Van Doren Quotes & Sayings

Education in the West, particularly higher education in America, has lost the ability to see the universe from very far away. — Charles Van Doren

I hoped that it would be possible to slide slowly from my public life back to the life of teaching and writing that I had always wanted. But things didn't work out that way. — Charles Van Doren

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. — Mark Van Doren

The first writers are first and the rest, in the long run, nowhere but in anthologies. — Carl Clinton Van Doren

Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and I were so different from each other. I was doing very young movies, and Marilyn, who was ahead of me, was doing a lot of homogenized movies that weren't quite as wild as the ones I was doing. Jayne was more of a character of herself. — Mamie Van Doren

I have always had the greatest respect for students. There is nothing I hate more than condescension - the attitude that they are inferior to you. I always assume they have good minds. — Mark Van Doren

Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at this moment exactly proportional to my skill to deal with it. Tomorrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of knowledge and use it better. — Mark Van Doren

you have to understand in order to disagree. — Charles Van Doren

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well. — Charles Van Doren

An unexamined idea, to paraphrase Socrates, is not worth having and a society whose ideas are never explored for possible error may eventually find its foundations insecure. — Mark Van Doren

I never wanted to be a trophy wife. I wanted to make it on my own. I didn't want to depend on a man. — Mamie Van Doren

Because the world is radically new, the ideal encyclopedia should be radical, too. — Charles Van Doren

It is possible that blondes also prefer gentlemen. — Mamie Van Doren

I came to Hollywood determined to follow in Jean Harlow's footsteps, but I was determined not to die young. My hope was to endure. And endure I have. — Mamie Van Doren

Raising children with an emphasis on intrinsic rewards is not a technique, a method or a trick to get them to do what the parent wants them to by subtler means, but a way of life, a way of living with children with real respect for their intelligence and for their being. — Mamie Van Doren

Familiar life, tending to sordidness, had been succeeded by remote life, generally idealized; historical detail had been brought in to teach readers who were being entertained. — Carl Clinton Van Doren

Weightless in water, swift as the wind, Subtle of purpose - a feather blown - I go with my oarsmen where they will, My beautiful body and theirs all one. — Mark Van Doren

Memory performs the impossible for man; holds together past and present, gives continuity and dignity to human life. — Mark Van Doren

I have never been a Marilyn Monroe wannabe. I have always been happy in my own skin! — Mamie Van Doren

The race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity. — Carl Clinton Van Doren

To be what no one ever was, to be what everyone has been: Freedom is the mean of those extremes that fence all effort in. — Mark Van Doren

I was involved, deeply involved, in a deception ... I have deceived my friends - and I had millions of them. — Charles Van Doren

Yes, it's hard to write, but it's harder not to. — Carl Van Doren

The most familiar quotations are the most likely to be misquoted. Some misquotations are still variable, some have settled down to false versions that have obscured the true ones. They have passed over from literature into speech. — Carl Clinton Van Doren

I love the fall. I love it because of the smells that you speak of; and also because things are dying, things that you don't have to take care of anymore, and the grass stops growing. — Mark Van Doren

For Tolstoy ... anything that human beings do has its glory ... I think he can be said to have hated nothing that ever happened. — Mark Van Doren

Wit is the only wall between us and the dark. — Mark Van Doren

He's the type of man who will end up dying in his own arms. — Mamie Van Doren

It is obvious that no difficulty in the way of world government can match the danger of a world without it. — Carl Clinton Van Doren

Guy Rivers, a conventional piece as regards the love affair which makes a part of the plot, is a tale of deadly strife between the laws of Georgia and a fiendish bandit. — Carl Clinton Van Doren

Wisdom before experience is only words; wisdom after experience is of no avail. — Mark Van Doren

Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor; it is the sign that he wants all the truth. — Mark Van Doren

In fiction, too, after the death of Cooper the main tendency for nearly a generation was away from the conquest of new borders to the closer cultivation, east of the Mississippi, of ground already marked. — Carl Clinton Van Doren

