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

More quotes by Walker Percy

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It is not merely the truth of science that makes it beautiful, but its simplicity.
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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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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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Why did God make woman so beautiful and man with such a loving heart?
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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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Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.
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I couldn't stand it. I still can't stand it. I can't stand the way things are. I cannot tolerate this age.
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My mother refused to let me fail. So I insisted.
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Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.
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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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Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.
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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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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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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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This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.
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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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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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