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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.

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
Levels
Developed
Enemy
Killed
War
Intense
School
Active
Ever
Hatred
Never
Anybody
Uniform
Time
Level
Uniforms
Duty
Ended

More quotes by John Knowles

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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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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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Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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The best teaching I ever experienced was at Exeter. Yale was a distinct letdown afterward.
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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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Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.
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Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.
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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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It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.
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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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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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Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.
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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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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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