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.
Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) French-American historian, educator, polymath
God’s Country and Mine, Part 2, ch. 8 (1954)
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Quotations by:
Barzun, Jacques
Many of us affect a tone of irony about gadgets, as if we lived always in realms above and dealt with trifles only during rare descents from sublime thoughts. The truth is that more and more of the important things in life turn on pinpoints. Our frustrations begin in trivialities — a telephone out of order, a car that will not start, a claim check whose number has been misread. The thing in cellophane that cannot be got at — plain to the sight but sealed like an egg — is the modern version of the torture of Tantalus. Catastrophes we will deal with like heroes, but the bottle top that defies us saps our morale, like the tiny arrows of the Lilliputians that maddened Gulliver and set his strength at naught.
Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) French-American historian, educator, polymath
God’s Country and Mine, Part 3, ch. 12 (1954)
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The test and use of a man’s education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.
Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) French-American historian, educator, polymath
Saturday Evening Post, “Science vs the Humanities” (3 May 1958)
Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.
Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) French-American historian, educator, polymath
In Arthur Krystal, “Age of Reason,” The New Yorker (2007-10-15)
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