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Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men. Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction. Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place.
Walker Percy
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Walker Percy
Age: 73 †
Born: 1916
Born: May 28
Died: 1990
Died: May 10
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Physician
Writer
Birmingham
Alabama
Helping
Increase
Place
Lead
Work
Failing
Article
Men
Takes
Grant
Brain
Published
Lord
Grants
Knowledge
Articles
Help
Destruction
More quotes by Walker Percy
I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free.
Walker Percy
One of the peculiar ironies of being a human self in the Cosmos: A stranger approaching you in the street will in a second's glance see you whole, size you up, place you in a way in which you cannot and never will, even though you have spent a lifetime with yourself, live in the Century of the Self, and therefore ought to know yourself best of all.
Walker Percy
This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.
Walker Percy
Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.
Walker Percy
For the world is broken, sundered, busted down the middle, self ripped from self and man pasted back together as mythical monster, half angel, half beast, but no man...Some day a man will walk into my office as a ghost or beast or ghost-beast and walk out as a man, which is to say sovereign wanderer, lordly exile, worker and waiter and watcher.
Walker Percy
Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know.
Walker Percy
Hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing about the world which is upsidedown: all the friendly and likable people seem dead to me only the haters seem alive.
Walker Percy
Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.
Walker Percy
You can get all A's and still flunk life.
Walker Percy
The present age is demented. It is possessed by a sense of dislocation, a loss of personal identity, an alternating sentimentality and rage which, in an individual patient, could be characterized as dementia.
Walker Percy
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
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
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
Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
Walker Percy
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
Consciously cultivate the ordinary.
Walker Percy
In this world, goodness is destined to be defeated.
Walker Percy
A novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories.
Walker Percy
Whenever I feel bad, I go to the library and read controversial periodicals. Though I do not know whether I am a liberal or a conservative, I am nevertheless enlivened by the hatred which one bears the other. In fact, this hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world.
Walker Percy
Ignorance, if recognized, is often more fruitful than the appearance of knowledge.
Walker Percy