Literary notes about Sentient (AI summary)
In literature, the term "sentient" frequently denotes an attribute beyond mere biological life, often implying a quality of awareness, emotion, or moral sensitivity. Authors invoke it to highlight both the capacities of living creatures to experience and suffer, as in reflections on cruelty toward a sentient being ([1]) or debates concerning the existence of feeling in a lifeless world ([2]), and to imbue natural phenomena or abstract ideas with life-like vitality, as when a stream or a mist is described as sentient ([3], [4]). Philosophical and ethical discussions also draw on the concept, extending it to explore the unique status of beings capable of moral discernment and creative thought ([5], [6], [7]). Thus, "sentient" becomes a versatile term that enriches narrative texture by merging the tangible with the introspective, inviting readers to consider the deeper implications of awareness and experience.
- My only consolation is that I had not the power of venting these barbarities on any sentient creature.
— from My Reminiscences by Rabindranath Tagore - First of all, it appears that such words can have no application or relevancy in a world in which no sentient life exists.
— from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James - The sentient stream sang loud and gay to greet her approaching, with fluent liquid fingers striking more joyously the chords of his stony lyre.
— from The Coming of Cuculain by Standish O'Grady - Over all the fields was a pale mist, waving and eddying in such impalpable air currents that it seemed to have a sentient life of its own.
— from Jerome, A Poor Man: A Novel by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman - [Pg 147] belief concerning the artistic process, in fact, the idyllic belief that every sentient man is an artist.
— from The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - Nothing is moral, that does not tend to the well-being of sentient beings.
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete ContentsDresden Edition—Twelve Volumes by Robert Green Ingersoll - As Priestley says: "Nothing is requisite to make any man whatever he is, but a sentient principle with this single law....
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James
