Authors:

William Faulkner Quotes - Page 12

All Quotes Alcohol Art Bones Children Conflict Country Courage Desire Drinking Earth Evil Excellence Fun Funny Giving Grief Hate Heart History Home Honesty Honor House Hurt Imagination Inspiration Inspirational Leaving Life Literature Loneliness Love Lying Memories Motivational Opportunity Pain Past Patience Perfection Pride Reading Reality Regret Responsibility Running Sacrifice Salvation Shame Sin Sleep Sorrow Soul Suffering Teaching Time Today Victory Wall War Water Whiskey Wisdom Writing
Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.

Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.

William Faulkner
Negative, Purity, States
William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.116, Modern Library

Though children can accept adults as adults, adults can never accept children as anything but adults too.

William Faulkner
Children, Adults, Accepting
Jack L. Capps, William Faulkner (1979). “Light in August: a concordance to the novel”

So long as the deceit ran along quiet and monotonous, all of us let ourselves be deceived, abetting it unawares or maybe through cowardice.

William Faulkner
Peace, War, Long
William Faulkner (1985). “Novels, 1930-1935”, Library of America

He made the earth first and peopled it with dumb creatures, and then He created man to be His overseer on the earth and to hold suzerainty over the earth and the animals on it in His name, not to hold for himself and his descendants inviolable title forever, generation after generation, to the oblongs and squares of the earth, but to hold the earth mutual and intact in the communal anonymity of brotherhood, and all the fee He asked was pity and humility and sufferance and endurance and the sweat of has face for bread.

William Faulkner
Humility, Men, Animal
Francis Lee Utley, William Faulkner, Lynn Z. Bloom, Arthur F. Kinney (1971). “Bear, man, and God: eight approaches to William Faulkner's The bear”, Random House Inc

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means.

William Faulkner
Art, Philosophy, Mean
George G. Stewart, Robert W. Hamblin, William Faulkner (2009). “Yoknapatawpha, images and voices: a photographic study of Faulkner's County, with passages from classic William Faulkner texts”, Univ of South Carolina Pr

It's because I'm alone.. If I could just feel it, it would be different, because I would not be alone. But if I were not alone, everybody would know it. And he could do so much for me, and then I would not be alone. Then I could be all right alone.

William Faulkner
Different, Would Be, Feels

Whatever its symbol - cross or crescent or whatever - that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race.

William Faulkner
Men, Race, Crosses
"William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

He thought that it was loneliness which he was trying to escape and not himself. But the street ran on: catlike, one place was the same as another to him. But in none of them could he be quiet. But the street ran on in its moods and phases, always empty: he might have seen himself as in numberless avatars, in silence, doomed with motion, driven by the courage of flagged and spurred despair; by the despair of courage whose opportunities had to be flagged and spurred.

William Faulkner
Loneliness, Opportunity, Silence
William Faulkner (1985). “Novels, 1930-1935”, Library of America

Love in the young requires as little of hope as of desire to feed upon.

William Faulkner
Love, Desire, Littles
William Faulkner (1985). “Light in August”, Vintage

A hack writer who would have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tried out a few of the old proven 'sure-fire' literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.

William Faulkner
Color, Europe, Fire

And when I think about that, I think that if nothing but being married will help a man, he's durn nigh hopeless.

William Faulkner
Men, Thinking, Helping
William Faulkner (1954). “The Best of Faulkner”

I will never lie again.

William Faulkner
Lying, Never Lie
William Faulkner (1999). “Novels, 1957-1962”

He was looking at her from behind the smiling that wasn't smiling but was something you were not supposed to see beyond.

William Faulkner
Behinds
William Faulkner (1936). “Absalom, Absalom!”, Random House (NY)

War is an episode, a crisis, a fever the purpose of which is to rid the body of fever. So the purpose of a war is to end the war.

William Faulkner
War, Purpose, Fever
William Faulkner (2011). “A Fable”, p.80, Vintage

Dear God, let me be damned a little longer, a little while.

William Faulkner
Littles, Dear God, Let Me
William Faulkner (2000). “My Mother is a Fish: A Commonplace Reader of William Faulkner's Fiction”

Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written.

William Faulkner
Book, Pride, Honor
"William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

Don Quixote — I read that every year, as some do the Bible.

William Faulkner
Years
"William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

The clock tick-tocked, solemn and profound. It might have been the dry pulse of the decaying house itself, after a while it whirred and cleared its throat and struck six times.

William Faulkner
Profound, House, Pulse
William Faulkner “The Sound and the Fury”, W. W. Norton & Company

I imagine as long as people will continue to read novels, people will continue to write them, or vice versa; unless of course the pictorial magazines and comic strips finally atrophy man's capacity to read, and literature really is on its way back to the picture writing in the Neanderthal cave.

William Faulkner
Writing, Men, Long

You can't. You just have to.

William Faulkner
William Faulkner (2011). “Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner”, p.19, Vintage

It is assumed that anyone who makes a million dollars has a unique gift, though he might have made it off some useless gadget.

William Faulkner
Unique, Dollars, Gadgets

I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue.

William Faulkner
People, Tongue, Consistent
William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.118, Modern Library

People ... have tried to evoke God or devil to justify them in what their glands insisted upon.

William Faulkner
People, Devil, Evoke
William Faulkner (1951). “Absalom, Absalom!”

Living is one constant and perpetual instant when the arras-veil before what-is-to-be hangs docile and even glad to the lightest naked thrust if we had dared, were brave enough (not wise enough: no wisdom needed here) to make the rending gash.

William Faulkner
Life, Wise, Brave
William Faulkner (1951). “Absalom, Absalom!”

It's the most satisfying occupation man has discovered yet, because you never can quite do it as well as you want to, so there's always something to wake up tomorrow morning to do.

William Faulkner
Morning, Writing, Men

You May Also Like: