John C. Van Dyke on the impossibility of describing the Grand Canyon

    The Grand Canyon is impossible to describe because the sublime is impossible to describe. John C. Van Dyke put it so:

Even the people who write prose, and are not popularly supposed to be bothered with fine frenzies, have their troubles in describing the Canyon. They have not enough adjectives to go around or to reach up and over. Language fails them. The tourist who comes out to the Rim for the first time and exclaims “Good God!” comes as near description as the more elaborately wordy if by his exclamation he means not only his own surprise but the greatness and goodness of God. (Quoted in The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 328.)

    For a brief biography of John C. Van Dyke, click here.