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
When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe, since the safe things are just the things that folks have been doing so long they have worn the edges off and there's nothing to the doing of them that leaves a man to say, That was not done before and it cannot be done again.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that embracing new challenges is more valuable than sticking to what is familiar and safe.
William Faulkner emphasizes the importance of taking risks and engaging with new experiences. He argues that true fulfillment comes from pursuing the unconventional and the challenging, rather than retreating to the comfort of familiar, worn paths. The essence of life lies in new and bright endeavors that inspire uniqueness and authenticity, rather than mere safety that feels overused and unoriginal.
Themes
RiskNewChallengeCourageExperienceSafety
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to encourage students to take risks in their education.
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
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