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Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.

John Knowles

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John Knowles
Age: 75 †
Born: 1926
Born: September 16
Died: 2001
Died: November 29
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Fairmont
West Virginia
Endure
Tree
Violence
Death
Nothing
Even
Love
Endures

More quotes by John Knowles

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Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.
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My father was in the coal business in West Virginia. Both dad and mother were, however, originally from Massachusetts New England, to them, meant the place to go if you really wanted an education.
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Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.
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So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all.
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The next major advance in the health of the American people will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for himself.
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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.
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Exeter was, I suspect, more crucial in my life than in the lives of most members of my class, and conceivably, than in the lives of almost anyone else who ever attended the school.
John Knowles
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But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.
John Knowles
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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
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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
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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.
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The best teaching I ever experienced was at Exeter. Yale was a distinct letdown afterward.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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the scornful force of his tone turned the word into a curse
John Knowles
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I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.
John Knowles
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Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.
John Knowles
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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