John Fowles Quotes

141 Sourced Quotes

The American myth is of free will in its simple, primary sense. One can choose oneself and will oneself; and this absurdly optimistic assumption so dominates the republic that it has bred all its gross social injustices.

John Fowles
Our knowledge of what the richer than ourselves possess, and the poor do not, has never been more widespread. Therefore, envy, which is wanting what others have, and jealousy, which is not wanting others to have what one has, have never been more widespread.

John Fowles
One degrades oneself sometimes in the effort not to be lonely.

John Fowles
How can one build a better self unless on the ruins of the old?

John Fowles
Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation.

John Fowles
All pasts are like poems; one can derive a thousand things, but not live in them.

John Fowles
There are two kinds of hangover: in one you feel ill and incapable, in the other you feel ill and lucid.

John Fowles
One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true

John Fowles
Stained glass, engraved glass, frosted glass; give me plain glass.

John Fowles
The price of tapping water into every house is that no one values water any more.

John Fowles
I knew words were like chains, they held me back... the act of description taints the description.

John Fowles
The word is the most imprecise of signs. Only a science-obsessed age could fail to comprehend that this is its great virtue, not its defect.

John Fowles
The diary will really try and tell people who you are and what you were. The alternative is writing nothing, or creating a totally lifeless, as it is leafless, garden.

John Fowles
You come to the United States not knowing what to expect. Then all your worst prejudices are confirmed.

John Fowles
No amount of reading and intelligent deduction could supplant the direct experience.

John Fowles
Our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be.

John Fowles
We chase the reward, we get the reward and then we discover that the true reward is always the next reward. Buying pleasure is a false end.

John Fowles
There cannot be any true leisure until all the world possesses it equally.

John Fowles
These last few days I've felt Godless. I've felt cleaner, less muddled, less blind. I still believe in a God. But he's so remote, so cold, so mathematical. I see that we have to live as if there is no God. Prayer and worship and singing hymns-all silly and useless.

John Fowles
There seemed many great auks till the last one was killed.

John Fowles
The more abhorrent a news item the more comforting it was to be the recipient, since the fact that it had happened elsewhere proved that it had not happened here, was not happening here, and would therefore never happen here.

John Fowles