Art is man determined to die sane.
BERNARD DEVOTOThe best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.
More Bernard DeVoto Quotes
-
-
History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
The trouble with the sacred Individual is that he has no significance, except as he can acquire it from others, from the social whole.
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 -
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. . . .
BERNARD DEVOTO -
The dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
The mind has its own logic but does not often let others in on it.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
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.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
Between the amateur and the professional . . . there is a difference not only in degree but in kind.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
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.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
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 -
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 -
One may lack words to express the impact of beauty but no one who has felt it remains untouched. It is renewal, enlargement, intensification.
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