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Quote by Christopher Isherwood

“...all around George, approaching him, crossing his path from every direction, is the male and female raw material which is fed daily into this factory, along the conveyor-belts of the freeways, to be processed, packaged and placed on the market... What do they think they are up to? Well, there is the official answer; preparing themselves for life which means a job and security in which to raise children to prepare themselves for life which means a job and security in which... Here, in their midst, George feels a sort of vertigo. Oh God, what will become of them all? What chance have they? Ought I yell out to them, right now, here, that it's hopeless? But George knows he can't do that. Because, absurdly, inadequately, in spite of himself almost, he is a representative of hope. And the hope is not false. No. It's just that George is like a man trying to sell a real diamond for a nickel, on the street. The diamond is protected from all but the tiniest few, because the great hurrying majority can never stop to dare to believe that it could conceivably be real.”

Quote by Christopher Isherwood

Book:A single man
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Work

A single man

A Single Man is a deeply moving narrative that delves into the complexities of grief and the search for meaning in the aftermath of loss. The story follows George Falconer, a middle-aged English professor, as he grapples with the profound impact of his partner's death on his life. The novel is known for its introspective and lyrical prose, offering a raw and honest portrayal of the human condition in the face of tragedy. more

Author

Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood

Christopher Isherwood is a renowned British novelist known for his profound portrayals of life in London and Berlin during the mid-20th century. His works often explore social change, personal identity, and moral dilemmas. more

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Book:Moving Through Parallel Worlds To Achieve Your Dreams
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“I mean, that guy who wants to be President, that Jarret, he would call you all heathens or pagans or something." Indeed, he would. “Yes,” I said. “He does seem to enjoy calling people things like that. Once he’s made everyone who isn’t like him sound evil, then he can blame them for problems he knows they didn’t cause. That’s easier than trying to fix the problems.”

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Book:Parable of the Talents
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“The ability of an object to constitute itself as a subject is thus defined, in the first instance, by the objective context provided by the genus; that is, the capacity or incapacity of an object to constitute itself as an individual subject depends first and foremost on the kind of thing the object is. For mechanical, chemical, and externally purposive objects, the power of the genus is determined essentially as violence insofar as these objects cannot constitute themselves as subjects through a predicate due to their very nature as defined by their genus. For example, a rock, qua rock, can be determined through a predicate externally - by means of external impact from other objects and forces (it can be crushed or cracked into pieces) or by means of human definition and conceptualization (this rock is igneous and that one is sedimentary) - but is cannot determine itself through a predicate and constitute itself as a subject by means of its own activity. The power of the objet to constitute itself as a subject is necessarily defined in relation to its essential Gattung-predicate, a predicate that manifests the power of violence insofar as the object is unable to constitute itself as a subject by means of this very same predicate. The third characteristic, finally, is that power as violence directs itself against individuality. In specifying that it is only in the presence of the freedom of self-consciousness that the power of the genus can be determined as fate, Hegel writes the following: 'Only self-consciousness has fate in the strict sense, because it is free, and therefore in the individuality of its 'I' it absolutely exists in and for itself and can oppose itself to its objective universality and alienate itself from it'. Individuality is thus defined as an existence in and for itself that can stand opposed to and be in contradiction with its objective universality or genus, while continuing to manifest the genus's power as identical with its own self-relation. Without the ability to oppose its genus, the ability to be self-alienated with respect to its genus, the object is not, strictly speaking, an individual (it remains a mere particular, a token of its type entirely interchangeable with other tokens of the same type). Individuality is therefore not only the power of the object to constitute itself as a subject through its predicate, but moreover, this power of self-constitution is essentially also the power to oppose, contradict, and transform the genus by means of the genus's own power as manifest in the determinateness of an individual.”

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“Indeed, it is this threefold character of man—the fact that through his spiritual intellect, which is so much more than merely rational, he has an affinity with the divine, while with his body he is linked to the material world—that gives him such a key position and role in the universe. He stands between God and the material world, between heaven and earth. In the old formula, he is the microcosm.' In fact, all things in creation have their meeting-place in man, and man is potentially all things. Properly seen, nothing is external to him. This is in contradistinction to the modern scientific view of things, which presupposes precisely that man does regard the world of nature as an object external to himself. It presupposes a loss of that consciousness in which nature is seen as part of his own subjectivity, as the living garment of his own inner being. Consequently man has also lost the sense of his role in relationship to the rest of creation. Displacing himself from nature, depersonalizing and objectifying it, he has destroyed the harmony and reciprocity that should exist between them.”

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Book:The Rape of Man & Nature: An Inquiry Into the Origins and Consequences of Modern Science
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“The mechanistic character of modern science is marked by a desire to dominate, to master and possess and to exploit nature, not to transform it, or to hallow it. It presumes that the earth belongs to man, not man to the earth. In this it simply reflects the self-assertion of its agent, the disinherited reason which, having completed its revolt against what surpasses it, now seeks to impose its laws over the rest of life. Man’s loss of his sense of harmony and reciprocity with nature—his destruction of the nuptial bonds between them—is itself the consequence of his loss of his sense of his status and role as the link between heaven and earth, the channel through which all commerce between them passes.”

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Book:The Rape of Man & Nature: An Inquiry Into the Origins and Consequences of Modern Science
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“God’s enhumanization has not only ‘taken manhood into God’; it has also taken the whole created world into God, has resurrected it and transfigured it in its very depths. It is only man’s continuing alienation from the ground of his being that prevents him from realizing this, that throws a veil of opacity between God and man, God and the world, an keeps them in a state of false division and disunity. Correspondingly, it is through overcoming this alienation, and through remaking himself in the image and likeness of the divine that is at the heart of his own subjective life and that confers on him his unique quality as a person, that he shares in the priesthood of Christ and in that sacrament of love and beauty in which all things, released from their bondage, live, move and have their being. Outside this relationship, apart from this sacrament, man has no real place in the world, or the world in him. He is but a tormented shadow of himself, and his world a forsaken wilderness, and on both he is compelled to seek ever further revenge for that crime against his own nature which he refuses to acknowledge, still more to expiate.”

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Book:The Rape of Man & Nature: An Inquiry Into the Origins and Consequences of Modern Science
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