Abuse

“ Look thou within thee, ere again ill-using me.
Art thou aware
Of nothing there
Which might abuse thee, as thou art abusing me?
A brain that mourns thine unredeemed rascality?
A soul that weeps at thy threadbare morality? ”

“ What a perversion, an abuse, an iniquity against the law of reciprocal righteousness, to call thousands together and get them, some certain ones, to seem conspicuous and devoted for one sole and grand object, and then all at once, with obliquity, open an avalanche on them for some imputed evil or monstrosity, for which, whatever be the wound or injury inflicted, they were both too fatigued and hurried with surprise, and too straightened for time, to be properly prepared. ”

“ The moment the solemn hereditary mask covering up an abuse is brusquely and adroitly torn aside, we feel a curious spasm, the corners of our mouth stretching apart and our breast heaving violently, as at a kind of sudden relief, an unexpected deliverance, experiencing a sense of our recovered superiority, of our revenge being gratified and of an act of justice having been performed. ”

“ Will nothing less than so many lives, and the ruin of a whole city, serve to atone for an abuse done to one foolish girl? By their question they tacitly reflect upon their father, as if he would have been content to let them deal with his daughter as with an harlot. Note, It is common for those who run into one extreme, to reproach and censure those who keep the mean, as if they ran into the other. Those who condemn the rigour of revenge, shall be misrepresented, as if they countenanced and justified the offence. ”

“ It rests upon no moral basis, it finds no stronghold in the national character. Outsiders may think the average American citizen strangely tolerant of abuses, and indeed I find him smiling with placid amusement at things which, were I in his place, would make my blood boil. But he is under no illusion as to the real nature of these things. An abuse remains an abuse in his eyes, though he may not for the moment see his way to rectifying it. ”

“ That this sacred passion has been most degradingly abused is witnessed to upon almost every hand. If man could behold in one scene the awful consequences of this abuse it would be the most beastly and hellish that could possibly be pictured. ”

“ Are we dogs, that we should be abused on every occasion? Scoundrels, ruffians, liars, thieves, you had no expression strong enough, no abuse coarse enough for us! Indeed, had we patiently borne such a life, we should have been unworthy to be called men! ”

“ Although her work is filled with maxims of the highest morality and purest wisdom, it called forth such violent abuse, that her husband appealed for her from the judgment of her contemporaries to that of mankind. ”

“ But does the abuse of a thing forbid its use? Is it not rather a plea all the stronger for its right use? What good things are not abused, and the best the most? Shall all good things be ruled out, because they only can be abused? ”

“ I have been actuated all my life from feelings of honorable emulation, but not those of empty ambition, nor the idle vanity of commanding the plaudits merely of the world. Circumstances have thrown me into prominent and responsible situations, and like yourself, General, I have received a full share of abuse. ”

“ Even our affections, so pure and beautiful in themselves, may, by abuse, be made sources of mischief, evil and disease. The abuses are too well known to require repetition here. The powers of energy and resistance, beneficial in themselves, in their abuse bring about the spirit of contradiction, violence and combat. ”

“ But the very contempt and scorn, the systematic and extravagant disparagement of which I was the object, served, perhaps, to magnify my few merits, and to render me of some account, whether deserving or not. A man is sometimes made great, by the greatness of the abuse a portion of mankind may think proper to heap upon him. ”

“ Pure abuse, however, as serving no good end, I have, wherever possible, deliberately avoided reading, wishing, indeed, to keep, not only hatred, malice, and uncharitableness, but even every trace of irritation, far away from my side of a discussion which demands not only good-temper, but largeness, clearness, and many-sidedness of mind, if it is to guide us to even provisional solutions. ”

“ An abuse committed in the age and place we live in, or any other, which will by the scandal imbolden others to the like, may not be complied in, without so great reason, as will notably preponderate the evil consequents. ”

