Quote

Genius consists not in making great discoveries, but in seeing the connection between small discoveries.

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
Connections
Discovery
Genius
Seeing
Small
Making
Discoveries
Great
Consists
Connection

More quotes by 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
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.
Walker Percy
Image
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.
Walker Percy
Image
My mother refused to let me fail. So I insisted.
Walker Percy
Image
Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
Walker Percy
Image
Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.
Walker Percy
Image
Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.
Walker Percy
Image
Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.
Walker Percy
Image
Joy and sadness come by turns.
Walker Percy
Image
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.
Walker Percy
Image
Children notice things first, people later.
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
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
Peace is only better than war when it's not hell too. War being hell makes sense.
Walker Percy
Image
Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
Walker Percy
Image
You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.
Walker Percy
Image
Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.
Walker Percy
Image
Life is fits and starts, mostly fits.
Walker Percy
Image
Classes? Categories? Was that what we had come to?
Walker Percy
Image
Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.
Walker Percy