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

More quotes by John Knowles

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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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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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Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.
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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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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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the scornful force of his tone turned the word into a curse
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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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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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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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Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.
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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 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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I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.
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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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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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The best teaching I ever experienced was at Exeter. Yale was a distinct letdown afterward.
John Knowles
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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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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.
John Knowles