I never wanted to see another quiz show. — Charles Van Doren

I studied really hard. But Hollywood never appreciated my talent. — Mamie Van Doren

Although by 1851 tales of adventure had begun to seem antiquated, they had rendered a large service to the course of literature: they had removed the stigma, for the most part, from the word novel. — Carl Clinton Van Doren

I've never acted my age and I never will. It's just the way I've always been. — Mamie Van Doren

I didn't feel like I was meant to be a nurse or a secretary. — Mamie Van Doren

There is one thing we can do, and the happiest people are those who do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present. We can be all here. We can ... give all our attention to the opportunity before us. — Mark Van Doren

I've learned a lot about good and evil. They are not always what they appear to be. — Charles Van Doren

My best asset is my brain. Without my brain, I don't think the rest of me would be too hot. — Mamie Van Doren

The job of the poet is to render the world-to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do. — Mark Van Doren

Great periods of poetry begin with an inordinate self-consciousness, and only gradually attain to the natural. — Mark Van Doren

I took my acting very seriously. I did over 40 films, and naturally, some of them were called B-movies because the woman was at the top of the billing. Women couldn't star in their own movies. — Mamie Van Doren

My total winnings after 14 appearances were $129,000. — Charles Van Doren

There are two statements about human beings that are true: that all human beings are alike, and that all are different. On those two facts all human wisdom is founded. — Mark Van Doren

Respect for the Truth is an acquired taste. — Mark Van Doren

I worked hard at memorizing lists of facts and figures, and carried with me a book of facts. — Charles Van Doren

It's a curious thing. I suppose most people think of artists as impatient but I don't know of any first-rate artist who hasn't manifested in his career an appalling patience, a willingness to wait and to do his best now in the expectation that next year he will do better. — Mark Van Doren

I've married a few people I shouldn't have, but haven't we all? — Mamie Van Doren

The art of reading is the art of adopting the pace the author has set. Some books are fast and some are slow, but no book can be understood if it is taken at the wrong speed. — Mark Van Doren

Melville brought to the task a sound knowledge of actual whaling, much curious learning in the literature of the subject, and, above all, an imagination which worked with great power upon the facts of his own experience. — Carl Clinton Van Doren

IT is mere coincidence that Cooper was born in the year which produced The Power of Sympathy and that when he died Uncle Tom's Cabin was passing through its serial stage, and yet the limits of his life mark almost exactly the first great period of American fiction. — Carl Clinton Van Doren

When it aims to express a love of the world it refuses to conceal the many reasons why the world is hard to love, though we must love it because we have no other, and to fail to love it is not to exist at all. — Mark Van Doren

The last part, the part you're now approaching, was for Aristotle the most important for happiness. — Charles Van Doren

("A classic is a book that remains in print" - Mark Van Doren) — Thomas Merton

Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king. — Mark Van Doren

It is astonishing how few stories have been told perfectly. — Mark Van Doren

The region west of the Mississippi continued in the popular mind to be a strange land for which the reports of explorers and travellers did the work of fiction, and Cooper's Prairie had few followers. — Carl Clinton Van Doren

Our best chance for happiness is education. — Mark Van Doren

The two most common charges against the older fiction, that it pleased wickedly and that it taught nothing, had broken down before the discovery, except in illiberal sects, that the novel is fitted both for honest use and for pleasure. — Carl Clinton Van Doren

The literature of the world has exerted its power by being translated. — Mark Van Doren

The genius of the Marx Brothers is for parody. They never are themselves. They exist too abundantly to be content with being that - they must go on, by the rapidest of transitions, to being something else. Groucho, in my opinion the bright star among the three, is never anything but the thing he is at the moment pretending to be. — Mark Van Doren

To fail to love is not to exist at all. — Mark Van Doren

Nothing stays
not even change,
That can grow tired
of it's own name;
The very thought
too much for it.
Somewhere in air
a stillness is,
So far, so thin-
But let it alone.
Whoever we are
it is not for us — Mark Van Doren

I cannot take back one word or action; the past does not change for anyone. — Charles Van Doren