Aloofness

“ Of course, this might have been done out of sheer wantonness, for I well knew—I had remarked it only too often—that, after listening to what I had to say, and angering me almost beyond endurance, she loved suddenly to torture me with some fresh outburst of contempt and aloofness! Yet she must have known that I could not live without her. Three days had elapsed since the affair with the Baron, and I could bear the severance no longer. When, that afternoon, I met her near the Casino, my heart almost made me faint, it beat so violently. ”

“ Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand
Thou too aloof bound with the flawless band
Of inner solitude; we bind not thee;
But who from thy self-chain shall set thee free?
What heart shall touch thy heart? what hand thy hand? ”

“ Passion, in him, comprehended many of the worst emotions which militate against human happiness. You could not contradict him, but you raised quick choler; you could not speak of wealth, but his cheek paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing natural advantages of this poor boy—his beauty, his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like a fiery atmosphere—had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices against him. ”

“ Observe with the utmost attention all the operations of your own mind, the nature of your passions, and the various motives that determine your will; and you may, in a great degree, know all mankind. For instance, do you find yourself hurt and mortified when another makes you feel his superiority, and your own inferiority, in knowledge, parts, rank, or fortune? You will certainly take great care not to make a person whose good will, good word, interest, esteem, or friendship, you would gain, feel that superiority in you, in case you have it. ”

“ The generosity of a miser, the good nature of an egotist, the gentleness of a passionate temperament, the tenderness of a barren nature, the piety of a dull heart, the humility of an excitable self-love, interest me as phenomena—nay, even touch me if I am the object of them, but they inspire me with very little confidence. I foresee the end of them too clearly. Every exception tends to disappear and to return to the rule. All privilege is temporary, and besides, I am less flattered than anxious when I find myself the object of a privilege. ”

“ How much that appeared to us plausible and attractive when we mingled in society, is now stripped of its false colouring, and rendered repulsive and odious! while, on the other hand, how much that was lightly esteemed by the world in which, we moved, is discovered to be worthy of our admiration and esteem! How much of human love, where we most calculated upon finding it, has escaped from our hold! but then, how much is left to succour and console us, from those upon whose kindness we feel to have but little claim! ”

“ Let us join hands and help each other to increase our vanity. Let us be vain, not of our trousers and hair, but of brave hearts and working hands, of truth, of purity, of nobility. Let us be too vain to stoop to aught that is mean or base, too vain for petty selfishness and little-minded envy, too vain to say an unkind word or do an unkind act. Let us be vain of being single-hearted, upright gentlemen in the midst of a world of knaves. Let us pride ourselves upon thinking high thoughts, achieving great deeds, living good lives. ”

“ Such obloquy, although intended to hurt, does but little if any injury to those against whom it is directed; but what may we think of the gentlemanly spirit of the men who descend to it? As for myself I cannot restrain a feeling of profound pity when beholding the spectacle of such conduct, and I turn with a sense of relief to the honorable men amongst them who have remained true to the nobler instincts of human nature. ”

“ Which of us is proof against the temptation of making a display of magnanimity, or of playing egoistically with another devoted heart? Which of us, in fact, has the force of character to be superior to petty vanity, to petty fine feelings, sympathy and self-reproach?... ”

“ Beware, my love, I conjure you, of that self-delusion which has been fatal to the peace of many persons—beware of priding yourself on the gracefulness of sensibility: if you yield to this vanity, your happiness is lost for ever. Always remember how much more valuable is the strength of fortitude, than the grace of sensibility. Do not, however, confound fortitude with apathy: apathy cannot know the virtue. Remember, too, that one act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world. ”

“ Our divines have, therefore, you see, very good reasons for raising humility into the rank of virtue. An amiable modesty, a diffident mildness of demeanor, are unquestionably calculated to promote the pleasures and the advantages of society; it is equally certain that insolence and arrogance are disgusting, that they wound our self-love and excite our aversion by their repulsive conduct ”

