Quotes from 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Wit is the only wall Between us and the dark.

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.

Our best chance for happiness is education.

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.

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.

Respect for the truth is an acquired taste.

Wit is the only wallBetween us and the dark.

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

Wisdom before experience is only words; wisdom after experience is of no avail.

There is no appeal from the ways of the world, which must continue on its own terms or take us all down with it into chaos and confusion.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.

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

The first thing to do about a problem is to recognize it; the second thing is to state it; the third thing is to solve it.