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All the pathos and irony of leaving one's youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveller learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.

Paul Fussell

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Paul Fussell
Age: 88 †
Born: 1924
Born: March 22
Died: 2012
Died: May 23
Historian
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Military Historian
University Teacher
Writer
Pasadena
California
Firsts
Places
Repeat
Pathos
First
Youth
Tries
Implicit
Trying
Behinds
Repeats
Traveller
Every
Behind
Irony
Successes
Never
Joy
Wander
Learns
Time
Wise
Thus
Joyous
Moment
Leaving
Traveler
Moments
Travel
Traveled
Recovered

More quotes by Paul Fussell

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Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline a constant 'paying off of old scores' and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances.
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Anybody who notices unpleasant facts in the have-a-nice-day world we live in is going to be designated a curmudgeon.
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Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice. ... They have experienced secretly and privately their natural human impulse toward sadism and brutality... Not merely did I learn to kill with a noose of piano wire put around somebody's neck from behind, but I learned to enjoy the prospect of killing that way.
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A more or less accurate measure of class in America is TV size: the bigger your TV, the lower your class.
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Tourism requires that you see conventional things, and that you see them in a conventional way.
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And the ideal travel writer is consumed not just with a will to know. He is also moved by a powerful will to teach.
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Before the development of tourism, travel was conceived to be like study, and it's fruits were considered to be the adornment of the mind and the formation of the judgment.
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The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower the class.
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The wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.
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What someone doesn't want you to publish is journalism all else is publicity.
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If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces.
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Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.
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Travelers learn not just foreign customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs and novel forms of government. They learn, if they are lucky, humility.
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So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us.Except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy,the survivors of the abyss sat hollow-eyed and silent, trying to comprehend a world without war.
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Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice.
Paul Fussell
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If we do not redefine manhood, war is inevitable.
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If the term discussion has always seemed to me to imply mild warnings of wasted time, workshop sets off a clangorous alarm.
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Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.
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Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience, and the best travellers . . . seem to be those able to hold two or three inconsistent ideas in their minds at the same time, or able to regard themselves as at once serious persons and clowns.
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The balls used in top class games are generally smaller than those used in others.
Paul Fussell