“ The milk of human kindness turns fast to gall; while those very passions, that frame of mind, which operated the first delusion, which stamped the features of unbounded friendship, of enthusiastic beneficence, now all subverted, are applied to exalt the violence of the opposite character. ”

“ It is possible to be too arrogant about our blood or our calling, but that arrogance is virtue compared with such mean pretence. The pride which identifies us with a great historic body is a humanizing, elevating habit of mind, inspiring sacrifices of individual comfort, gain, or other selfish ambition, for the sake of that ideal whole: and no man swayed by such a sentiment can become completely abject. ”

“ Always is it your pleasure to hold aloof from me, and to give judgments which you have pondered in secret, nor have you ever brought yourself with a ready heart to declare to me the matter which you devise. ”

“ It was when I charged her with pride as the reason of refusal. Then suddenly her eyes filled up, and her lip trembled, and such a change came over her features that I grew shocked at my own words.
“'Pride!' cried she. 'If you mean that inordinate self-esteem that prefers isolation to sympathy, that rejects an obligation from mere haughtiness, I know not the feeling. ”

“ What might lower lesser men, lowered not you; Heaven left you that dignity, for it belongs alike to your intellect and your virtues—but suffered it to be a source of your anguish. Why? Because, not content with adorning your virtues, it was covering the fault against which were directed the sorrows. ”

“ Thus the good and bad qualities of our actions and manners constitute virtue and vice, and determine our personal character, than which nothing operates more strongly on these passions. In like manner, 'tis the beauty or deformity of our person, houses, equipage, or furniture, by which we are render'd either vain or humble. The same qualities, when transfer'd to subjects, which bear us no relation, influence not in the smallest degree either of these affections. ”

“ To these considerations was added a sort of charm, not easily explained, and by no means justifiable, produced by the very temerity and hazardness accompanying this attempt. I thought, with scornful emotions, on the bars and hinderances which pride, and caprice, and delusive maxims of decorum, raise in the way of human intercourse. I spurned at these semblances and substitutes of honesty, and delighted to shake such fetters into air and trample such impediments to dust. I wanted to see a human being, in order to promote her happiness. ”

“ It may be because this atmosphere of deceit and adulation in which I am living has already contaminated me, or, perhaps, because I shrink in such dismay from the thought that all this praise and all these demonstrations of affection are due solely to my wealth, but I can scarcely credit so much baseness and deceitfulness, nor can I quite believe that I am so utterly unattractive, or that I am wholly incapable of inspiring any sincere and disinterested affection. ”

“ To be without any advantages over others—neither possessing better food nor purer air, nor a more cheerful mind—but always to be giving away, returning, communicating, and becoming poorer! To know how to be humble in order to be accessible to many people and humiliating to none! To take a great deal of injustice on his shoulders and creep through the cracks and crannies of all kinds of errors, in order that we may reach many obscure souls on their secret paths! [pg 323] ever in possession of some kind of love, and some kind of egoism and self-enjoyment! ”

“ The eulogiums either turn upon his power, or riches, or family, or virtue; all of which are subjects of vanity, that we have already explained and accounted for. 'Tis certain, then, that if a person considered himself in the same light in which he appears to his admirer, he would first receive a separate pleasure, and afterwards a pride or self-satisfaction, according to the hypothesis above explained. ”

“ Is, then, apathy the perfection of our nature—and is not that nature refined and harmonized by the gentle and social affections? The Being who gave to the mind its reason, gave also to the heart its sensibility.
'I make no apologies for, because I feel no consciousness of, weakness. An attachment sanctioned by nature, reason, and virtue, ennoble the mind capable of conceiving and cherishing it: of such an attachment a corrupt heart is utterly incapable. ”

