Jacques Barzun Quotes
A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth. An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can. Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art. Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about the past are a form of injustice. Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine. Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole. If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age. If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real. In any assembly the simplest way to stop transacting business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principal. In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years. It seems a long time since the morning mail could be called correspondence. Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions. Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti. Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy. Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred. Since it is seldom clear whether intellectual activity denotes a superior mode of being or a vital deficiency, opinion swings between considering intellect a privilege and seeing it as a handicap. Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition. The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers. The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works. The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.
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