Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by John Cassian

Quote by John Cassian

Work

Making Life a Prayer: Selected Writings

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

John Cassian
John Cassian

John Cassian (360-435 AD) was a prominent figure in early Christian history, known for his contributions to monasticism and theological thought. He spent his life primarily in Egypt, where he founded one of the first monasteries and became its abbot. Cassian is renowned for his deep understanding of monastic life and his influential writings on Christian doctrine. more

You May Also Like

“Ogni volta che camminava sentiva di lasciarsi alle spalle se stesso, e nel consegnarsi al movimento delle strade, riducendosi a un occhio che vede, eludeva l’obbligo di pensare; e questo, più di qualsiasi altra cosa, gli donava una scheggia di pace, un salutare vuoto interiore. Il mondo era fuori di lui, gli stava intorno e davanti, e la velocità del suo continuo cambiamento gli rendeva impossibile soffermarsi troppo su qualunque cosa. Paul Auster, Trilogia di New York”

Paul AusterCamminareCittà Di VetroTrilogia Di New York
Book:City of Glass: Graphic Novel
Create image

“Enough already of Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault poured like ketchup over everything. Lacan: the French fog machine; a grey-flannel worry-bone for toothless academic pups; a twerpy, cape-twirling Dracula dragging his flocking stooges to the crypt. Lacan is a Freud T-shirt shrunk down to the teeny-weeny Saussure torso. The entire school of Saussure, inluding Levi-Strauss, write their muffled prose of people with cotton wool wrapped around their heads; they're like walking Q-tips. Derrida: a Gloomy Gus one-trick pony, stuck on a rhetorical trope already available in the varied armory of New Criticism. Derrida's method: masturbating without pleasure. It's a birdbrain game for birdseed stakes. Neo-Foucaldian New Historicism: a high-wax bowling alley where you score points just by knockng down the pins.”

Poststructuralism
Book:Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays
Create image

“Now, in the academy, you cannot just say anything about male theory. You have to proceed with an immanent critique, that is to say, you have to expertly play the parts against the whole. You show, for example, how certain assumptions in the work actually defeat its stated purpose of human liberation, but once remedied, i.e. salvaged, the theory will work for women. An immanent critique can stay within the masculinist academic circle. In this position women become the technicians of male theory who have to reprogram the machine, turning it from a war machine against women into a gentler, kinder war machine, killing us softly. This is a very involving task and after years of playing this part it is understandable that there may be little desire to admit that the effort was virtually futile. An investment has been made, and the conformity is not wholly outer. What attitudes and feelings does this sexist context produce towards oppositional women who refuse this male material? Does a male-circled woman have the power and security to be generous? Having compromised her freedom, will she be less willing to compromise ours? Perhaps the most pernicious aspect of this arrangement, besides the ways it sets women against one another, is the fact that although the male academy values owning our freedom, it does not have to pay a lot for it. Masculine culture already controls gross amounts of female lives. Still, it seems to want more, but always at the same low price. The exploited are very affordable.”

FeminismAcademiaPostmodernismPoststructuralism
Author:Somer Brodribb
Create image

“It is a revelation to compare the Don Quixote of Pierre Menard with that of Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes, for example, wrote the following (Part I, Chapter IX): ...truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future's counselor. This catalog of attributes, written in the seventeenth century, and written by the "ingenious layman" Miguel de Cervantes, is mere rhetorical praise of history. Menard, on the other hand, writes: ...truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future's counselor. History, the mother of truth! - the idea is staggering. Menard, a contemporary of William James, defines history not as delving into reality but as the very font of reality. Historical truth, for Menard, is not "what happened"; it is what we believe happened. The final phrases - exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future's counselor - are brazenly pragmatic.”

HumourPostmodernismPoststructuralismIntertextualityDeath Of The Author
Book:Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote
Create image

“While poststructuralism has a cynical disdain for terms such as ‘Truth with a capital T’ and ‘Knowledge with a capital K’, the entire edifice depends upon a mysterious ‘Power with a capital P’ (...) A history that is the sum of individual responses to and refractions of Power is no more of a history of human existence than a relay of blinking lights is a history of light. Such a schema is not a history, but a situation, a meaningless existential crisis in which one is positioned arbitrarily.”

HistoryPowerPoststructuralism
Book:The Politics of Everybody: Feminism, Queer Theory, and Marxism at the Intersection
Create image