891 Quotes by William Faulkner

But who knows why a man, though suffering, clings, above all the other well members, to the arm or leg which he knows must come off?

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.

I never said anything more. it doesn’t do any good. I’ve found that when a man gets into a rut the best thing you can do is let him stay there.

Ay, grief goes, fades; we know that–but ask the tear ducts if they have forgotten how to weep.

It was like a meeting between two iron knights of the old time, not for material gain but for principle – honor denied with honor, courage denied with courage – the deed done not for the end but for the sake of the doing, put to the ultimate test and proving nothing save the finality of death and the vanity of all endeavor.

I heard that my mother is dead. I wish I had time to let her die. I wish I had time to wish I had. It is because in the wild and outraged earth too soon too soon too soon. It’s not that I wouldn’t and will not it’s that it is too soon too soon too soon.

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.

She accepted that – not reconciled: accepted – as though there is a breathing-point in outrage when you can accept it almost with gratitude since you can say to yourself, ’thank God, this is all; at least I now know all of it –.

In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women. Father said it’s like death: only a state in which the others are left and I said, But to believe it doesn’t matter and he said, That’s what’s so sad about anything: not only virginity and I said, Why couldn’t it have been me and not her who is unvirgin and he said, That’s why that’s sad too; nothing is even worth the changing of it...