Famous Quotes & Sayings

Paul Fussell Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 45 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Paul Fussell.

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Famous Quotes By Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell Quotes 227989

Before the development of tourism, travel was conceived to be like study, and its fruits were considered to be the adornment of the mind and the formation of judgement. — Paul Fussell

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When the Allies bombed the Italians on the island of Pantelleria in June, 1943, General Spaatz, of the United States Air Corps, concluded that bombing can reduce to the point of surrender any first-class nation now in existence, within six months. — Paul Fussell

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To get home you had to end the war. To end the war was the reason you fought it. The only reason. — Paul Fussell

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A guide book is addressed to those who plan to follow the traveler, doing what he has done, but more selectively. A travel book, in its purest, is addressed to those who do not plan to follow the traveler at all, but who require the exotic or comic anomalies, wonders and scandals of the literary form romance which their own place or time cannot entirely supply. — Paul Fussell

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The worst thing about war was the sitting around and wondering what you were doing morally. — Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell Quotes 1407023

Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances. — Paul Fussell

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If the guidebook used to be critical, today it seems largely a celebratory adjunct to the publicity operations of hotels, resorts, and even countries. — Paul Fussell

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Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it. — Paul Fussell

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If the term discussion has always seemed to me to imply mild warnings of wasted time, workshop sets off a clangorous alarm. — Paul Fussell

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The simple is carefully shunned by those who labour to seem what they would be. — Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell Quotes 1192212

Another reason is that the letters are almost always funny, offering readers the spectacle of some pompous self-celebrator given ample ironic room in which to parade his self-solicited hurt. — Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell Quotes 1618853

I would read accounts of so-called battles I had been in, and they had no relation whatever to what had happened. So I began to perceive that anything written was fiction to various degrees. The whole subject
the difference between actuality and representation
was an interesting one. And that's what brought me to literature in the first place. — Paul Fussell

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When ... asked what I am writing, I have answered, "A book about social class in America," ... It is if I had said, "I am working on a book urging the beating to death of baby whales using the dead bodies of baby seals. — Paul Fussell

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Things without defense: insects, kittens, small boys. — Paul Fussell

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Irony is the attendant of hope and the fuel of hope is innocence. — Paul Fussell

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Anyone telling about his travels must be a liar, ... for if a traveler doesn't visit his narrative with the spirit and techniques of fiction, no one will want to hear it. — Paul Fussell

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Chickenshit can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war. — Paul Fussell

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Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice. — Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell Quotes 1675106

I find nothing more depressing than optimism. — Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell Quotes 1933034

A more or less accurate measure of class in America is TV size: the bigger your TV, the lower your class. — Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell Quotes 1593532

The implicit optimism of the [field service post card] is worth noting - the way it offers no provision for transmitting news like "I have lost my left leg" or "I have been admitted into hospital wounded and do not expect to recover." Because it provided no way of saying "I am going up the line again," its users had to improvise. Wilfred Owen had an understanding with his mother that when he used a double line to cross out "I am being sent down to the base," he meant he was at the front again. Close to brilliant is the way the post card allows one to admit to no state of health between being "quite" well, on the one hand, and, on the other, being so sick that one is in hospital. — Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell Quotes 1967183

Most people who seek attention and regard by announcing that they're writing a novel are actually so devoid of narrative talent that they can't hold the attention of a dinner table for thirty seconds, even with a dirty joke. — Paul Fussell

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What someone doesn't want you to publish is journalism; all else is publicity. — Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell Quotes 2167502

The middles cleave to euphemisms not just because they're an aid in avoiding facts. They like them also because they assist their social yearnings towards pomposity. This is possible because most euphemisms permit the speaker to multiply syllables, and the middle class confuses sheer numerousness with weight and value. — Paul Fussell

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The balls used in top class games are generally smaller than those used in others. — Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell Quotes 939128

Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience, and the best travellers ... seem to be those able to hold two or three inconsistent ideas in their minds at the same time, or able to regard themselves as at once serious persons and clowns. — Paul Fussell

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There is no Apocalypse. — Paul Fussell

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Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles. — Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell Quotes 313362

So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us.Except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy,the survivors of the abyss sat hollow-eyed and silent, trying to comprehend a world without war. — Paul Fussell

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If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces. — Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell Quotes 446583

All the pathos and irony of leaving one's youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveller learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time. — Paul Fussell

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Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination. — Paul Fussell

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The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower your class.
Paul Fussell

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The past is not the present: pretending it is corrupts art and thus both rots the mind and shrivels the imagination and conscience. — Paul Fussell

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Travel sharpens the senses. Abroad one feels, sees and hears things in an abnormal way. — Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell Quotes 1478431

The day after the British entered the war Henry James wrote a friend:
The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness ... is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous years were all the while really making for and meaning is too tragic for any words. — Paul Fussell

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Travelers learn not just foreign customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs and novel forms of government. They learn, if they are lucky, humility. — Paul Fussell

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Anybody who notices unpleasant facts in the have-a-nice-day world we live in is going to be designated a curmudgeon. — Paul Fussell

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Today the Somme is a peaceful but sullen place, unforgetting and unforgiving ... To wander now over the fields destined to extrude their rusty metal fragments for centuries is to appreciate in the most intimate way the permanent reverberations of July, 1916. When the air is damp you can smell rusted iron everywhere, even though you see only wheat and barley. — Paul Fussell

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Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends. — Paul Fussell

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Tourism requires that you see conventional things, and that you see them in a conventional way. — Paul Fussell

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The past, which as always did not know the future, acted in ways that ask to
be imagined before they are condemned. Or even simplified. — Paul Fussell

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And the ideal travel writer is consumed not just with a will to know. He is also moved by a powerful will to teach. — Paul Fussell

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If truth is the main casualty in war, ambiguity is another. — Paul Fussell

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If we do not redefine manhood, war is inevitable. — Paul Fussell