All Jacques Barzun Quotes
- Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published. Bad
- When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. Absurd
- Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art. Art
- In any assembly the simplest way to stop transacting business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principle. Any
- 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… All
- The one thing that unifies men in a given age is not their individual philosophies but the dominant problem that these philosophies are designed to… Age
- To denounce does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence. Any
- The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated, will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though never said, that uttering nonsense… Acts
- Machines are admirable and tyrannize only with the user's consent. Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine gives relief from drudgery but where… Abdicates
- Look for all fancy wordings and get rid of themAvoid all terms and expressions, old or new, that embody affectation. Affectation
- The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers Crime
- Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy Great
- The piano is the social instrument par excellence... drawing-room furniture, a sign of bourgeois prosperity, the most massive of the devices by which the young… Bourgeois
- Out of man's mind in free play comes the creation Science. It renews itself, like the generations, thanks to an activity which is the best… Activity
- Democracy, to maintain itself, must repeatedly conquer every cell and corner of the nation. How many of our public institutions and private businesses, our schools,… Businesses
- I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties,… Accurately
- The sole justification of teaching, of the school itself, is that the student comes out of it able to do something he could not do… Able
- The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it. Teaching may… Administering
- Tennis belongs to the individualistic past - a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world. Belongs
- Take a portion of wit, And fashion it fit, Like a needle, with point and with eye: A point that can wound, An eye to… Eye
- Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces. Boredom
- Finding oneself was a misnomer; a self is not found but made. Finding
- 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… Distance
- Life is given us as a passion. Given
- 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… Accepted