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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

History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Art History Philosophy
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.
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Airplane Automatism Game Organisation Pilot Player Tennis
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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Civilization Condition Country Finish Permanent
The dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.
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Dawn False Knowledge
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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Cocktail Evening Occupation
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
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.
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Average Lines Twenties
The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.
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Reason Refuse Trouble
The only places where American medicine can fully live up to its possibilities are the teaching hospitals.
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Medicine Possibility Teaching
The achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire.
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Empires Internal People United States
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.
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Earth Happiest Kissing Life Sudden
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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Evidence Generosity Life Men
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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Government Race Stupid
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 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.
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Food Heart Promise Season Sense Wall
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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Altogether Campground Coma Pulse Strengthening Weaken

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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