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Quote by Jacques Barzun

“The piano is the social instrument par excellence... drawing-room furniture, a sign of bourgeois prosperity, the most massive of the devices by which the young are tortured in the name of education and the grown-up in the name of entertainment.”

Book:Critical Questions: On Music and Letters, Culture and Biography, 1940-1980

Work

Critical Questions: On Music and Letters, Culture and Biography, 1940-1980

This volume compiles scholarly essays that delve into the relationships between music and letters, as well as the cultural and biographical contexts of the period from 1940 to 1980. more

Author

Jacques Barzun

Jacques Barzun was an American historian, born on November 30, 1907, and passed away on October 25, 2012. He was renowned for his profound insights into Western culture, literature, and history, and is considered one of the most important cultural critics of the 20th century. more

“It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tendered kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet.”

Source: Rip Van Winkle: The legend of Sleepy Hollow and other tales

“In all works on Natural History, we constantly find details of the marvellous adaptation of animals to their food, their habits, and the localities in which they are found.”

Found Natural Animal Habit Details Adaptation Marvellous Natural History Locality

Book:A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro: With an Account of the Native Tribes, and Observations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley

Source: A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro: With an Account of the Native Tribes, and Observations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley

“It has been generally the custom of writers on natural history to take the habits and instincts of animals as the fixed point, and to consider their structure and organization as specially adapted to be in accordance with them.”

Has Beens Natural Animal Habit Organization Structure Instinct Fixed Customs Adapted Natural History

Book:The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise

Source: The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise

“We all fall into our habits, our routines, our ruts. They're used quite often, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid living, to avoid doing the messy part of having relationships with other people, of dealing with a person next to us. That's why we can all be in a room on our cell phones and not have to deal with one another.”

People Persons Used Fall Next Rooms Deals Habit Phones Cells Messy Cell Phone Ruts Relationships With Others

Author:Andrew Stanton

“I don't want to be overdramatic about it, but I'm starting to see a lot of my bad habits get the best of me.”

Want Habit Starting Bad Habits Best Of Me

Author:Ben Gibbard

“People's sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.”

People Wells Political Sex Known Opinion Habit Hollywood Well Known Political Opinions