To denounce does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence.
Jacques BarzunMaxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable. The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony.
Jacques BarzunIf civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
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 Barzun