Quote

Our knowledge of what the richer than ourselves possess, and the poor do not, has never been more widespread. Therefore, envy, which is wanting what others have, and jealousy, which is not wanting others to have what one has, have never been more widespread.

John Fowles

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John Fowles
Age: 79 †
Born: 1926
Born: March 31
Died: 2005
Died: November 5
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Leigh-on-Sea
Essex
Therefore
Knowledge
Poor
Widespread
Others
Richer
Never
Jealousy
Possess
Wanting
Envy

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Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation.
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It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.
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Baseball and cricket are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base-in both senses-greed.
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To despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.
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Each age, each guilty age, builds high walls around its Versailles and personally I hate those walls most when they are made by literature and art.
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It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.
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You come to the United States not knowing what to expect. Then all your worst prejudices are confirmed.
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We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.
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Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.
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Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society.
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The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.
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I am infinitely strange to myself.
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I knew words were like chains, they held me back . . . the act of description taints the description.
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I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.
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Thomas Beecham was a pompous little band-master who stood against everything creative in the art of his time.
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Another reason I think the novel will survive is that the reader has to work in a novel. In a film, you are presented with someone else's imagination exactly bodied out. The marvelous thing about a novel is that every reader will imagine even the very simplest sentence slightly differently.
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Wolves don't hunt singly, but always in pairs. The lone wolf was a myth.
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Adulthood is not an age, but a stage of knowledge of self.
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We talked for hours. He talked and I listened. It was like wind and sunlight. It blew all the cobwebs away.
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The American myth is of free will in its simple, primary sense. One can choose oneself and will oneself and this absurdly optimistic assumption so dominates the republic that it has bred all its gross social injustices.
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