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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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John Knowles
Age: 75 †
Born: 1926
Born: September 16
Died: 2001
Died: November 29
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Fairmont
West Virginia
Anyone
Conceivably
Lives
Attended
Else
Suspect
School
Suspects
Ever
Crucial
Life
Members
Almost
Class
Exeter

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