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Top John Knowles Quotes

Browse top 47 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by John Knowles.

Favorite John Knowles Quotes

1. "Never say you are five feet nine whenyou are five feet eight and a half" was the first one I encountered.Another was, "Always say some prayers at night because it might turnout that there is a God." ~ John Knowles
2. "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
3. "the scornful force of his tone turned the word into a curse" ~ John Knowles
4. "We are all born equally far from the sun." ~ John Knowles
5. "I jounced the limb." ~ John Knowles
6. "It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature." ~ John Knowles
7. "I knew that part of friendship consisted in accepting a friend's shortcomings, which sometimes included his parents." ~ John Knowles
8. "Everyone contributed to this legend except Phineas. At the outset, with the attempt on Hitler's life, Finny had said, "If someone gave Leper a loaded gun and put it at Hitler's temple, he'd miss." There was a general shout of outrage, and then we recommended the building of Leper's triumphal arch around Brinker's keystone. Phineas took no part in it, and since little else was talked about in the Butt Room he soon stopped going there and stopped me from going as well—"How do you expect to be an athlete if you smoke like a forest fire?" He drew me increasingly away from the Butt Room crowd, away from Brinker and Chet and all other friends, into a world inhabited by just himself and me, where there was no war at all, just Phineas and me alone among all the people of the world, training for the Olympics of 1944." ~ John Knowles
9. "In the deep, tacit way in which feeling becomes stronger than thought, I had always felt that the Devon School came into existence the day i entered it, was vibrantly real while i was a student there, and then blinked out like a candle the day I left" ~ John Knowles
10. "Is he using terror to keep away boredom? Does he have to try to destroy something? Even as a last resort, himself?" ~ John Knowles
11. "So the war swept over like a wave at the seashore, gathering power and size as i bore on us, overwhelming in its rush, seemingly inescapable, and then at the last moment eluded by a word from Phineas; I had simply ducked, that was all,and the wave's concentrated power had hurtled harmlessly overhead, no doubt throwing others roughly up on th beach, but leaving me peaceably treading water as before. 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." ~ John Knowles
12. "You can do more! A lot more. If you want a...record you can be proud of, you'll do a heck of a lot more than just what you have to." ~ John Knowles
13. "Last night as your breathingsettled into sleepwhat I heard was the half-forgotten sound,the velvet rush and hiss,the automatic clickas the record player's arm runs out,is brushed awayat the record's centre,the pulse of its subsidingoddly comforting.33 1/3 rpm.The knowledge that when the music ends,there will not be silence." ~ John Knowles
14. "The tree was not only stripped by the cold season, it seemed weary with age, enfeebled, dry. So more the things remain the same, the more they change after all. Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence. Changed, I headed back though the mud. I was drenched; anybody could see it was time to come out of the rain." ~ John Knowles
15. "...it also meant mornings of glory such as this one, in which the snow, white almost to blueness, lay like a soft comforter over the hills, and birches and pines indestructibly held their ground, rigid lines against the snow and sky, very thin and very strong like Vermonters." ~ John Knowles
16. "Most of the students there, he said, don't know what they think. You tell 'em, they'll think it. I plan to tell 'em." ~ John Knowles
17. "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
18. "Someone knocked me down; I pushed Brinker over a small slope; someone was trying to tackle me from behind. Everywhere there was the smell of vitality in clothes, the vital something in wool and flannel and corduroy which spring releases. I had forgotten that this existed, this smell which instead of the first robin, or the first bud or leaf, means to me that spring has come. I had always welcomed vitality and energy and warmth radiating from thick and sturdy winter clothes. It made me happy, but I kept wondering about next spring, about whether khaki, or suntans or whatever the uniform of the season was, had this aura of promise in it. I felt fairly sure it didn't." ~ John Knowles
19. "Because, unfamiliar with the absence of fear and what that was like, I have not been able to identify its presence." ~ John Knowles
20. "Now here it was after all, preserved by some considerate hand with varnisch and wax. Preserved along with it, like stale air in an unopened room, was the well known fear which had surrounded and filled those days, so much of it that I hadn't even known it was there. Because, unfamiliar with the abscence of fear and what that was like, I had not been able to identify it's presence.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.I felt fear's echo, and along with that I felt the unhinged, uncontrollable joy which had been its accompanient and opposite face, joy which had broken out sometimes in those days like Northern Lights across black sky" ~ John Knowles
21. "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
22. "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." ~ John Knowles
23. "What deceived me was my own happiness; for peace is indivisible, and the surrounding world confusion found no reflection inside me." ~ John Knowles
24. "Finny never permitted himself to realize that when you won they lost. That would have destroyed the perfect beauty which was sport." ~ John Knowles
25. "This is a school,' said Pete in his level voice. 'All views can be expressed and considered here. We're not indoctrinating you.' Yes, well,' Hochschwender replied coolly, 'that's a matter of point of view." ~ John Knowles
26. "He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he." ~ John Knowles
27. "Must like the rest of us on the surface, he had an underlying obliging and considerate strain which barred him from being a really important member of the class. You had to be rude at least sometimes and edgy often to be credited with "personality," and without that accolade no one at Devon could be anyone. No one, with the exception of course of Phineas." ~ John Knowles
28. "...he's imagining himself Justice incarnate, balancing the scales. He's forgotten that Justice incarnate is not only balancing the scales but also blindfolded." ~ John Knowles
29. "Let us pray". We all slumped immediately and unthinkingly in to the awkward crouch in which God was addressed." ~ John Knowles
30. "He was nodding his head, his jaw tightening and his eyes closed on the tears. "I believe you. It's okay because I understand and I believe you. You've already shown me and I believe you." ~ John Knowles
31. "From my locker I collected my sneakers, jock strap, and gym pants and then turned away, leaving the door ajar for the first time, forlornly open and abandoned, the locker unlocked. This was more final than the moment when the Headmaster handed me my diploma. My schooling was over now." ~ John Knowles
32. "But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth." ~ John Knowles
33. "Je ne give a damn pas about le français, Les filles en France ne wear pas les pantelons" ~ John Knowles
34. "Gene, on the desire to be Finny: "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." ~ John Knowles
35. "I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it." ~ John Knowles
36. "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." ~ John Knowles
37. "So the more things stay the same, the more they change after all." ~ John Knowles
38. "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
39. "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." ~ John Knowles
40. "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
41. "Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence." ~ John Knowles
42. "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." ~ John Knowles
43. "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
44. "There was no harm in taking aim, even if the target was a dream." ~ John Knowles
45. "Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak." ~ John Knowles
46. "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." ~ John Knowles
47. "...his jaw tightening and his eyes closed on the tears. "I believe you. It's okay because I understand and I believe you." ~ John Knowles

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John Knowles Quotes
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John Knowles Quotes

Today's Quote

But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care."
Author: Benjamin Tucker

What Did John Knowles Talk About?

Thin
Here
Con
Hen
Ear
Self
Mean
Ten
Use
End
Thou
Lit
Per
Cause
Wit
Ring
King
Ally
Bee
Head
Hey
Round
Tan
Though
Sing
Son
Los
Sin
Side
Said
Win
Ears
Ways
Felt
Ought
Away
Able
Himself
Era
Sky
Yes
Stop
Sun
Turn
Top
Times
Tree
Tea
She
Hate

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