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Book: The 42nd Parallel
Quotes of Book: The 42nd Parallel
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  1. John Dos Passos _ The 42nd Parallel

    and you wondered if you'd be alive next time Halley's Comet came round
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  2. John Dos Passos _ The 42nd Parallel

    Too goddam many lawyers mixed up in this. Run the sonsobitches out. If they resists shoot 'em, that's what I says to the Governor, but they're all these sonsobitches a lawyers fussin' everythin' up all the time with warrants and habeas corpus and longwinded rigmarole. My ass to habeas corpus."
    book-quote

  3. John Dos Passos _ The 42nd Parallel

    ...and the Sunday the bishop came you couldn't see Halley's Comet any more and you saw the others being confirmed and it lasted for hours because there were a lot of little girls being confirmed too and all you could hear was mumble mumble this thy child mumble mumble this thy child and you wondered if you'd be alive next time Halley's Comet came round
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  4. John Dos Passos _ The 42nd Parallel

    but on account of the flag and prosperity and making the world safe for democracy, they were afraid to be with him, or to think much about him for fear they might believe him; for he said: While there is a lower class I am of it, while there is a criminal class I am of it, while there is a soul in prison I am not free.
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  5. John Dos Passos _ The 42nd Parallel

    U. S. A. is the slice of a continent. U. S. A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stockquotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public-library full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U. S. A. is the world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills, U. S. A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts. U. S. A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U. S. A. is the letters at the end of an address when you
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  6. John Dos Passos _ The 42nd Parallel

    One phrase stuck in Fainy's mind, and he repeated it to himself after he had gone to bed that night: It is time for all honest men to band together to resist the ravages of greedy privilege.
    book-quote

  7. John Dos Passos _ The 42nd Parallel

    While there is a lower class I am of it, while there is a criminal class I am of it, while there is a soul in prison I am not free.
    book-quote

  8. John Dos Passos _ The 42nd Parallel

    was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass,he walked through the woods one wintercrunching through the shinycrusted snowstumbling into a little dell where a warm spring wasand found the grass green and weeds sproutingand skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,He went home and sat by the stove and read Struggle for Existence Origin of Species NaturalSelection that wasn't what they taught in church,so ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg,found a seedball in a potato plantsowed the seed and cashed in on 's Natural Selectionon and with the Burbank potato.Young man go west; went to Santa Rosafull of his dream of green grass in winter ever-blooming flowers ever-bearing berries; could cash in on Natural Selection carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winterand seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus-winters were bleak in that bleakbrick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts-out to sunny Santa Rosa;and he was a sunny old manwhere roses bloomed all yeareverblooming everbearinghybrids.America was hybridAmerica could cash in on Natural Selection.He was an infidel he believed in and NaturalSelection and the influence of the mighty deadand a good firm shipper's fruitsuitable for canning.He was one of the grand old men until the churchesand the congregationsgot wind that he was an infidel and believedin . had never a thought of evil,selected improved hybrids for Americathose sunny years in Santa Rosa.But he brushed down a wasp's nest that time;he wouldn't give up and Natural Selectionand they stung him and he diedpuzzled.They buried him under a cedartree.His favorite photographwas of a little totstanding beside a bed of hybrideverblooming double Shasta daisieswith never a thought of evilAnd Mount Shastain the background, used to be a volcanobut they don't have volcanosany more.
    book-quotecharles-darwindarwinherbert-spencer

  9. John Dos Passos _ The 42nd Parallel

    The young man walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough {faces slide out of sight, talk trails into tattered scraps, footsteps tap fainter in alleys}; he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the wantads, learn the trades, take up the jobs, live in all the boardinghouses, sleep in all the beds. One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life is not enough. At night, head swimming with wants, he walks by himself alone.
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  10. John Dos Passos _ The 42nd Parallel

    The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armour of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error." -John Dos Passos
    book-quote
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