They were watching, out there past men's knowing, where stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the vastness of existence beyond human understanding, invoking imagery of the sea and the cosmos as realms of mystery.
Cormac McCarthy's quote invites readers to contemplate the profound mysteries that lie beyond human comprehension. It suggests a world where the natural elements—the stars and the sea—harbor deeper truths that elude our everyday understanding. The imagery of 'stars drowning' and 'whales ferrying their vast souls' evokes a sense of wonder about the interconnectedness of life and the universe, urging us to acknowledge the limits of human knowledge in the face of such awe-inspiring phenomena.
In practice
This quote could be used in a philosophical discussion about the nature of existence.
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.
Men expect that religion should cost them no pains, that happiness should drop into their laps without any design and endeavor on their part, and that, after they have done what they please while they live, God should snatch them up to heaven when they die. But though the commandments of God be not grievous, yet it is fit to let men know that they are not thus easy.
How we put our collective talents to work is a social issue, not solely a personal one.
Each individual Christian and every community is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor.
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food.
We are called to reach out to those who find themselves in the existential peripheries of our societies and to show particular solidarity with the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters: the poor, the disabled, the unborn and the sick, migrants and refugees, the elderly and the young who lack employment.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.