Jacques Barzun

“Whoever wants to know the hearts and minds of America had better learn baseball.”

“Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in memorable form - or else it is not art.”

“The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.”

“Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.”

“Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”

“Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about people in the past are a form of injustice.”

“Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.”

“After being boxed in by man and his constructions in Europe and the East, the release into space is exhilarating. The horizon is a huge remote circle, and no hills intervene.”

“It seems a long time since the morning mail could be called correspondence.”

“The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers.”

“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 han...”

“Varese, Apollinaire, Ezra Pound, Leger, Gleizes, Severini, Villon, Duchamp, Duchamp-Villon, Marie Laurencin, Cocteau and many others were to me household names in the literal sense - names o...”

“Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.”

“Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.”

“Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy.”

“By the time I was 9, I had the conviction that everybody in the world was an artist except plumbers or people who delivered groceries.”

“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.”

“Schools are not intended to moralize a wicked world, but to impart knowledge and develop intelligence, with only two social aims in mind: prepare to take on one's share in the world's work,...”

“Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.”

“I'll read, and then I'll take naps. When I feel sleep coming on, I give in and don't fight it.”