Literary notes about Consciousness (AI summary)
Literary authors employ "consciousness" in multifaceted ways, often using it to depict both the fluid and enduring facets of the human mind. In some works, it conveys the gradual return of an experiential landscape or memory—as when place and time interweave in subtle recollection ([1]) or when the entirety of one’s life glows poignantly with regret and lost love ([2]). Other authors address the workings of thought itself, portraying consciousness as an active process where one idea yields to another ([3]) or as a reservoir sustaining personal identity ([4]). At times, the term underscores the inner dialogue of morality and self-reflection, hinting at the struggle between desire and decency ([5], [6]), while other discussions situate consciousness within broader social and philosophical frameworks that question its origins and its ties to collective being ([7], [8], [9]).
- Consciousness of place came ebbing back to him slowly over a vast tract of time unlit, unfelt, unlived.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce - The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - If idea A follows idea B, consciousness simply exchanges one for another.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James - It is this memory of passed facts—a memory always present to the mind—that constitutes the consciousness of our normal personality.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - There was a struggle in his heart between the desire to forget his unhappy brother for the time, and the consciousness that it would be base to do so.
— from Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy - I felt as if I had committed some great crime, the consciousness of which haunted me.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - How different must be the worlds in the consciousness of ant, cuttle-fish, or crab!
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James - The collective consciousness is the highest form of the psychic life, since it is the consciousness of the consciousnesses.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - The unity of consciousness is nevertheless synthetical and, therefore, primitive.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
