William Alexander Percy
William Alexander Percy
William Alexander Percy was a lawyer, planter, and poet from Greenville, Mississippi. His autobiography Lanterns on the Levee became a bestseller. His father LeRoy Percy was the last United States Senator from Mississippi elected by the legislature. In a largely Protestant state, the younger Percy championed the Roman Catholicism of his French mother.
"Only one thing never changes – the human heart. Revolutions and ideologies may lacerate it, even break it, but they cannot change its essence. After Fascism and Communism and Capitalism and Socialism are over and forgotten as completely as slavery and the old South, that same headstrong human heart will be clamoring for the old things it wept for in Eden – love and a chance to be noble, laughter and a chance to adore something, someone, somewhere. (Ch. 3)"
"I never heard them over their juleps express a philosophy of life, and if I had it would have been incomprehensible to me, but a philosophy was implicit in all their thoughts and actions. It probably made the Southern pattern. Perhaps it is all contained in a remark of Fathers when he was thinking aloud one night and I sat at his feet eavesdropping eagerly: "I guess a mans job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able – always remembering the results will be infinitesimal – and to attend to his own soul." (Ch. 7)"
"Delta girls are born dancing and never stop, which is as it should be, for surely it is the finest form of human amusement except tennis and talking. (Ch. 12)"
"Our woods are not made for walking because the vines and bushes are too rampant and the rattlesnakes too much at home. But the high levee is perfect for a stroll, which you can extend, if so minded, a hundred miles in either direction. (Ch. 12, on Greenville, Mississippi)"
"Whenever you are just about to decide that Americans are selfish, unpatriotic, and unintelligent, they always prove themselves the most liberal and lovable people in the world. You simply cant stay disgusted with them. What a pity they are not disciplined enough to survive! (Ch. 20)"
"One night Jakie Smith rushed into my room with the sudden illumination: "I know what it is! The law is common sense plus clear English!" Ive never heard a better definition of what the law should be and isnt. (Ch. 11)"