“ An accusation of immorality in oneself or in one's parents is contumelious in a high degree. Our mothers are a favorite target for the shafts of contumely that through them reach us. Abuse is not the only vehicle of contumely; scorn, wanton ridicule, indecent mockery and caricature that cover the unfortunate victim with shame and confusion serve the purpose as well. To strike one, to spit on one and other ignoble attacks and assaults belong to the same category of crime. ”

“ But no sooner in my just resentment had I started to upbraid her, than she—as now for the first time realising the cause of her companion's misfortune—began to heap upon me terms of the most violent and shameful abuse ”

“ The abuse which I call attention to, is promiscuous and unannounced mental practice where there is no necessity for it, or the motive is mercenary, or one can to advantage speak the truth audibly; then the ease is not exceptional. As a rule, one has no more right to enter the mind of a person, stir, upset, and adjust his thoughts without his knowledge or consent, than one has to enter a house, unlock the desk, displace the furniture, and suit one's self in the arrangement and management of another man's property. ”

“ We do invicem angariare, contemn, consult, vex, torture, molest, and hold one another's noses to the grindstone hard, provoke, rail, scoff, calumniate, challenge, hate, abuse (hard-hearted, implacable, malicious, peevish, inexorable as we are) , to satisfy our lust or private spleen, for [4610] toys, trifles, and impertinent occasions, spend ourselves, goods, friends, fortunes, to be revenged on our adversary, to ruin him and his. ”

“ Smothering, doting, pampering, over-indulgence, treating the child as an extension of the parent, not respecting the child's boundaries, and burdening the child with excessive expectations are also forms of abuse. ”

“ For one abuse that it pretends to avert, it gives rise to innumerable others which are worse, and from which society afterwards suffers seriously, without taking into account the cause that produced them. ”

“ Another abuse is the neglect, contempt, or misapplied fear of not directly religious occupations and labours which, however otherwise appropriate or even necessary to this soul’s growth and destination, tend to disturb its quiet and to absorb a part of its time and attention. ”

“ "The horrid cruelties and outrages that once and a while find their way into the papers,—such cases as Prue's, for example,—what do they come from? In many cases, it is a gradual hardening process on both sides,—the owner growing more and more cruel, as the servant more and more callous. Whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline. ”

“ A gross and brutal abuse may work an opposite effect by the law of contrarieties, but in ordinary cases this is the ordinary course of events. In common Christian families a boy will appraise his mother at his father’s valuation. ”

“ To abuse means to use wrongly, or to injure. We have talked about the uses of the female organs and also about the care of them. Sometimes, I have watched children rub their eyes until they were quite red and inflamed. ”

“ Thirty years ago, when I was writing on theological subjects, I came in for a very pretty share of abuse, such as it was the fashion of that day, at least in certain quarters, to bestow upon those who were outside of the high-walled enclosures in which many persons ”

“ Instead, hundreds of thousands of children each year suffer abuse and neglect, most often at the hands of their own parents or other family members. The horrors of physical or emotional trauma deny these young people their childhood, and our abused children carry the psychological scars of their mistreatment throughout their lives. ”

“ It defines and asserts the right, it points out the abuse; and it endeavors to secure the right, and to guard against the abuse, by giving redress to the sufferer, and by punishing the offender. For years had it been the practise to transport obnoxious persons out of the realm into distant parts, under the pretext of punishment, or of safe custody. ”

“ At my abuses reckon up their own:
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown;
Unless this general evil they maintain,
All men are bad and in their badness reign. ”

“ Of the various forms of abuse which spring from ignorance or corruption in the exercise of the most important of our human faculties, two only will be dwelt on—viz., masturbation and fornication. These are the two radical vices from which all forms of unnatural vice spring. The first is the especial temptation of the child, the last the temptation or corruption of the adult. ”

“ Among the persons who were guilty of such serious abuse we have in the first place nurses, governesses, and other servants to whom children are left much too carelessly, then in regrettable frequency come the teachers ”

