William Alexander Percy Quotes

#1. To the mind that could dream and shape our beaconed universe, what is injustice to us may be unfathomable tenderness, and our horror only loveliness misunderstood.

William Alexander Percy

#2. I have a need of silence and of stars.
Too much is said too loudly. I am dazed.
The silken sound of whirled infinity
Is lost in voices shouting to be heard ...

William Alexander Percy

#3. It is a very nice world-that is, if you remember that while morals are all-important between the Lord and His creatures, what counts between one creature and another is good manners.

William Alexander Percy

#4. They ask little, for they know it is little they will receive for all their asking, but what little is so dear, as it always is to the autumn-hearted who know life is pitiful and infinitely sweet.

William Alexander Percy

#5. I suspect anyway that the important things we learn we never remember because they become a part of us, we absorb them ... we don't absorb multiplication tables.

William Alexander Percy

#6. And would it not be proud romance Falling in some obscure advance, To rise, a poppy field of France?

William Alexander Percy

#7. As with all great teachers, his curriculum was an insignificant part of what he communicated. From him you didn't learn a subject, but a life ... Tolerance and justice, fearlessness and pride, reverence and pity, are learned in a course on long division if the teacher has those qualities ...

William Alexander Percy