In any assembly the simplest way to stop transacting business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principle.
Jacques BarzunIntellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention.
Jacques BarzunIf 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 BarzunA culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others,thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.
Jacques Barzun