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If I had the choice of knowing the truth or searching for the truth, I'd take the search.

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
Choice
Choices
Knowing
Truth
Take
Searching
Search

More quotes by Walker Percy

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In this world, goodness is destined to be defeated.
Walker Percy
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As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they are tranquilized in their despair.
Walker Percy
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It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal.
Walker Percy
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Why did God make woman so beautiful and man with such a loving heart?
Walker Percy
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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
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To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.
Walker Percy
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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.
Walker Percy
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My mother refused to let me fail. So I insisted.
Walker Percy
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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?
Walker Percy
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Americans are the nicest, most generous, and sentimental people on earth. Yet Americans have killed more unborn children than any nation in history.
Walker Percy
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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.
Walker Percy
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The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives.
Walker Percy
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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.
Walker Percy
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Consciously cultivate the ordinary.
Walker Percy
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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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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.
Walker Percy
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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
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What nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than J.C. Penney pantsuits.
Walker Percy
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The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off.
Walker Percy
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Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.
Walker Percy