Jacques Barzun quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Jacques Barzun

Jacques Barzun Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Jacques Barzun on Wise Famous Quotes.

The ascetic is often a sensualist who has reached the limit of his capacity.

Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.

[T]hat is the triumph of history - truth absolute is not at hand; the original with which to match the copy does not exist.

Highly-adaptive, informal networks move diagonally and eliptically, skipping entire functions to get things done.

Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.

It is only in the shadows, when some fresh wave, truly original, truly creative, breaks upon the shore, that there will be a rediscovery of the West.

If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real.

It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism.

Speech, after all, is in some measure an expression of character, and flexibility in its use is a good way to tell your friends from the robots.

When all around take fundamental ideas for granted, these must be the truth. For most minds there is no comfort like it.

For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods; for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation.

First Principle: Have a point and make it by means of the best word.

To denounce does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence.

Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.

Writing, at least a craft and at its best an art, aspiring to the unique, is the most difficult to learn.

You never step in the same river of thought twice, because neither you nor it are the same.

Intellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention.

Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy.

To delve into history entails, besides the grievance of hard work, the danger that in the depths one may lose one's scapegoats.

Above all, do not talk yourself out of good ideas by trying to expound them at haphazard meetings.

Tennis belongs to the individualistic past - a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.

Americans began by loving youth, and now, out of adult self-pity, they worship it.

The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers.

Look for all fancy wordings and get rid of themAvoid all terms and expressions, old or new, that embody affectation.

The mind tends to run along the groove of one's intention and overlook the actual expression.

We cannot appreciate the art of any age without first acquiring an equivalent of the experience it depicts.

[ ... ] the state is not immoral but amoral; half of it exists outside morality

The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.

If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.

[The prince] dare not let ethics keep him from doing whatever evil must be done to preserve himself and the state.

The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.

Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.

Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.

The reason teaching has to go on is that children are not born human; they are made so.

Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.

Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.

No one has ever used historical examples, near or remote, with the detail, precision, and directness to be found in every page of Shaw.

No subject of study is more important than reading ... all other intellectual powers depend on it.

Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.

I'll read, and then I'll take naps. When I feel sleep coming on, I give in and don't fight it.

The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.

Finding oneself was a misnomer; a self is not found but made.

Grab a pen and put down some words - your name even - and a title: something to see, to revise, to carve, to do over in the opposite way

When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.

I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.

By the time I was 9, I had the conviction that everybody in the world was an artist except plumbers or people who delivered groceries.

Above all, the ability to feel the force of an argument apart from the substance it deals with is the strongest weapon against prejudice.

It seems a long time since the morning mail could be called correspondence.

The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.

Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.

The history of creation is but a succession of battles between amateurs of genius-inspired heretics- and orthodox professionals.

In any assembly the simplest way to stop transacting business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principle.

An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.

Life is given us as a passion.

Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.

In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.

Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published.

Simple English is no one's mother tongue. It has to be worked for.

Baseball is a kind of collective chess with arms and legs in full play under sunlight.