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

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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.
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Maybe there are times when an honest hatred serves us better than love corrupted by sentimentality, meretriciousness, sententiousness, cuteness.
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The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off.
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Being uneducated is no guarantee against being obnoxious.
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But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.
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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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There is no pain on this earth like seeing the same woman look at another man the way she once looked at you.
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A novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories.
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Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.
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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.
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Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
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Americans are the nicest, most generous, and sentimental people on earth. Yet Americans have killed more unborn children than any nation in history.
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Life is fits and starts, mostly fits.
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What nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than J.C. Penney pantsuits.
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Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
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Suppose you ask God for a miracle and God says yes, very well. How do you live the rest of your life?
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To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.
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A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle.
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Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.
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