Bluster

“ How much more pleasing and how much more praised is a gentleman who carries arms, if he be modest, speak little and boast little, than another who is forever sounding his own praises, and with blasphemy and bluster seems to be hurling defiance at the world! ”

“ I did but assent to it, and was silent for your sake. It never answers to bluster and threaten unless one can fight at the same time; and it answers just as little to fight, unless we know we are the strongest. ”

“ The old man was beaten. The old man had surrendered, unconditionally. Edwin’s heart lightened as he perceived more and more clearly what this surprising victory meant. It meant that always in the future he would have the upper hand. He knew now, and Darius knew, that his father had no strength to fight, and that any semblance of fighting could be treated as bluster. Probably nobody realised as profoundly as Darius himself, his real and yet mysterious inability to assert his will against the will of another. The force of his individuality was gone. ”

“ To begin by bluster, but afterwards to take fright at the enemy’s numbers, shows a supreme lack of intelligence. ”

“ He was a weak man, even in his passions. "All right," he said, after reflecting briefly. "As you say, it don't make so much odds. Myself, I'm for slitting the young pup's ears—but later on, later on. And though I'd like to straighten out the record as far as it goes—Well, as you say."
For all of Captain Falk's bluster and pretension, I was becoming more and more aware that the subtle Kipping could twist him around his little finger, and that for some end of his own Kipping did not wish affairs to come yet to a head. ”

“ There was a faint blush, too, came up in her face, not like the blush of agitation, indeed, but that sort of sudden transient glow, which comes over a cheek unhackneyed to any strong sensations, upon even a slight emotion. There are few people in the world more to be pitied than women who have lost the power of blushing. ”

“ A blush spread itself on her face and bosom; she turned upon her back as if impelled by the agency of someone, her lovely thighs spread of themselves, her breasts heaved rapidly, her whole body was agitated, her arms spread then of a sudden fell, and then she became motionless as death. Certainly she had tasted in a dream all those joys which the waking sense can know. A soft emotion succeed the calm in which she had been absorbed. ”

“ When a girl ceases to blush, she32 has lost the most powerful charm of beauty. That extreme sensibility which it indicates may be a weakness and incumbrance in our sex, as I have too often felt; but in yours it is peculiarly engaging. Pedants, who think themselves philosophers, ask why a woman should blush when she is conscious of no crime? It is a sufficient answer, that nature has made you to blush when you are guilty of no fault, and has forced us to love you because you do so.—Blushing is so far from being necessarily an attendant on guilt, that it is the usual companion of innocence. ”

“ I curse my whole life, its joys and its sorrows! I curse myself, my ears, my eyes, my heart, my tongue, my head! All those things which thou hast given me I fling back in thy face, thou Fate, thou Demon! Cursed be thou—aye, cursed for ever! Yet with this very curse will I vanquish thee at the last. For, in truth, what more canst thou do unto me? Strike me, if thou wilt—aye, strike me to the ground: I will yet laugh aloud in thy face, and cry, "My curse be upon thee, my curse be upon thee!" ”

“ Final IT is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself. Mr. Bounderby felt that Mrs. Sparsit had audaciously anticipated him, and presumed to be wiser than he. ”

“ Vaso-motor Sensibility.—Inability to blush has always been considered the accompaniment of crime and shamelessness. Blushing is also very rare among idiots and savages; the Spaniards used to say of the South American Indians: “How can one trust men who do not know how to blush?” From the investigations of Amadei, Tonnini, and Bergesio, it appears that if we compare lunatics and criminals, twice as many of the latter are incapable of blushing. Pasini, in his examinations of women, noted blushing in 21 per cent. of murderers, 20 per cent. of poisoners, 18 per cent. ”

“ With regard to guilt or innocence, blushing offers no evidence whatever. There is a great troop of people who blush without any{51} reason for feeling guilty. The most instructive thing in this matter is self-observation, and whoever recalls the cause of his own blushing will value the phenomenon lightly enough. ”

