Inspirational Quotes by Carl Clinton Van Doren (American Critic, Historian)

Carl Clinton Van Doren (1885–1950) was an American critic, historian, academic, and Pulitzer-winning biographer. His writings range from surveys of literature to novels, biography, and criticism. He is the brother of Mark Van Doren, an American poet, writer, and critic.

Born in Hope, Illinois, Van Doren was educated at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Columbia University. He taught at Columbia 1911–30 and helped establish American literature and history as an integral part of university programs in the U.S. He also served as managing editor of the Cambridge History of American Literature 1917–21 and literary editor of The Nation 1919–22 and Century Magazine 1922–25.

Van Doren won a Pulitzer for his sharp biography of Benjamin Franklin (1939.) Other works include The American Novel (1921; revised 1940;) Contemporary American Novelists (1922;) American and British Literature since 1890 (1925; revised 1939; written with his brother, the critic and teacher Mark Van Doren,) and What Is American Literature? (1935.)

Van Doren’s autobiography is Three Worlds (1936.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Carl Clinton Van Doren

To all appearances, fiction is the native dialect of mankind, and the truth an esoteric language as yet but imperfectly learned and little loved.
—Carl Clinton Van Doren
Topics: Truth

Yes, it’s hard to write, but it’s harder not to.
—Carl Clinton Van Doren
Topics: Writers, Writing, Authors & Writing

Yes, it’s hard to write. But it’s harder not to.
—Carl Clinton Van Doren

The race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity.
—Carl Clinton Van Doren
Topics: Religion, Humankind, Humanity

The most familiar quotations are the most likely to be misquoted. Some misquotations are still variable, some have settled down to false versions that have obscured the true ones. They have passed over from literature into speech.
—Carl Clinton Van Doren

A classic is a book that doesn’t have to be written again.
—Carl Clinton Van Doren
Topics: Books

It is obvious that no difficulty in the way of world government can match the danger of a world without it.
—Carl Clinton Van Doren

Whoever says he knows that immortality is a fact is merely hoping that it is.
—Carl Clinton Van Doren

Neither creator nor critic can make himself universal by barely taking thought about it. He is what he lives. The measure of the creator is the amount of life he puts Into his work. The measure of the critic is the amount of life he finds there.
—Carl Clinton Van Doren

Inspirational Quotes by Carl Clinton Van Doren (American Critic, Historian)

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