186 Quotes by Robert Penn Warren

Any act of pure perception is a feat, and if you don’t believe it, try it sometime. But.

A young man’s ambition is to get along in the world and make a place for himself-half your life goes that way, till you’re 45 or 50. Then, if you’re lucky, you make terms with life, you get released.

Now, an individual, one fellow, he will stop doing business because he’s got a notion of what is right, and he is a hero. But folks in general, which is society, Doc, is never going to stop doing business. Society is just going to cook up a new notion of what is right. Society is sure not ever going to commit suicide. At least, not that way and of a purpose.

But wanting don’t make a thing true. You don’t have to live forever to figure that out.

There ain’t anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity. Can you figure out a single thing you really please-God like to do you can do and keep your dignity? The human frame just ain’t built that way.

Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something...

A diamond ain’t a thing in the world but a piece of dirt that got awful hot. And God-a-Mighty picked up a handful of dirt and blew on it and made you and me and George Washington and mankind blessed in faculty and apprehension. It all depends on what you do with the dirt. That right?

Good-bye, Lois, and I forgive for you everything I did to you.

And when anybody is interested in himself quite simply and directly the way Willie is interested in Willie you call it genius. It’s.