Quote

Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.

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
Happiness
Risks
Also
Gain
Great
Gains
Whenever
Court
Loss
Risk
Malaise
Chance
Courts

More quotes by Walker Percy

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Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.
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Consciously cultivate the ordinary.
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Ooooh, Kate groans, Kate herself now. I'm so afraid. I know. What am I going to do? You mean right now? Yes. We'll go to my car. Then we'll drive down to the French Market and get some coffee. Then we'll go home. Is everything going to be all right? Yes. Tell me. Say it. Everything is going to be all right.
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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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Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.
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In this world, goodness is destined to be defeated.
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If poets often commit suicide, it is not because their poems are bad but because they are good. Whoever heard of a bad poet committing suicide? The reader is only a little better off. The exhilaration of a good poem lasts twenty minutes, an hour at most. Unlike the scientist, the artist has reentry problems that are frequent and catastrophic.
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To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.
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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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Why is there such a gap between nonspeaking animals and speaking man, when there is no other such gap in nature?
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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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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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Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.
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Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.
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Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
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It is not a bad thing to settle for the Little Way, not the big search for the big happiness but the sad little happiness of drinks and kisses, a good little car and a warm deep thigh.
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Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
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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.
Walker Percy
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If I had the choice of knowing the truth or searching for the truth, I'd take the search.
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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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