Mark van Doren > Quotes

“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

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

“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

“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

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”
― Mark Van Doren

“It is astonishing how few stories have been told perfectly.”
― 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

“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.”
― Mark Van Doren

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

“The fairly common assumption that we ourselves can afford to be ignorant because somewhere there is somebody who knows the answer — such an assumption builds ignorance fast, and builds it widely. The rapid growth of knowledge we sometimes boast about, seen in this perspective, looks like its opposite: the rapid growth of ignorance. Unchecked, it could become absolute; and that would be disaster. For no one then would trust himself to speculate about the huge central things that matter most. He would have lost the ambition, and to that extent the power, to do so.”
― 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

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

“Travelling Storm
- 1894-1972

The sky, above us here, is open again.
The sun comes hotter, and the shingles steam.
The trees are done with dripping, and the hens
Bustle among bright pools to pick and drink. . . .
But east and south are black with speeding storm.
That thunder, low and far, remembering nothing,
Gathers a new world under it and growls,
Worries, strikes, and is gone. Children at windows
Cry at the rain, it pours so heavily down,
Drifting across the yard till the sheds are grey. . . .
A county father on, the wind is all—
A swift dark wind that turns the maples pale,
Ruffles the hay, and spreads the swallows’ wings.
Horses, suddenly restless, are unhitched,
And men, with glances upward, hurry in;
Their overalls blow full and cool; they shout;
Soon they will lie in barns and laugh at the lightning. . . .
Another county yet, and the sky is still;
The air is fainting; women sit with fans
And wonder when a rain will come that way.”
― Mark Van Doren