I lived, particularly in childhood but with lessening intensity right on to middle age, in a world that was peculiarly and intimately my own, scarcely to be shared with others or even made plausible to them. I habitually read special meanings into things, scenes and places — qualities of wonder, beauty, promise, or horror — for which there was no external evidence visible or plausible to others. My world was peopled with mysteries, seductive hints, vague menaces, "intimations of immortality."


A passage from the first volume of his Memoirs as quoted in Political Realism in American Thought (1977) by John W. Coffey, p. 26

George F. Kennan Quotes

I lived, particularly in childhood but with lessening intensity right on to middle age, in a world that was peculiarly and intimately my own,...

I lived, particularly in childhood but with lessening intensity right on to middle age, in a world that was peculiarly and intimately my own,...

I lived, particularly in childhood but with lessening intensity right on to middle age, in a world that was peculiarly and intimately my own,...

I lived, particularly in childhood but with lessening intensity right on to middle age, in a world that was peculiarly and intimately my own,...