Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.
Anthony BurgessRead
It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questions, little 6655321.
Interpretation
This quote explores the complexity of goodness and the moral choices individuals face.
In this quote, Anthony Burgess delves into the intricate nature of morality, questioning whether true goodness stems from an individual's free choice or is merely a result of external expectations. He suggests that the struggle between choosing good and bad is inherently tied to one's moral character, provoking profound thoughts about the essence of goodness and whether it's more virtuous to choose goodness freely than to have it imposed upon oneself.
In practice
In a philosophical debate about morality and choices.
Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.
There is a satisfactory boniness about grammar which the flesh of sheer vocabulary requires before it can become a vertebrate and walk the earth.
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.
Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy.
Only in England is the perversion of language regarded as a victory for democracy.
You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now what I've never seen before. I'm cured! Praise Bog! I'm cured!
A golf course is the epitome of all that is purely transitory in the universe, a space not to dwell in, but to get over as quickly as possible.
You say I have the most wicked face of any woman. You say my hair is like the serpent locks of Medusa, that my eyes have the cruel cunning of Borgia, that my mouth is the mouth of the sinister scheming Delilah, that my hands are like the talons of a Circe or the blood-bathing Elizabeth Bathory. And then you ask me of my soul—you wish to know if it is reflected in my face.
Each society is a hero system which promises victory over evil and death.
they may all be drunk at my place, but they're all honest, and though we do lie-because I lie, too-in the end we'll lie our way to the truth
Am I alive and a reality, or am I but a dream?
From a purely positivist point of view, man is the most mysterious and disconcerting of all the objects met with by science.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.