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It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.

Van Wyck Brooks

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Van Wyck Brooks
Age: 77 †
Born: 1886
Born: February 16
Died: 1963
Died: May 2
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Plainfield
New Jersey
Take
Swans
Geese
French
Express
Profound
Wells
Well

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The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an Orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making fun of them.
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Better the fragrant herb of wit and a little cream of affability than all the pretty cups in the world.
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Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.
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The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.
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There is no stopping the world's tendency to throw off imposed restraints, the religious authority that is based on the ignorance of the many, the political authority that is based on the knowledge of the few.
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If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?
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Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.
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People of small calibre are always carping. How affected so-and-so is! Don't you think he is silly? He was certainly quite mistaken about this or that. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or their prowess or good breeding.
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As against having beautiful workshops, studies, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day.
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Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere.
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Once you have a point of view all history will back you up.
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The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.
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Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.
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Longfellow is to poetry what the barrel-organ is to music.
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