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But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.

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
Living
Giving
Much
Life
Imaginable
Ambitions
Grand
Ambition
Ordinary

More quotes by Walker Percy

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To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.
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Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.
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Children notice things first, people later.
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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 it that no other species but man gets bored? Under the circumstances in which a man gets bored, a dog goes to sleep.
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You can get all A's and still flunk life.
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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.
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Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.
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Ignorance, if recognized, is often more fruitful than the appearance of knowledge.
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A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.
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Why has the South produced so many good writers? Because we got beat.
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Losing hope is not so bad. There's something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.
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Classes? Categories? Was that what we had come to?
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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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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.
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Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.
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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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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
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Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Walker Percy
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Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone's finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?
Walker Percy