Quote

Ignorance, if recognized, is often more fruitful than the appearance of knowledge.

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
Fruitful
Recognized
Appearance
Ignorance
Knowledge
Often

More quotes by Walker Percy

Image
What nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than J.C. Penney pantsuits.
Walker Percy
Image
Consciously cultivate the ordinary.
Walker Percy
Image
Why did God make woman so beautiful and man with such a loving heart?
Walker Percy
Image
For some time now the impression has been growing upon me that everyone is dead. It happens when I speak to people. In the middle of a sentence it will come over me: yes, beyond a doubt this is death. There is little to do but groan and make an excuse and slip away as quickly as one can.
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
Image
Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.
Walker Percy
Image
Losing hope is not so bad. There's something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.
Walker Percy
Image
If poets often commit suicide, it is not because their poems are bad but because they are good. Whoever heard of a bad poet committing suicide? The reader is only a little better off. The exhilaration of a good poem lasts twenty minutes, an hour at most. Unlike the scientist, the artist has reentry problems that are frequent and catastrophic.
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
I don't like to be described as a Southern writer. The danger is, if you're described as a Southern writer, you might be thought of as someone who writes about a picturesque local scene like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With the Wind, something like that.
Walker Percy
Image
In this world, goodness is destined to be defeated.
Walker Percy
Image
Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.
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
Being uneducated is no guarantee against being obnoxious.
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
Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
Walker Percy
Image
Suppose you ask God for a miracle and God says yes, very well. How do you live the rest of your life?
Walker Percy
Image
Nothing remains but desire, and desire comes howling down Elysian Fields like a mistral.
Walker Percy
Image
Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.
Walker Percy
Image
This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.
Walker Percy