Jacques Barzun

I'll read, and then I'll take naps. When I feel sleep coming on, I give in and don't fight it.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

If 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.

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

In any assembly the simplest way to stop transacting business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principle.

The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.

The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.

Varese, Apollinaire, Ezra Pound, Leger, Gleizes, Severini, Villon, Duchamp, Duchamp-Villon, Marie Laurencin, Cocteau and many others were to me household names in the literal sense - names of familiar figures around the house.