TuesdayOct 20, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
John Robert Fowles (March 31, 1926 - November 5, 2005) was an English novelist and essayist.
You are like a porcupine. When the animal has its spines erect, it cannot eat. If you do not eat, you will starve. And your prickles will die with the rest of your body.
I knew words were like chains, they held me back ... the act of description taints the description.
Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is.
The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.
There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.
Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women from laughing at them.
Night fell again. There was war to the south, but our sector was quiet. The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud.
I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always does to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one's life. Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women from laughing at them.
The newspapers are full of what we would like to happen to us and what we hope will never happen to us.
Evolution did not intend trees to grow singly. Far more than ourselves they are social creatures, and no more natural as isolated specimens than man is as a marooned sailor or hermit.
But I think the most harmful change brought about by Victorian science in our attitude to nature lies in the demand that our relation with it must be purposive, industrious, always seeking greater knowledge.
Only fools think our attitude to our fellow men is a thing distinct from our attitude to 'lesser' life on this planet.
We all write poems; it is simply that the poets are the ones who write in words.
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