Jay Smith > Jay's Quotes

“There was no harm in taking aim, even if the target was a dream.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“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, A Separate Peace

“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, A Separate Peace

“Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“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, A Separate Peace

“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”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“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

“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.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“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, A Separate Peace

“This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion the old giants have become pygmies while you were looking the other way.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“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.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“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.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“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, A Separate Peace

“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, A Separate Peace

“I think we reminded them of what peace was like, we boys of sixteen. We were registered with no draft board, we had taken no physical examinations. No one had ever tested us for hernia or color blindness. Trick knees and punctured eardrums were minor complaints and not yet disabilities which would separate a few from the fate of the rest. We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being fought to preserve. Anyway, they were more indulgent toward us than at any other time; they snapped at the heels of seniors, driving and molding and arming them for the war. They noticed our games tolerantly. We reminded them of what peace was like, of lives which were not bound up with destruction.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“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.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“...I alone was a dream, a figment which had never really touched anything. 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, A Separate Peace

“Then for no reason at all, I felt magnificent. It was as though my body until that instant had simply been lazy as though the aches and exhaustion were all imagined, created from nothing in order to keep me from truly exerting myself. Now my body seemed at last to say, "Well, if you must have it, here!" and an accession of strength came flooding through me. Buoyed up, I forgot my usual feeling of routine self-pity when working out, I lost myself, oppressed mind along with aching body; all entanglements were shed, I broke into the clear.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“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."

I didn't think that this was true, my seventeen years of experience had shown this to be much more false than true, but it was like every other thought and belief of Finny's: it should have been true.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“What deceived me was my own happiness; for peace is indivisible, and the surrounding world confusion found no reflection inside me.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“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 , A Separate Peace

“Finny never permitted himself to realize that when you won they lost. That would have destroyed the perfect beauty which was sport.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“Why talk about something you can't do anything about?”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“...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, A Separate Peace

“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, A Separate Peace