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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.

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
Seen
Reports
Face
Willingness
Faces
Consideration
Shaw
Stranger
Wont
Lack
Pose
Complete
Gentleness
Surprise
Report
Listen
Strangers

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Life is given us as a passion.
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Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
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Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.
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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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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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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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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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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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[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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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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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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When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.
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Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy
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I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.
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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 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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Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.
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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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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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For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation.
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