If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the struggle against nihilism and the importance of faith in providing meaning.
Flannery O'Connor's quote emphasizes the pervasive influence of nihilism in contemporary life, likening it to the very air we breathe. She articulates her belief that without the moral framework provided by the Church to combat this nihilistic worldview, she would have succumbed to cold logical positivism, which disregards the significance of emotional and spiritual truths in human existence.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of belief systems in combating pessimism.
Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.
What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.
There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.
Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are
He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery.
The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where the human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal through the senses with abstractions.
I have no influence with the rising generation. All my arguments have failed to induce them to set bounds to their wants.
The response to war is to live like brothers and sisters. The response to injustice is to share. The response to despair is a limitless trust and hope. The response to prejudice and hatred is forgiveness. To work for community is to work for humanity. To work for peace is to work for a true political solution; it is to work for the Kingdom of God. It is to work to enable every one to live and taste the secret joys of the human person united to the eternal.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
The federal government is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers. The principle, that it can exercise only the powers granted to it . . . is now universally admitted.
Wasn't he the one who said you shouldn't trust anybody who calls himself an ordinar man? - Naoko
She likes to try everything, out of curiosity, but she'll be sorry if she isn't guided by her heart.
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