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Mutability Quotes

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Mutability Quotes

“It's a fact—everyone is ignorant in some way or another. Ignorance is our deepest secret. And it is one of the scariest things out there, because those of us who are most ignorant are also the ones who often don't know it or don't want to admit it. Here is a quick test: If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant. Before it is too late, go out there and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, assumes, or considers certain things very strongly and very differently from you, and just have a basic honest conversation. It will do both of you good.”

ThinkingChangeSecretLearningWiseIgnoranceDiscoveryIgnorantQuestioningThinkBeliefsIntrospectionQuestionsOpen MindNew ThoughtNewOpen MindedQuestionAdaptabilityAssimilationOpen MindednessReceptiveOpenAdaptIncorporatingPonderMutabilityRethinkingRethinkAssimilateRe Evaluating
Book:The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
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“Everything fluctuates on earth; nothing remains in a constant and lasting form, and those affections which are attached to external things necessarily change with their object. We are ever looking forward or backward, ruminating on what is past, and can return no more, or anticipating the future, which may never arrive; there is nothing solid to which the heart can attach, itself, neither have we here below any pleasures that are lasting. Permanent, happiness is, I fear, unknown, and scarcely is there an instant in our most lively enjoyments when the heart can truly say, May this moment last forever!!! How then can such a fugitive state be called happiness, which leaves an uneasy void in the heart, which ever prompts us to regret something that is past, or desire something for the future?”

ChangeFluxMutability
Book:Reveries of the Solitary Walker
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“Each person would like to be certain of the approval of the other, but to be certain of the other is already to lose that sense of the other as an independent judge. I want you to say 'I love you', but the last thing I would want to do is to ask you, much less force you, to say it. I want you to say it freely, and not because I want you to or expect you to. But then, you know that I do want you to say it, and I know that you know that I want you to say it. So you say it; I don't really believe you. Did you say it because you mean it? Or in order not to hurt my feelings? And so I get testy, more demanding, to which your response is, quite reasonably, to become angry or defensive, until finally I provoke precisely what I feared all along, - an outburst of abuse. But then, I fell righteously hurt; you get apologetic. You seek forgiveness; I hesitate. You aren't sure whether I will say it or not: I'm not sure whether you mean it or not, but I say, 'I forgive you'. You wonder whether I'm really forgiving you or just trying to keep from hurting your feelings, and so you become anxious, testy, and so on.”

LoveRelationshipCertaintyMutability
Book:In the Spirit of Hegel
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“The mask shows that the individualized face of the other is, in a certain measure, our own creation: remove the mask and beneath it you find a mask. This observation leads to a certain anxiety, since it suggests that the other’s presence in his face may be no more real than his presence in the mask. Perhaps we are even mistaken in attributing to persons the kind of absolute individuality that we unavoidably see in their features. Maybe our everyday interactions are more ‘carnivalesque’ than we care to believe, the result of a constant and creative imagining that behind each face lies something like this – namely, the inner unity with which we are acquainted and for which none of us has words. Maybe the individuality of the other resides merely in our way of seeing him, and has little or nothing to do with his way of being.”

SelfIdentityMaskMutability
Book:Face of God: The Gifford Lectures
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“A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism. The distinguishing characteristic of small republics is stability: the character of large republics is mutability.”

ShouldStatesCharacterGovernmentFallPrinciplesVirtueTyrannyPreservesCharacteristicsExpensiveRepublicStabilityTransformedDecayDisregardDespotismDegeneratesDependencyFree GovernmentMutability
Author:Simon Bolivar
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“There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream; which, by their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity.”

HumansSometimesSeemsEarthLiteratureLanguagePrinciplesTreeHuman NatureRootsFoundationPlantMereCurrentsSurfaceProofPreservesStreamsSoilWeedRootedNow And ThenWorthlessUnchangingSwept AwayDeep RootsMutability
Book:The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. – The Complete Collection: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Voyage, Roscoe, A Royal Poet, A Sunday in London and many more (Illustrated)
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“Mutability is the badge of infirmity. It is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike. Now he is for marrying; and now a mistress is preferred to a wife. Now he is ambitious and aspiring; presently the meanest servant is not more humble than he. This hour he squanders his money away; the next he turns miser. Sometimes he is frugal and serious; at other times profuse, airy, and gay.”

