Quote

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.

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
Objects
Silence
Rest
Spirit
Music
Inhaled
Made
Ineffable
Intangible
Referring

More quotes by Jacques Barzun

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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 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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Tennis belongs to the individualistic past - a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.
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History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris it is full of live and dead things, some destined for resurrection it mingles many waters and holds in solution invisible substances stolen from distant soils.
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When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.
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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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[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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If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
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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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Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.
Jacques Barzun
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Speech, after all, is in some measure an expression of character, and flexibility in its use is a good way to tell your friends from the robots.
Jacques Barzun
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Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
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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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