“A gentleman can live through anything.”
And
“A man’s moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.”
And
“A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.”
And
“All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.”
And
“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”
And
“An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why.”
And
“Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.”
And
“Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other.”
And
“Given a choice between grief and nothing, I’d choose grief.”
And
“Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.”
And
“I believe that man will not merely endure. He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”
And
“I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.”
And
“I’m bad and I’m going to hell, and I don’t care. I’d rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.”
And
“I’m inclined to think that a military background wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
And
“It’s a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can’t eat for eight hours; he can’t drink for eight hours; he can’t make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.”
And
“Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That’s how he finds that he can bear anything.”
And
“My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.”
And
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.”
And
“The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.”
And
“There is something about jumping a horse over a fence, something that makes you feel good. Perhaps it’s the risk, the gamble. In any event it’s a thing I need.”
And
“Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday’s omissions and regrets.”
And
‘We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.”
And
“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”
And
“Even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as an honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.”
And
“Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid. Ain’t nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.”
And
“I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.” Nobel Prize Speech, December 1950
And
“Mr. Khrushchev says that Communism, the police state, will bury the free ones. He is a smart gentleman, he knows that this is nonsense since freedom, man’s dim concept of and belief in the human spirit is the cause of all his troubles in his own country. But if he means that Communism will bury capitalism, he is correct. That funeral will occur about ten minutes after the police bury gambling. Because simple man, the human race, will bury both of them. That will be when we have expended the last grain, dram, and iota of our natural resources. But man himself will not be in that grave. The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.” Speech in New York, October 1959
And
“No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual’s individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol — cross or crescent or whatever — that symbol is man’s reminder of his duty inside the human race. Its various allegories are the charts against which he measures himself and learns to know what he is. It cannot teach a man to be good as the textbook teaches him mathematics. It shows him how to discover himself, evolve for himself a moral codes and standard within his capacities and aspirations, by giving him a matchless example of suffering and sacrifice and the promise of hope.” Paris Review Interview, 1958
And
The two great men in my time were Mann and Joyce. You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with “faith.”
And
“Life is motion, and motion is concerned with what makes man move — which is ambition, power, pleasure. What time a man can devote to morality, he must take by force from the motion of which he is a part. He is compelled to make choices between good and evil sooner or later, because moral conscience demands that from him in order that he can live with himself tomorrow. His moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.”
Wikipedia: William Faulkner
