Breakdown

“ No sign, of all those I have [Pg 183] indicated as pointing towards a breakdown, should be neglected. The time to take heed is when any man or woman finds that their powers of work are failing them, their nerves easily upset, or their minds assailed by an unreasonable dread of the future, or that in one or other of various ways they are not the people they were. It is better to slow down at the first danger signal than to run past one after another until we are pulled up with a crash. ”

“ I force myself to keep going when I wonder how the miserable machine responds to my urging, and I shall keep it going, after a fashion, until the final breakdown. Fate weaves the thread of our lives, I truly believe, and she didn't use very good material when she started mine. ”

“ Most of the breakdowns that we meet with are put down to work or overwork. It is, therefore, looking at the matter from the personal point of view, a burning question as to how work can be carried out without bringing in its train this much-dreaded climax. ”

“ If people would take more care in preparing [Pg 167] themselves for their daily duties, and in improving their conditions of work, both for themselves and their employees, we should hear very much less of breakdowns than we do at present. ”

“ In fact, change of disposition is one of the most significant features in nervous breakdowns. A man who has always taken the greatest pleasure in the society of his children will begin to snap at them without any cause. ”

“ Upon all ordinary things, breakage comes as the climax of disaster; upon a select few, breakage comes as the climax of destiny. The fountain-pen that I hold in my hand—the pen with which, without so much as a change of nib, all my books have been written—will lie broken before me one of these days. ”

“ The first use I made of our rebound was to say with intensity: 'What will you do if he does?'
'Does publish the picture?' There was an instant charm to me in the privacy of her full collapse and the sudden high tide of our common defeat. 'What can I? It's all very well; but there's nothing to be done. I want never to see him again. ”

“ He pushes a brick; what caused the brick to fall? He feels that it was his own force that caused it; he no longer looks upon the push and the fall as if the former merely preceded the latter; he imagines a connection of necessity between the push and the fall, the cause and the effect, and gradually comes to imagine himself as the causer of the cause. ”

“ I have already said that the breach from one mind to another is perhaps the greatest breach in nature. The only breaches that can well be conceived to occur within the limits of a single mind would either be interruptions, time-gaps during which the consciousness went out altogether to come into existence again at a later moment; or they would be breaks in the quality, or content, of the thought, so abrupt that the segment that followed had no connection whatever with the one that went before. ”

“ Grose, that first scared Sunday, my flash of something it would scarce have done to call light. Here at present I felt afresh—for I had felt it again and again—how my equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature. ”

“ We have had not only one incident for every day in the week, but two or three; we have not simply been stunned with the alarming noise of one terrific clash, but another, and another, and another, have followed upon each other's heels, like Job's messengers, till we have needed Job's patience and resignation to hear the dreadful tale of woes. ”

“ When we slowly recover from the tumult and passion of some violent distress, a peculiar stillness falls upon the Mind, and the atmosphere around it becomes in that stillness appallingly clear. We knew not, while wrestling with our woe, the extent of its ravages. ”

“ It will be noted, in passing, that in this falling dream which is so familiar to you and me and all of us, we never strike bottom. To strike bottom would be destruction. Those of our arboreal ancestors who struck bottom died forthwith. ”

“ Failing health, broken spirits, a very sad home, and many uncertainties are hard to bear, but I believe I could face them all better than the thought of ‘Brain bankruptcy.’ To draw on my intellect and get for answer ‘no assets’ would, I feel, overwhelm me utterly. ”

“ Every chain must wear out in time. Mine was worn to attenuation before to-night—this last blow snaps it. To-morrow, when the world wakes to its petty round of cares and joys, my troubles will be over. ”

“ And it is equally clear that we experience every hour the effects of our fall and ruin. What, then, comes to us from all this chaos and wild confusion, in a voice of irresistible conviction, but the irrefragable truth of both those sides of humanity? ”

“ All is there disorder and accident, or seems so; sudden starts of its shattered beds hither and thither; ugly struggles of unexpected strength from under the ground; fallen fragments, toppling one over another into more helpless fall. ”

“ If the effect of a misunderstanding or a quarrel were immediate, with what rapidity would not the tragedies of the world develop! With what certitude could one not foresee, and perhaps provide against, the climax of an evil fortune. ”

“ Strong men faced the cutting blast, and wandered many a mile in search of work, only to come back disappointed, footsore, weary in body and faint in heart. Wives met them at the threshold, and needed not to ask, "How have you fared?" ”

“ In a few years there will be a more or less even line—at least a gentle undulation—instead of these raw, jagged breaks that give a disquieting sense of incompletion, or else look as if a great conflagration had eaten out the rest of the buildings. ”