MenTwoSometimesTurnsNextWishHoursWifeDesignSeriousGayHumbleServantAmbitiousMistressTwo DaysMarryingBadgesInfirmityMisersAiryFrugalMutability
Author:Pierre Charron
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“True hope is based on the energy of character. A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope, because it knows the mutability of human affairs, and how slight a circumstance may change the whole course of events. Such a spirit, too, rests upon itself; it is not confined to partial views or to one particular object. And if at last all should be lost, it has saved itself.”

IfsKnowsShouldMindHumansMayWholeCharacterLastsSpiritCoursesHopeEnergyLostStrongCausesViewsEventsObjectsParticularCircumstancesAffairSavedConfinedStrong MindMutability
Author:Karl Ludwig von Knebel
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“The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existance, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.”

MindHumansPastMemoriesPartyRecordsWrittenEventsMembersAgreeObjectivesPast EventsMutabilityIgnorance In 19841984 ImportantAgree Upon
Book:Animal Farm and 1984
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“Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability. To trace the remote in the immediate; the eternal in the ephemeral; the past in the present; the infinite in the finite; these are to me the springs of delight and beauty.”

PastPleasureBehindsWonderEternalSpringInfiniteDelightUnexpectedSuperficialFiniteEphemeralUnexploredMutability
Book:The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
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“Wimsey stooped for an empty sardine-tin which lay, horribly battered, at his feet, and slung it idly into the quag. It struck the surface with a noice like a wet kiss, and vanished instantly. With that instinct which prompts one, when depressed, to wallow in every circumstance of gloom, Peter leaned sadly against the hurdles and abandoned himself to a variety of shallow considerations upon (1) The vanity of human wishes; (2) Mutability; (3) First love; (4) The decay of idealism; (5) The aftermath of the Great war; (6) Birth-control; and (7) The fallacy of free-will.”

FirstsHumansWarWishFeetBirthCircumstancesKissingEmptyLaysInstinctSurfaceVarietyVanityConsiderationFree WillAbandonedPeterWetDecayFirst LoveIdealismShallowGloomFallacyBirth ControlGreat WarPromptsAftermathTinHurdleBatteredMutabilitySardines
Author:Dorothy L. Sayers
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“There is to me about this place a smell of rot, the smell of rot that ripe fruit makes. Nowhere, ever, have the hideous mechanics of birth and copulation and death -those monstrous upheavals of life that the Greeks call miasma, defilement- been so brutal or been painted up to look so pretty; have so many people put so much faith in lies and mutability and death death death.”

PeopleLooksLyingBirthFruitSmellGreekBrutalMechanicMonstrousRipeHideousUpheavalRipe FruitMutabilityDefilement
Author:Donna Tartt
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“There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature.”

WritingHumansSeemsLanguagePrinciplesHuman NatureProofRootedNow And ThenUnchangingMutability
Book:The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. – The Complete Collection: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Voyage, Roscoe, A Royal Poet, A Sunday in London and many more (Illustrated)
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“It may be said that the power of preventing bad laws includes that of preventing good ones; and may be used to the one purpose as well as to the other. But this objection will have little weight with those who can properly estimate the mischiefs of that inconstancy and mutability in the laws, which form the greatest blemish in the character and genius of our governments.”

WellsMayLittlesSaidCharacterGovernmentFormLawUsedPurposeGeniusWeightMischiefObjectionsPreventingInconstancyMutabilityBad Laws
Book:The Federalist Papers: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
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“Idealists are people who believe in the potential of human nature for transformation. . . . The most essential attribute of human nature is its mutability and freedom from instinct . . . it is always within our power to change our nature. So it is actually the idealists who are on the mark and the realists who are off base.”

PeopleBelieveHumansHuman NatureEssentialsMarkTransformationInstinctAttributesIdealismRealistIdealistPower To ChangeMutability
Book:People of the Lie
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“It is a nostalgic time right now, and photographs actively promote nostalgia. Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos. ... All photographs are memento mori. To take photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt”

PersonsArtMomentsVirtueSubjectsRight NowPhotographyPhotographNostalgiaVulnerabilityTouchedMortalityTwilightRelentlessNostalgicFreezingPathosMemento MoriMementoMutability
Author:Susan Sontag
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“It's my belief that history is a wheel. 'Inconstancy is my very essence,'? says the wheel. Rise up on my spokes if you like but don't complain when you're cast back down into the depths. Good times pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it's also our hope. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away.”

IfsBeliefWorstEssenceTragedyDepthCastsComplainingPassingPassingsWheelsGood TimesSpokesPassing AwayTime PassesInconstancyMutability
Author:Boethius
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