“ Would you see the kindly, self-sacrificing affections developed under their most honest but least poetical guise—displayed without any mixture of vanity, and unchecked in the display by any fear of being thought vain?—you will see it, not among the prosperous, the high-born, the educated, "far, far removed from want, and grief, and fear," but among the poor, the miserable, the perverted—among those habitually exposed to all influences that harden and deprave. ”

“ None, he would say with great earnestness, appeared so ugly to his instinctive perception as some of those persons whom the world accounted handsome, but upon whom pride, or haughtiness or conceit had set its stamp, or who bore in their countenances what no countenance can conceal, the habitual expression of any reigning vice, whether it were sensuality and selfishness, or envy, hatred, malice and uncharitableness. ”

“ The self-delight with which she had kissed her image in the glass had faded before the sense of futility in being anything whatever—charming, clever, resolute—what was the good of it all? Events might turn out anyhow, and men were hateful. ”

“ Or, if your tenderness for the feelings—say the failings, if you please,—the prejudices, the weaknesses of others,—has no weight, let, at least, your own ideas of personal propriety, your just pride, your conscious worth, point out to you the path in society which you are so eminently formed to tread. ”

“ Pride, vanity, ill-conditioned egoism of all sorts, are bred in his heart, as in every heart; need, above all, to be cast-out of his heart,—to be, with whatever pangs, torn-out of it, cast-forth from it, as a thing worthless. ”

“ Let him consider how all want of love, all indifference to the needs, the feelings, the weakness of others; all sharp and hasty judgments and utterances, so often excused under the plea of being outright and honest; all manifestations of temper and touchiness and irritation; all feelings of bitterness and estrangement, have their root in nothing but pride, that ever seeks itself, and his eyes will be opened to see how a dark, shall I not say a devilish pride, creeps in almost everywhere, the assemblies of the saints not excepted. ”

“ Of the benevolent class, the more prominent are, love of kindred, of friends, of benefactors, of home and country. Of the malevolent affections, so called, the more important are the feeling of resentment in view of personal injury, of indignation at the wrongs of others, the feeling of jealousy, and the like. ”

“ I at least am a modern with some interest in advocating tolerance, and notwithstanding an inborn beguilement which carries my affection and regret continually into an imagined past, I am aware that I must lose all sense of moral proportion unless I keep alive a stronger attachment to what is near, and a power of admiring what I best know and understand. ”

“ If you remind me that one ought generously to overlook the faults of others—I generously overlook the faults of others—for five minutes. If you remind me that to harbor jealousy and envy is mean and contemptible, I make an effort, and throw out all jealous and envious thoughts—for five minutes. ”

“ But it may also, I think, be met by notice of a fact, which we were unable to urge in considering the similar possibility with regard to goods—namely the possibility that the reason why we attribute greater value to a worthy affection for a real person, is that we take into account the additional good consisting in the existence of that person. We may I think urge, in the case of cruelty, that its intrinsic odiousness is equally great, whether the pain contemplated really exists or is purely imaginary. ”

“ And if, through your disillusion and disgust, and the pain of broken idols, you permit yourself to act foolishly and with want of dignity at a period when love seems of supreme importance, you will be laying up limitations for yourself. ”

“ I have never seen together so many attractions, so much gaiety, so much coquetry, so much light, so much innocence and virtue. No one ever understood better the art of having grace without affectation, raillery without malice, gaiety without folly, propriety without constraint, and virtue without severity. ”

“ But I don't think myself a fine fellow because I'm melancholy. I don't measure my force by the negations in me, and think my soul must be a mighty one because it is more given to idle suffering than to beneficent activity. ”

“ But I am guiltless of the weakness of altruism—contemptible word, under which the modern mind tries to conceal its cowardice and absence of all sound philosophy. I am an egoist, dear Madame, believe me, an egoist pure and simple. ”

“ For he has this special tumour of arrogance, that he would be making himself the equal of others, exalting his own good qualities (if they exist) , and depreciating those of others. And he deems his neighbour’s defect to be his own advancement. ”