Life & Wisdom Quote by Henry Van Dyke

Culture, for Van Dyke, isn’t a museum pass or a stack of opinions you borrow to sound literate. It’s a trained appetite: the habit of taking pleasure in what’s excellent, and the disciplined ability to explain that pleasure without hand-waving. The sneaky force of the line is that it makes taste both sensual and accountable. “Being pleased” keeps culture rooted in real feeling, not dutiful reverence. “Knowing why” refuses the lazy romance of “it just speaks to me,” insisting that judgment is part of enjoyment, not an enemy of it.

Written in an era when “culture” often meant social polish and highbrow signaling, Van Dyke quietly redraws the boundaries. He democratizes the concept while still raising the bar. Anyone can develop the habit; not everyone does. That word “habit” is doing heavy lifting: culture becomes practice, not pedigree. It’s cultivated through repetition, attention, and comparison - the slow work of learning what lasts, what’s made well, what deepens rather than merely distracts.

There’s also a moral subtext. “Best” implies standards, and standards imply responsibility: you owe your mind more than the loudest, easiest, most marketable thing. In a mass-media age already arriving in Van Dyke’s lifetime, the quote reads as a preemptive critique of passive consumption. Culture, he suggests, is what happens when pleasure grows up and can give an account of itself.