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
Receiving the National Medal of Science is the thrill of a lifetime, but good science does not happen in isolation.
Sandra FaberRead
I have a reverence for medicine because I hero-worshiped my father [a former doctor], and because I admire doctors, I admire study, empiricism and rational thought. I don't study, empiricize or think rationally myself - but I admire it in others.
Hugh LaurieRead
We used to think that you could pay attention to five to nine things at a time. We now know that's not true. That's a crazy overestimate. The conscious mind can attend to about three things at once. Trying to juggle any more than that, and you're going to lose some brainpower.
Daniel LevitinRead
I venture to define science as a series of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiment and observation and fruitful of further experiments and observations. The test of a scientific theory is, I suggest, its fruitfulness.
James Bryant ConantRead
All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries.
Karl PearsonRead
I would designate as science fiction in the best sense: they are visions and anticipations by which we seek to attain a true knowledge, but, in fact, they are only imaginations whereby we seek to draw near to the reality.
Pope Benedict XviRead