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Life is given us as a passion.

Jacques Barzun

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Jacques Barzun
Age: 104 †
Born: 1907
Born: November 30
Died: 2012
Died: October 25
Critic
Cultural Historian
Historian
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Passion
Given
Life

More quotes by Jacques Barzun

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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
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The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
Jacques Barzun
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It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism.
Jacques Barzun
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Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.
Jacques Barzun
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Above all, do not talk yourself out of good ideas by trying to expound them at haphazard meetings.
Jacques Barzun
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Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
Jacques Barzun
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Baseball is a kind of collective chess with arms and legs in full play under sunlight.
Jacques Barzun
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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
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Education in the United States is a passion and a paradox. Millions want it, and commend it, and are busy about it. At the same time they degrade it by trying to get it free of charge and free of work.
Jacques Barzun
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In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.
Jacques Barzun
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You never step in the same river of thought twice, because neither you nor it are the same.
Jacques Barzun
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Finding oneself was a misnomer a self is not found but made.
Jacques Barzun
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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
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When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.
Jacques Barzun
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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 look round, And at folly or vice let it fly
Jacques Barzun
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Music, not being made up of objects nor referring to objects, is intangible and ineffable it can only be as it were inhaled by the spirit: the rest is silence.
Jacques Barzun
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For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation.
Jacques Barzun
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Schools are not intended to moralize a wicked world, but to impart knowledge and develop intelligence, with only two social aims in mind: prepare to take on one's share in the world's work, and perhaps in addition, lend a hand in improving society, after schooling is done.
Jacques Barzun
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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
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I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.
Jacques Barzun