Careless

“ Carelessness is a dangerous enemy. A careless little girl set a bottle on a chair within reach of her baby sister, and now poor baby is blind! It only took a moment to put the bottle in the right or wrong place. So sometimes the carelessness of one minute causes a life time of sorrow. Welcome to our garden. I am glad you mean to work to extend the usefulness of The Pansy. ”

“ The careless man will not be troubled by a little more or less of dust on his garment; but he who, so to speak, has a habit of frequently looking at himself in the glass, cannot but feel the smallest speck a burden. And thus, just because of my pride, my little sins have weighed on me far more than many a man can say of his grievous ill-doings, and to atone for them seemed almost impossible. ”

“ CHARLES. Here then—Bumpers—you Rogues—Bumpers! Maria—Maria——
FIRST GENTLEMAN. Maria who?
CHARLES. Oh, damn the Surname 'tis too formal to be register'd in Love's calendar—but now Careless beware—beware—we must have Beauty's superlative.
FIRST GENTLEMAN. Nay Never study [,] Careless—we'll stand to the Toast—tho' your mistress should want an eye—and you know you have a song will excuse you——
CARELESS. Egad so I have—and I'll give him the song instead of the Lady.——
SONG.—AND CHORUS—4 Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen; Here's to the widow of fifty ”

“ Unless we are careful for nothing, because we have committed our cares to Him, we must be full of cares, harassed by them, troubled, p. 10afflicted, distressed; or, being careless, we shall be deemed worthless, and left to drift upon shoals and into quicksands, and to sink in the gulf of destruction. ”

“ There is such a thing as a noble and dangerous form of carelessness, which allows of profound conclusions and insight: the carelessness of the self-reliant and over-rich soul, which has never troubled itself about friends, but which knows only hospitality and knows how to practise it; whose heart and house are open to all who will enter—beggar, cripple, or king. ”

“ My aged, honored father gravely insisted, all his life long, that no accidents, as they are termed, in human life, ever take place, unless there is in the first place, carelessness, somewhere. Much more is it true that many an individual who sickens and loses his life, is the victim of carelessness ”

“ Cibber," said I, rather hurt at Tarleton's speech, though the object of it seemed to hear this description with the most unruffled composure—"Mr. Cibber, I am happy and proud of an introduction to the author of the 'Careless Husband.' Here is my address; oblige me with a visit at your leisure."
"How could you be so galling to the poor devil?" said I, when Cibber, with a profusion of bows and compliments, had left us to ourselves. ”

“ It is a thing so fragile that, like a sensitive plant exposed to the cold blast, it withers if not guarded tenderly. It withers none the less surely because one’s carelessness may not be deliberate. And I knew that my carelessness in a way had been deliberate. ”

“ By your gross carelessness you have lost us the rubber, a mistake which one intelligent glance at your hand would have avoided. Come, there are other pursuits, are there not, in which you wish to be engaged? ”

“ Does it matter very much what I say and do now, provided I make my peace with Him before I die? And so will come over you not merely a carelessness about religious duties, about prayer, reading, church-going, but worse still, a carelessness about right and wrong. You will be in danger of caring little about controlling your passions, about speaking the truth, about being just and merciful to your fellow-men. And then, when your conscience wakes you up at times, and cries, Prepare to meet thy God! ”

“ The things that were there had evidently drifted there and got heaped up by accident—homely things most of them, and disposed with the carelessness natural to a man who had little belief or hope in his future. ”

“ Little do we think, indeed, how our own words may some day stand witness against us. The application of the Gospel is too plain to need any explanation, but there is one point I would impress upon you particularly this morning: our carelessness. We are all stewards of our own souls, and concerning the care we have taken of them, the use to which we have put the many opportunities of merit, the investment, as it were, we have made of the innumerable graces offered us, we shall have to render a strict account, and at what moment we know not. ”

“ Carelessness, carried to a certain pitch, becomes unchristian. "It is not well," says an old proverb, "to talk of the gallows to a man whose father was hanged." Some persons are so notoriously absent or forgetful, that their friends will say of them: "We must not tell B—-; he is certain to tread on somebody's corns. ”

