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 DEVOTOThe trouble with the sacred Individual is that he has no significance, except as he can acquire it from others, from the social whole.
More Bernard DeVoto Quotes
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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 man determined to die sane.
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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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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 mind has its own logic but does not often let others in on it.
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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.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day’s occupation that is known as the cocktail hour.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
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 only places where American medicine can fully live up to its possibilities are the teaching hospitals.
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The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.
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Art is the terms of an armistice signed with fate.
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The dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.
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The West begins where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches. When you reach the line which marks that drop – for convenience, the one hundredth meridian – you have reached the West.
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The rat stops gnawing in the wood, the dungeon walls withdraw, the weight is lifted your pulse steadies and the sun has found your heart, the day was not bad, the season has not been bad, there is sense and even promise in going on.
BERNARD DEVOTO