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 DEVOTOSure 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.
More Bernard DeVoto Quotes
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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. It marks the lifeward turn.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day’s occupation that is known as the cocktail hour.
BERNARD DEVOTO -
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 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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Something can be done with people who put pickled onions in: strangulation seems best.
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The achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire.
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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 dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.
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 -
The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.
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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 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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Art is the terms of an armistice signed with fate.
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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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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