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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

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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
Bored
Dog
Species
Circumstances
Gets
Goes
Sleep
Men
Boredom

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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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Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
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Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.
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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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I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's 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.
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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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I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free.
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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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Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know.
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It makes people nervous for one to step out of one's role.
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We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their face away.
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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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But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.
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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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Peace is only better than war when it's not hell too. War being hell makes sense.
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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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Like many young men in the South, he had trouble ruling out the possible. They are not like an immigrant's son in Passaic who desires to become a dentist and that is that. Southerners have trouble ruling out the possible. What happens to a... man to whom all things seem possible and every course of action open? Nothing of course.
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