The achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire.
BERNARD DEVOTOYou can no more keep a martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there. The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth and one of the shortest-lived.
More Bernard DeVoto Quotes
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When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day’s occupation that is known as the cocktail hour. It marks the lifeward turn.
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You can no more keep a Martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there.
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Art is the terms of an armistice signed with fate.
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It is the first American section to be finished to achieve stability in the conditions of its life. It is the first old civilization, the first permanent civilization in America.
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The heart wakens from coma and its dyspnea ends. Its strengthening pulse is to cross over into campground, to believe that the world has not been altogether lost or, if lost, then not altogether in vain.
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The trouble with the sacred Individual is that he has no significance, except as he can acquire it from others, from the social whole.
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New England is a finished place. Its destiny is that of Florence or Venice, not Milan while the American empire careens onward toward its unpredicted end. . . .
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This is the violet hour, the hour of hush and wonder, when the affectations glow and valor is reborn, when the shadows deepen along the edge of the forest and we believe that, if we watch carefully, at any moment we may see the unicorn.
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Something can be done with people who put pickled onions in: strangulation seems best.
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A novelist has mad a fictional representation of life. I doing so, he has revealed to us more significance, it may be, than he could find in life itself.
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Art is man determined to die sane.
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One may lack words to express the impact of beauty but no one who has felt it remains untouched. It is renewal, enlargement, intensification.
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You can no more keep a martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there. The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth and one of the shortest-lived.
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The dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.
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The skillful man is, within the function of his skill, a different psychological organization. . . . A tennis player or a watchmaker or an airplane pilot is an automatism but he is also criticism and wisdom.
BERNARD DEVOTO