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Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice.

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
Fought
Nice
Secret

More quotes by Paul Fussell

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Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present.
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Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.
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The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower the class.
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Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it.
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The balls used in top class games are generally smaller than those used in others.
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To get home you had to end the war. To end the war was the reason you fought it. The only reason.
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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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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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Travel sharpens the senses. Abroad one feels, sees and hears things in an abnormal way.
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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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Tourism requires that you see conventional things, and that you see them in a conventional way.
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The past is not the present: pretending it is corrupts art and thus both rots the mind and shrivels the imagination and conscience.
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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.
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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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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.
Paul Fussell
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Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience.
Paul Fussell
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If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces.
Paul Fussell
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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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And the ideal travel writer is consumed not just with a will to know. He is also moved by a powerful will to teach.
Paul Fussell
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If we do not redefine manhood, war is inevitable.
Paul Fussell