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Top 120 Robert Penn Warren Quotes (2026 Update)
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Robert Penn Warren Quote: “You just make it up as you go along.”

101. “You just make it up as you go along.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “Politics is action and all action is but a flaw in the perfection of inaction, which is peace, just as all being is but a flaw in the perfection of nonbeing. Which is God. For if God is perfection and the only perfection is in nonbeing, then God is nonbeing. Then God is nothing. Nothing can give no basis for the criticism of Thing in its thingness. Then where do you get anything to say? Then where do you get off?”

102. “Politics is action and all action is but a flaw in the perfection of inaction, which is peace, just as all being is but a flaw in the perfection of nonbeing. Which is God. For if God is perfection and the only perfection is in nonbeing, then God is nonbeing. Then God is nothing. Nothing can give no basis for the criticism of Thing in its thingness. Then where do you get anything to say? Then where do you get off?”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “That old unionism was, however, very different from the kind we live with now. We do not live with an ideal, sometimes on the defensive, of union. We live with the overriding, overwhelming fact, a fact so technologically, economically, and politically validated that we usually forget to ask how fully this fact represents a true community, the spiritually significant communion which the old romantic unionism had envisaged.”

103. “That old unionism was, however, very different from the kind we live with now. We do not live with an ideal, sometimes on the defensive, of union. We live with the overriding, overwhelming fact, a fact so technologically, economically, and politically validated that we usually forget to ask how fully this fact represents a true community, the spiritually significant communion which the old romantic unionism had envisaged.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “Let us leave in suspension such debates about the economic costs of the War and look at another kind of cost, a kind more subtle, pervasive, and continuing, a kind that conditions in a thousand ways the temper of American life today. This cost is psychological, and it is, of course, different for the winner and the loser.”

104. “Let us leave in suspension such debates about the economic costs of the War and look at another kind of cost, a kind more subtle, pervasive, and continuing, a kind that conditions in a thousand ways the temper of American life today. This cost is psychological, and it is, of course, different for the winner and the loser.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “And right is a lid you put on something and some of the things under the lid look just like some of the things not under the lid, and there never was any notion of what was right if you put it down on folks in general that a lot of them didn’t start squalling because they just couldn’t do any human business under that kind of right.”

105. “And right is a lid you put on something and some of the things under the lid look just like some of the things not under the lid, and there never was any notion of what was right if you put it down on folks in general that a lot of them didn’t start squalling because they just couldn’t do any human business under that kind of right.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “So I tried to make what amends I could for being what I was...”

106. “So I tried to make what amends I could for being what I was...”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “I took a card out of my pocket and gave it to him. He looked at the card for a minute, holding it off near arm’s length as though he were afraid it would spit in his eye, then he turned it over and looked at the back side a minute till he was dead sure it was blank.”

107. “I took a card out of my pocket and gave it to him. He looked at the card for a minute, holding it off near arm’s length as though he were afraid it would spit in his eye, then he turned it over and looked at the back side a minute till he was dead sure it was blank.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “More and more Emerson recedes grandly into history, as the future he predicted becomes a past.”

108. “More and more Emerson recedes grandly into history, as the future he predicted becomes a past.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “For the truth is a terrible thing. You dabble your foot in it and it is nothing. But you walk a little farther and you feel it pull you like an undertow or a whirlpool. First there is the slow pull so steady and gradual you scarcely notice it, then the acceleration, then the dizzy whirl and plunge into darkness. For there is a blackness of truth, too. They say it is a terrible thing to fall into the Grace of God. I am prepared to believe that.”

109. “For the truth is a terrible thing. You dabble your foot in it and it is nothing. But you walk a little farther and you feel it pull you like an undertow or a whirlpool. First there is the slow pull so steady and gradual you scarcely notice it, then the acceleration, then the dizzy whirl and plunge into darkness. For there is a blackness of truth, too. They say it is a terrible thing to fall into the Grace of God. I am prepared to believe that.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “In America they have to know just what you are – novelist, poet, playwright... Well, I’ve been all of them... I think poems and novels and stories spring from the same seed. It’s not like, say, playing polo and knitting.”

