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History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.

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

Food Heart Promise Season Sense Wall
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.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Believe Shadow Watches
You can no more keep a Martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Kissing Martini Refrigerator
The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.
BERNARD DEVOTO

May Paper Writing
Something can be done with people who put pickled onions in: strangulation seems best.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Done Onions People
The mind has its own logic but does not often let others in on it.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Doe Math Mind
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.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Average Lines Twenties
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

Government Race Stupid
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

Civilization Destiny Life
The only places where American medicine can fully live up to its possibilities are the teaching hospitals.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Medicine Possibility Teaching
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

Believe Food Heart Lifeward
The dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Dawn False Knowledge
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.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Altogether Campground Coma Pulse Strengthening Weaken
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 DEVOTO

Civilization Condition Country Finish Permanent
When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day’s occupation that is known as the cocktail hour.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Cocktail Evening Occupation
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

Earth Happiest Kissing Life Sudden

History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.

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History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.

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