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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.
John Fowles
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John Fowles
Age: 79 †
Born: 1926
Born: March 31
Died: 2005
Died: November 5
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Teacher
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Leigh-on-Sea
Essex
Sense
Myth
Injustices
Injustice
Bred
Oneself
Gross
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Primaries
American
Primary
Simple
Republic
Free
Optimistic
Absurdly
Social
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More quotes by John Fowles
Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society.
John Fowles
That's the trouble with provincial life. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery. No romance.
John Fowles
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
That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.
John Fowles
Content is a word unknown to life it is also a word unknown to man.
John Fowles
Duty is but a pot. It holds whatever is put in it, from the greatest evil to the greatest good.
John Fowles
I hate the uneducated and the ignorant. I hate the pompous and the phoney. I hate the jealous and the resentful. I hate the crabbed and mean and the petty. I hate all ordinary dull little people who aren't ashamed of being dull and little.
John Fowles
The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke. We're so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we're stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can't stand ours.
John Fowles
The best wines take the longest to mature.
John Fowles
To despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.
John Fowles
It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.
John Fowles
Hazard has conditioned us to live in hazard. All our pleasures are dependent on it. Even though I arrange for a pleasure, and look forward to it, my eventual enjoyment of it is still a matter of hazard. Wherever time passes, there is hazard.
John Fowles
You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me.
John Fowles
I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope - an impotence, in short and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.
John Fowles
He is solid immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day his killing bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion. A thick round wall of glass.
John Fowles
Love is the mystery between two people, not the identity.
John Fowles
The profoundest distances are never geographical.
John Fowles
Which are you drinking? The water or the wave?
John Fowles
He felt himself in suspension between the two worlds, the warm, neat civilization behind his back, the cool, dark mystery outside. We all write poems it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.
John Fowles
Adulthood is not an age, but a stage of knowledge of self.
John Fowles
