All's Well That Ends Well

“ So we stood a moment, and I had no words, but she spake at last in a hard, snarling voice, such as she oftenest used to me, but worse.
"'Now at last the time has come when thou art of no more use to me; for I can see thee what thou hast got for thyself. But know now that thou hast not yet drunk of the Well at the World's End, and that it will not avail thee to flee out of this wood; for as long as I live thou wilt not be able to get out of reach of my hand; and I shall live long: I shall live long. ”

“ Let the world end, yes, let the world end before this strange new companion, gained in want, and poverty, and suffering, and now lost by reason of comforts and health, shall shed one tear of suffering! ”

“ I began to think how everything ends at last. Love ends, sorrow ends, and to our mortal sense everything that is mortal ends, whether that which is spiritual has a perpetual effect beyond these eyes or not. ”

“ And, as man's heart beats high with hope and ever throbs with justice, those occurrences that fall out as he would wish them are the ones he loves the best; in this we find the reason for "poetic justice"—the "happy ending." ”

“ Now when they saw this they were exceedingly moved and they looked on one another, and each saw that the other was pale, with glistening eyes, since they were to come to the very point of their doom, and that it should be seen whether there were no such thing as the Well in all the earth, but that they had been chasing a fair-hued cloud; or else their Quest should be achieved and they should have the world before them, and they happy and mighty, and of great worship amidst all men. ”

“ The allurement of hope, the flattery of the present, the sweetness of pleasure, the well-being which falls to our lot, amid the lamentations of a suffering world governed by chance and error, draws us back to it and rivets our bonds anew. ”

“ Pain and pleasure, good and evil, come to us from unexpected sources. It is not there, where we have gathered up our brightest hopes, that the dawn of happiness breaks. It is not there, where we have glanced our eye with affright, that we find the deadliest gloom. ”

“ In a flash he realized his alternative⁠—the dreary desolation of human progress with its grinding future, the joy and glory of a soulless happiness that reason denied and yet the heart welcomed as an ultimate truth. ”

“ The true story has no end—no end. But endlessly dreary would the story be, were there no Life living by its own will, no perfect Will, one with an almighty heart, no Love in whom we live and move and have our being. ”

“ To submit absolutely to him is the only reason: circumstance as well as all being must then bud and blossom as the rose. And it will!—what matter whether in this world or the next, if one day I know my life as a perfect bliss, having neither limitation nor hindrance nor pain nor sorrow more than it can dominate in peace and perfect assurance? ”

“ He felt what all we poor mortals have to feel sooner or later—the pitiless force of the Things that Must Be, not only without us but (where the real trouble lies) within, all the inevitable tormenting of one's high resolves, those inevitable seasons when the better self is forgotten. ”

“ It is plainly for our good that He torments us. Should not then we, in our turn, realising that Pain is our greatest happiness, seek, ourselves, for more pain, and also teach our fellow human beings that it is only through pain that we can reach the true heart and meaning of life? ”

“ Is he feeling as I feel now?—as if Heaven had somehow come down to earth and shed a new loveliness over the mountains, and the valleys, and the sea?—as if one must always be good because of the joy in the world, and make everyone so happy that evil must eventually die out? ”

“ I insisted. “Dark thoughts can be kept down by sheer determination. But it is better to fill the mind so full with what is pleasant that no room is left for gloom. There is so much to enjoy it must take a real sorrow to disturb a heart resolved to be happy.” ”

“ In opposition to that, the outcry revived of late against happiness, as a motive, has its full right. But I mean by happiness, man’s true well-being—that of his higher, not his lower nature—that of his nature, not for a moment, but for ever. ”

“ All the delight, as well as the pomp of this world, will end. All is over then. Nothing remains but two eternities, the one of glory and the other of punishment; one of bliss, the other of misery; one of joy, and the other of suffering; the just in heaven, the sinners in hell. [Examine how you stand , and especially with regard to your besetting sin.] Poor, then, will be that man who has loved the world, and who, for the miserable joys of this world, has lost everything — everything, soul, body, heaven, and God. [Awaken your contrition, and make a firm resolution.] ”

“ Comes not of hatred of the wrong, nor love
Of the good, but rather from the shame which Pride
Knows which has gone astray and spent itself
Upon unworthy ends. So this strong soul
Laboured on unfulfilled. Yet who shall trace
By what hidden processes of waste and pain
The great Will is fulfilled, and doth achieve
The victory of Good? ”

“ There's neither rhyme nor reason in it that I can see. But it's the rule of life that it should end in death. For some the end is swift—for some it's slow—some know when it's coming—some don't,—the last are the happiest. ”

“ I've no hope nor courage to try to get well—I am just sinking under the burden of my unhappy, unmanly lite, and my best hope may soon be to become unconscious and remain so forever. And yet I fully believe that one kind word from you would inspire me with the wish, the power to live. ”

“ Down there one thinks of one's work, one's little vexations and pleasures, one's eating and drinking and ease and pain. One lives, and one must die. Down there and everyday—our sorrow seemed the end of life.... ”

“ We were full of hope, and it clung about us to the end, hope for the life together we should lead, out of it all, out of the battle and struggle, the wild and empty passions, the empty arbitrary ‘thou shalt’ and ‘thou shalt not’ of the world. ”

“ Therefore ye do but right to seek to the Well at the World's End, that ye may the better accomplish that which behoveth you, and that ye may serve your fellows and deliver them from the thralldom of those that be strong and unwise and unkind, of whom we have heard strange tales. ”

