Literary notes about Mutable (AI summary)
The term “mutable” has been employed in literature to underscore impermanence and susceptibility to change across both abstract and tangible realms. In theological and philosophical texts, authors like St. Augustine and Boethius use it to denote the fleeting nature of human thoughts, morals, and the physical world, contrasting these transient states with the eternal or immutable divine [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. Similarly, Cicero’s discussions on the mutability of matter and bodies highlight the inherent variability of the natural world [6], [7], [8], while John Locke and William James extend this notion to intellectual and experiential constructs [9], [10]. Romantic and modern writers, such as Shelley and Joyce, illustrate mutable human feelings and identity, reflecting the ceaseless ebb and flow of personal and emotional life [11], [12], [13], [14]. In each instance, “mutable” serves as a critical lens through which authors examine the instability and dynamism fundamental to existence.
- Now all thought which thus varies is mutable; and no mutable thing is eternal: but our God is eternal."
— from The Confessions of St. Augustine by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine - And this order, by its intrinsic immutability, restricts things mutable which otherwise would ebb and flow at random.
— from The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius - And therefore the evil will could not exist in an evil nature, but in a nature at once good and mutable, which this vice could injure.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine - If souls please thee, be they loved in God: for they too are mutable, but in Him are they firmly stablished; else would they pass, and pass away.
— from The Confessions of St. Augustine by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine - And true too, that whatsoever is mutable, gives us to understand a certain want of form, whereby it receiveth a form, or is changed, or turned.
— from The Confessions of St. Augustine by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine - Now, according to your doctrine, all the elements are mutable; all bodies, therefore, are mutable.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations by Marcus Tullius Cicero - Now, according to your doctrine, all the elements are mutable; all bodies, therefore, are mutable.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations by Marcus Tullius Cicero - By the same reason, if all the elements are mutable, every body is mutable.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations by Marcus Tullius Cicero - Thirdly, or their simple ones mutable and undetermined.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 by John Locke - The mutable in experience must be founded on immutability.
— from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James - How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - The image of a solitary (ipsorelative) mutable (aliorelative) man.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce - This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable, and cannot withstand you, if you say that it shall not.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
