"the leprosy of unreality"

For some reason, one that is completely unknown to me, i have a tendency to recall--from a bank of about five or ten--short, unrelated passages from an assortment of unrelated books that i've read in my lifetime, and i recall them quite often. If you are the type of person that has recurring dreams, i think this is somewhat similar, because although i recall these words quite often, i have not been able to establish any connection with events or thought patterns that tip me off as to when i'll think of them again. It's not like favorite quotes that you would put on your facebook profile, because i have those, and they are different than these. Again, the closest comparison i can at the moment think of is that between these "quotes", if you will, and a dream which occurs throughout your life, but for which you have no real explanation or even ability to describe. They are similar in that they occur at seemingly random times, and, more expressively, they seem to me to be pictorial rather than paragraphical. In other words, it's as if i randomly see words on a page for which i retain a memory of reading and which carry with them a definite meaning, but i cannot always know the "quote" verbatim as it existed from the author's pen and as i read it originally.

This is all very confusing and annoying and boring to you, i know, but i'm getting somewhere. All of that (the previous paragraph) to say that there is one of those "quotes" which comes up most often and which has been the cause of the most thought, by far. i read this book, if my mind serves me correctly, in the seventh grade, and when i came across this quote i was struck very vividly by it, and continued to be for sometime. And by this i mean that it was something i struggled with intellectually as an idea with which i wasn't quite sure i agreed. But when the book was over, (this book being A Separate Peace, by John Knowles), i forgot, or forced myself to forget, this idea, and quote, altogether. But, like a recurring dream, it has never failed to visit me at random times since the seventh grade, and since it did so again this evening, i wanted to share it with you. It still causes me to think, and although i'm not quite certain about the superlative or dogmatic nature of its message, i will say that i've come to believe there is at least a certain amount of truth in it. i now give it to you as food for thought, albeit an out-of-context thought if you haven't read the book, yet thought still beneficial as i see it:

"It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak."