Quotes from Jacques Barzun

Tennis belongs to the individualistic past - a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.

Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.

It seems a long time since the morning mail could be called correspondence.

Schools are not intended to moralize a wicked world, but to impart knowledge and develop intelligence, with only two social aims in mind: prepare to take on one's share in the world's work, and perhaps in addition, lend a hand in improving society, after schooling is done.

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.

Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.

Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.

Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.

You never step in the same river of thought twice, because neither you nor it are the same.

no subject of study is more important than reading…all other intellectual powers depend on it.

The French call mot juste the word that exactly fits. Why is this word so hard to find? The reasons are many. First, we don't always know what we mean and are too lazy too find out.

It is a noteworthy feature of 20C culture that for the first time in over a thousand years its educated class is not expected to be at least bilingual.

The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.

A 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.

Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about people in the past are a form of injustice.

Simple English is no one's mother tongue. It has to be worked for.

First Principle: Have a point and make it by means of the best word.

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

To delve into history entails, besides the grievance of hard work, the danger that in the depths one may lose one's scapegoats.

The mind tends to run along the groove of one's intention and overlook the actual expression.

the state is not immoral but amoral; half of it exists outside morality

Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.

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.