“ Carelessness may exist in any degree, and in this respect it differs from the other form of mens rea. Intention either exists or it does not; there can be no question of the degree in which it is present. ”

“ You are liable to lose your life every day by the carelessness of some one. The house in which you are to sleep on a cold winter's [Pg 62] night may be burned down by the neglect of those who take care of the fires. ”

“ Here you are going to read about the abuse of a very useful thing, indeed—a match. When things are a common, everyday part of the household, people are apt to treat them carelessly; and carelessness always means trouble. ”

“ The carelessness is ignorance. Their form of it is not half so shocking as that of the mother who will tremble at the slightest sign of suffering in her child, but will hear him lie against his brother without the smallest discomfort. ”

“ We cannot tell for ourselves or others any way by which our souls shall certainly be saved, in spite of carelessness; or any way by which, carelessness shall be overcome necessarily; all that can be done is, to point out how it may be overcome, by what means the soul may be helped in its endeavours; not how those endeavours and holy desires may be rendered needless. ”

“ Carelessness and in-attention alone can afford us any remedy. For this reason I rely entirely upon them; ”

“ It is in our religious life just as in everything else—spiritual carelessness or neglect must mean spiritual weakness. In all other matters we look for results in some proportion to our efforts. As we sow we expect to reap. ”

“ No iron necessity binds men to the fatal course they take, but a perverse will and an unbelieving heart. 7. This carelessness is a state of mind that provokes God to withdraw His Spirit. Deeply criminal. No apathy in heaven, there ought to be none on earth. Must it not offend God, to say that He has failed to reveal Himself in a way to interest His creatures? ”

“ But petty unfaithfulness, carelessness, and stupidity on the part of your servants; little vexations and cross-accidents in your daily life; the ceaseless cares of managing a household and family, and possibly of making an effort to maintain appearances with very inadequate means;—all those little annoying things which are not misfortune but worry, effectually blister away the enjoyment of life while they last, and serve no good end in respect to mental and moral discipline. ”

“ He was dominated by the carelessness of happiness, by the high indifference of joy. ”

“ Cibber played the part of Sir Novelty Fashion, and his performance as Lord Foppington, the same character renamed, in Vanbrugh’s piece, established his reputation as an actor. In 1698 he was assailed, with other dramatists, by Jeremy Collier in the Short View. In November 1702 he produced, at Drury Lane, She Wou’d and She Wou’d Not; or the Kind Impostor, one of his best comedies; and in 1704, for himself and Mrs Oldfield, The Careless Husband, which Horace Walpole classed, with Cibber’s Apology, as “worthy of immortality.” ”

“ I can guess clearly how it alose before: it alose thlough the sheer carelessness of the first men. The land was at first so vely, vely much more than enough for all, that the men did not take the tlouble to make an allangement among themselves; and afterwards the habit of carelessness was confirmed; till at last the vely oliginal carelessness must have got to have the look of an allangement; and so the stleam which began in a little long ended in a big long, the long glowing more and more fixed and fatal as the stleam lolled further flom the source. ”

“ to lose both looks like carelessness. ”

“ Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. ”

“ But as I see you to-day, knowing your radiant childhood, and the good fortune which was yours for years, and the heart-tearing shock which came so cruelly, I see a sickness more dire and fatal than any for which you have ever yet been treated. The beauty and youth and charity of your spirit are mortally ill. I see your soul an emaciated remnant, a skeleton of its possible self. It threatens to die before your body. Selfish sorrow has infected and permeated your once lovely, better self, and to-day you have no true goodness left. You are good to others that they may be better to you. ”

“ So, when she listened to the fervid exhorter, revealing the new highway to heaven, that glorious way where the good Lord carries all our burdens, if we will just cast them upon Him, a great light illumined her soul. Why a weary life of strife and misunderstanding? She would give herself without reserve, and even in the giving she could feel her burden roll away. In a flash it seemed, life had changed. She was now the Lord's—mind, soul and body. He directed; she followed. He could not lead her wrong, and, as all her impulses and desires were now divine, she could do no wrong. ”

