The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.
BERNARD DEVOTOThe 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.
More Bernard DeVoto Quotes
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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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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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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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When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day’s occupation that is known as the cocktail hour.
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The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.
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The parks preserve it permanently in the inheritance of the American citizens.
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Art is man determined to die sane.
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Something can be done with people who put pickled onions in: strangulation seems best.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
You can no more keep a Martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there.
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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.
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.
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