William Faulkner Quotes

The eternal duel between Ormuzd and Ahriman, God and Satan, is raging in my breast, which is one among their billion battlefields.

The bad guys I play don't want to be bad. It's the struggle between the part of them that's an animal and the part that's the intellect that's interesting.

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

Senator H. Alexander Smith of New Jersey spent the day wrestling with his conscience. He won.

Man, wretched man, whene'er he stoops to sin, Feels, with the act, a strong remorse within.

A conscience is that still small voice that people won't listen to.

The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was 'sublime and beautiful,'the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether.

The ordinary man is ruined by the flesh lusting against the spirit; the scholar by the spirit lusting too much against the flesh.

True conviction of sin--how difficult it is, when its appearances and modes of life are so fair, when it twines itself so cunningly about, or creeps so insidiously into, our amiable qualities, and sets off its internal disorders by so many outward charms and attractions.

We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side belongs to men.

Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting.

It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals.

A man may quarrel with himself alone; that is, by controverting his better instincts and knowledge when brought face to face with temptation.

One of my themes is that there is good and evil in everyone. I was not out to make these guys heroes. I really don't believe in heroes. The best of people have a dark side and it's a constant struggle for the better side to survive and to thrive.

I am hopelessly divided between the dark and the good, the rebel and the saint, the sex maniac and the monk, the poet and the priest, the demagogue and the populist. Pen to paper, I put it all down - I'm out on a limb here, so watch my back.

My conscience aches but it's going to lose the fight.

Are we not also married to conscience which we would love to get rid of often enough since it is more bothersome than a man or a woman ever could become?

We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.

What can I expect from myself? My sensation in all their horrible acuity, and a profound awareness of feeling. A sharp mind that only destroys me, and an unusual capacity for dreaming to keep me entertained. A dead will and a reflection that cradles it, like a living child. From, The Book of Disquiet

The rebel can never find peace. He knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil. The value which supports him is never given to him once and for all - he must fight to uphold it, unceasingly.

Thou art a dreaming thing, A fever of thyself.

How can one be well...when one suffers morally?

In suffocating the voice of conscience, passion carries with itself a restlessness of the body and the senses: it is the restlessness of the "external man." When the internal man has been reduced to silence, then passion, once it has been given freedom of action, so to speak, exhibits itself as an insistent tendency to satisfy the senses and the body.

...in certain moods, no man can weigh this world without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance.