|
679a815
|
Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.
|
|
major-major
mediocre
mediocrity
|
Joseph Heller |
|
5920a40
|
Whatever his elders told him to do, he did. They told him to look before he leaped, and he always looked before he leaped. They told him never to put off until the next day what he could do the day before, and he never did. He was told to honor his father and his mother, and he honored his father and his mother. He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill, until he got into the Army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed. He ..
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
880ff2b
|
Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskoph had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
903cbcb
|
I'm not running away from my responsibilities. I'm running to them. There's nothing negative about running away to save my life.
|
|
joseph-heller
yossarian
|
Joseph Heller |
|
811420b
|
History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; WHICH men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from th..
|
|
war
|
Joseph Heller |
|
97d4cec
|
When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
da53746
|
Actually there were many officers' clubs that Yossarian had not helped build, but he was proudest of the one on Pianosa. It was a sturdy and complex monument to his powers of determination. Yossarian never went there to help until it was finished; then he went there often, so pleased was he with the large , fine, rambling shingled building. It was a truly splendid building, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each t..
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
f037e9f
|
I am miracle ingredient Z-247. I'm immense. I'm a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger. I'm a bona fide supraman.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
99e2ed6
|
When I was a kid," Orr replied, "I used to walk around all day with crab apples in my cheeks. One in each cheek." ... A minute passed. "Why?" [Yossarian] found himself forced to ask finally. Orr tittered triumphantly. "Because they're better than horse chestnuts... When I couldn't get crab apples," Orr continued, "I used horse chestnuts. Horse chestnuts are about the same size as crab apples and actually have a better shape, although the sh..
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
0c8f63a
|
So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six..
|
|
joseph-heller
yossarian
catch-22
god
new-testament
|
Joseph Heller |
|
5e84d15
|
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity trust upon them.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
852e402
|
Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office.
|
|
war
|
Joseph Heller |
|
ecaebad
|
For war there is always enough. It's peace that's expensive.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
4388d3c
|
I used to get a big kick out of saving people's lives. Now I wonder what the hell's the point, since they all have to die anyway." "Oh, there's a point, all right," Dunbar assured him. "Is there? What's the point?" "The point is to keep them from dying as long as you can." "Yeah, but what's the point, since they all have to die anyway?" "The trick is not to think about that." "Never mind the trick. What the hell's the point?" Dunbar pondere..
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
de89612
|
His heart cracked, and he fell in love. He wondered if she would marry him. "Tu sei pazzo," she told him with a pleasant laugh. "Why am I crazy?" he asked. "Perche non posso sposare." "Why can't you get married?" "Because I am not a virgin," she answered. "What has that got to do with it?" "Who will marry me? No one wants a girl who is not a virgin." "I will. I'll marry you." "Ma non posso sposarti." "Why can't you marry me?" "Pe..
|
|
marriage
women
|
Joseph Heller |
|
ae14563
|
Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include tooth decay in His divine system of creation? Why in the world did He ever create pain?' 'Pain?' Lieutenant Shiesskopf's wife pounced upon the word victoriously. 'Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.' 'And who created the dangers?' Yossarian demanded. 'Why couldn't He have used a doorbell to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a s..
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
a1a59cd
|
where are the snowdens of yesteryear?
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
708cbef
|
That crazy bastard may be the only sane one left.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
4f47b04
|
Who is Spain?
|
|
snowden
|
Joseph Heller |
|
e549771
|
The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody co..
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
c7567ba
|
What the hell are you getting so upset about?' he asked her bewilderedly in a tone of contrive amusement. 'I thought you didn't believe in God.' I don't,' she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. 'But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make Him to be.' Yossarian laughed and turned her arms loose. 'Let's have a little more religious freedom between us,' he proposed obl..
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
1c3aa97
|
You're an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I'm an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I'm in an ideal position to appreciate it.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
923f07d
|
I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
9e9159f
|
Nately had a bad start. He came from a good family.
|
|
nately
good
family
|
Joseph Heller |
|
e3459e6
|
While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of it.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
b120bb7
|
Just what the hell did you mean, you bastard, when you said we couldn't punish you?" said the corporal who could take shorthand reading from his steno pad. "All right," said the colonel. "Just what the hell did you mean?" "I didn't say you couldn't punish me, sir." "When," asked the colonel. "When what, sir?" "Now you're asking me questions again." "I'm sorry, sir. I'm afraid I don't understand your question." "When didn't you say we couldn..
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
9838764
|
The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live."
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
87023c3
|
Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
5591aa3
|
Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. Th..
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
203208f
|
Major Major had lied, and it was good. He was not really surprised that it was good, for he had observed that people who did lie were, on the whole, more resourceful and ambitious and successful than people who did not lie.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
072d20c
|
He was sick with lust and mesmerized with regret
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
81b47d4
|
Someone had to do something sometime. Every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try to break the lousy chain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
b94495c
|
As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
22790cd
|
Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.
|
|
joseph-heller
courage
confidence
positive
dread
|
Joseph Heller |
|
c3d500e
|
I'll tell you what justice is. Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
a8e94f1
|
But how can one be warm alone?
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
f2d1ce1
|
All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars.
|
|
war
stars
humor
|
Joseph Heller |
|
aac1b72
|
Clevinger was a troublemaker and a wise guy. Lieutenant Scheisskopf knew that Clevinger might cause even more trouble if he wasn't watched. Yesterday it was the cadet officers; tomorrow it might be the world. Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times. Such men were dangerous, and even the new cadet officers whom Clevinger had helped into office were eager to give ..
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
93f3a30
|
I did it to protect my good reputation in case anyone ever caught me walking around with crab apples in my cheeks. With rubber balls in my hands I could deny there were crab apples in my cheeks. Everytime someone asked me why I was walking around with crab apples in my cheeks, I'd just open my hands and show them it was rubber balls I was walking around with, not crab apples, and that they were in my hands, not my cheeks. It was a good stor..
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
d7079ef
|
You wouldn't be normal if you were never afraid. Even the bravest men experience fear. One of the biggest jobs we all face in combat is to overcome fear.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
f090952
|
Gold was not sure of many things, but he was definite about one: for every successful person he knew, he could name at least two others of greater ability, better, and higher intelligence who, by comparison, had failed.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
7799d7f
|
Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as eleven-times-seventeen years. "I think you're crazy," was the way Clevinger had responded to Dunbar's discovery. "Who wants to know?" Dunbar answered. "I mean it," Clevinger insisted. "Who cares?" Dunbar answered. "I ..
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |
|
1704a43
|
He found Luciana sitting alone at a table in the Allied officers' night club, where the drunken Anzac major who had brought her there had been stupid enough to desert her for the ribald company of some singing comrades at the bar. "All right, I'll dance with you," she said, before Yossarian could even speak. "But I won't let you sleep with me." "Who asked you?" Yossarian asked her. "You don't want to sleep with me?" she exclaimed with surpr..
|
|
sex
women
|
Joseph Heller |
|
f550bf1
|
Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did. Soon the only people attending were those who never asked questions, and the sessions were discontinued altogether, since Clevinger, the corporal and Colonel Korn agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.
|
|
|
Joseph Heller |