Quote

Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real?

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
People
Noticed
Illness
Disaster
Death
Real
Time

More quotes by 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
Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
Walker Percy
Image
Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
Walker Percy
Image
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.
Walker Percy
Image
Nothing remains but desire, and desire comes howling down Elysian Fields like a mistral.
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
This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.
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
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
It is not merely the truth of science that makes it beautiful, but its simplicity.
Walker Percy
Image
Joy and sadness come by turns.
Walker Percy
Image
A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle.
Walker Percy
Image
Children notice things first, people later.
Walker Percy
Image
Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.
Walker Percy
Image
A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.
Walker Percy
Image
I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.
Walker Percy
Image
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.
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
To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.
Walker Percy
Image
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.
Walker Percy