Jacques Barzun Quotes

Alongside my 'no email' policy, I resolve to make better use of the wonderful Royal Mail, and send letters and postcards to people. There is a huge pleasure in writing a letter, putting it in an envelope and sticking the stamp on it. And huge pleasure in receiving real letters, too.

One serious drawback about letters is that, in order to get them, one must send some out. When it comes to the mail, I feel it is better to receive than to give.

I'm lucky if I write a letter.

Down on the ground, we seem to do anything but make lengthy, robust monologues. We can communicate in an instant almost anywhere. Gone is the slow old letter - itself a monologue, a sort of considered performance of best self - and in its place is the e-mail, the text, the SMS, the tweet.

I just happen to be from the generation that, like a lot of my older friends, started out writing letters.

If you look at the history of the letter in the novel, small changes in the British postal service became really significant because of how quickly people are suddenly able to communicate, and letters actually arrive at the intended time, and they arrive to the correct recipient. All of this is really important to a plot.

The possibility of interpersonal communication has increased substantially with contemporary technology. But as compared with the major changes, which were long ago, these are not huge.

I spend almost every morning with mail.

If you look at the history of communication, new technologies like the phone and e-mail didn't just let people do things faster; it fundamentally changed the scope of the kinds of projects people dared to take on.

But the fact is, Mr. Chairman, for all the challenges the Postal Service of the 21st century faces, it still retains its traditional place as a key cog in how American businesses conduct their affairs and how Americans all across this land communicate.

Who would know but ten years ago that kids would be texting each other all the time, that that would be one of their main forms of communication.

I like writing letters and receiving letters. It's a shame that we've lost the art of letter-writing and saving correspondence. I mourn that.

Sadly, e-mail has triggered the decline of the handwritten note; I have seen its near-disappearance in my lifetime.

No texting. What happens then? Good old-fashioned letters.

People will now go to films with subtitles, you know. They're not afraid of them. It's one of the upsides of text-messaging and e-mail. Maybe the only good thing to come of it.

Saving a letter from an old friend doesn't exist anymore. Everything is texted or emailed.

People live too much of their lives on email or the Internet or text messages these days. We're losing all of our communication skills.

The Postal Service's unmatched ability to reach every household and business in America six days a week is a vital part of the nation's infrastructure.

I don't write letters anymore.

I get about three letters a day from all over the world.

Think about back in the day when we had Archie Bunker, 'The Jeffersons.' We had stuff to sit down and share and laugh at. The Internet has made it so we don't have to sit together anymore. It's so self-absorbed. No one has to talk to each other anymore, and people don't realize that that is killing us.

Everyone loves to get a letter. I love sending them. I love getting them.

I have never written a letter in my life.

The Postal Service is critical to our economy, our seniors and veterans who count on lifesaving medications, our small businesses that need to ship their products, and even to our democracy.

Social media has given us the world at our fingertips every morning. And we watch it change, live. In the morning, in the old days, we'd read the 'Post,' and that was what we had.