“ And, in fact, where have our young people learned the shameful habit of self-abuse, and many other foul, unnatural crimes, that are bringing so many thousands to an early grave? Ask those unhappy victims, ask our physicians throughout the country, and they will tell you that, in almost every instance, it was from the evil companions with whom they associated in the common schools. ”

“ Aside from the injury the girl does herself by yielding to this habit, there is one other reason which appeals to the conscience, and that is, self-abuse is an offence against moral law it is putting to a vile, selfish use the organs which were given for a high, sacred purpose.
29. "LET THEM ALONE, except to care for them when care is needed, and they may prove the greatest blessing you have ever known. They were given you that you might become a mother, the highest office to which God has ever called one of His creatures. Do not debase yourself and become lower than the beasts of the field. ”

“ A course of vice once entered upon is not easily left. A youth who once gives himself up to sin, rarely escapes from going headlong to destruction.
An Indignant Father.—A case came to our knowledge through a gentleman who brought his daughter to us for treatment for the effects of self-abuse, of a father who adopted a summary method of curing his son of the evil practice. ”

“ Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse! ”

“ As there exists a certain abuse, which is characterized by the most abominable savagery, but which nevertheless some of the faithful have stupidly adopted. We, prompted by motives of humanity, have decreed that all further mangling of the human body, the very mention of which fills the soul with horror, should be henceforth abolished. ”

“ Perhaps in ages when much most ignorant abuse of women prevailed in literature—abuse springing mainly out of the vile prejudices and superstitions of the mediæval Church—some such figure might have been expected to arise. ”

“ II. The guilt and danger which attend the vice.—1. It is an ungrateful abuse of God’s bounty. 2. It divests the man of his native dignity and sinks him below the brutal herds. 3. Is injurious to the body as well as mind. 4. Consumes men’s substance. 5. Wastes a man’s conscience as well as his substance. 6. Intemperance generates other vices—impure lustings, angry passions, profane language, insolent manners, obstinacy of heart, and contempt of reproof. ”

“ What use was it to argue with a little idiot like this? Indeed, peasants never do argue; they use abuse. ”

“ When people are subject to violent fits of choler, and to an unrestrained licence of words and actions, only in the company of those who, from their unfortunate situation in life, are obliged to bear such abuse, it is a plain proof that considerations which regard their own personal safety, have some influence on their minds in the midst of their fury, and instruct them to be mad certa ratione modoque. ”

“ Abuse is generally prompted by anger, and vented in harsh and unseemly words. It is more personal and coarse than invective. Abuse generally takes place in private quarrels; invective in writing or public discussions. ”

“ Where even the child itself can tell the difference is with physical and sexual abuse. Here is a co-operative effort at concealment, strong emotions of shame and guilt, repressed to the point of producing anxiety and "neurosis". Sometimes the child perceives even the injustice of the situation, though it rarely dares to express its views, lest it be abandoned by its abusers. ”

“ It meets impending danger in an instant—not only personal danger, but is present in our relations with others; as the mother repels harm from her child. The resentment against wrong and injustice should be taught as a righteous and noble attainment, but the abuses are equally dangerous. ”

“ One more extract will more than suffice to show the nature of this abuse, which we fear is, from its daily increasing power and influence upon the female mind, becoming more and more difficult of cure ”

“ You accuse (some one) that he has abused you: then why do you bring yourself under the same accusation? Why inflict a blow on yourself? Keep free from passion, keep unwounded: do not, by wishing to smite another, bring the hurt upon yourself. ”

“ An end must be put at the earliest possible moment to an abuse which, if suffered to continue, would tend to—tend to—I draw your special attention to the following point, M. le Préfet. An end must be put as soon as possible to an abuse. ”

“ As to the abuses of anger, which it is to be observed may be in all different degrees, the first which occurs is what is commonly called passion—to which some men are liable, in the same way as others are to the epilepsy, or any sudden particular disorder. ”