110. “In America they have to know just what you are – novelist, poet, playwright... Well, I’ve been all of them... I think poems and novels and stories spring from the same seed. It’s not like, say, playing polo and knitting.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind. The best you can do is do something and then make up some law to fit and by the time that law gets on the books you would have done something different. Do.”

111. “The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind. The best you can do is do something and then make up some law to fit and by the time that law gets on the books you would have done something different. Do.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind.”

112. “The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “I didn’t answer right away, and she came across to the writing table, moving quick and nervous, the way she always did, inside of a shapeless shoddy-blue summer suit that she must have got by walking into a secondhand store and shutting her eyes and pointing and saying, “I’ll take that.”

113. “I didn’t answer right away, and she came across to the writing table, moving quick and nervous, the way she always did, inside of a shapeless shoddy-blue summer suit that she must have got by walking into a secondhand store and shutting her eyes and pointing and saying, “I’ll take that.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “That is what all of us historical researchers believe. And we love truth.”

114. “That is what all of us historical researchers believe. And we love truth.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “Well, you were the Boss’s poodle. And you liked it. You liked to be spit on. You weren’t human. You weren’t real. That’s what I thought. But I was wrong, Tiny. Somewhere down in you there was something made you human. You resented being spit on. Even for money.”

115. “Well, you were the Boss’s poodle. And you liked it. You liked to be spit on. You weren’t human. You weren’t real. That’s what I thought. But I was wrong, Tiny. Somewhere down in you there was something made you human. You resented being spit on. Even for money.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “I know nothing I’m doing is important,′ he said. ‘Sure, I’m just a waste product of history. Maybe nothing I’m doing is even real, after all. But I was born right here, in this old house, and I look out the window and know what I’m seeing, and I know some people I like to be with, and I like what I do all day long, and maybe that’s all that realness is, anyway.”

116. “I know nothing I’m doing is important,′ he said. ‘Sure, I’m just a waste product of history. Maybe nothing I’m doing is even real, after all. But I was born right here, in this old house, and I look out the window and know what I’m seeing, and I know some people I like to be with, and I like what I do all day long, and maybe that’s all that realness is, anyway.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “I don’t care about anybody being handsome”, she said, “but I never did go for anybody that reminded me of a box of spilled spaghetti. All elbows and dry rattle.”

117. “I don’t care about anybody being handsome”, she said, “but I never did go for anybody that reminded me of a box of spilled spaghetti. All elbows and dry rattle.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “I had found the truth, I had dug the truth up out of the ash pile, the garbage heap, the kitchen midden, the bone yard, and had sent that little piece of truth to Adam Stanton. I couldn’t cut the truth to match his ideas. Well, he’d have to make his ideas match the truth. That is what all of us historical researchers believe. The truth shall make you free.”

118. “I had found the truth, I had dug the truth up out of the ash pile, the garbage heap, the kitchen midden, the bone yard, and had sent that little piece of truth to Adam Stanton. I couldn’t cut the truth to match his ideas. Well, he’d have to make his ideas match the truth. That is what all of us historical researchers believe. The truth shall make you free.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “What you are is an expression of history.”

119. “What you are is an expression of history.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “But it was her fudge and I let her cook it.”

120. “But it was her fudge and I let her cook it.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “A man’s got to carry something besides a corroded liver with him out of that dark backwood and abysm of time, and it might as well be the little black books.”

121. “A man’s got to carry something besides a corroded liver with him out of that dark backwood and abysm of time, and it might as well be the little black books.”

— Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quote: “The grandfather’s clock in the corner of the room, I suddenly realized, wasn’t getting any younger. It would drop out a tick, and the tick would land inside my head like a rock dropped in a well, and the ripples would circle out and stop, and the tick would sink down the dark. For a piece of time which was not long or short, and might not even be time, there wouldn’t be anything. Then the tock would drop down the well, and the ripples would circle out and finish.”

122. “The grandfather’s clock in the corner of the room, I suddenly realized, wasn’t getting any younger. It would drop out a tick, and the tick would land inside my head like a rock dropped in a well, and the ripples would circle out and stop, and the tick would sink down the dark. For a piece of time which was not long or short, and might not even be time, there wouldn’t be anything. Then the tock would drop down the well, and the ripples would circle out and finish.”

— Robert Penn Warren

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