What a man does defiles him, not what is done by others.
WILLIAM GOLDINGHe became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery.
More William Golding Quotes
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I don’t think they [contemporary writers] read me either. I mean, if we’re concerned genuinely with writing, I think we probably get on with our work.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I am here; and here is nowhere in particular.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
This is our island. It’s a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we’ll have fun.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I’m scared of him,” said Piggy, “and that’s why I know him. If you’re scared of someone you hate him but you can’t stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he’s all right really, an’ then when you see him again; it’s like asthma an’ you can’t breathe.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I am astonished at the ease with which uninformed persons come to a settled, a passionate opinion when they have no grounds for judgment.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
A star appeared…and was momentarily eclipsed by some movement.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I play the piano passionately and inaccurately. Indeed, I worked out the other day that of my seventy-five years; I have spent at least one year sitting on a piano stool.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I hope my books make statements about our general condition.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Life’s scientific, but we don’t know, do we? Not certainly, I mean.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness.
WILLIAM GOLDING