It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism. Jacques Barzun More Quotes by Jacques Barzun More Quotes From Jacques Barzun Time and rest are needed for absorption. Psychologists confirm that it is really in the summer that our muscles learn to skate and in the winter, how to swim. Jacques Barzun swimsummerwinter 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. Jacques Barzun riverswaterhistory Vanity is a static thing. It puts it faith in what it has, and is easily wounded. Pride is active, and satisfied only with what it can do, hence accustomed not to feel small stings. Jacques Barzun staticvanitypride For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods; for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation. Jacques Barzun methodmassauthority 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. Jacques Barzun distancegamesfootball To delve into history entails, besides the grievance of hard work, the danger that in the depths one may lose one’s scapegoats. Jacques Barzun hard-workdepthmay Regarding the idea of race, .. no agreement seems to exist about what race means. Race seems to embody a fact as simple and as obvious as the noonday sun, but if that is so, why the endless wrangling about the idea and the facts of race. What is a race? How can it be recognized? Who constitute the several races?. Jacques Barzun racesimplemean The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated, will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though never said, that uttering nonsense and half-truth without cease ends by destroying Intellect Jacques Barzun small-actscharacterlong Maxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable. The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony. Jacques Barzun symphonycuttingair Intellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention. Jacques Barzun conventionsequalitysublime We are accustomed to the artist scoundrel or specialist in vice, and unaccustomed to the creator in whom passion and reason and moral integrity hold in balance. But greatness of intellect and feeling, or soul and conduct - magnanimity, in short - does occur; it is not a myth for boy scouts, and its reality is important, if only to give us the true range of the term "human," which we so regularly define by its lower reaches. Jacques Barzun passionartistintegrity Among the words that can be all things to all men, the word "race" has a fair claim to being the most common, most ambiguous and most explosive. No one today would deny that it is one of the great catchwords about which ink and blood are spilled in reckless quantities. Yet no agreement seems to exist about what race means. Jacques Barzun racemenmean The greatest artists have never been men of taste. By never sophisticating their instincts they have never lost the awareness of the great simplicities, which they relish both from appetite and from the challenge these offer to skill in competition with popular art. Jacques Barzun skillsmenart Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing. Jacques Barzun old-ageprofessionage 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. Jacques Barzun formauthoritysocial In ordinary speech the words perception and sensation tend to be used interchangeably, but the psychologist distinguishes. Sensations are the items of consciousness--a color, a weight, a texture--that we tend to think of as simple and single. Perceptions are complex affairs that embrace sensation together with other, associated or revived contents of the mind, including emotions. Jacques Barzun colorsimplethinking Seeing clearly within himself and always able to dodge around the ends of any position, including his own, Shaw assumed from the start the dual role of prophet and gadfly. To his contemporaries it appeared frivolous and contradictory to perform as both superman and socialist, sceptic and believer, legalist and heretic, high-brow and mob-orator. But feeling the duty to teach as well as to mirror mankind, Shaw did not accept himself as a contradictory being. Jacques Barzun gadfliesmirrorsfeelings The nation in arms is virtually a communist state: the people must be paid wages and fed and protected and regimented behind the lines as much as on the front. Minds must be kept loyal and at the right pitch of hate, so that successive drafts of fighters are accepted without murmurings. Letters and newspapers must be censored while the propaganda mill grinds on. As for decisions of strategy and overall command, they must please many masters: dissenters in the cabinet, the heads of the allied states and public opinion. Hence failures must be disguised or concealed. Jacques Barzun tyrantshatepeople Life is given us as a passion. Jacques Barzun givenpassionlife-is The reason teaching has to go on is that children are not born human; they are made so. Jacques Barzun teachingeducationchildren
