32 Quotes by 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.

To fail to love is not to exist at all.

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

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.

A classic is a book that remains in print.

The literature of the world has exerted its power by being translated.

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 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.

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.