“ If you want to save the witness his blush you can do it only at the beginning—during the movement of the eyes—and only by taking no notice of it, by not looking at him, and going right on with your remarks. This incidentally is valuable inasmuch as many people are much confused by blushing and really do not know what they are talking about while doing it. There is no third thing which is the cause of the blush and of the confusion; the blush itself is the cause of the confusion. ”

“ Runa.—I hurl a curse on thee, a heavy curse, a terrible curse!
Mahulena.—Mother! Mother!
Runa.—I hurl upon thee a curse most powerful, which will follow thee and hound thee, hound thee until death as a pack of furious dogs pursues a timid fawn! By heaven I curse thee, I curse thee by earth! O earth, thou art a mother too; thou wilt hear me, thou must hear me: destruction to thee if thou remainest deaf! My curse is mighty as the wind, the fire, the sea! As a magic word, full of horror, which drags down the stars from heaven. Even fate itself will not overpower my curse! ”

“ Blushing is not only involuntary, but the wish to restrain it, by leading to self-attention, actually increases the tendency.
The young blush much more freely than the old, but not during infancy, which is remarkable, as we know that infants at a very early age redden from passion. I have received authentic accounts of two little girls blushing at the ages of between two and three years; and of another sensitive child, a year older, blushing when reproved for a fault. Many children at a somewhat more advanced [Pg 366] age blush in a strongly marked manner. ”

“ Blushing—that ideal token of innocence and purity—is no accidental fact; it was not given to man as a sign of nobility, nor as a mirror to reflect the agitation of his heart; it is a fact rendered necessary by bodily functions and which the will can neither produce nor suppress. It is simply caused by the structure of our vital machine, by the activity of the blood-vessels in all organs and in all animals. ”

“ Blushing is a purely local modification of the circulation of this kind, and it will be instructive to consider how a blush is brought about. An emotion—sometimes pleasurable, sometimes painful—takes possession of the mind; thereupon a hot flush is felt, the skin grows red, and according to the intensity of the emotion these changes are confined to the cheeks only, or extend to the "roots of the hair," or "all over." ”

“ The Circassian who can blush is more highly valued than another, because the blush is eloquent of maiden modesty and heart untainted. The fact that there is also a blush of violated modesty, a blush of shame, and of guilt, does not argue against this view, any more than the fact that we blush if, though innocent, we are accused of guilt. It is the association of ideas and of emotions that evokes the blush in such cases. ”

“ But she who uttered the scream knew of no tragedy save that which was taking place in her own breast. She had just repulsed a dastardly suitor, and seeing you enter so unexpectedly in a state of unaccountable horror and agitation, was naturally stricken with dismay, and thought she saw your ghost, or what was worse, a possible avenger; while you, having failed to kill the man you sought, and having killed a man you esteemed, let no surprise on her part lure you into any dangerous self-betrayal. ”

“ To our surprise the Bluestocking began to blush, and her blush is not the coy, irresponsible flushing of an ordinary girl, but a painful rush of blood to the face under stress of deep earnestness, the kind of blush which forces one to look away. ”

“ In the breast of each human being is implanted an instinctive fear of Pain. It sits on us like a nightmare, from the time we first come to consciousness of our surroundings. It is a curse of humanity, like drink, and he who can lighten that curse is as much of a philanthropist as George W. Childs or Andrew Carnegie. ”

“ The frightful beating in my breast shows thee that I do not murder thee from frivolous emotion. The thought of my lonely nights is strangling me. I swear to thee, child, on my soul, that it is not satiety which rules me. ”

“ As there generally exists at the same time a strong wish to avoid the appearance of shame, a vain attempt is made to look direct at the person who causes this feeling; and the antagonism between these opposite tendencies leads to various restless movements in the eyes. I have noticed two ladies who, whilst blushing, to which they are very liable, have thus acquired, as it appears, the oddest trick of incessantly blinking their eyelids with extraordinary rapidity. An intense blush is sometimes accompanied by a slight effusion of tears ”

