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.
BERNARD DEVOTOThe water of life was given to us to make us see for a while that we are more nearly men and women, more nearly kind and gentle and generous, pleasanter and stronger than without its vision there is any evidence we are.
More Bernard DeVoto Quotes
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Something can be done with people who put pickled onions in: strangulation seems best.
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Art is the terms of an armistice signed with fate.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
The parks preserve it permanently in the inheritance of the American citizens.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
The water of life was given to us to make us see for a while that we are more nearly men and women, more nearly kind and gentle and generous, pleasanter and stronger than without its vision there is any evidence we are.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
You can no more keep a Martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
Between the amateur and the professional . . . there is a difference not only in degree but in kind.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
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.
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The dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
The only places where American medicine can fully live up to its possibilities are the teaching hospitals.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
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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History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.
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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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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 -
Sure the people are stupid: the human race is stupid. Sure Congress is an inefficient instrument of government. But the people are not stupid enough to abandon representative government for any other kind, including government by the guy who knows.
BERNARD DEVOTO