We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the transient nature of ownership and life's impermanence.
Christopher Isherwood's quote suggests that our possessions and the world around us are not truly ours but rather temporary loans that we experience during our lifetime. It invites reflection on the nature of ownership and the importance of valuing experiences over material goods, reminding us that everything we have is ultimately borrowed and will one day be passed on to others.
In practice
In a speech about minimalism, one could say, 'We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers.'
The more I think about myself, the more I'm persuaded that, as a person, I really don't exist. That is one of the reasons why I can't believe in any orthodox religion: I cannot believe in my own soul. No, I am a chemical compound, conditioned by environment and education. My "character" is simply a repertoire of acquired tricks, my conversation a repertoire of adaptations and echoes, my "feelings" are dictated by purely physical, external stimuli.
A minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary.
What’s so phony nowadays is all this familiarity. Pretending there isn’t any difference between people —well, like you were saying about minorities, this morning. If you and I are no different, what do we have to give each other? How can we ever be friends?
I'm like a book you have to read. A book can't read itself to you. It doesn't even know what it's about. I don't know what I'm about.
The paternalist is a sentimentalist at heart, and the sentimentalist is always potentially cruel.
I am a camera, with its shutter open. Someday, all of this will be developed, printed, fixed.
True karate is this: that in daily life one's mind and body be trained and developed in a spirit of humility, and that in critical times, one be devoted utterly to the cause of justice.
To all conservative women out there: If you are so sure the embryo needed for stem cell research are precious human life that can't be destroyed, then implant one in your uterus and bring it to term. That's right, put your cervix where your mouth is.
Nothing short of self-respect and that justice which is essential to a national character ought to involve us in war.
Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.
The future does not exist, because nobody has ever experienced it. You can only ever experience a present moment.
Footballers' 'lack of loyalty,' for instance, is not an indication of players' moral delinquency. Instead, the capacity to move on quickly without forming lasting attachments is a skill that the contemporary capitalist world inculcates and relies upon.
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