Jacques Barzun Quotes - Page 3

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• In a large university, there are as many deans and executive heads as there are schools and departments. Their relations to one another are intricate and periodic; in fact, "galaxy" is too loose a term: it is a planetarium of deans with the President of the University as a central sun. One can see eclipses, inner systems, and oppositions.

  Jacques Barzun

  School, President, Sun

  Jacques Barzun (1954). “Teacher in America”

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• Science is an all-pervasive energy, for it is at once a mode of thought, a source of strong emotion, and a faith as fanatical as any in history.

  Jacques Barzun

  Strong, Energy, Emotion

  1964 Science, The Glorious Entertainment.

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

  Jacques Barzun

  Sleep, Fighting, Naps

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• 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.

  Jacques Barzun

  Block, Stupid, Writing

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

  Jacques Barzun

  Running, Expression, Mind

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

  Jacques Barzun

  Morning, Fog, Long

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• Of true knowledge at any time, a good part is merely convenient, necessary indeed to the worker, but not to an understanding of his subject: One can judge a building without knowing where to buy the bricks; one can understand a violin sonata without knowing how to score for the instrument. The work may in fact be better understood without a knowledge of the details of its manufacture, of attention to these tends to distract from meaning and effect.

  Jacques Barzun

  Knowledge, Knowing, Judging

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• Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.

  Jacques Barzun

  Fake People, Routine, Ends

  Jacques Barzun (1959). “The House of Intellect”

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

  Jacques Barzun

  Fashion, Tahiti, Clothings

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• To watch a football game is to be in a prolonged neurotic doubt as to what you're seeing. It's more like an emergency happening at a distance than a game. I don't wonder the spectators take to drink.

  Jacques Barzun

  Football, Distance, Games

  Quoted in Colin Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

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

  Jacques Barzun

  Prejudice, Substance, Weapons

  Jacques Barzun (1954). “Teacher in America”

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• Bernard Shaw remains the only model we have of what the citizen of a democracy should be: an informed participant in all things we deem important to the society and the individual.

  Jacques Barzun

  Democracy, Important, Citizens

  "A Jacques Barzun Reader: Selections from His Works (Bernard Shaw)". Book by Jacques Barzun (p. 231), December 24, 2001.

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• On the one hand, society needs a common faith and vigorous institutions with the power to coerce; and on the other, the individual as a human soul or as the bearer of a new and possibly saving heresy, must be free. It is difficult enough to reconcile these two needs, but the problem holds another hazard: the need of action under the pressure of time.

  Jacques Barzun

  Hands, Two, Soul

  "Bernard Shaw in Twilight". The Kenyon Review, 1943.

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

  Jacques Barzun

  Hands, History, Triumph

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• My notion about any artist is that we honor him best by reading him, by playing his music, by seeing his plays or by looking at his pictures. We don't need to fall all over ourselves with adjectives and epithets. Let's play him more.

  Jacques Barzun

  Fall, Reading, Artist

  Interview with John C. Tibbetts, December 4, 1986.

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• 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.

  Jacques Barzun

  Creative, Shadow, West

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

  Jacques Barzun

  Rivers, Steps

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

  Jacques Barzun

  Expression, Looks, Fancy

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• Life is given us as a passion.

  Jacques Barzun

  Passion, Life Is, Given

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• The nation in arms is virtually a communist state: the people must be paid wages and fed and protected and regimented behind the lines as much as on the front. Minds must be kept loyal and at the right pitch of hate, so that successive drafts of fighters are accepted without murmurings. Letters and newspapers must be censored while the propaganda mill grinds on. As for decisions of strategy and overall command, they must please many masters: dissenters in the cabinet, the heads of the allied states and public opinion. Hence failures must be disguised or concealed.

  Jacques Barzun

  Hate, Tyrants, People

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• History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for resurrection; it mingles many waters and holds in solution invisible substances stolen from distant soils.

  Jacques Barzun

  Rivers, History, Water

  "Clio and the Doctors" by Jacques Barzun, ("History as Counter-Method and Anti-Abstraction"), 1974.

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

  Jacques Barzun

  Fiction, May, Crime

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• Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.

  Jacques Barzun

  Funny, Humor, Literature

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

  Jacques Barzun

  Historical, Example, Details

  "Bernard Shaw in Twilight" by Jacques Barzun in "The Kenyon Review", Volume 5, No. 3 (pp. 321-345), Part IV, www.jstor.org. Summer 1943.

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• One great aim of revision is to cut out. In the exuberance of composition it is natural to throw in - as one does in speaking - a number of small words that add nothing to meaning but keep up the flow and rhythm of thought. In writing, not only does this surplusage not add to meaning, it subtracts from it. Read and revise, reread and revise, keeping reading and revising until your text seems adequate to your thought.

  Jacques Barzun

  Reading, Writing, Cutting

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