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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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Jacques Barzun
Age: 104 †
Born: 1907
Born: November 30
Died: 2012
Died: October 25
Critic
Cultural Historian
Historian
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Illusion
Perfection
Especially
Young
Disillusion
Always
Cynicism
Alternative
Alternatives
Creates

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Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.
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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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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, hospitals, and domestic hearths are in reality little fascist states where freedom of speech is more rigorously excluded than vermin?
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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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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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Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.
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I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.
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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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Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
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Like Rousseau, whom he resembles even more than he resembles Voltaire, Shaw never gave a social form to his assertiveness, never desired to arrive and to assimilate himself, or wield authority as of right.
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The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.
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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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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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The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
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Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment
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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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When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.
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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.
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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.
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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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