Zitate von John Cowper Powys

„Die ergreifenden Szenen in fast jedermanns Leben sind meist solche, die von niemand bemerkt und von der fraglichen Person völlig außer acht gelassen werden.“

—  John Cowper Powys, buch Glastonbury Romance

A Glastonbury Romance, London 1933, Carl Hanser Verlag München, Wien für Zweitausendeins, 1995, aus dem Englischen von Klaus Pemsel, ISBN 3-86150-258-5, S. 925

„Tod und Liebe! In diesen beiden allein lag die letzte Würde des Lebens.“

—  John Cowper Powys, buch Wolf Solent

Wolf Solent, 1929, aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Richard Hoffmann, Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-40091 X, S. 684
"Death and Love! In those two alone lay the ultimate dignity of life." - p. 950 archive.org http://archive.org/stream/wolfsolentanovel030662mbp#page/n469/mode/2up

„Wenn ich mich des Lebens, so dachte er, nicht mit absolut kindlichem Versinken in seine einfachsten Elemente freuen kann, wäre es ebensogut, wenn ich nicht geboren wäre.“

—  John Cowper Powys, buch Wolf Solent

Wolf Solent, 1929, aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Richard Hoffmann, Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-40091 X, S. 693
"If I can't enjoy life," he thought, "with absolute childish absorption in its simplest elements, I might as well never have been born!" - p. 963 archive.org http://archive.org/stream/wolfsolentanovel030662mbp#page/n481/mode/2up

„One needs no strange spiritual faith to worship the earth.“

—  John Cowper Powys

„Even the most purely rational minds who find the universe in "pure thought" are driven against their rational will to visualize this "pure thought" and to give it body and form and shape and movement.“

—  John Cowper Powys

Quelle: The Complex Vision (1920), Chapter I
Kontext: One of the curious psychological facts, in connection with the various ways in which various minds function, is the fact that when in these days we seek to visualize, in some pictorial manner, our ultimate view of life, the images which are called up are geometrical or chemical rather than anthropomorphic. It is probable that even the most rational and logical among us as soon as he begins to philosophize at all is compelled by the necessity of things to form in the mind some vague pictorial representation answering to his conception of the universe.
Most minds see the universe of their mental conception as something quite different from the actual stellar universe upon which we all gaze. Even the most purely rational minds who find the universe in "pure thought" are driven against their rational will to visualize this "pure thought" and to give it body and form and shape and movement.

„We are all creators. We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials.“

—  John Cowper Powys

Quelle: The Meaning of Culture (1929), p. 222
Kontext: Not the wretchedest man or woman but has a deep secretive mythology with which to wrestle with the material world and to overcome it and pass beyond it. Not the wretchedest human being but has his share in the creative energy that builds the world. We are all creators. We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials.

„Love, in spite of all rational knowledge to the contrary, is always in the mood of believing in miracles.“

—  John Cowper Powys

Quelle: The Meaning of Culture (1929), p. 170
Kontext: The influence of friendship upon culture differs from that of love, in that it assumes the basic idiosyncrasies of personal taste to be unalterable. Love, in spite of all rational knowledge to the contrary, is always in the mood of believing in miracles.

„We philosophize for the same reason that we move and speak and laugh and eat and love. In other words, we philosophize because man is a philosophical animal.… We may be as sceptical as we please. Our very scepticism is the confession of an implicit philosophy.“

—  John Cowper Powys

Quelle: The Complex Vision (1920), Chapter I
Kontext: My answer to the question "Why do we philosophize?" is as follows. We philosophize for the same reason that we move and speak and laugh and eat and love. In other words, we philosophize because man is a philosophical animal.… We may be as sceptical as we please. Our very scepticism is the confession of an implicit philosophy.

„The eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness.“

—  John Cowper Powys

Quelle: The Complex Vision (1920), Chapter I
Kontext: This swallowing up of life in nothingness, this obliteration of life by nothingness is what the emotion of malice ultimately desires. The eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness.

„It is strange how few people make more than a casual cult of enjoying Nature.“

—  John Cowper Powys, buch Glastonbury Romance

Quelle: The Meaning of Culture (1929), p. 178
Quelle: A Glastonbury Romance
Kontext: It is strange how few people make more than a casual cult of enjoying Nature. And yet the earth is actually and literally the mother of us all. One needs no strange spiritual faith to worship the earth.

„One always feels that a merely educated man holds his philosophical views as if they were so many pennies in his pocket. They are separate from his life. Whereas with a cultured man there is no gap or lacuna between his opinions and his life. Both are dominated by the same organic, inevitable fatality. They are what he is.“

—  John Cowper Powys

Quelle: The Meaning of Culture (1929), p. 19

„If by the time we're sixty we haven't learned what a knot of paradox and contradiction life is, and how exquisitely the good and the bad are mingled in every action we take, and what a compromising hostess Our Lady of Truth is, we haven't grown old to much purpose.“

—  John Cowper Powys

The Art of Growing Old (1944), p. 13

„No refining of one's taste in matters of art or literature, no sharpening of one's powers of insight in matters of science or psychology, can ever take the place of one's sensitiveness to the life of the earth. This is the beginning and the end of a person's true education.“

—  John Cowper Powys

Quelle: The Meaning of Culture (1929), p. 175

„I have been reading of late, most carefully, oh such an exciting mass of Anarchist Literature sent to me by old Emma Goldman who is my Prime Minister & chief Political Philosopher! and every week I get the anarchist paper from Avenue A New York City and also the ‘Bulletin of Information’ from the Anarchists of Barcelona. This latter pamphlet I am carefully keeping; because it is not so much concerned with the war as with their experiment in Catalonia of organizing their life on Anarchist lines and getting rid of all Dictatorship & of the ‘Sovereign State’.“

—  John Cowper Powys

Letter to his sister (24 September 1938), published in The Letters of John Cowper Powys to Philippa Powys (1996), edited by Anthony Head p. 106

„Ambition is the grand enemy of all peace.“

—  John Cowper Powys

Quelle: The Meaning of Culture (1929), p. 140

„Man is the animal who weeps and laughs — and writes. If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back — in a book.“

—  John Cowper Powys

The Pleasures of Literature (1938), p. 17 <!-- London: Cassell -->

„"The meaning of culture" is nothing less than the conduct of life itself, fortified, thickened, made more crafty and subtle, by contact with books and with art.“

—  John Cowper Powys

Quelle: The Meaning of Culture (1929), p. 134

„The love that interferes and knows not how to leave alone is a love alien to Nature's ways.“

—  John Cowper Powys

Quelle: The Meaning of Culture (1929), p. 209

„Our rulers at the present day, with their machines and their preachers, are all occupied in putting into our heads the preposterous notion that activity rather than contemplation is the object of life.“

—  John Cowper Powys

In Defence of Sensuality (1930), p. 136