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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
Adolescence
Fail
Failing
Mother
Insisted
Refused

More quotes by Walker Percy

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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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Consciously cultivate the ordinary.
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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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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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Ignorance, if recognized, is often more fruitful than the appearance of knowledge.
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In this world, goodness is destined to be defeated.
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Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone's finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?
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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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Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.
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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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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.
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Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to 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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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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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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A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.
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Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.
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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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Peace is only better than war when it's not hell too. War being hell makes sense.
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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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