Quote

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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Jacques Barzun
Age: 104 †
Born: 1907
Born: November 30
Died: 2012
Died: October 25
Critic
Cultural Historian
Historian
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Read
Give
Take
Feel
Naps
Feels
Fight
Giving
Coming
Sleep
Fighting

More quotes by Jacques Barzun

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Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published.
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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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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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Intellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention.
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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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Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment
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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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Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.
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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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Bernard Shaw remains the only model we have of what the citizen of a democracy should be: an informed participant in all things we deem important to the society and the individual.
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Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.
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Baseball is a kind of collective chess with arms and legs in full play under sunlight.
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The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.
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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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Above all, do not talk yourself out of good ideas by trying to expound them at haphazard meetings.
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When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.
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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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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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Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
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