“There was no harm in taking aim, even if the target was a dream.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“What I mean is, I love winter, and when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“I began to know that each morning reasserted the problems of night before, that sleep suspended all but changed nothing, that you couldn’t make yourself over between dawn and dusk.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way-if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“So the more things remained the same, the more they changed after all. Nothing endures. Not love, not a tree, not even a death by violence.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me; there was always something deadly lurking in anything I wanted, anything I loved.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion the old giants have become pygmies while you were looking the other way.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“When you love something it loves you back in whatever way it has to love.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“Always say some prayers at night because it might turn out that there is a God.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“You have to do what you think is the right thing, but just make sure it’s the right thing in the long run, and not just for the moment.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“Looking back now across fifteen years I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in, which must mean that in the interval I had succeeded in a very important undertaking: I must have made my escape from it.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“It was hard to remember in the heavy and sensual clarity of these mornings; I forgot whom I hated and who hated me. I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because these mornings were too full of beauty for me, because I knew of too much hate to be contained in a world like this.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“Gene, on the desire to be Finny: "I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become a part of Phineas.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“Je ne give a damn pas about le français, Les filles en France ne wear pas les pantelons”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“As I said, this was my sarcastic summer. It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“Never say you are five feet nine when
you are five feet eight and a half" was the first one I encountered.
Another was, "Always say some prayers at night because it might turn
out that there is a God.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all—plus c'est la même chose, plus ça change. Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“I think we reminded them of what peace was like, we boys of sixteen. We were registered with no draft board, we had taken no physical examinations. No one had ever tested us for hernia or color blindness. Trick knees and punctured eardrums were minor complaints and not yet disabilities which would separate a few from the fate of the rest. We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being fought to preserve. Anyway, they were more indulgent toward us than at any other time; they snapped at the heels of seniors, driving and molding and arming them for the war. They noticed our games tolerantly. We reminded them of what peace was like, of lives which were not bound up with destruction.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“Stranded in this mill town railroad yard while the whole world was converging elsewhere, we seemed to be nothing but children playing among heroic men.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
“...I alone was a dream, a figment which had never really touched anything. I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me.”
― John Knowles, quote from A Separate Peace
John Knowles
Born place: in Fairmont, West Virginia, The United States
Born date September 16, 1926
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“Take it easy, Grace," Noah told her as he stepped into his slacks. "According to Ben she's doing fine now and is kicking up a fuss at all the attention. To quote Ben, 'She's pitching a bitch about looking old and frail.”
― Lori Foster, quote from Too Much Temptation
“the irrational invalidates any meaning attached to it.”
― Hermann Broch, quote from The Sleepwalkers
“Animal in man is the drive to concentrate on the satisfaction of needs; spiritual in man is the will to serve higher ends, and in serving ends he transcends his needs.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, quote from God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism
“It’s unavoidable: so long as we value money more highly than living beings and more highly than relationships, we will continue to see living beings as resources, and convert them to cash; objectifying, killing, extirpating. This is true whether we’re talking about fish, fur-bearing mammals, Indians, day-laborers, and so on. If monetary value is attached to something it will be exploited until it’s gone.”
― Derrick Jensen, quote from A Language Older Than Words
“Wallingford vaulted up from his chair. “You’ve come here so that I can mollify you and share in your belittling of Anais? Well, you’ve knocked on the wrong bloody door, Raeburn, because I will not join you in disparaging Anais. I will not! Not when I know what sort of woman she is—she is better than either of us deserves. Damn you, I know what she means to you. I know how you’ve suffered. You want her and you’re going to let a mistake ruin what you told me only months ago you would die for. Ask yourself if it is worth it. Is your pride worth all the pain you will make your heart suffer through? Christ,” Wallingford growled, “if I had a woman who was willing to overlook everything I’d done in my life,
every wrong deed I had done to her or others, I would be choking back my pride so damn fast I wouldn’t even taste it.”
Lindsay glared at Wallingford, galled by the fact his friend— the one person on earth he believed would understand his feelings—kept chastising him for his anger, which, he believed, was natural and just.
“If I had someone like Anais in my life,” Wallingford continued, blithely ignoring Lindsay’s glares, “I would ride back to Bewdley with my tail between my legs and I would do whatever I had to do in order to get her back.”
“You’re a goddamned liar! You’ve never been anything but a selfish prick!” Lindsay thundered. “What woman would you deign to lower yourself in front of? What woman could you imagine doing anything more to than fucking?”
Wallingford’s right eye twitched and Lindsay wondered if his friend would plant his large fist into his face. He was mad enough for it, Lindsay realized, but so, too, was he. He was mad, angry—all but consumed with rage, but the bluster went out of him when Wallingford spoke.
“I’ve never bothered to get to know the women I’ve been with. Perhaps if I had, I would have found one I could have loved—one I could have allowed myself to be open with. But out of the scores of women I’ve pleasured, I’ve only ever been the notorious, unfeeling and callous libertine—that is my shame.Your shame is finding that woman who would love you no matter what and letting her slip through your fingers because she is not the woman your mind made her out to be. You have found something most men only dream of. Things that I have dreamed of and coveted for myself. The angel is dead. It is time to embrace the sinner, for if you do not, I shall expect to see you in hell with me. And let me inform you, it’s a burning, lonely place that once it has its hold on you, will never let you go. Think twice before you allow pride to rule your heart.”
“What do you know about love and souls?” Lindsay growled as he stalked to the study door.
“I know that a soul is something I don’t have, and love,” Wallingford said softly before he downed the contents of his brandy, “love is like ghosts, something that everyone talks of but few have seen. You are one of the few who have seen it and sometimes I hate you for it. If I were you, I’d think twice about throwing something like that away, but of course, I’m a selfish prick and do as I damn well please.”
“You do indeed.”
Wallingford’s only response was to raise his crystal glass in a mock salute.“To hell,” he muttered,“make certain you bring your pride. It is the only thing that makes the monotony bearable.”
― Charlotte Featherstone, quote from Addicted
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