If a man knew how to live he would never die. Robert Penn Warren More Quotes by Robert Penn Warren More Quotes From Robert Penn Warren The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him. Robert Penn Warren endsmenknowledge The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world. Robert Penn Warren damnationhistoryworld You have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have got to make it out of. Robert Penn Warren And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost. Robert Penn Warren devilstudentscomplicated Everything seems an echo of something else. Robert Penn Warren echoesseems The asking and the answering which history provides may help us to understand, even to frame, the logic of experience to which we shall submit. History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future. Robert Penn Warren common-humanityunderstandinggiving I think the greatest curse of American society has been the idea of an easy millennialism -- that some new drug, or the next election or the latest in social engineering will solve everything. Robert Penn Warren engineeringideasthinking So little time we live in Time, Robert Penn Warren practicemaytime The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life. Robert Penn Warren confusionordinarywriting Goodness . . . You got to make it out of badness . . . Because there isn't anything else to make it out of. Robert Penn Warren badnessgoodness Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good. Robert Penn Warren sellssoulmen The past is always a rebuke to the present. Robert Penn Warren rebukehistorypast Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They're inexpensive and easy to procure. Robert Penn Warren amusementeasytwo Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake. Robert Penn Warren motivationalinspirationalhistory When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a ham trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can. Robert Penn Warren mothertryingfather Tell me a story of deep delight. Robert Penn Warren delightstorytellingstories If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other. Robert Penn Warren burdenacceptingpast The poem . . . is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life. Robert Penn Warren writingmeaningfulmen If you look at a thing, the very fact of your looking changes it...if you think about yourself, that very fact changes you. Robert Penn Warren happinesslooksthinking In one deep sense, novels are concealed autobiography. I don't mean that you are telling facts about yourself, but you are trying to find out what you really think or who you are. Robert Penn Warren writingmeanthinking
