Quotessence
Home / Authors / Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenIfsKnowsHistoryWorldPastWritingPoetryLifeMayThinkingDefinitionsDoeEndsHumansLittlesLooksPoetry IsSelfTrying

Famous Robert Penn Warren Quotes

“It is hard to remember.” “Remember what?” “All that goes into the making of any one moment we live. There are things one must try to remember. Do you know what is the hardest thing to remember?” “No,” Adam said. “Well, I’ll tell you, my son,” Aaron Blaustein said. “The hardest thing to remember is that other men are men.” He leaned to set his cup down. “But that,” he said, “is the only way you can be a man yourself. Can be anything.”

MenHistoryMemory
Book:Wilderness: A Tale of the Civil War
Create image

“For life is a fire burning along a piece of string--or is it a fuse to a powder keg which we call God?--and the string is what we don't know, our Ignorance, and the trail of ash, which, if a gust of wind does not come, keeps the structure of the string, is History, man's Knowledge, but it is dead, and when the fire has burned up all the string, then man's Knowledge will be equal to God's Knowledge and there won't be any fire, which is Life. Or if the string leads to a powder keg, then there will be a terrific blast of fire, and even the trail of ash will be blown completely away.”

IfsKnowsMenDoeLife IsFirePiecesIgnoranceWindEqualStructureBurningStringsBurnedAshesTrailsTerrificBlastPowderFuseFire BurningKegs
Book:All the King's Men
Create image

“I heard somebody open and shut the gate to the barn lot, but I didn't look around. If I didn't look around it would not be true that somebody had opened the gate with the creaky hinges, and that is a wonderful principle for a man to get hold of... What you don't know know don't hurt you, for it ain't real. They called that Idealism in my book I had when I was in college, and after I got hold of that principle I became an Idealist... If you are an Idealist it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway.”

IfsKnowsMenLooksDoeBookRealMatterHurtPrinciplesWonderfulHeardCollegeGoes OnBeing TrueGatesIdealismIdealistHingesBarns
Book:All the King's Men
Create image

“It all began, as I have said, when the Boss, sitting in the black Cadillac which sped through the night, said to me (to Me who was what Jack Burden, the student of history, had grown up to be) "There is always something." And I said, "Maybe not on the Judge." And he said, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.”

MenSaidNightBlackBornSinStudentsJudgingSittingBurdenCorruptionBossStinkShroudsCadillacsSped
Book:All the King's Men
Create image