To denounce does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence.
Jacques BarzunWe cannot appreciate the art of any age without first acquiring an equivalent of the experience it depicts.
Jacques BarzunOne great aim of revision is to cut out. In the exuberance of composition it is natural to throw in - as one does in speaking - a number of small words that add nothing to meaning but keep up the flow and rhythm of thought. In writing, not only does this surplusage not add to meaning, it subtracts from it. Read and revise, reread and revise, keeping reading and revising until your text seems adequate to your thought.
Jacques BarzunIt is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism.
Jacques BarzunSince in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens - all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate.
Jacques Barzun