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

Doe Math Mind
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
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
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
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
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
Between the amateur and the professional . . . there is a difference not only in degree but in kind.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Airplane Player Wisdom
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
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
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

Mad May Novelists
Art is the terms of an armistice signed with fate.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Armistice Art Fate
The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.
BERNARD DEVOTO

May Paper Writing
The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Reason Refuse Trouble
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
The parks preserve it permanently in the inheritance of the American citizens.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Citizen Country Park Permamnetly Preserve

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 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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