György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness
Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), p. 64
Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 9
Context: Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits … A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.
György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness
Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), p. 64
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
1860s, Life and Letters in New England (1867)
Context: The key to the period appeared to be that the mind had become aware of itself. Men grew reflective and intellectual. There was a new consciousness. The former generations acted under the belief that a shining social prosperity was the beatitude of man, and sacrificed uniformly the citizen to the State. The modern mind believed that the nation existed for the individual, for the guardianship and education of every man. This idea, roughly written in revolutions and national movements, in the mind of the philosopher had far more precision; the individual is the world.
This perception is a sword such as was never drawn before. It divides and detaches bone and marrow, soul and body, yea, almost the man from himself. It is the age of severance, of dissociation, of freedom, of analysis, of detachment. Every man for himself. The public speaker disclaims speaking for any other; he answers only for himself. The social sentiments are weak; the sentiment of patriotism is weak; veneration is low; the natural affections feebler than they were. People grow philosophical about native land and parents and. relations. There is an universal resistance to ties rand ligaments once supposed essential to civil society. The new race is stiff, heady and rebellious; they are fanatics in freedom; they hate tolls, taxes, turnpikes, banks, hierarchies, governors, yea, almost laws. They have a neck of unspeakable tenderness; it winces at a hair. They rebel against theological as against political dogmas; against mediation, or saints, or any nobility in the unseen.
The age tends to solitude. The association of the time is accidental and momentary and hypocritical, the detachment intrinsic and progressive. The association is for power, merely, — for means; the end being the enlargement and independency of the individual.
Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian
Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 10
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IX : Faith, Hope, and Charity
Context: Consciousness, the craving for more, more, always more, hunger of eternity and thirst of infinity, appetite for God — these are never satisfied. Each consciousness seeks to be itself and all other consciousnesses without ceasing to be itself; it seeks to be God. And matter, unconsciousness, tends to be less and less, tends to be nothing, its thirst being a thirst for repose. Spirit says: I wish to be! and matter answers: I wish not to be!
“We'll be chopped up before you can say 'King Maggot'.”
Tamora Pierce book Lady Knight
Source: Lady Knight
Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer
"A Matter of the Soul" (1975), pp. 75-76
It All Adds Up (1994)
Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 10, Counting Sheep
Adi Shankara (788–820) Hindu philosopher monk of 8th century
Source: Atma Bodha (1987), p. 7: Quote nr. 4.
“Everything is a bit of darkness, even light itself.”
Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet
Todo es un poco de oscuridad, hasta la misma luz.
Voces (1943)