Quotes from William Alexander Percy

I have a need of silence and of stars. Too much is said too loudly. I am dazed. The silken sound of whirled infinity Is lost in voices shouting to be heard…

To the mind that could dream and shape our beaconed universe, what is injustice to us may be unfathomable tenderness, and our horror only loveliness misunderstood.

They ask little, for they know it is little they will receive for all their asking, but what little is so dear, as it always is to the autumn-hearted who know life is pitiful and infinitely sweet.

The good die when they should live, the evil live when they should die; heroes perish and cowards escape; noble efforts do not succeed because they are noble, and wickedness is consumed in its own nature. Looking at truth is not at first a heartening experience--it becomes so, if at all, only with time, with infinite patience, and with the luck of a little personal happiness.

With us, when you speak of 'the river,' though there be many, you mean always the same one, the great river, the shifting, unappeasable god of the country, feared and loved the Mississippi.