Quotes from book
The Last Gentleman

Name: The Last Gentleman
Author: Walker Percy

The Last Gentleman is a 1966 novel by Walker Percy. The narrative centers on the character of Williston Bibb Barrett, a man born in the Mississippi Delta who has moved to New York City, where he lives at a YMCA and works as a night janitor. Will suffers from a "nervous condition", which causes him to experience fits of déjà vu and amnesiac fugues.

“Once again he began to feel bad in the best of environments. And he noticed that other people did too. So bad did they feel, in fact, that it took the worst of news to cheer them up. On the finest mornings he noticed that people in the subway looked awful until they opened their newspapers and read of some airliner crashing and killing all hundred and seven passengers. Where there had been misery in their happiness, now as they shook their heads dolefully at the tragedy they became happy in their misery.”

Walker Percy book The Last Gentleman

The Last Gentleman (1966)

“He could tell that the other expected him to be surprised, but it was not in him to be surprised because it was no more surprising to him when things did not fall out as they were supposed to than when they did.”

Walker Percy book The Last Gentleman

The Last Gentleman (1966)

“What a man can be the next minute bears no relation to what he is or what he was the minute before.”

Walker Percy book The Last Gentleman

The Last Gentleman (1966)

“Christ should leave us. He is too much with us and I don't like his friends. We have no hope of recovering Christ until Christ leaves us. There is after all something worse than being God-forsaken. It is when God overstays his welcome and take up with the wrong people.”

Walker Percy book The Last Gentleman

The Last Gentleman (1966)

“It was no more nor less than true. You do things by doing things, not by not doing them. No more crazy upsidedownness, he resolved. Good was better than bad. Good environments are better than bad environments.”

Walker Percy book The Last Gentleman

The Last Gentleman (1966)

“Good-looking and amiable as he was, however, he did not strike one as remarkable. People usually told him the same joke two or three times.”

Walker Percy book The Last Gentleman

The Last Gentleman (1966)
Context: He was a young man of pleasant appearance. Of medium height and exceedingly pale, he was nevertheless strongly built and quick and easy in his ways. Save for his deafness in one ear, his physical health was perfect. Handsome as he was, he was given to long silences. So girls didn't know what to make of him. But men liked him. After a while they saw that he was easy and meant no harm. He was the sort whom classmates remember fondly; they liked to grab him around the neck with an elbow and cuff him around. Good-looking and amiable as he was, however, he did not strike one as remarkable. People usually told him the same joke two or three times.