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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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John Knowles
Age: 75 †
Born: 1926
Born: September 16
Died: 2001
Died: November 29
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Fairmont
West Virginia
Knew
Everything

More quotes by John Knowles

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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 remain the same, the more they change after all.
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Never say you are five feet nine when you are five feet eight and a half was the first one I encountered. Another was, Always say some prayers at night because it might turn out that there is a God.
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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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But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.
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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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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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It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.
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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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Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.
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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.
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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 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 best teaching I ever experienced was at Exeter. Yale was a distinct letdown afterward.
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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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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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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.
John Knowles
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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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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.
John Knowles
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Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.
John Knowles