# Quote — William Alexander Percy, Lanterns On The Levee

> Only one thing never changes – the human heart. Revolutions and ideologies may lacerate it, even break it, but they cannot change its essence. After Fascism and Communism and Capitalism and Socialism are over and forgotten as completely as slavery and the old South, that same headstrong human heart will be clamoring for the old things it wept for in Eden – love and a chance to be noble, laughter and a chance to adore something, someone, somewhere. (Ch. 3)

- Author: [William Alexander Percy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-alexander-percy.md)
- Book: [Lanterns On The Levee](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-alexander-percy/lanterns-on-the-levee.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Alexander_Percy#Lanterns_on_the_Levee_(1941)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-alexander-percy/lanterns-on-the-levee/only-one-thing

## More from this book

> Honor and honesty, compassion and truth are good even if they kill you, for they alone give life its dignity and worth. (Ch. 24)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-alexander-percy/lanterns-on-the-levee/honor-and-honesty.md)

> Our woods are not made for walking because the vines and bushes are too rampant and the rattlesnakes too much at home. But the high levee is perfect for a stroll, which you can extend, if so minded, a hundred miles in either direction. (Ch. 12, on Greenville, Mississippi)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-alexander-percy/lanterns-on-the-levee/our-woods-are.md)

> That short period of my life spent in the line is the only one I remember step by step – as if it moved sub specie aeternitatis. Not that I enjoyed it; I hated it. Not that I was fitted for it by temperament or ability, I was desperately unfitted; but it, somehow, had meaning, and daily life hasn't: it was part of a common endeavor, and daily life is isolated and lonely. (Ch. 17, on his service on the Western Front in World War I)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-alexander-percy/lanterns-on-the-levee/that-short-period.md)