Joseph Wood Krutch Writer
- Gender: Male
- Citizenship: United States
- Born: Nov 25, 1893
- Died: May 22, 1970
Joseph Wood Krutch (pronounced krootch) (November 25, 1893 - May 22, 1970) was an American writer, critic, and naturalist.
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, he initially studied at the University of Tennessee and received a masters degree and Ph.D. from Columbia University. After serving in the army in 1918, he travelled in Europe for a year with friend Mark Van Doren. Afterwards, he worked as teacher at Brooklyn Polytechnic.
He became a theater critic for The Nation and wrote several books, gaining acclaim through a work critical of the impact of science and technology, The Modern Temper (1929). He also wrote biographies of Samuel Johnson and Henry David Thoreau in the 1940s, altogether completing a dozen volumes of literary biography and theatrical history. Throughout his life he wrote thirty-five books altogether.
He worked as a professor at Columbia University from 1937 to 1953.
The Measure of Man was published in 1954 and won the National Book Award for Nonfiction next year.
What a man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants.
war
Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.
finance
It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder.
inspirational & knowledge
Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude.
happiness
When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman.
environmental
If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.
beauty, environmental & food
Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.
pet