Walker Percy Quotes

Probably all the books I've ever written have been efforts to define the boundaries of humanity.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

What am I? Do I know? I am a man: quite simply, a 'breather.'

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.

So few humans seem to fully exist themselves that I wonder if all this endless speculation and haggling about God is really an exploration of a more interesting and embarrassing question about ourselves.

If you don't ponder the end of the world on a regular basis, I don't think you're really human.

How embarrassing for man to be the greatest miracle on earth and not to understand it!

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

How do we describe the fact of human existence? At a certain point, perhaps, style fails us. Language, even and in particular at its most evocative, becomes less of an aid and more of a difficulty.

I think the single most important, fascinating, and complex aspect of human nature is that we all know, deep down, that we are not what we ought to be - or as John Doe says in 'Seven,' 'We are not what was intended.'

The trouble is, I just don't know if I'm too human or not human enough.

The human condition is endlessly fascinating to me, and the existential horrors of life are what drive our imaginations and theater in general.

Starting with the lyrics, 'Only scared of myself and the truth in the stars/I'm a king, I'm the dirt, God within me shine,' the first half of '6 Weeks' delves into my attempts to balance the notion that I have an existential purpose with the realization that I am nothing against the vastness of the universe.

The big problem of any young person's life is to have models to suggest possibilities. Nietzsche says, 'Man is the sick animal.' Man is the animal that doesn't know what to do with itself. The mind has many possibilities, but we can live no more than one life. What are we going to do with ourselves?

The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.

So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what purpose he had been placed in the word.

If I want to read something that's really giving me something serious and fundamental to think about, about the human condition, if you like, or what we're all doing here, or what's going on, then I'd rather read something by a scientist in the life sciences, like Richard Dawkins, for instance.

What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.

What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.

They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

Truly, life is wasted on the living, Nobody Owens. For one of us is too foolish to live, and it is not I.

I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?

Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence