Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Walker Percy
Walker Percy Quotes
82 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
But what physician has not had patients who don't make any sense at all? To tell the truth, they're our stock-in-trade. We talk and write about the ones we can make sense of.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
Why is there such a gap between nonspeaking animals and speaking man, when there is no other such gap in nature?
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
Genius consists not in making great discoveries, but in seeing the connection between small discoveries.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
I don't like to be described as a Southern writer. The danger is, if you're described as a Southern writer, you might be thought of as someone who writes about a picturesque local scene like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With the Wind, something like that.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
Maybe there are times when an honest hatred serves us better than love corrupted by sentimentality, meretriciousness, sententiousness, cuteness.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
Nothing remains but desire, and desire comes howling down Elysian Fields like a mistral.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
But there is much to be said for giving up... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
You don't ever really learn anything you didn't know when you were thirteen.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
Ignorance, if recognized, is often more fruitful than the appearance of knowledge.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
A novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
What nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than J.C. Penney pantsuits.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
Free people have a serious problem with place, being in a place, using up a place, deciding which new place to rotate to. Americans ricochet around the United States like billiard balls.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real?
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
I am not ashamed to use the word class. I will also plead guilty to another charge. The charge is that people belonging to my class think they're better than other people. You're damn right we're better. We're better because we do not shirk our obligations either to ourselves or to others....we live by our lights, we die by our lights, and whoever the high gods may be, we'll look them in the eye without apology.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
What television and movies give the writer is a new community and a new set of referents.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
Who would want to live with a novelist? A man underfoot in the house all day? A man, moreover, subject to solitary funks and strange elations. If I were a woman, I'd prefer a traveling salesman.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
It was no more nor less than true. You do things by doing things, not by not doing them. No more crazy upsidedownness, he resolved. Good was better than bad. Good environments are better than bad environments.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
Oh the crap that lies lurking in the English soul. Somewhere it, the English soul, received an injection of romanticism which nearly killed it.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. There is very little sin in the depths of the malaise. The highest moment of a malaisian's life can be the moment when he manages to sin like a proper human (Look at us, Binx — my vagabond friends as good as cried out to me — we're sinning! We're succeeding! We're human after all!).
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free. (2.12).
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
A good rotation. A rotation I define as the experiencing of the new beyond the expectation of the experiencing of the new.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
My aunt is convinced I have a "flair for research." This is not true. If I had a flair for research, I would be doing research. Actually I'm not very smart. My grades were average. My mother and my aunt think I am smart because I am quiet and absent-minded–and because my father and grandfather were smart. They think I was meant to do research because I am not fit to do anything else–I am a genius whom ordinary professions can't satisfy.
Walker Percy
Source
Report...
In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.
Walker Percy
1
2
3
4
Quote of the day
Destiny is the invention of the cowardly, and the resigned.
Ignazio Silone
Walker Percy
Born:
May 28, 1916
Died:
May 10, 1990
(aged 73)
Bio:
Walker Percy, Obl.S.B. was a Southern American author from Covington, Louisiana, whose interests included philosophy and semiotics.
Known for:
The Moviegoer (1961)
Lost in the Cosmos (1983)
Love in the Ruins (1971)
The Last Gentleman (1966)
The Thanatos Syndrome (1987)
Most used words:
man
people
place
bad
live
life
time
suicide
search
god
read
soul
happiness
despair
fact
Walker Percy on Wikipedia
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Walker Percy Quotes
Walker Percy Short Quotes
Quotes about Walker Percy
American Novelist Quotes
Novelist Quotes
20th-century Novelist Quotes
Related People
John Kennedy Toole
American Novelist
Flannery O'Connor
American Novelist
Shelby Foote
American Historian
Eudora Welty
American Author
William Alexander Percy
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes