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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

If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order to survive, to protect some aspect of myself that was now in constant retreat.

We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.

Hope for some means its loss for others; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power--the ones who had taken it away--become afraid, more protective of their endangered interests, more...

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?

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,'...

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.

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...

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 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.

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...

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

There are outrages and there are outrages, and some are more outrageous than others.Mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.The Death of Socrates...

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

Everyone was always very friendly toward him, and no one was ever very nice; everyone spoke to him, and no one ever said anything.

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?

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

fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.

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...

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...

Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy. There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that...

When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me, I reach my end, for artless I surrendered to one who is my undoing and my end.

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

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...

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.

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'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?

Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.

Having an honest friend-one before whom you can dump all your heart's pockets and still feel that you are worth something-is a form of wealth that will buy you nothing but will give you everything....

With fear come the lies and the justifications that, no matter how convincing, lower our self-esteem.