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.
Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.
People's personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.
From a purely positivist point of view, man is the most mysterious and disconcerting of all the objects met with by science.
A comfortable, convenient life is not a real life - the more comfortable, the less alive. The most comfortable life is in the grave.
Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops desiring power more than light. They want authority, not outlook.
The people must fight for their laws as for their walls.
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