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Bernard DeVoto Quotes
1897–1955 United States
Bernard Augustine DeVoto (January 11, 1897 – November 13, 1955) was an American historian, conservationist, essayist, columnist, teacher, editor, and reviewer.
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Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.
Don't have much to do with people who drink sherry at any time except with soup; there's something wrong with them.
Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerves give to wisdom.
The dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.
The Course of Empire (1952)
In the South, a lady’s opinions could not be more important than a drawing-room charade, an accompaniment to sillabubs and cobbler.
Mark Twain's America (1932)
The martini is the supreme American gift to world culture.
The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.
Biography seemed to be no more than a high-spirited game of yanking out shirttails and setting fire to them.
Art is the terms of an armistice signed with fate.
Orange bitters make a good astringent for the face. Never put them in anything that is to be drunk.
California was almost entirely dream, a dream vague but deep in the minds of a westering people.
The Year of Decision 1846 (1943)
The nation had had two symbols of solitude, the forest and the prairies; now it had a third, the mountains.
The Year of Decision 1846 (1943)
History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.
The Course of Empire (1952)
The West begins where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches. When you reach the line which marks that drop — for convenience the one hundredth meridian — you have reached the West.
Remember always that the three abominations are: (1) rum, (2) any other sweet drink, and (3) any mixed drink except one made of gin and dry vermouth in the ratio I have given.
The common man fled westward. A thirsty land swallowed him insatiably. There is no comprehending the frenzy of the American folk-migration. God’s gadfly had stung us mad.
Mark Twain's America (1932)
When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the cocktail hour.
The trouble with the sacred Individual is that he has no significance except as he can acquire it from others, from the social whole.
That other supreme American gift to world culture, the martini cocktail, will do only at its own hour — when darkness begins to fall from the wings of night and the heart cries out for a swift healing.
Sure the people are stupid: the human race is stupid. Sure Congress is an inefficient instrument of government. But the people are not stupid enough to abandon representative government for any other kind, including government by the guy who knows.
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