“ What will be the end?—the end of her objectless wandering, apart from all love, caring for human beings only through her pride, clinging to life only as the hunted wounded brute clings to it? God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such misery! ”

“ Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! ”

“ One of the surest tags of the American short story has been its happy ending. No matter what vicissitudes the hero or heroine may have undergone, what problems and tragedies may have overtaken them, what unmendable exploits of circumstance or fate they may have been subjected to, in the end all must be well with them. The happy ending is a direct result of our uplift optimism, of our Pollyanna philosophy of life, of our fear of reality. We have always justified it on the ground of our national psychology, which, we claim, is buoyant and aggressive and won’t accept defeat. ”

“ Let the intenseness of our happiness border upon misery, because we can make Him no return. Let our head become waters, and our eyes a fountain of tears,—tears of humble repentance, of solemn joy, of silent admiration, of exalted adoration, of raptured desires, of inflamed transports, of speechless awe. ”

“ It is a loud cry, not merely of one intoxicated and torn heart, but of the claim of inner and true emotion to be still the greatest force of life; the one thing worth having—worth living for, longing for, dying for. ”

“ The end in both cases, however, is a helpless breaking-down in the face of the constantly approaching Unknown, or the banishment of all thoughts on the subject as far as possible, or finally, in the bravest cases, a stoical surrender to an unavoidable fate—unless there is a hope that life will continue beyond. ”

“ Whatever I do, wherever I go, is not the result always the same, is not the end always there?”
“Go die, you who are doomed to die! Go suffer, you who are doomed to suffer! You do not live to be happy. ”

“ Good could never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning. ”

“ It may be—indeed to my mind it seems just—that, when our life has closed, when evil or good is no longer a choice for us, we may still have to witness the working out of the train of consequences we have laid. ”

“ I cannot yet decide whether I have lost a great happiness, the greatest that could come to any man, or escaped the worst misfortune that could befall me. But, such as it is, I will try to set the fact honestly down. ”

“ Just why this special love for hidden crosses? "My God, what joy can he greater than to suffer for Thy love? The more the suffering is and the less it appears before men, the more it is to Thy honor and glory." ”

“ Don't you like that better than reading on and on because you have set yourself to do it, and ending with a feeling of relief because it is done, at last? These human hearts are naughty things and need more grace continually. ”

“ What I now felt was not that aspiration toward the Infinite, that love for universal nature, with which my whole being had been filled of late; but I was consumed by a thirst, a longing for happiness,—I could not yet call it by its name, but for a happiness beyond expression, even if it should annihilate me. It was almost an agony of mingled joy and pain. ”

“ What is the end of quarrels, but that everyone is fretted and vexed, and no one gains anything! Whereas by endeavouring to please and love each other, the end is happiness to ourselves, and joy to everyone around us. ”

“ In all that we do, we wish, more or less, to come to the end; we are impatient to finish and glad to be done. But the last scene of all, the general end, is something that, as a rule, we wish as far off as may be. ”

“ Now, too, as when it first began,
Life is yet life, and man is man.
For all that breathe beneath the heaven's high cope,
Joy with grief mixes, with despondence hope.
Hope conquers cowardice, joy grief ”

“ He saw that nothing was good and nothing was evil; things were merely adapted to an end. ”

“ Oh dear! What is to become of us? At the rate we are going on now, every thing must soon be lost. To think of what we have sacrificed and are still sacrificing, yet all to no purpose. Every comfort is gone. ”

“ This is always the case where the heart fails to accept the lesson taught. By submission to sorrow the sweetest traits of character are developed, as some fruits are brought to perfection only by frost. Misfortune should act upon us or upon our feelings like fire upon old tenements, which are consumed only to be rebuilt with greater perfection. The winds of adversity sweep over the soul and scatter the fairest blossoms of hope. But the blossoms fall that the fruit may appear. So with us, when the flowers of hope are gone, there come the fruits of long-suffering, patience, faith, and love. ”

“ And if the end were attained, if at last you emerged from the trial ever beautiful and ever young, defying time and evil, and lifted above the natural decay of flesh and intellect, who shall say that the awesome change would prove a happy one? Choose, my son, and may the Power who rules all things, and who says ‘thus far shalt thou go, and thus much shalt thou learn,’ direct the choice to your own happiness and the happiness of the world, which, in the event of your success, you would one day certainly rule by the pure force of accumulated experience.— Farewell! ”

“ But slowly as the recovery came, it did come; and the more you see of us, the clearer it will be to you that we are happy. That we live amidst beauty without any fear of becoming effeminate; that we have plenty to do, and on the whole enjoy doing it. What more can we ask of life? ”

“ When that life should come to which I secretly looked forward,—when my soul should bound into a more radiant atmosphere, where the clouds, if any were, should be all gold- and silver-tinted, and where my sorrows, love-colored, were to be sweeter than other people's joys,—in that life, there would be moments of sweet abandonment to the simple sense of happiness. ”

“ Is it not worth while striving to be good, when goodness is to bring eternal happiness? Is it not worth while endeavoring to overcome our evils, when those evils are the only barriers to our entrance on these joys? ”

“ Again have we been reminded that the whole course of human life and destiny hinges often upon a single circumstance, and that in the loom of fate the breaking of a single strand is adequate to mar forever life's golden cloth. ”