A Quote by Bernard DeVoto

Art is the terms of an armistice signed with fate. — © Bernard DeVoto
Art is the terms of an armistice signed with fate.
Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not. So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things. What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance. And all music is.
All of the arts are kin - music and sculpture and dance, those are wordless art forms. But poetry is defined by language. Of course, each art is distinct, and has its own character - not just in terms of media, but in terms of what seems to lie at the heart of it.
I would not despair unless I knew the irrevocable decree was passed; saw my misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and signed and sealed by neces-sity.
The Battle of Waterloo is a work of art with tension and drama with its unceasing change from hope to fear and back again, changewhich suddenly dissolves into a moment of extreme catastrophe, a model tragedy because the fate of Europe was determined within this individual fate.
Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.
In terms of using my degree, I started working for YP; I signed on as director of communications.
There is no need to express art in terms of nature. It can perfectly well be expressed in terms of geometry and the exact sciences.
Fate is a misplaced retreat. Many people rationalize an unexplained event as fate and shrug their shoulders when it occurs. But that is not what fate is. The world operates as a series of circles that are invisible, for they extend to the upper air. Fate is where these circles cut to earth. Since we cannot see them, do not know their content, and have no sense of their width, it is impossible to predict when these cuts will slice into our reality. When this happens, we call it fate. Fate is not a chance event but one that is inevitable, we are simply blind to its nature and time.
Art is a revolt against fate. All art is a revolt against man's fate.
If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds.... I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.
Here halt, I pray you, make a little stay. O wayfarer, to read what I have writ, And know by my fate what thy fate shall be. What thou art now, so shall thou be. The world's delight I followed with a heart Unsatisfied: ashes am I, and dust.
There are five things that societies do: They reproduce; they produce food; they organize themselves in terms of law; they organize themselves in terms of belief; and they make art. Four of them are about conformity, and in these, everything would go more smoothly if people just would shut up and do what they're told. But in art it doesn't work that way.
Fate! There is no fate. Between the thought and the success God is the only agent. Fate is not the ruler, but the servant of Providence.
Doing things in my day was simple: you either signed to a big label or you signed to a very small label, and you worked with that one, and then they eventually signed you on to a big one.
No high-minded painter of the last fifty years has been able to come to terms with his art without coming to terms with the problem of cubism.
Doing stuff on my own terms and making a record without being signed to a label - I credit that all to my commercial work.
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