Quote

The best teaching I ever experienced was at Exeter. Yale was a distinct letdown afterward.

John Knowles

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by John Knowles

Image
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.
John Knowles
Image
Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.
John Knowles
Image
Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.
John Knowles
Image
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
Image
So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all.
John Knowles
Image
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
Image
It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.
John Knowles
Image
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
Image
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.
John Knowles
Image
But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.
John Knowles
Image
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.
John Knowles
Image
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
Image
Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.
John Knowles
Image
As I walked briskly out the road the wind knifed at my face, but this sun caressed the back of my neck.
John Knowles
Image
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.
John Knowles
Image
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.
John Knowles
Image
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
Image
Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.
John Knowles
Image
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
Image
I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.
John Knowles