Quote

Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.

Walker Percy

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walker Percy
Age: 73 †
Born: 1916
Born: May 28
Died: 1990
Died: May 10
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Physician
Writer
Birmingham
Alabama
Stuffed
Boredom
Bored
Blessing
Self

More quotes by Walker Percy

Image
I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free.
Walker Percy
Image
Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know.
Walker Percy
Image
A novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories.
Walker Percy
Image
If I had the choice of knowing the truth or searching for the truth, I'd take the search.
Walker Percy
Image
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
Image
For the world is broken, sundered, busted down the middle, self ripped from self and man pasted back together as mythical monster, half angel, half beast, but no man...Some day a man will walk into my office as a ghost or beast or ghost-beast and walk out as a man, which is to say sovereign wanderer, lordly exile, worker and waiter and watcher.
Walker Percy
Image
In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished.
Walker Percy
Image
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.
Walker Percy
Image
Being uneducated is no guarantee against being obnoxious.
Walker Percy
Image
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.
Walker Percy
Image
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
Image
Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.
Walker Percy
Image
Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.
Walker Percy
Image
Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
Walker Percy
Image
Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real?
Walker Percy
Image
This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.
Walker Percy
Image
Why is it that no other species but man gets bored? Under the circumstances in which a man gets bored, a dog goes to sleep.
Walker Percy
Image
One of the peculiar ironies of being a human self in the Cosmos: A stranger approaching you in the street will in a second's glance see you whole, size you up, place you in a way in which you cannot and never will, even though you have spent a lifetime with yourself, live in the Century of the Self, and therefore ought to know yourself best of all.
Walker Percy
Image
Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.
Walker Percy
Image
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.
Walker Percy