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Book: The Lords of Discipline
Quotes of Book: The Lords of Discipline
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  1. Pat Conroy _ The Lords of Discipline

    It both surprised and angered me that {they} had reached a consensus of agreement against me. The way I looked at the world, enemies criticized and friends affirmed.
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  2. Pat Conroy _ The Lords of Discipline

    I loved these salt rivers more than I loved the sea; I loved the movement of tides more than I loved the fury of surf. Something in me was congruent with this land, something affirmed when I witnessed the startled, piping rush of shrimp or the flash of starlight on the scales of mullet. I could feel myself relax and change whenever I returned to the lowcountry and saw the vast green expanses of marsh, feminine as lace, delicate as calligraphy. The lowcountry had its own special ache and sting.
    book-quotenaturesouthern-fictionsouth-carolina

  3. Pat Conroy _ The Lords of Discipline

    I had come to Charleston as a young boy, a lonely visitor slouching through its well-tended streets, a young boy, lean and grassy, who grew fluent in his devotion and appreciation of that city's inestimable charm. I was a boy there and saw things through the eyes of a boy for the last time. The boy was dying and I wanted to leave him in the silent lanes South of Broad.I would leave him with no regrets except that I had not stopped to honor his passing. I had not thanked the boy for his capacity for astonishment, for curiosity, and for survival. I was indebted to that boy. I owed him my respect and my thanks. I owed him my remembrance of the lessons he learned so keenly and so ominously.
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  4. Pat Conroy _ The Lords of Discipline

    I loved county fairs in the South. It was hard to believe that anything could be so consistently cheap and showy and vulgar year after year. each year I thought that at least one class act would force its way into a booth or sideshow, but I was always mistaken. The lure of the fair was the perfect harmony of its joyous decadence, its burned-out dishonored vulgarity, its riot of colors and smells, its jangling, tawdry music, and its wicked glimpse into the outlaw life of hucksters, tattoo parlors, monstrous freaks, and strippers.
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  5. Pat Conroy _ The Lords of Discipline

    The only way I could endure being a coward was if I was the only one who knew it.
    book-quotecouragepride

  6. Pat Conroy _ The Lords of Discipline

    I had the need to be the good master, but definitely the master, no matter what the cost.
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  7. Pat Conroy _ The Lords of Discipline

    I lit a cigarette and began puffing on it as I drank one quick beer after another. I was neither a drinker nor a smoker nor a fighter, but I had planned to be all three on this day.
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  8. Pat Conroy _ The Lords of Discipline

    The mind is an intricate mechanism that can be run on the fuels of both victory and defeatism.
    book-quoteemotionspessimismthinking

  9. Pat Conroy _ The Lords of Discipline

    I thought that I must always search for the remarkable combinations, add unknowns, mix things that were clearly marked with things beyond marking. I would leave the simulated test and enter into forbidden territory. I would look for that moment when I would begin to pour alone and in wonder. I would always try to seize that moment and to accept its challenge. I wanted to become the seeker, the aroused and passionate explorer, and it was better to go at it knowing nothing at all, always choosing the unmarked bottle, always choosing your own unproven method, armed with nothing faith and a belief in astonishment. And if by accident, I could make a volcano in a single test tube, then what could I do with all the strange magnificent elements of the world with its infinity of unknowns, with the swarm of man, with civilization, with language?
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  10. Pat Conroy _ The Lords of Discipline

    I meditated on the nature of friendship as I practiced the craft. My friends had always come from outside the mainstream. I had always been popular with the fifth column of my peers, those individuals who were princely in their solitude, lords of their own unpraised melancholy. Distrusting the approval of the chosen, I would take the applause of exiles anytime. My friends were all foreigners, and they wore their unbelongingness in their eyes. I hunted for that look; I saw it often, disarrayed and fragmentary and furious, and I approached every boy who invited me in.
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  11. Pat Conroy _ The Lords of Discipline

    The narrator analyzes that the maturing, passing away boy within him, "had issued me a challenge as he passed the baton to the man in me: He had challenged me to have the courage to become a gentle, harmless man.
    book-quotematuritymanhood

  12. Pat Conroy _ The Lords of Discipline

    In Charleston, more than elsewhere, you get the feeling that the twentieth century is a vast, unconscionable mistake.
    book-quote
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