Walker Percy Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  Life, Men, Ideas

  60 Copy quote

• 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

  Fighting, Men, Victory

  Walker Percy (2011). “The Moviegoer”, p.27, Open Road Media

  50 Copy quote

• We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their face away.

  Walker Percy

  Love, Friendship, Real

  Walker Percy (2011). “Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World”, p.59, Open Road Media

  47 Copy quote

• In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished.

  Walker Percy

  Faith, Lonely, Inspiration

  Walker Percy (2011). “Signposts in a Strange Land”, p.161, Open Road Media

  41 Copy quote

• How did it happen that now he could see everything so clearly. Something had given him leave to live in the present. Not once in his entire life had he come to rest in the quiet center of himself but had forever cast himself from some dark past he could not remember to a future that did not exist. Not once had he been present for his life. So his life had passed like a dream. Is it possible for people to miss their lives the way one can miss a plane?

  Walker Percy

  Dream, Dark, Past

  47 Copy quote

• 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

  Spiritual, Despair, Possibility

  Walker Percy (2011). “The Moviegoer”, p.10, Open Road Media

  40 Copy quote

• 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

  Loss, Identity, Age

  Walker Percy (2011). “Signposts in a Strange Land”, p.165, Open Road Media

  27 Copy quote

• 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

  Fiction, Knows

  39 Copy quote

• To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.

  Walker Percy

  Possibility

  Walker Percy (2011). “The Moviegoer”, p.10, Open Road Media

  55 Copy quote

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

  Walker Percy

  Discovery, Connections, Genius

  Walker Percy (2011). “The Thanatos Syndrome”, p.6, Open Road Media

  8 Copy quote

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

  Walker Percy

  Knowing, Choices, Knowing The Truth

  7 Copy quote

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

  Walker Percy

  Real, People, Illness

  Walker Percy (2011). “The Moviegoer”, p.37, Open Road Media

  38 Copy quote

• You can get all A's and still flunk life.

  Walker Percy

  Education, School, Life Learning

  "Don't Overdo Graduation Speech". www.altoonamirror.com. May 24, 2015.

  33 Copy quote

• The mystery lies in the here and now. The mystery is: What is one to do with oneself? As you get older you begin to realize the trick time is playing, and that unless you do something about it, the passage of time is nothing but the encroachment of the horrible banality of the past on the pure future. The past devours the future like a tape recorder, converting pure possibility into banality. The present is the tape head, the mouth of time. Then where is the mystery and why bother kicking through the ashes? Because there is a clue in the past.

  Walker Percy

  Time, Lying, Past

  Walker Percy (2011). “Lancelot”, p.46, Open Road Media

  14 Copy quote

• Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.

  Walker Percy

  Wander, Diversion

  Walker Percy (2011). “The Moviegoer”, p.33, Open Road Media

  28 Copy quote

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

  Walker Percy

  Ignorance, Appearance, Ifs

  Walker Percy (2011). “Signposts in a Strange Land”, p.63, Open Road Media

  15 Copy quote

• Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.

  Walker Percy

  Believe, Men, Doe

  Walker Percy (2013). “The Last Gentleman and The Second Coming: In One Volume”, p.14, Open Road Media

  40 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Doubt, Growing

  Walker Percy (2011). “The Moviegoer”, p.45, Open Road Media

  21 Copy quote

• I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?

  Walker Percy

  Beer, Despair, Drink

  Walker Percy, Lewis A. Lawson, Victor A. Kramer (1993). “More Conversations with Walker Percy”, p.64, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  45 Copy quote

• The so-called sexual revolution is not, as advertised, a liberation of sexual behavior but rather its reversal. In former days, even under Victoria, sexual intercourse was the natural end and culmination of heterosexual relations. Now one begins with genital overtures instead of a handshake, then waits to see what will turn up (e.g., might become friends later). Like dogs greeting each other nose to tail and tail to nose.

  Walker Percy

  Dog, Waiting, Tails

  Walker Percy (2013). “The Last Gentleman and The Second Coming: In One Volume”, p.356, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Children, People, Earth

  Walker Percy (2011). “Signposts in a Strange Land”, p.166, Open Road Media

  10 Copy quote

• Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.

  Walker Percy

  Hymns, Waiting, Catholic

  Walker Percy (2011). “Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World”, p.206, Open Road Media

  23 Copy quote

• The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning: The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest. The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to.

  Walker Percy

  Suicide, Morning, Past

  Walker Percy (2011). “Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book”, p.53, Open Road Media

  29 Copy quote

• 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

  Dog, Sleep, Men

  Walker Percy (2011). “Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book”, p.39, Open Road Media

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, People, Dawn

  Walker Percy (2011). “The Moviegoer”, p.35, Open Road Media

  22 Copy quote

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