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The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they might be related to one another in ways frowned on by the Old Testament.

What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you squarely in the eye and said he would rather die than be killed in combat

Read me back the last line. 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take shorthand. Not my last line, stupid! the colonel shouted. Somebody else's. 'Read me back the last line,'...

Inscribed on the back was a line from Virgil in Latin: Audentes fortuna juvat. Fortune favors the bold. He'd been bold all right, but Fortune hadn't gotten the memo.

The rain was pattering hypnotically on the plane's exterior.

Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great. We are talking of only a painting.

It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?

Why are they going to disappear him? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?

Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been demoted because he no longer gave a damn whether he missed or not. He had decided to live forever or die...

He could not make them understand that he was a crotchety old fogey of twenty-eight, that he belonged to another generation, another era, another world, that having a good time bored him and was not...

It's a small wound. All we have to do is stop the bleeding, clean it out and put a few stitches in." "But I've never had a chance to operate before. Which one is the scalpel? Is this one the scalpel?

He wondered often how he would ever recognize the first chill, flush, twinge, ache, belch, sneeze, stain, lethargy, vocal slip, loss of balance or lapse of memory that would signal the inevitable...

Yossarian quickened his pace to get away, almost ran. The night was filled with horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world, like a psychiatrist through a...

Steal Captain Black's car, said Yossarian. That's what I always do. We can't steal anybody's car. Since you began stealing the nearest car every time you wanted one, nobody leaves the ignition on.

They couldn't touch him because he was Tarzan, Mandrake, Flash Gordon. He was Bill Shakespeare. He was Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Deirdre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the...

There were billions of conscientious body cells oxidating away day and night like dumb animals at their complicated job of keeping him alive and healthy, and every one was a potential traitor and foe.

The man who declares that survival at all costs is the end of existence is morally dead, because he's prepared to sacrifice all other values which give life its meaning. -SIDNEY HOOK

It's only that I feel an injustice has been committed. Why should I have somebody else's malaria and you have my dose of clap?

He glanced at me, then chuckled. Sprezzatura's an Italian word. Means the art of making something difficult look easy.

Why," swore Yossarian at him approvingly, "you evil-eyed, mechanicallyaptituded, disaffiliated son of a bitch, did you walk around with anything in your cheeks?

the full fury of his storming countenance with its rugged overhang of gullied forehead and huge crag of a humpbacked nose that came charging out of his face wrathfully like a Big Ten fullback.

Men," Colonel Cargill began in Yossarian's squadron, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it.

Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions then he is caught in Catch-22: if he flies he is crazy, and doesn't have to; but if he doesn't want to he must be sane and has...

Yossarian wrinkled his forehead with quizzical amusement. You won't marry me because I'm crazy, and you say I'm crazy because I want to marry you? Is that right?

Would you like to see your country lose?' Major Major asked. 'We won't lose. We've got more men, more money and more material. There are ten million men in uniform who could replace me. Some people...

he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall?

His goading remained gentle. Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think...

Five is very good, Milo, he observed with enthusiasm, spying a ray of hope. That averages out to almost one combat mission every two months. And I'll bet your total doesn't even include the time you...

Through the lavender gloom clouding the entrance of the operations tent, Yossarian glimpsed Chief White Halfoat, diligently embezzling whiskey rations, forging the signatures of nondrinkers and...

He felt imprisoned in an airplane. In an airplane there was absolutely no place in the world to go except to another part of the airplane. Doc Daneeka had been told that people who enjoyed climbing...

You just came out of the hospital ten days ago," Milo reminded him reprovingly. "You can't keep running into the hospital every time something happens you don't like. No, the best thing to do is fly...

Bribery is against the law, and you know it. But it's not against the law to make a profit, is it? So it can't be against the law for me to bribe someone in order to make a fair profit, can it? No, of...

If you run into trouble, just tell everybody that the security of the country requires a strong domestic Egyptian-cotton speculating industry.