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

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Time and rest are needed for absorption. Psychologists confirm that it is really in the summer that our muscles learn to skate and in the winter, how to swim.
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Above all, do not talk yourself out of good ideas by trying to expound them at haphazard meetings.
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Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy
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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.
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Simple English is no one’s mother tongue. It has to be worked for.
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Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published.
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Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
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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.
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After being boxed in by man and his constructions in Europe and the East, the release into space is exhilarating. The horizon is a huge remote circle, and no hills intervene.
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Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.
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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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The professionals resemble and recognize each other by virtue of the stigmata that their trade has left upon them. They are like the dog in the fable, whose collar has made an indelible mark around his neck. The amateur is the shaggy wolf whom no dog had better trust too far.
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Finding oneself was a misnomer a self is not found but made.
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The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.
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Baseball is a kind of collective chess with arms and legs in full play under sunlight.
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Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
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Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.
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On reflection, moral judgment in the arts appears rather as a tribute to their power to influence emotion and possibly conduct. And reflecting further on what some critics do today, one sees that a good many have merely shifted the ground of their moralism, transferring their impulse of righteousness to politics and social issues.
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