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My mother refused to let me fail. So I insisted.

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
Mother
Insisted
Refused
Adolescence
Fail
Failing

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Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
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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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Ignorance, if recognized, is often more fruitful than the appearance of knowledge.
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Consciously cultivate the ordinary.
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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.
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Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.
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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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Joy and sadness come by turns.
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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.
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Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
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This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.
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The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off.
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Life is fits and starts, mostly fits.
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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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What is the nature of the search? you ask. Really it is very simple, at least for a fellow like me so simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island.
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The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives.
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Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.
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Losing hope is not so bad. There's something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.
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The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
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Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.
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