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
I don't care much for facts, am not much interested in them, you can't stand a fact up, you've got to prop it up, and when you move to one side a little and look at it from that angle, it's not thick enough to cast a shadow in that direction.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the subjective nature of reality and how facts can be interpreted differently based on perspective.
William Faulkner's quote reflects on the limitations of facts, suggesting that they are not absolute truths but rather require interpretation and context to gain meaning. This highlights the importance of perspective in understanding reality, implying that what one perceives as true may differ depending on one’s viewpoint, thereby questioning the reliability of objective information.
Themes
PerspectiveTruthInterpretationRealitySubjectivity
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about historical events where differing perspectives are presented.
More from William Faulkner
All quotes →I 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
Moral precepts are constant through the ages and not obedient to circumstances.
Lord ActonRead
War's a profanity because, let's face it, you've got two opposing sides trying to settle their differences by killing as many of each other as they can.
Norman SchwarzkopfRead
The belief in authority is the source of conscience; which is therefore not the voice of God in the heart of man, but the voice of some men in man.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us.
Benjamin RushRead
Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.
Blaise PascalRead
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
Winston ChurchillRead