Status Updates From A Jacques Barzun Reader: Se...

Plenty highbrow.

Reading abundantly, in good books, is indispensable. It is only in good writing that you will find how words are best used, what shades of meaning they can be made to carry, and by what devices (or lack of them) the reader is kept going smoothly or bogged down in confusion.

"The price of learning to use words is the development of an acute self-consciousness. Nor is it enough to pay attention to words only when you face the task of writing—that is like playing the violin only on the night of the concert. You must attend to words when you read, when you speak, when others speak. Words must become ever present in your waking life, an incessant concern..."

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"I want a touch of bitterness in everything-always a jeer in the midst of our triumphs, desolation in the midst of enthusiasm." [-Flaubert]