Bernard DeVoto Quotes
22 quotes
in 380 categories
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Let us candidly admit that there are shameful blemishes on the American past, of which the worst by far is rum. Nevertheless, we have improved…
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The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.
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It is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness untouched so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its curve…
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Sure the people are stupid: the human race is stupid. Sure Congress is an inefficient instrument of government. But the people are not stupid enough…
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The achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire.
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History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.
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Between the amateur and the professional . . . there is a difference not only in degree but in kind. The skillful man is, within…
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One may lack words to express the impact of beauty but no one who has felt it remains untouched. It is renewal, enlargement, intensification. The…
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Something can be done with people who put pickled onions in: strangulation seems best.
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This is the violet hour, the hour of hush and wonder, when the affectations glow and valor is reborn, when the shadows deepen along the…
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You can no more keep a Martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there.
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The water of life was given to us to make us see for a while that we are more nearly men and women, more nearly…
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You can no more keep a martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there. The proper union of gin and vermouth is…
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New England is a finished place. Its destiny is that of Florence or Venice, not Milan while the American empire careens onward toward its unpredicted…
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The dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.
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The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.
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The trouble with the sacred Individual is that he has no significance, except as he can acquire it from others, from the social whole.
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When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the cocktail hour.
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The mind has its own logic but does not often let others in on it.
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The rat stops gnawing in the wood, the dungeon walls withdraw, the weight is lifted your pulse steadies and the sun has found your heart,…
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