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Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone’s finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?

— Walker Percy Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)

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More quotes by Walker Percy

There is no fashion so absurd, even grotesque, that it cannot be adopted, given two things: the authority of the fashion-setter (Dior, Jackie Onassis) and the vacuity or noughtness of the consumer.

Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)

Oh the crap that lies lurking in the English soul. Somewhere it, the English soul, received an injection of romanticism which nearly killed it.

The Moviegoer (1961)

What a man can be the next minute bears no relation to what he is or what he was the minute before.

The Last Gentleman (1966)

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life.

The Moviegoer (1961)

As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they are tranquilized in their despair.

The Moviegoer (1961)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Walker Percy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.