William Faulkner Quotes
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I don't want money badly enough to work for it.
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So long as the deceit ran along quiet and monotonous, all of us let ourselves be deceived, abetting it unawares or maybe through cowardice.
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Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid.
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Marriage is long enough to have plenty of room for time behind it.
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So, never be afraid. Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed. If you, not just you in this room tonight, but in all the thousands of other rooms like this one about the world today and tomorrow and next week, will do this, not as a class or classes, but as individuals, men and women, you will change the earth.
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You must always know the past, for there is no real Was, there is only Is.
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It's all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won't be over until tomorrow.
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Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other.
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No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.
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A dream is not a very safe thing to be near... I know; I had one once. It's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt. But if it's a good dream, it's worth it.
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Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.
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...thinking as he had thought before and would think again and as every other man has thought: how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.
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You like orchids?... Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men, their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption.
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We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
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Setting an example for your children takes all the fun out of middle age Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favorable do nothing.
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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.
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...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
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The air brightened, the running shadow patches were now the obverse, and it seemed to him that the fact that the day was clearing was another cunning stroke on the part of the foe, the fresh battle toward which he was carrying ancient wounds.
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The writer doesn't need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper.
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People need trouble - a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.
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I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness – people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.
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Who gathers the withered rose?
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No one individual can tell the truth.
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Idleness breeds our better virtues.