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Literary notes about Permanence (AI summary)

The word "permanence" in literature serves as a multifaceted concept, employed to denote both abstract, eternal qualities and concrete, measurable states. Philosophers like Kant [1] and Schopenhauer [2] use it to distinguish between experiential constancy and metaphysical substance, suggesting that what we perceive is more a function of our experience than an inherent attribute. In contrast, literary figures such as Hawthorne [3] and Montgomery [4] use the term to highlight essential, yet sometimes fragile, qualities within human nature and relationships. Meanwhile, sociologists and historians [5, 6, 7] invoke permanence to discuss the enduring stability of social structures and traditions, and even in more personal or ephemeral contexts—as seen in discussions of art and emotion [8, 9]—the term oscillates between representing immutable truths and degrees of likelihood. This palette of usages illustrates the word's versatility in capturing the tension between lasting essence and the mutable, often transient, conditions of life.
  1. But permanence can never be proved of the concept of a substance, as a thing in itself, but for the purposes of experience only.
    — from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant
  2. Thus the law of causality is essentially bound up with that of the permanence of substance; they reciprocally derive significance from each other.
    — from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer
  3. Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman.
    — from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  4. This new love that has come into her life seems such a wonderful thing to her that I think she hardly dares believe in its permanence.
    — from Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery
  5. Lastly, the most striking example of the permanence of social structure which I have met is in the Hawaiian Islands.
    — from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park
  6. The permanence and solidarity of the group rest finally upon this body of common experience and tradition.
    — from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park
  7. There is something very curious in the permanence of race conditions after they have been fixed for a thousand years or so in a people.
    — from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park
  8. Permanence is a word of degrees.
    — from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson
  9. Permanence Of Written Emotion For all emotions written words are a bad medium.
    — from Etiquette by Emily Post

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