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 DEVOTOIt 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.
More Bernard DeVoto Quotes
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The parks preserve it permanently in the inheritance of the American citizens.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
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 -
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 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 -
Something can be done with people who put pickled onions in: strangulation seems best.
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 -
History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
The achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
Between the amateur and the professional . . . there is a difference not only in degree but in kind.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
Art is the terms of an armistice signed with fate.
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 -
Art is man determined to die sane.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
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 -
The only places where American medicine can fully live up to its possibilities are the teaching hospitals.
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