Quote

We may complain and cavil at the anarchy which is the amateurs natural element, but in soberness we must agree that if the amateur did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.

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
May
Element
Must
Complaining
Would
Agree
Elements
Amateurs
Exist
Amateur
Necessary
Anarchy
Ability
Invent
Natural
Complain

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Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy
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The educated man had throughout the ages found a way to covert passionate activity into silent and motionless pleasure. He can sit still in a room and not perish.
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To delve into history entails, besides the grievance of hard work, the danger that in the depths one may lose one’s scapegoats.
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Intellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention.
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Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.
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Simple English is no one’s mother tongue. It has to be worked for.
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An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.
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Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about the past are a form of injustice.
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Life is given us as a passion.
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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.
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Finding oneself was a misnomer a self is not found but made.
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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.
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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
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Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.
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To denounce does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence.
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