John Fowles Quotes

Science provides an understanding of a universal experience. Arts provide a universal understanding of a personal experience.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

I think, then, that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller - some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Speak not of what you have read, but about what you have understood.

We find little in a book but what we put there. But in great books, the mind finds room to put many things.

How you mean? How you mean? What you know about the team? You just know what you get told girl I see behind the scene

Transmitting information is easier than creating understanding.

Reading enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time.

I see myself as a witness to humanity.

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

Cliches are what make you understand something.

I look at you and I write down what I hear.

Common sense varies among the young, as among the old.

I really value words. I really try to illustrate and let people draw their own conclusions.

The analysis of concepts is for the understanding nothing more than what the magnifying glass is for sight.

Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

Knowledge, may it be said, is higher than magic and is more to be sought. It is quite possible to see what is happening and yet not know what is forward, for while seeing is believing, it does not follow that either seeing or believing is knowing.

All vital truth contains the memory of all that for which it is not true.

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.