John Knowles quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by John Knowles

John Knowles Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from John Knowles on Wise Famous Quotes.

There was a breath of widening life in the morning air
something hard to describe

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.

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

I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.

We are all born equally far from the sun.

Well, it's a useful room." "Yes, I guess it's useful, all right.

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.

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

The war was and is reality for me.

The summer of 1943 at Exeter was as happy a time as I ever had in my life.

Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.

Sarcasm is the protest of the weak.

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

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

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

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

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

Why talk about something you can't do anything about?

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

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.

Never say you are five feet nine when you are five feet eight and a half.

You never waste your time. That's why I have to do it for you.

What deceived me was my own happiness; for peace is indivisible, and the surrounding world confusion found no reflection inside me.

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

I jounced the limb.

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

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

Because, unfamiliar with the absence of fear and what that was like, I have not been able to identify its presence.

I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before.

I saw on the pad not an operator's number from my home town, but one which seemed to interrupt the beating of my heart.

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

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.

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

Let us pray. We all slumped immediately and unthinkingly in to the awkward crouch in which God was addressed.

Finny never permitted himself to realize that when you won they lost. That would have destroyed the perfect beauty which was sport.

...moved by his own sermon.

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

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 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.

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

Is he using terror to keep away boredom? Does he have to try to destroy something? Even as a last resort, himself?

There are just tiny fragments of pleasure and luxury in the world, and there is something unpatriotic about enjoying them.

So the more things remained the same, the more they changed after all. Nothing endures. Not love, not a tree, not even a death by violence.

The first person who says anything unpleasant will get a swift kick in the ass.

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.

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

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.