Bernard DeVoto

The missionaries were vortices of force thrown out in advance by the force to the eastward that was making west. They thought that they came to bring Christ but in thinking so they were deceived. They were agents of a historical energy and …

Mr. Lincoln was telling his countrymen that the achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire, and he was telling them that Yesterday must not be permitted to Balkanize …

The nation had had two symbols of solitude, the forest and the prairies; now it had a third, the mountains.

California was almost entirely dream, a dream vague but deep in the minds of a westering people.

The migration was under way. ... Its great days were just around the turn of spring — and an April restlessness, a stirring in the blood, a wind from beyond the oak openings, spoke of the prairies, the great desert, and the western sea.

In the South, a lady’s opinions could not be more important than a drawing-room charade, an accompaniment to sillabubs and cobbler.

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 …

This is the violet hour, the hour of hush and wonder, when the affections glow and valor is reborn, when the shadows deepen along the edge of the forest and we believe that, if we watch carefully, at any moment we may see the unicorn.

Nothing can be done with people who put olives in martinis, presumably because in some desolate childhood hour someone refused them a dill pickle and so they go through life lusting for the taste of brine.

You can no more keep a martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there. The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth, and one of the shortest-lived. The fragile …

When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the cocktail hour.

The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.

The trouble with the sacred Individual is that he has no significance except as he can acquire it from others, from the social whole.