When I have one martini, I feel bigger, wiser, taller. When I have a second, I feel superlative. When I have more, there's no holding me.
William FaulknerRead
Civilization begins with distillation
Interpretation
What this quote means
Civilization's progress starts with the refinement of basic elements into something greater.
William Faulkner's quote suggests that the development of civilization relies on the ability to distill and refine raw materials, ideas, and culture into more sophisticated and organized forms. This distillation represents not only the literal process of extracting purities from substances but also the metaphorical process of enhancing human experiences and knowledge, leading to the creation of a more advanced society.
Themes
CivilizationDistillationProgressRefinementSociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about technological advancements, one might say, 'As William Faulkner aptly put it, Civilization begins with distillation, underscoring the crucial role of innovation in our progress.'
More from William Faulkner
All quotes βI feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.
William FaulknerRead
When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it...his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it...
William FaulknerRead
Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.
William FaulknerRead
He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear....One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.
William FaulknerRead
Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; he is a Kentuckian too.
William FaulknerRead
Similar quotes
The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material.
Karl PearsonRead
An Experiment, like every other event which takes place, is a natural phenomenon; but in a Scientific Experiment the circumstances are so arranged that the relations between a particular set of phenomena may be studied to the best advantage.
James Clerk MaxwellRead
One can't predict the weather more than a few days in advance.
Stephen HawkingRead
A scientist is no more a collector and classifier of facts than a historian is a man who complies and classifies a chronology of the dates of great battles and major discoveries.
Peter MedawarRead
And as for other men, who worked in tank-rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,-sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out into the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard! This contributed to the passing of the Pure Food Act of 1906.
Upton SinclairRead
Theory is the essence of facts. Without theory scientific knowledge would be only worthy of the madhouse.
Oliver HeavisideRead