Of true knowledge at any time, a good part is merely convenient, necessary indeed to the worker, but not to an understanding of his subject: One can judge a building without knowing where to buy the bricks; one can understand a violin sonata without knowing how to score for the instrument. The work may in fact be better understood without a knowledge of the details of its manufacture, of attention to these tends to distract from meaning and effect.
Jacques BarzunMusic, not being made up of objects nor referring to objects, is intangible and ineffable; it can only be as it were inhaled by the spirit: the rest is silence.
Jacques BarzunA 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.
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