The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.
BERNARD DEVOTOThe parks preserve it permanently in the inheritance of the American citizens.
More Bernard DeVoto Quotes
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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 trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.
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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 dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.
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Between the amateur and the professional . . . there is a difference not only in degree but in kind.
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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.
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Art is the terms of an armistice signed with fate.
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Art is man determined to die sane.
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The trouble with the sacred Individual is that he has no significance, except as he can acquire it from others, from the social whole.
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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.
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The mind has its own logic but does not often let others in on it.
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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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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. . . .
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The parks preserve it permanently in the inheritance of the American citizens.
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The achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire.
BERNARD DEVOTO