“ A strange sensation awoke in the tips of those tightening fingers, and thrilled through every vein of the woman's body,—such a horrible thrill as vibrates along the nerves of a monomaniac, when the sight of a dreadful terror in his victim's face first arouses the murderous impulse in his breast. ”

“ The horrible sight of the mangled, bleeding bodies, the set eyes, and jaws locked from excessive torture, will surely fasten on his eye forever, and blister his sight. Horrid dreams, wherein jibing fiends shall mock at him and the wail of the damned ring forever in his ears, shall surely visit his pillow and haunt him every night. Each voice that he hears amid the carnage shall seem, in after-time, to be the voice of an accusing angel telling him of his guilt. ”

“ There was something like an emanation of evil from her eyes and from the face of the other, who, exactly behind her and overtopping her by half a head, kept his eyelids lowered in a sinister fashion--which in the poor girl, reached, stirred, set free that faculty of unreasoning explosive terror lying locked up at the bottom of all human hearts and of the hearts of animals as well. ”

“ It is not true that there has been no time to test it. For thousands of years we have been proving and proving it, over and over. We have tried the experiment of fierceness; and blood answered blood. We have tried the experiment of lust; and lust has left in the mouth the odor of corruption and a fiercer fever. We have forced the body into the most refined and perverse pleasures and found ourselves worn out and heavy-hearted, lying upon filth. ”

“ Nothing could have protected her from your rage—nothing but your impotence. The dream you have had, and in which you are still bound, may teach you much, may save you. The mysterious phantoms of this dream bear with them a most pregnant meaning. The lake of blood, in which your victims have appeared, is the blood you have shed. The molten lava which replaced it is the gnawing, eating remorse, which must consume you before one day, that the Almighty, having mercy on your protracted tortures, shall call you to himself, and let you taste the ineffable sweetness of his gracious forgiveness. ”

“ Shyness.—This odd state of mind, often called shamefacedness, or false shame, or mauvaise honte, appears to be one of the most efficient of all the causes of blushing. Shyness is, indeed, chiefly recognized by the face reddening, by the eyes being averted or cast down, and by awkward, nervous movements of the body. Many a woman blushes from this cause, a hundred, perhaps a thousand times, to once that she blushes from having done anything deserving blame, and of which she is truly ashamed. ”

“ Blushing is now the colour of virtue, but it was not then the colour of innocency. They that had no sin in their conscience, might well have no shame in their faces, though they had no clothes to their backs. ”

“ Now perhaps you will ask me what is understood by cursing and the uttering of imprecations. It means, my dear brethren, cursing a person or a thing or an animal in moments of anger or despair. It is wishing to destroy him or to make him suffer. The Holy Ghost tells us that the person who has the ready curse in his mouth should greatly fear, lest God should grant him what he desires. There are some who have the Devil always on their tongues, who consign to him everything which annoys them. ”

“ In the first place, we see, more or less vaguely, according to our imaginative endowment, a scene of very great confusion and horror: figures wildly shuffling to and fro, clutching at each other, writhing, grimacing with convulsed agony, shrieking, yelling, howling; we see horrible wounds, rent, raw flesh, arrows sticking in torn muscles, dragging forth hideous entrails, spirting and gushing and trickling of blood; we see the mother, agonised into almost beast-like rage and terror, the fourteen boys and girls, the god and the goddess adjusting their shafts and drawing their bows ”

“ Each moment his agony grows more intense, his sufferings more acute, for the poison is thrilling through his veins,—he turns pale,—his eyes become blood-cast,—his breast quivers with emotion and his limbs tremble beneath him ”

“ And so, as we go to have a meal of fictitious terror at the tragedy, of something more questionable in the ballet, we go for a glut of blood to the execution. The lust is in every man’s nature, more or less. Did you ever witness a wrestling or boxing match? The first clatter of the kick on the shins, or the first drawing of blood, makes the stranger shudder a little; but soon the blood is his chief enjoyment, and he thirsts for it with a fierce delight. It is a fine grim pleasure that we have in seeing a man killed ”