Quote

It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal.

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
Something
Tests
Canaries
Like
Caught
Shaft
Mines
Lowered
Mine
Skinned
Air
Lethal
However
Prophetic
Possible
Thin
Canary
Artist
Test
Whiff

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Genius consists not in making great discoveries, but in seeing the connection between small discoveries.
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A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.
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Life is fits and starts, mostly fits.
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Why is it that no other species but man gets bored? Under the circumstances in which a man gets bored, a dog goes to sleep.
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Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
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Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
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I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.
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I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.
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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.
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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.
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Being uneducated is no guarantee against being obnoxious.
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Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.
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It is not merely the truth of science that makes it beautiful, but its simplicity.
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You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.
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Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
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We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their face away.
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Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.
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Consciously cultivate the ordinary.
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Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.
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In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished.
Walker Percy