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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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John Knowles
Age: 75 †
Born: 1926
Born: September 16
Died: 2001
Died: November 29
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Fairmont
West Virginia
Distinct
Experienced
Teaching
Best
Ever
Exeter
Letdown
Afterward
Yale

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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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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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It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.
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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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So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all.
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Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.
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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.
John Knowles
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Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.
John Knowles
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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.
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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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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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.
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.
John Knowles
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Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.
John Knowles
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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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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.
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.
John Knowles
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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.
John Knowles
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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