"No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead."

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"No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead."

Explore more quotes by Van Wyck Brooks

"The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man."

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"Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright."

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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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"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."

Perception, Geese, Swans

"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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"People of small caliber are always carping. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or prowess or good breeding."

People, Superiority, Knowledge, Breeding

"The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses."

War, Impulses, Man

"The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me... by newspapers and the Bible."

Bible, Books, English

"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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"Nothing is sadder than having worldly standards without worldly means."

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Exlpore more Experience quotes

"There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California."

Edward Abbey, American Author

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"And so I think that if the person has the funds, the network, and the equipment to do this, and also the experience, which is the key factor, then they can be quite deadly."

John Abizaid, American Soldier

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"Well, the hardest thing to do, as we know from our own experience on 9/11 is protect everything all the time."

John Abizaid, American Soldier

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"There is only one thing which can master the perplexed stuff of epic material into unity; and that is, an ability to see in particular human experience some significant symbolism of man's general destiny."

Lascelles Abercrombie, British Poet

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"The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience."

Chinua Achebe, Nigerian Writer

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"In my experience, problems most frequently arise from those who report for television, with little field experience in your area but an insatiable appetite for a sound bite."

Alvin Adams, American Businessman

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"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

Douglas Adams, English Writer

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"Major social movements eventually fade into the landscape not because they have diminished but because they have become a permanent part of our perceptions and experience."

Freda Adler, American Educator

Experience, Perceptions

"Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience."

Felix Adler, German Educator

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"It is always self-defeating to pretend to a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history."

Renata Adler, Italian Journalist

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