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
Made
Ineffable
Intangible
Referring
Objects
Silence
Rest
Spirit
Music
Inhaled

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I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.
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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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The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
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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 intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.
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The one thing that unifies men in a given age is not their individual philosophies but the dominant problem that these philosophies are designed to solve.
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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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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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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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Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.
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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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Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment
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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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