I felt early on I wasn't going to be a respectable citizen.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a sense of self-awareness regarding one's identity and societal expectations.
Cormac McCarthy's quote speaks to the internal realization of not conforming to societal norms or expectations. It highlights the struggle of self-identity in contrast to the ideals of what is considered a 'respectable citizen.' This recognition can lead to deeper questions about authenticity and one's place in the world, suggesting that true respectability may lie in being true to oneself rather than adhering to external pressures.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about personal identity in a philosophy class.
Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.
See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.
What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.
The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.
He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.
A man may be theologically knowing and spiritually ignorant.
Only within yourself exists the other reality for which you long. I can give you nothing that has not already its being within yourself. I can throw open to you no picture gallery but your own soul.
Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right, By these we reach divinity
Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops desiring power more than light. They want authority, not outlook.
Men are always more inclined to pitch their estimate of the enemy's strength too high than too low, such is human nature.
When you think of it, really there are four fundamental questions of life. You've asked them, I've asked them, every thinking person asks them. They boil down to this; origin, meaning, morality and destiny. 'How did I come into being? What brings life meaning? How do I know right from wrong? Where am I headed after I die?'
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