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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.

Some are born mediocre, others become mediocre, and others are required.

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

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.

Yossarian was committing his traditional rights of freedom and independence with the boldness of exercising them.

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

Black glasses had big, red frames. The false black mustache belonged to a multicolored flattener and Major Major wore both of a basketball match in a day, when he felt he could no longer bear his...

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.

Buildings and shapes without contour were flying near him without noise, worn implacably on the surface of a strong, timeless wave.

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

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,'...

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?

In short, he was a dope. He often looked to Yossarian like one of those people hanging around modern museums with both eyes together on one side of a face. It was an illusion, of course, generated by...

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

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...

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.

In a way the C.I.D. man was pretty lucky, because outside the hospital the war was still going on.Men went mad and were rewarded with medals. All over the world, boys on every side of the bomb line...

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

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...

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'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 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...

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.

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.

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...

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...

Just for once, I'd like to see these things straightened out somehow, so that everyone gets exactly what they deserve. It would restore my faith in this universe.

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...

The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likeable. In three days no one could stand him.

It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian say the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.

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

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?

Thinking that it would console him, she took a piece of charcoal and erased the innumerable loves that he still owed her for, and she voluntarily brought up her own most solitary sadnesses so as not...