Affront

“ Many circumstances, I will own, may excuse what is called rebellion, but no circumstances can ever make it good for your cause, and however honourable to your feelings, it will reflect no credit on your judgments. It will bind you more closely to the block of the oppressor, and your children's children, whilst they talk of your exploits, will feel that you have done them injury, instead of benefit. ”

“ It is opposition, sudden hurt, violence, which naturally excites the passion: and the real demerit or fault of him who offers that violence, or is the cause of that opposition or hurt, does not, in many cases, so much as come into thought. ”

“ There are some—and perhaps you think me one of them—who are driven by circumstances, led by their passions, or their follies, or their vices, to a state of opposition with the rest of mankind, and who then, when cast out from society, find a thousand specious reasons for warring against it. ”

“ I would have you fight, not only with that spirit with which you are wont to encounter other enemies, but with a certain indignation and resentment, as if you saw your slaves suddenly taking up arms against you. ”

“ A RULE OF LIFE
‘If you want to annoy an opponent thoroughly, and even to harm him,’ said a crafty old knave to me, ‘you reproach him with the very defect or vice you are conscious of in yourself. Be indignant ... and reproach him!
‘To begin with, it will set others thinking you have not that vice.
‘In the second place, your indignation may well be sincere.... You can turn to account the pricks of your own conscience. ”

“ An act, therefore, which concludes an earnest and protracted conflict, which has not been reached without a stormy debate in the soul, which marks the victory of evil over the love of character, sensibility to shame, the authority of conscience and the fear of God, an act of this sort concentrates in itself the essence of all the single determinations which preceded it, and possesses power to generate a habit and to derange the constitution, equal to that which the whole series of resistances to duty, considered as so many individual instances of transgression, is fitted to impart. ”

“ Where's the fire? Where's the individuality? Where's the conflict, the fighting and snarling and raging that makes living. All this is apathy, this is death! You don't grow by being agreeable, but by conflict. ”

“ He is a man Who with a double surety binds his followers. My lord your son had only but the corpse, But shadows and the shows of men, to fight; For that same word 'rebellion' did divide The action of their bodies from their souls; And they did fight with queasiness, constrain'd, As men drink potions; that their weapons only Seem'd on our side, but for their spirits and souls This word 'rebellion'—it had froze them up, As fish are in a pond. ”

“ Ah, only a little while, and that struggle will be upon us—and they will do their best to bend us to their will and cut us to their pattern, to exercise us, to lengthen us, to shorten us, to corrupt us.... ”

“ The struggle, which, when some great principle of politics or morals is the subject of the strife, ennobles in our eyes the unflinching combatants, only degrades when the violence and the rancour result from the soreness of wounded vanity, or the malice of blighted anticipation. ”

“ Shall he who, unwittingly, totters blindfold on the edge of a precipice, deem it a rude or an uncharitable violence which would snatch him with a strong and a venturous hand, or even it may be with a painful grasp, from the fearful ruin over which he impends? ”

“ Pray note it, my dear friend, for you will find, in the absence of all voluntary or even conscious cruelty on the part of the master, the best possible comment on a state of things which, without the slightest desire to injure and oppress, produces such intolerable results of injury and oppression. ”

“ Passionately convinced (at twenty) that we had sworn ourselves for life to each cause which we espoused, we have pleaded and planned and denounced and persuaded; have struck the shrewdest blows which our strength could compass, and devised the most dangerous pitfalls for our opponents' feet which wit could suggest. ”

“ I neither run nor fight, but do meanly stand, answering each heavy blow of a cruel master with doleful wails and piteous cries. I am galled with irons; but even these are more tolerable than the consciousness, the galling consciousness of cowardice and indecision. ”

“ Let me be no impediment to your treating with the enemy; nor do you any longer oppose my fixed resolution. I complain not of my fate, nor do I accuse any body. To arraign the conduct of gods or men, is natural to those only who wish to live. ”

“ Suppose A insults B, and B demands satisfaction, and they agree to fight; they meet and inflict upon each other blows and injuries, and whip each other right well. A, however, is the conqueror, and B retires vanquished, in shame and disgrace. ”

“ I might first of all say a great deal about the rivalries, envy, bitter censures, libels, injustices, schemes and plots against your character, both in public and private, and the many other difficulties which the wickedness of men will induce them to oppose to you in the path you have chosen. These obstacles, always very hard to overcome and often insuperable, exercise a further influence. ”

“ When we turn to the page of history, and read of men visited by adversity—what do we say to those of their fellow-creatures who fall off from them on account of their misfortunes? Do we not call them little-minded, and visit them with our contempt? ”

“ From desires arise hatred, dissensions, quarrels, seditions, wars. Nor is it only out of doors that these passions vent themselves, nor is it only against others that they run with blind violence; but they are often shut up, as it were, in the mind, and throw that into confusion with their disagreements. ”

“ They still smart under the reciprocal wrongs inflicted, they still recall the gloating fiendishness of their foes, and apart from any recollections of outrage, they rather make a point of honor of their inflexibility. ”

