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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.
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
Men
Towns
Mill
World
Seemed
Railroads
Among
Mills
Playing
Yard
Peace
Yards
Nothing
Heroic
Converging
Whole
Elsewhere
Stranded
Children
Town
Railroad
More quotes by John Knowles
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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Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.
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The best teaching I ever experienced was at Exeter. Yale was a distinct letdown afterward.
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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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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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the scornful force of his tone turned the word into a curse
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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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Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.
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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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It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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