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John Fowles Quotes

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Famous John Fowles Quotes

“This pain, this terrible seeing-through that is in me now. It wasn't necessary. It is all pain, and it buys nothing. Gives birth to nothing. All in vain. All wasted. The older the world becomes, the more obvious it is. The bomb and the tortures in Algeria and the starving babies in the Congo. It gets bigger and darker. More and more suffering for more and more. And more and more in vain.”

WorldPainSufferingDarkBirthTerribleWasteObviousVainTortureStarvingNothingNecessaryBirthingBombOlderWasted
Book:The Collector
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“Even more ominous ... is the fact that since the Second World War a new kind of intellectual has emerged in large numbers. ... he is only minimally interested in the proper intellectual significance of images and objects. Such people are not really intellectuals, but visuals ... A visual is more interested in style than in content ... A visual does not feel a rioting crowd being machine-gunned by the police, he simply sees a brilliant news photograph.”

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Author:John Fowles
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“Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.”

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Book:THE FRENCH LIEUTENTANT'S WOMAN
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“It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me.”

MenWorldLifeShouldMadeIdeasReasonDoneFeelingsCareYoungEvilDespairNormalYoung ManBombsContemplatingLots Of MoneyViciousDroppingBrutalityPerfectly NormalCallousness
Author:John Fowles
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“It came to me…that I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, that what I was feeling at that moment justified all I had been through, because all I had been through was my being there. I was experiencing…a new self-acceptance, a sense that I had to be this mind and this body, its vices and its virtues, and that I had no other chance or choice.”

WorldWantMindSelfMomentsFeelingsBodyChoicesChanceVirtueAcceptanceVicesThat MomentSelf AcceptanceJustifiedBeing ThereNew Self
Book:The Magus
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“We lay on the ground and kissed. Perhaps you smile. That we only lay on the ground and kissed. You young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not. But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion. It is not only species of animal that die out. But whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know. But pity yourself for what it did.”

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Author:John Fowles
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“Though I like the various forms of football in the world, I don't think they begin to compare with these two great Anglo-Saxon ball games for sophisticated elegance and symbolism. Baseball and cricket are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base - in both senses - greed. With football we are back to the monotonous clashing armor of the brontosaurus.”

ThinkingWorldMadeTwoWarBeautifulFormGamesFootballProudBaseballBallsGreedVariousFleshChessSensesCompareSubstitutesSophisticatedCricketEleganceMixturesMedievalArmorSymbolismMonotonousChivalryBall GamesMedieval WarAnglo Saxon
Author:John Fowles
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“People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free of each other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more.”

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Author:John Fowles
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