Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Christopher Isherwood (Anglo-American Novelist, Playwright)

Christopher Isherwood (1904–86,) fully Christopher William Bradshaw-Isherwood, was a prolific Anglo-American writer who worked in many genres, comprising fiction, drama, film, travel, and autobiography. He immigrated to the USA in 1939 and became interested in Hindu philosophy.

Born in Disley, Cheshire, England, Isherwood was educated at Repton and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and studied medicine at King’s College, London, 1928–29, but gave it up to teach English in Berlin 1929–33. His best-known works, Mr. Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939,) were centered on his outsider’s view of the decadence of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism.

In collaboration with poet W. H. Auden, a school friend, and later lover, Isherwood wrote three prose-verse plays with political overtones, which use Expressionist technique, music-hall parody, and ample symbolism to portray the social climate: The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935,) The Ascent of F6 (1937,) and On the Frontier (1938.)

Isherwood traveled in China with Auden in 1938 and wrote Journey to a War (1939.) ln 1939, he emigrated to California to be a scriptwriter for MGM and took U.S. citizenship in 1946. The Broadway hit I am a Camera (1951; film 1955,) and the musical Cabaret (1966; film 1972,) were based on his earlier Berlin stories, especially Sally Bowles (1937.) Later novels include Prater Violet (1945,) The World in the Evening (1954,) and Meeting by the River (1967.)

In the 1940s, Isherwood became much interested in oriental religion, specifically Vedānta philosophy. With Swami Prabhavananda, he produced an acclaimed translation of the Hindu religious classic The Bhagavad-Gītā (1944) and a collection of the aphorisms of Patanjali (1953.)

Isherwood also translated Charles Baudelaire’s Intimate Journals (1947,) and wrote several autobiographical books, including A Single Man (1964; film 2009) and Christopher and His Kind (1977.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Christopher Isherwood

Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique, and not too much imagination.
Christopher Isherwood
Topics: Life and Living, Life

Horror is always aware of its cause; terror never is. That is precisely what makes terror terrifying.
Christopher Isherwood
Topics: Fear

A minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of a threat to the majority, real or imaginary.
Christopher Isherwood

A grown man who can shed tears without embarrassment is like a yogi who has learned to expel toxic matter from his body by consciously speeding up the peristaltic rhythm. He can eliminate many of life’s poisons.
Christopher Isherwood

I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it.
Christopher Isherwood
Topics: Belief

Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.
Christopher Isherwood

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