English En
  • Deutsche De
  • English En
  • Français Fr
  • Русский Ru

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our marketing and analytics partners who may combine it with other information you've provided to them or which they've separately collected from you. You also may to see our Privacy Policy. By clicking the OK button below, you accept our cookies.

Authors:

Walker Percy quotes

American Writer May 28, 1916 – May 10, 1990

Cite this Page: Citation

Quotes

The fateful law of human semiotics is this: that of all the objects in the entire Cosmos which the sign-user can apprehend through the conjoining of signifier and signified (word uttered and thing beheld), there is one which forever escapes his comprehension--and that is the sign-user himself...The self of the sign-user can never be grasped, because, once the self locates itself at the dead center of its world, there is no signified to which a signifier can be joined to make a sign. The self... Walker Percy
Looking at oneself in a mirror is a self-canceling phenomenon. Eyes looking into eyes make a hole which spreads out and renders one invisible. I had seen more of myself in that single glimpse of a ghostly image in the pier mirror, not knowing it was I. Walker Percy
An organism exists in its environment in only one mode, that of an open system responding to those segments of its environment to which it is genetically programmed to respond or to which it has learned to respond. But a self must be placed in a world. It cannot not be placed. If it chooses by default not to be placed, then its placement is that of not choosing to be placed. Walker Percy
Ooooh," Kate groans, Kate herself now. "I'm so afraid." "I know." "What am I going to do?" "You mean right now?" "Yes."We'll go to my car. Then we'll drive down to the French Market and get some coffee. Then we'll go home." "Is everything going to be all right?" "Yes." "Tell me. Say it." "Everything is going to be all right. Walker Percy
Walker Percy quote: "People usually told him the same joke two or three times."
People usually told him the same joke two or three times. Walker Percy
The earth-self observing the Cosmos and trying to understand the Cosmos by scientific principles from which its self is excluded is, beyond doubt, the strangest phenomenon in all of the Cosmos, far stranger than the Ring Nebula in Lyra. It, the self, is in fact the only alien in the entire Cosmos. Walker Percy
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
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
...the self in the twentieth century is a voracious nought which expands like the feeding vacuole of an amoeba seeking to nourish and inform its own nothingness by ingesting new objects in the world but, like a vacuole, only succeeds in emptying them out. Walker Percy
In my new freedom I remember thinking: If one knows what he wants to do, others will not only not stand in the way but will lend a hand from simple curiosity and amazement. Walker Percy
Have you noticed that the narrower the view the more you can see? For the first time I understand how old ladies can sit on their porches for years. Walker Percy
Walker Percy quote: "the self can be as desperately stranded in the transcendence..."
...the self can be as desperately stranded in the transcendence of theory as in the immanence of consumption. Walker Percy
Walker Percy quote: "My mother refused to let me fail. So I insisted."
My mother refused to let me fail. So I insisted. Walker Percy
I have observed that it is no longer possible for one young man to speak unwarily to another not known to him, except in certain sections of the South and West, and certainly not with a book in his hand. Walker Percy
Walker Percy quote: "Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend..."
Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon. Walker Percy

Popular Author

Related Authors