Best 74 quotes of John Knowles on MyQuotes

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.

Always say some prayers at night because it might turn out that there is a God.

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.

As I walked briskly out the road the wind knifed at my face, but this sun caressed the back of my neck.

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.

But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.

Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever.

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.

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.

I knew that part of friendship consisted in accepting a friend’s shortcomings, which sometimes included his parents.

I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become a part of Phineas.

I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there.

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.

It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart

It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.

It was hard to remember in the heavy and sensual clarity of these mornings; I forgot whom I hated and who hated me. I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because these mornings were too full of beauty for me, because I knew of too much hate to be contained in a world like this.

Life is fighting. In life, it's the look ahead that counts. We are all born equally far from the sun. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.

Peace is indivisible, and the surrounding world confusion found no reflection inside me.

Sarcasm is the protest of the weak.

Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.

So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all.

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.

Teenagers today are more free to be themselves and to accept themselves.

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

The next major advance in the health of the American people will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for himself.

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.

There are special, strange gifted people in the world and they have to be treated with understanding

There was no harm in taking aim, even if the target was a dream.

the scornful force of his tone turned the word into a curse

We are all born equally far from the sun.

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.

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.

Young people in my generation were sort of in lockstep, and it wasn't just the '40s, either. In the '30s and in the '50s it was the same. No one ever dropped out unless he got sick or got kicked out.

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.

And sometimes you need too much to know the facts, and so humbly and stupidly you stay.

As I had to do whenever I glimpsed this river, I thought of Phineas. Not of the tree and pain, but of one of his favorite tricks, Phineas in exaltation, balancing on one foot on the prow of a canoe like a river god, his raised arms invoking the air to support him, face transfigured, body a complex set of balances and compensations, each muscle aligned in perfection with all the others to maintain this supreme fantasy of achievement, his skin glowing from immersions, his whole body hanging between river and sky as though he had transcended gravity and might by gently pushing upward with his foot glide a little way higher and remain suspended in space, encompassing all the glory of the summer and offering it to the sky.

Because it seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.

But Brinker came in. I think he made a point of visiting all the rooms near him the first day. “Well, Gene,” his beaming face appeared around the door. Brinker looked the standard preparatory school article in his gray gabardine suit with square, hand-sewn-looking jacket pockets, a conservative necktie, and dark brown cordovan shoes. His face was all straight lines— eyebrows, mouth, nose, everything—and he carried his six feet of height straight as well. He looked but happened not to be athletic, being too busy with politics, arrangements, and offices. There was nothing idiosyncratic about Brinker unless you saw him from behind; I did as he turned to close the door after him. The flaps of his gabardine jacket parted slightly over his healthy rump, and it is that, without any sense of derision at all, that I recall as Brinker’s salient characteristic, those healthy, determined, not over-exaggerated but definite and substantial buttocks.

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. And if it wasn't there, as for example with Phineas, then I put it there myself.

Finny always said what he happened to be thinking, and if this stunned people then he was surprised.

...he's imagining himself Justice incarnate, balancing the scales. He's forgotten that Justice incarnate is not only balancing the scales but also blindfolded.

...his jaw tightening and his eyes closed on the tears. “I believe you. It’s okay because I understand and I believe you.

I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case.

I did not cry then or ever about Finney. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into his family’s straightlaced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case.

I did not stop to think that one wave is inevitably followed by another even larger and more powerful, when the tide is coming in.

I didn't know why he had chosen me, why it was only to me that he could show the most humbling sides of his handicap. I didn't care. For the war was no longer eroding the peaceful summertime stillness I had prized so much at Devon, and although the playing fields were crusted under a foot of congealed snow and the river was now a hard gray-white lane of ice between gaunt trees, peace had come back to Devon for me.