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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

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
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

Individuality Sacred Trouble
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

Evidence Generosity Life Men
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
The dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Dawn False Knowledge
Between the amateur and the professional . . . there is a difference not only in degree but in kind.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Airplane Player Wisdom
The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Reason Refuse Trouble
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.
BERNARD DEVOTO

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

Doe Math Mind
You can no more keep a Martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Kissing Martini Refrigerator
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
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
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 parks preserve it permanently in the inheritance of the American citizens.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Citizen Country Park Permamnetly Preserve
Art is the terms of an armistice signed with fate.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Armistice Art Fate
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

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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