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
Only the peak feels so sound and stable that the beginning of the falling is hidden for a little while.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the illusion of stability at the peak of success and the unseen decline that may follow.
William Faulkner's quote suggests that when one reaches a high point or peak in life, it often feels secure and steady. However, this perception can be deceiving, as the signs of decline or difficulty may not be immediately apparent. It implies a warning about the transient nature of success and the inevitability of change.
Themes
SuccessStabilityChangeIllusionDecline
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech, to highlight the importance of staying grounded even at the heights of success.
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
Man produces evil as a bee produces honey.
William GoldingRead
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still
T. S. EliotRead
I had a strong sudden instinct that I must be alone. I didnβt want to see any people at all. I had seen so many people all my life -- I was an average mixer, but more than average in a tendency to identify myself, my ideas, my destiny, with those of all classes that came in contact with. I was always saving or being saved -- in a single morning I would go through the emotions ascribable to Wellington at Waterloo. I lived in a world of inscrutable hostiles and inalienable friends and supporters.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
For my part, it is not the mystery of the incarnation which I discover in religion, but the mystery of social order, which associates with heaven that idea of equality which prevents the rich from destroying the poor
Napoleon BonaparteRead
Can a man of perception respect himself at all?
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of the problem of wheat.
SocratesRead