Bernard De Voto Quotes

21 Sourced Quotes

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. The fragile tie of ecstasy is broken in a few minutes, and thereafter there can be no remarriage.

Bernard De Voto
The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.

Bernard De Voto
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 De Voto
Man is a noisome bacillus whom our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.

Bernard De Voto
When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the cocktail hour.

Bernard De Voto
Throw away that bottle of grenadine. Never buy another one.

Bernard De Voto
Art is the terms of an armistice signed with fate.

Bernard De Voto
Don't have much to do with people who drink sherry at any time except with soup; there's something wrong with them.

Bernard De Voto
Remember always that the three abominations are: (1) rum, (2) any other sweet drink, and (3) any mixed drink except one made of gin and dry vermouth in the ration that I have given.

Bernard De Voto
The achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire.

Bernard De Voto
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 De Voto
We are a pious people but a proud one too, aware of a noble lineage and a great inheritance. Let us candidly admit that there are shameful blemishes on the American past, of which by far the worst is rum.

Bernard De Voto
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 De Voto
This is the violet hour, the hour of hush and wonder, when the affections 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 De Voto
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 De Voto
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 De Voto
Let us candidly admit that there are shameful blemishes on the American past, of which the worst by far is rum. Nevertheless, we have improved man's lot and enriched his civilization with rye, bourbon and the Martini cocktail. In all history has any other nation done so much?

Bernard De Voto
Biography seemed to be no more than a high-spirited game of yanking out shirttails and setting fire to them.

Bernard De Voto
And, I suppose, nothing can be done with people who put olives in martinis, presumably because in some desolate childhood hour someone refused them a dill pickle and so they go through life lusting for the taste of brine. Something can be done with people who put pickled onions in: strangulation seems best.

Bernard De Voto
The dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.

Bernard De Voto
Orange bitters make a good astringent for the face. Never put them in anything that is to be drunk.

Bernard De Voto