John Fowles, The Magus
"If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence."
54 Quotes
"If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence."
John Fowles, The Magus
"When I was going on one day in the car about not having any close friends - using my favourite metaphor: the cage of glass between me and the rest of the world - she just laughed. 'You like it,' she said. 'You say you're isolated, boyo, but you really think you're different."
John Fowles, The Magus
"It was an unforgettable painting; it set a dense golden halo of light round the most trivial of moments, so that the moment, and all such moments, could never be completely trivial again."
John Fowles, The Magus
"I had always believed, and not only out of cynicism, that a man and a woman could tell in the first ten minutes whether they wanted to go to bed together; and that the time that passed after those first ten minutes represented a tax, which might be worth paying if the article promised to be really enjoyable, but which nine times out of ten became rapidly excessive."
John Fowles, The Magus
"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. You are too young to know this. You are still becoming. Not being."
John Fowles, The Magus
"Now I understand why you grow so many flowers."She shifted her head, not understanding. I said, "To cover the stink of sulphur."
John Fowles, The Magus
"Death starves us of life. So we learn to fabricate our own immortalities."
John Fowles, The Magus
"The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself."
John Fowles, The Magus
"Labor is a man crowning glory."Not this man's."I quote Marx"I raised my hands. The pickaxe handle had been rough."I quote blisters."
John Fowles, The Magus
"In spite of her superficial independence, her fundamental need was to cling. All her life was an attempt to disprove it; and so proved it. She was like a sea anemone -- had only to be touched once to adhere to what touched her."
John Fowles, The Magus
"He was one of the most supremely stupid men I have ever met. He taught me a great deal."
John Fowles, The Magus
"The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night?"
John Fowles, The Magus
"Because they died, we know we still live. 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."
John Fowles, The Magus
"So that the smile was not so much an attitude to be taken to life as the nature of the cruelty of life, a cruelty we cannot even choose to avoid, since it is human existence."
John Fowles, The Magus
"That is how war corrupts us. It plays on our pride in our own free will."
John Fowles, The Magus
"And I envy you. You have the one thing that matters. You have all your discoveries before you."
John Fowles, The Magus
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