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Quote by Mark 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.”

Quote by Mark Van Doren

Author

Mark Van Doren was an American poet, scholar, and literary critic. His poetry is known for its profound emotion and beautiful language. Born on June 13, 1894, he passed away on December 10, 1972. more

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“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.”

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Book:Autobiography

Source: Autobiography

“Our best chance for happiness is education.”

Author:Mark 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.”

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“A classic is a book that remains in print”

Book Remains Classic Print

Author:Mark Van Doren

“Since art is a virtue of the intellect, it demands to communicate with the entire universe of the intellect. Hence it is that the normal climate of art is intelligence and knowledge: its normal soil, the civilized heritage of a consistent and integrated system of beliefs and values; its normal horizon , the infinity of human experience enlighted by the passionate insight of anguish or the intellectual virtues of a contemplative mind.”

“The spiritual experience of the philosopher is the nourishing soil of philosophy; that without it there is no philosophy; and that, even so, spiritual experience does not, or must not, enter into the intelligible texture of philosophy. The pulp of the fruit must consist of nothing but the truth.”

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Book:Existence and the Existent

Source: Existence and the Existent

“God does not ask for 'religious' art or 'Catholic' art. The art he wants for himself is Art, with all its teeth”

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Book:Art and Faith: Letters between Jacques Maritain and Jean Cocteau

Source: Art and Faith: Letters between Jacques Maritain and Jean Cocteau

“I don't see America as a mainland, but as a sea, a big ocean. Sometimes a storm arises, a formidable current develops, and it seems it will engulf everything. Wait a moment, another current will appear and bring the first one to naught.”

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Author:Jacques Maritain

“Our Nation, a great stage for the acting out of great thoughts, presents the classic confrontation between Locke's views of the state of nature and Rousseau's criticism of them... Nature is raw material, worthless without the mixture of human labor; yet nature is also the highest and most sacred thing. The same people who struggle to save the snail-darter bless the pill, worry about hunting deer and defend abortion. Reverence for nature, mastery of nature- whichever is convenient.”

“The utilitarian behaves sensibly in all that is required for preservation but never takes account of the fact that he must die... His whole life is absorbed in avoiding death, which is inevitable, and therefore he might be thought to be the most irrational of men, if rationality has anything to do with understanding ends or comprehending the human situation as such.”