154 Quotes by Jacques Barzun

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.

The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.

In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.

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.

I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.

Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.

Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.

Time and rest are needed for absorption. Psychologists confirm that it is really in the summer that our muscles learn to skate and in the winter, how to swim.

Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.