If it’s going to be a world with no time for sentiment, it’s not a world that I want to live in.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a desire for a world that values emotions and sentimentality.
Christopher Isherwood's quote reflects a profound belief in the importance of sentiment in human life. It suggests that a world devoid of emotional connection and genuine feelings is undesirable and lacking in humanity. By emphasizing sentiment, Isherwood champions the need for empathy, love, and connection in society, portraying them as essential elements for a fulfilling existence.
In practice
In a speech advocating for emotional intelligence in education, one might say this quote to emphasize the importance of feelings.
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.
Neither seek nor avoid, take what comes.
Learn to live without self concern. _x000D_ _x000D_ For this you must know your own true being as indomitable, fearless and ever victorious. _x000D_ _x000D_ Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, _x000D_ _x000D_ you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas, and live by truth alone.
Conflicts create the fire of affects and emotions; and like every fire it has two aspects: that of burning and that of giving light.
Every action done by nature is done in the shortest way.
I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.
Supposed I don't want to redeem myself? Why should I fight to uphold the system that cast me out? I shall take pleasure in seeing it smashed.
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