“ Father, wife, God himself, have given you the best they have: an honorable name, a lifetime of devotion, the full ten talents. For these, you have returned dishonor, unchastity and self-indulgent hypocrisy. You have begged extenuation on the basis of nervous ill- health and temporary irresponsibility, both of which you have brought upon yourself by violating the laws of right-living. It is your soul that is sick. You are not fit to live free and equal with righteous men and women. ”

“ Four useful lives are emptying the best of their strength, ability and love into years of service that you may know a poor, low-grade, selfish, physical comfort. You are taking from them and others consideration, self-sacrifice, loyalty, unstinted devotion, and giving in return only ungrateful dollars. You are rich in these, but poorer than Lazarus in the least of the qualities which make life worth living a day, which keep Death from being a haunting terror. ”

“ And so fate, or rather Providence, took the reins from the weak, passionate hands that were so unfit to hold them, and threw him back, helpless and baffled, on his bed of pain; there to learn, week by week, through weary sickness and still more weary convalescence, the lesson that only suffering could teach him—that it were well to forgive others their sins, even as he hoped his might be forgiven. ”

“ Carey, worn out with anxiety and watching, her nerves shaken by lack of sleep, her spirits depressed by debt and difficulties which thickened around her, found it hard indeed to let patience have its perfect work, and to place firm trust in the changeless love of Him who so sorely tried her. ”

“ The hour of our misfortune may be to-day, to-morrow, or the day after. Every chance incident of untoward aspect may herald the bad tidings, and we live in unceasing expectancy of evil. Do what I would, a dreary and despondent gloom now settled on me; I felt as if I were predestined to some grievous misfortune, against which I was utterly powerless, and the hour of which I could neither hasten nor retard. How bitterly I reproached myself for making an acquaintance with the Count! For years I had lived a life of solitary seclusion, avoiding even the commonest forms of acquaintanceship. ”

“ For nearly twenty years this oversensitive girl had known few hours of understanding and sympathy. For a week or two she merely rested; then one evening, it seemed precipitate, but some way it was as easy as anything she had ever done, she told the story we have heard. There, revealed, was the defect of a life, a problem to be worked out by the analytic student of mankind. Was it to introduce a little saving recklessness, the redeeming truth of honesty and justice to self, or the neutralizing of self-negation by the acceptance of merited worth! ”

“ Alas! my darlings, do not we, who are aged and have experience, know that it is those who are not taken by calamity and suffering who gradually fall into that hardness of heart, which prevents the spirit from feeling one of the most wholesome of truths—that indifference is danger, and that a neglect of the things which belong to a better life, and which serve to prepare us for it, is the great omission of those who are not called upon to suffer. ”

“ God made you, 'shaped you out of a little clay.' Ye were small once; a few years ago ye were not at all. Ye have beauty, strength, thoughts, 'ye have compassion on one another.' Old age comes-on you, and gray hairs; your strength fades into feebleness ”

“ My own boy, this is only one of the dark hours, when the evil one tempts you in your weakness; need I remind you of what you have so often preached to others, that as thy day thy strength will be, and that help never comes beforehand? ”

“ Sad lesson to poor human pride, that believes so much in its own efforts, and yet that many a one laid by in the vigor of life and work, has to learn so painfully. Oh, hardest of all work, to do nothing while others toil round us, to wait and look on, knowing God's ways are not our ways, that the patient endurance of helplessness is the duty ordained for us!
Carrie had to undergo another ordeal the following day, for she was just settled on her couch when Mrs. Smedley entered unannounced. ”

“ A new life came when she was twenty-eight, with the saving helper who heard the cry of the suffering nerves, and interpreted their message. She had told him all. His wise kindness made it easy to tell all. He showed her the wrong invalidism thoughts, the unhappy, depressing, devitalizing attitude toward death. He revealed truths unthought by her of manhood and womanhood. He pointed out the poisonous trail of her enmity, and she put it from her. He inspired her to make friends with her nerves, who were so devotedly striving to save her. ”