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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.

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
Night
Nine
Another
Eight
Might
Feet
Firsts
Turn
First
Prayer
Always
Five
Never
Turns
Encountered
Half
Prayers

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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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I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.
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the scornful force of his tone turned the word into a curse
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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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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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Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all.
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Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.
John Knowles
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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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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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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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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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It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.
John Knowles