“ In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 551
“ He had come to that moment in his age when there occurred to him, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it. He found himself wondering if his life were worth the living; if it had ever been. It was a question, he suspected, that came to all men at one time or another; he wondered if it came to them with such impersonal force as it came to him. The question brought with it a sadness, but it was a general sadness which (he thought) had little to do with himself or with his particular fate; he was not even sure that the question sprang from the most immediate and obvious causes, from what his own life had become. It came, he believed, from the accretion of his years, from the density of accident and circumstance, and from what he had come to understand of them. He took a grim and ironic pleasure from the possibility that what little learning he had managed to acquire had led him to this knowledge: that in the long run all things, even the learning that let him know this, were futile and empty, and at last diminished into a nothingness they did not alter. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 1.4K
“ Dispassionately, reasonably, he contemplated the failure that his life must appear to be. He had wanted friendship and the closeness of friendship that might hold him in the race of mankind; he had had two friends, one of whom had died senselessly before he was known, the other of whom had now withdrawn so distantly into the ranks of the living that... He had wanted the singleness and the still connective passion of marriage; he had had that, too, and he had not known what to do with it, and it had died. He had wanted love; and he had had love, and had relinquished it, had let it go into the chaos of potentiality. Katherine, he thought. "Katherine." And he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of his life he had been an indifferent one. He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality. He had conceived wisdom, and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance. And what else? he thought. What else? What did you expect? he asked himself. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 454
“ Young people," McDonald said contemptuously. "You always think there's something to find out." "Yes, sir," Andrews said. "Well, there's nothing," McDonald said. "You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you — that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain't done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you're the only one that knows the secret; only then it's too late. You're too old." "No," Andrews said. A vague terror crept from the darkness that surrounded them, and tightened his voice. "That's not the way it is." "You ain't learned, then," McDonald said. "You ain't learned yet. . . . ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 2.2K
“ The poets say that youth is the day of the fevered blood, the hour of love, the moment of passion; and that with age comes the cooling baths of wisdom, whereby the fever is cured. The poets are wrong. I did not know love until late in my life, when I could no longer grasp it. Youth is ignorant, and its passion is abstract. ”
- John Williams- Copy
“ You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the significance of what you are doing. There are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and that are not recorded in the annals of history. Remember that while you're trying to decide what to do. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 2.1K
“ He had come to that moment in his age when there occurred to him, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it. He found himself wondering if his life were worth the living; if it had ever been. It was a question, he suspected, that came to all men at one time or another; he wondered if it came to them with such impersonal force as it came to him. The question brought with it a sadness, but it was a general sadness which (he thought) had little to do with himself or with his particular fate; he was not even sure that the question sprang from the most immediate and obvious causes, from what his own life had become. It came, he believed, from the accretion of his years, from the density of accident and circumstance, and from what he had come to understand of them. He took a grim and ironic pleasure from the possibility that what little learning he had managed to acquire had led him to this knowledge: that in the long run all things, even the learning that let him know this, were futile and empty, and at last diminished into a nothingness they did not alter. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 437
“ There's been a lot of energy in this race and the candidates have run fairly aggressive campaigns. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 599
“ As I told one parent, we appreciate the generosity, but every drop of fuel that we put in a bus is fuel that could have gone in an ambulance or emergency vehicle trying to help the relief effort. Now, as we look at the news in the newspaper and on television of what's going on, to imagine an ambulance trying to help those people might run out of fuel because we're running the chess team over to Colleton County, well, to us it highlights some priorities. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 834
“ There's been a lot of energy in this race and the candidates have run fairly aggressive campaigns. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 352
“ The point, simply, is that we are doing more rediscovering these days than discovering coming anew upon truths that ignorant people refused to examine, over the centuries, because the wise people who held custody of the fundamental truths of nature were unpopular. ”
- John Williamson- Copy
- 1.1K
“ That would still leave Ottawa with billions of dollars to spend on roads and infrastructure. ”
- John Williamson- Copy
- 2K
“ This only reinforces the perception that, when it comes to spending, there is not a lot of consideration given to taxpayers. ”
- John Williamson- Copy
- 899
“ That would still leave Ottawa with billions of dollars to spend on roads and infrastructure. ”
- John Williamson- Copy
- 1.4K
“ The Olympics are a wonderful metaphor for world cooperation, the kind of international competition that's wholesome and healthy, an interplay between countries that represents the best in all of us. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 2K
“ Some kids, for some reason, it just doesn't click in the classroom as they need it to. We have college coaches talk to them, former high school athletes, motivational speakers, teachers, principals. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 571
“ Toronto is a big, sophisticated city and multi-ethnic, and people love coffee here. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 2.7K
“ The Olympics are a wonderful metaphor for world cooperation, the kind of international competition that's wholesome and healthy, an interplay between countries that represents the best in all of us. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 614
“ We were shocked and dismayed that one of our teachers would be involved in something like this. Teachers are held to the highest standards, and again, we are shocked. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 3.3K
“ The Olympics are a wonderful metaphor for world cooperation, the kind of international competition that's wholesome and healthy, an interplay between countries that represents the best in all of us. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 2K
“ The point, simply, is that we are doing more rediscovering these days than discovering coming anew upon truths that ignorant people refused to examine, over the centuries, because the wise people who held custody of the fundamental truths of nature were unpopular. ”
- John Williamson- Copy
- 3.9K
“ The Olympics are a wonderful metaphor for world cooperation, the kind of international competition that's wholesome and healthy, an interplay between countries that represents the best in all of us. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 2.1K
“ The point, simply, is that we are doing more rediscovering these days than discovering coming anew upon truths that ignorant people refused to examine, over the centuries, because the wise people who held custody of the fundamental truths of nature were unpopular. ”
- John Williamson- Copy
- 3K
“ Some kids, for some reason, it just doesn't click in the classroom as they need it to. We have college coaches talk to them, former high school athletes, motivational speakers, teachers, principals. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 933
“ There's been a lot of energy in this race and the candidates have run fairly aggressive campaigns. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 3.2K
“ The potential for social unrest, social instability is pretty significant,... You have a very substantial proportion of your population that has been undereducated, malnourished, marginalized, is disaffected, not able to go to school. ”
- John Williamson- Copy
- 964
“ Incumbent on the city's approval of the campus plan, we believe it's possible to bring everything together in one place. ”
- John Williams- Copy
- 469
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