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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.
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
Present
Imagination
Shrivels
Art
Rots
Past
Corrupts
Mind
Pretending
Thus
Tradition
Conscience
More quotes by Paul Fussell
Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present.
Paul Fussell
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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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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Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience.
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Most people who seek attention and regard by announcing that they're writing a novel are actually so devoid of narrative talent that they can't hold the attention of a dinner table for thirty seconds, even with a dirty joke.
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What someone doesn't want you to publish is journalism all else is publicity.
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The simple is carefully shunned by those who labour to seem what they would be.
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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.
Paul Fussell
Travel sharpens the senses. Abroad one feels, sees and hears things in an abnormal way.
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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 balls used in top class games are generally smaller than those used in others.
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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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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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If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces.
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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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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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Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice.
Paul Fussell
If we do not redefine manhood, war is inevitable.
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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.
Paul Fussell
