Jacques Barzun - The House of Intellect (1959)

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If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.

Jacques Barzun
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

Jacques Barzun
Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.

Jacques Barzun
Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in memorable form—or else it is not art.

Jacques Barzun
Education in the United States is a passion and a paradox. Millions want it, and commend it, and are busy about it. At the same time they degrade it by trying to get it free of charge and free of work.

Jacques Barzun
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.

Jacques Barzun
The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated, will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though never said, that uttering nonsense and half-truth without cease ends by destroying Intellect

Jacques Barzun
Intellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention.

Jacques Barzun
The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.

Jacques Barzun
Americans began by loving youth, and now, out of adult self-pity, they worship it.

Jacques Barzun