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It is a sad day when one looks back and sees that his largest regrets have become some of the most integral elements of his dreams.

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
Looks
Largest
Sees
Regret
Elements
Dreams
Dream
Become
Integral
Back
Regrets

More quotes by John Knowles

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There are simply more young people than there ever were. You get this feeling of strength. Also, large numbers can be a drawback, making it difficult to lose one's anonymity.
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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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Your war memories will be with you forever, you'll be asked about them thousands of times after the war is over. People will get their respect for you from that-partly from that, don't get me wrong-but if you can say that you were up front where there was some real shooting going on, then that will mean a whole lot to you in years to come.
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Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.
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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.
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So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all.
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Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.
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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.
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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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As I walked briskly out the road the wind knifed at my face, but this sun caressed the back of my neck.
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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.
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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.
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I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.
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The best teaching I ever experienced was at Exeter. Yale was a distinct letdown afterward.
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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.
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the scornful force of his tone turned the word into a curse
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It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.
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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.
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Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.
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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