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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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Jacques Barzun
Age: 104 †
Born: 1907
Born: November 30
Died: 2012
Died: October 25
Critic
Cultural Historian
Historian
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Ideas
Trying
Good
Expound
Haphazard
Meetings
Advice
Talk

More quotes by 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.
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Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.
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Life is given us as a passion.
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[T]hat is the triumph of history - truth absolute is not at hand the original with which to match the copy does not exist.
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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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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 game of homo ludens: science is in the strictest and best sense a glorious entertainment.
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Above all, the ability to feel the force of an argument apart from the substance it deals with is the strongest weapon against prejudice.
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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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Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.
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Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
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Finding oneself was a misnomer a self is not found but made.
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Strangers who have seen Shaw face to face are wont to report their surprise at his gentleness and consideration, his willingness to listen and his complete lack of pose.
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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.
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Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.
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Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.
Jacques Barzun
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Tennis belongs to the individualistic past - a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.
Jacques Barzun
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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.
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Intellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention.
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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The greatest artists have never been men of taste. By never sophisticating their instincts they have never lost the awareness of the great simplicities, which they relish both from appetite and from the challenge these offer to skill in competition with popular art.
Jacques Barzun