Quotes From "Light In August" By William Faulkner

Ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crises with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth. William Faulkner

It does not take long. Soon the fine galloping language, the gutless swooning full of sapless trees and dehydrated lusts begins to swim smooth and swift and peaceful. It is better than praying without having to bother to think aloud. It is like listening in a cathedral to a eunuch chanting in a language which he does not even need to not understand. William Faulkner

Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice. William Faulkner

Though children can accept adults as adults, adults can never accept children as anything but adults too. William Faulkner

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. William Faulkner

It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreathed, is like spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath himself diffuse in the natural grayness, becoming one with loneliness and quiet that has never known fury or despair. "That was all I wanted, " he thinks, in a quiet and slow amazement. "That was all, for thirty years. That didn't seem to be a whole lot to ask in thirty years. William Faulkner

Memory believes before knowing remembers.[ Light in August] William Faulkner

It is a happy faculty of the mind to slough that which conscience refuses to assimilate. William Faulkner

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice. William Faulkner

When it's a matter of not-do, I reckon a man can trust himself for advice. But when it comes to a matter of doing, I reckon a fellow had better listen to all the advice he can get. William Faulkner

It is the man who all his life has been self-convicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence. William Faulkner

I mind how I said to you once that there is a price for being good the same as for being bad; a cost to pay. And it's the good men that cant deny the bill when it comes around. They cant deny it for the reason that there aint any way to make them pay it, like a honest man that gambles. The bad men can deny it; that's why dont anybody expect them to pay on sight or any other time. But the good cant. Maybe it takes longer to pay for being good than for being bad. William Faulkner

And so sometimes I would think how the devil had conquered God. William Faulkner

But something held him, as the fatalist can always be held: by curiosity, pessimism, by sheer inertia. William Faulkner

And I reckon them that are good must suffer for it the same as them that are bad. William Faulkner

Here I am I am tired I am tired of running of having to carry my life like it was a basket of eggs William Faulkner