“ If I wanted any further evidence of this, the moral atmosphere which words diffuse, I would ask you to observe how the first thing men do, when engaged in controversy with others, be it in the conflict of the tongue or the pen, or of weapons more wounding yet, if such there be, is ever to assume some honourable name to themselves, such as, if possible, shall beg the whole subject in dispute, and at the same time to affix on their adversaries a name which shall place them in a ridiculous or contemptible or odious light. ”

“ It was a lesson which they would all need in the great world, where many a race is run, and where the conqueror is not always gentle towards the conquered—where defeat generates ill-will, envy, and hatred. ”

“ We have asked, petitioned, begged, implored, for the removal of our grievances. If we are men we must do more—we must strike for them. Else we confess ourselves unworthy of the freedom which we claim. ”

“ But consider that man is over [105] against his enemy, with a mind like unto a walled city filled with armed men. Consider how in life's conflicts, thoughts become the swords of anger, the clubs of envy, stings for hissing hatred. ”

“ But enough of this, sir. Where to deceive an enemy in open strife, to gain a mighty object, such as security, or conceal one's needful proceedings from the eyes of those who have no right to pry, is the end proposed, some palliation may be found, perhaps, for a deviation from the strict truth. ”

“ Educated to look upon these and kindred principles as embodying correct rules of conduct, we view with approval the resistance of oppression and injustice, and even the spirit which resents and punishes insult. ”

“ Hence the antagonisms that arise at every point of human contact. The sum of these antagonisms is what we call the struggle of life, which is merely the struggle of each to survive at the expense of his fellows, and is therefore barbaric. ”

“ When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. ”

“ You easily surmise that trouble is near. His look of dogged defiance tells you that he is marching forth to meet some enemy, man or beast. This is the first march of civilization - one in which brute strength plays the principal part. ”

“ For what reason do you afflict your souls while you continue to find pleasure in oppression and to take delight in injustice? Behold, you fast for the sake of strife and contention and to smite with the fist of wickedness. ”

“ Anybody, who has experienced, written, read, heard, or seen, even a little of this ever-recurrent hanging controversy, loathes its very atmosphere, and gladly retreats from it, seldom without a sense of protest, and a chafing at injustice. ”

“ These agitations are the opportunities and the means God offers us to refine the taste, mould the character, lift the purpose, and educate the moral sense of the [Pg 212] masses, on whose intelligence and self-respect rests the State. ”

“ A heavy, slow tread could be heard now and then, and now and then groans, and now and then words of protest and anger, bitter reproach, tremulous entreaty, fierce invective, and passionate lamentation. ”

“ They to whom the precious gift of fresh light has been given are called upon to exhibit their credentials as teachers in suffering for it. They, and those who oppose them, have alike a sacred cause; and the fearful spectacle arises of earnest, vehement men contending against each other as for their own souls, in fiery struggle. ”

“ Why should a stern, condemning voice declare in recesses of my soul, 'You could and should resist'? For years I have been daily yielding to temptation, and conscience as often pronounces sentence against me. ”

“ They do not foresee the gradual drawing closer to their outward defences—the struggle to get within their guarded lines—the fight that is surely coming between a sated, dull, degraded civilization on the one side, and a hungry, bold, ambitious savagery on the other. ”

“ They take for their protection the shield of a false and tinsel wit, the answer of a sneer, the argument of a supercilious look, and try to gloze over everything, to themselves and others, with a contemptuous persiflage which confounds all right and wrong. ”

“ It is a noble and magnanimous struggle—a battle against self, against "flesh and blood; against principalities and powers; against spiritual wickedness in high places." It is therefore, a formidable struggle. ”

“ Confusion and uproar, quarrelling and fighting, language of the most hateful description, and the most determined rebellion against every thing like order and regularity, gave the gentlemen engaged in the undertaking of taming them the hardest day's work they had ever encountered. ”

“ Fate, which for thirty years forced my inclinations, for thirty others has seemed to oppose them; and this continued opposition, between my situation and inclinations, will appear to have been the source of enormous faults, unheard of misfortunes, and every virtue except that fortitude which alone can do honor to adversity. ”

“ Can it progress no farther in the path in which he stands to oppose me? His resistance is the last obstacle to be overcome—he must be overthrown—and then? ... and then! ...
O my cunning intellect! Canst thou not deceive thyself as thou hast deceived others?... ”

“ We are instructed over and over again of a frightful conflict of forms, the forms of the past, monstrous in their strength and in their outline, against whom the Sons of Light were battling, against whom the great Lords of the Flame came down. ”

“ We are perpetually on the lookout for enemies and attack; we dread pitfalls and circumventions, and we feel that every face which we encounter is a smiling deceit—every honeyed word a blandishment meant to betray us. ”

“ But the things which are in the habit of being said, for the sake of amplification, or in the way of digression, or when men are summing up, are introduced either to excite hatred, or pity, or to work on the feelings of the judges by means of those arguments which have been already given; provided that the importance of the facts, or the envy of men, or the dignity of the parties, will allow of it. ”

“ That words be observed, wandering and idle thoughts be avoided, sudden anger and desire of revenge, even of such as persecute the truth, be guarded against; for we often mix our zeal with our wild-fire. ”