Quotes from John Williams

a quotation from the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset as an epigraph for Stoner: "A hero is one who wants to be himself.

When at last he came to his decision, it seemed to him that he had known all along what it would be.

A quarantatré anni compiuti, William Stoner apprese ciò che altri, ben più giovani di lui, avevano imparato prima: che la persona che amiamo da subito non è quella che amiamo per davvero e che l'amore non è una fine ma un processo attraverso il quale una persona tenta di conoscerne un'altra.

But the required survey of English literature troubled and disquieted him in a way nothing had ever done before.

Between the brutality that would sacrifice a single innocent life to a fear without a name, and the enlightenment that would sacrifice thousands of lives to a fear that we have named, I have found little to choose.

There was a softness around him, and a languor crept upon his limbs. A sense of his own identity came upon him with sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been.

No, sir," Stoner said, and the decisiveness of his voice surprised him. He thought with some wonder of the decision he had suddenly made.

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.

No seu quadragésimo terceiro ano de vida, William Stoner aprendeu o que outros, muito mais jovens do que ele, tinham aprendido antes de si: que a pessoa que amamos no início não é a mesma pessoa que amamos no fim, e que o amor não é uma meta e sim um processo através do qual uma pessoa tenta conhecer outra.

They do the work, and he gets all the money. They think he's a crook, and he thinks they're fools. You can't blame either side; they're both right.

but his long thin fingers moved with grace and persuasion, as if giving to the words a shape that his voice could not.

Mrs. Bostwick's face was heavy and lethargic, without any strength or delicacy, and it bore the deep marks of what must have been a habitual dissatisfaction.

Annesi, hayat?n? sab?rla kabullenmiÅŸti, katlanmak zorunda olduÄŸu uzun bir anm??ças?na.

Her life was invariable, like a low hum; and it was watched over by her mother, who, when Edith was a child, would sit for hours watching her paint her pictures or play her piano, as if no other occupation were possible for either of them.

He said slowly, "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.

Horace once told me that laws were powerless against the private passions of the human heart, and only he who has no power over it, such as the poet or the philosopher, may persuade the human spirit to virtue.

That the one could intensify the other had never occurred to them; and since the embodiment came before the recognition of the truth, it seemed a discovery that belonged to them alone.

He did his work at the University as he did his work on the farm—thoroughly, conscientiously, with neither pleasure nor distress.

Stoner saw them through a haze, as if he were an audience.

Her moral training, both at the schools she attended and at home, was negative in nature, prohibitive in intent, and almost entirely sexual. The sexuality, however, was indirect and unacknowledged; therefore it suffused every other part of her education, which received most of its energy from that recessive and unspoken moral force. She learned that she would have duties toward her husband and family and that she must fulfill them.

Finch turned to the other men and without raising his voice managed to call out to them.

And we have come out of this, at least, with ourselves. We know that we are — what we are.

It was the force of a public tragedy he felt, a horror and a woe so all-pervasive that private tragedies and personal misfortunes were removed to another state of being, yet were intensified by the very vastness in which they took place, as the poignancy of a lone grave might be intensified by a great desert surrounding it.

To care not for one's self is of little moment, but to care not for those whom one has loved is another matter.