“ Their beautiful elasticity and strength rebound instantly to an apparently uninjured fulness; and so we go on, undermining, undermining at point after point, until suddenly some day there comes a tragedy, a catastrophe, for which we are as unprepared as if we had been working to avert, instead of to hasten it. ”

“ After all, if the old order crumbled, was it not because of its own weakness? Was not the fact of its decay the sign of some secret disintegration, of rottenness at the core? And if the new spirit could destroy, perhaps it could build as well. ”

“ There'll be talk—oh, I know human nature, and that it's impossible for things to be otherwise—but at least I may count upon you for stemming the tide a little, until the way is rather clearer. Believe me, there will be a crisis—a solution of some sort will come. I know that the present state of tension can't last. ”

“ It happens also, when less sharp the blow, The vital motions which are left are wont Oft to win out—win out, and stop and still The uncouth tumults gendered by the blow, And call each part to its own courses back, And shake away the motion of death which now Begins its own dominion in the body, And kindle anew the senses almost gone. ”

“ Some outward or inward shock, some drastic swing of the psychic pendulum, must sooner or later restore the balance and bring the will back to that wavering and indecisive state—poised like the point of a compass between the two extremes—which seems to be its normal attitude. ”

“ Sometimes it is the nature of the work which imposes a special strain. Great responsibilities and grave issues may have to be met, as in the case of contractors, stockbrokers, etc. An enormous degree of nervous tension may have to be concentrated into a few minutes. ”

“ The breaker is a truly modern invention, which, had it existed in the days of the Spanish inquisition, would have placed in the hands of the malevolent fanatics an instrument of exquisite torture. It is constructed to effect a double purpose, the achievement of the maximum of production and the expenditure of the minimum of human effort. ”

“ Blocks weighing unbelievable tons crash off them, or they will suddenly, without a second's warning, break into a million pieces. I can never conquer a creepiness of the spine as I listen to one of these tragedies. ”

“ A catastrophe so afflicting in its nature, and one so calculated to excite the amazement of his wife, unmanned him—not upon his own account, but from the distressing event about to be revealed in a manner so harsh and abrupt. ”

“ If the tensions change from moment to moment entirely, we have a broken, a fragmentary effect, as that of zigzag, where all is dropping and picking up again of associated motions; in the straight line, much prolonged, we have a gradual and inexorable rending of these tendencies to associated movements. ”

“ This is what is pictured to us here. We see a glorious “Breaker” taking His place before His redeemed, breaking forth at their head, breaking down all barriers, and breaking the heads of Leviathan and all his hosts. ”

“ Every one of these breaks in your lifeline shows a moment when you stood face to face with death. Ah, señor, in all my experience I have never seen such an adventurous palm.... You have stood elbow to elbow with death, and yet those little squares about the breaks show a guiding spirit of protection. ”

“ But the sudden and violent change in your whole disposition, has proved only too plainly, that some concealed and unfortunate event—some mysterious adventure, at which we cannot guess, is the cause of your melancholy; which cause, however remote, still continues to exercise over you the same destructive influence. ”

“ But a fresh obstacle, an unexpected incident, would be enough to wreck this vigorous constitution, to break the weakened springs, and produce the hesitancy, the aimless, unfinished movements, which physiologists know well in men undermined by grief. ”

“ And then all the life and lilt went out of them, and they were again maundering and futile things, getting in one another's way, stumbling and shuffling through the darkness, hesitating to grasp ropes, and, when they did take hold, invariably taking hold of the wrong rope first. ”

“ A small thing, a word, a look, may often put out the spark which is about to light the destructive train. How few [Pg 394] there are in this world of jealousy and contention, who are ready to utter that word, or bestow that look, and how many who will fan the spark of strife into a blaze, or will at least let it alone, and take no pains to put it out. ”

“ Ahead of her loomed, only dimly discerned as yet, the ordeal of strenuous monotony; the deadly-dull, prolonged grind wherein endurance, as it hardens, is subjected to a constantly harsher strain, until the soul revolts as, in the earlier stage, the body had rebelled. ”

“ The Breaker is gone up before them: they have broken up, and have passed thro' the gate, and are gone out by it, and their king shall pass before them, and the Lord on the head of them. Nahum ii. 12. All thy strong holds shall be like fig-trees with the first ripe figs: if they be shaken, they shall fall into the mouth of the eater. ”

“ The air is obscured by murky doubt, and unaccustomed shapes stand along the path, indistinguishable under the light malign. Uncertain hope scarcely glimmers, nor can the termination of the struggle be divined. ”

“ How many has this very feeling ruined, and will continue to ruin for succeeding ages, who can tell? "A sea of troubles" is incidental to our existence, and the dark prognostic that rises on our mental horizon, heralding the approach of some destructive blast, is too often unheeded by us until it has swept over our devoted heads. ”

“ And how many griefs are calmed, anxieties forgotten, thanks to this wholly physical act of attention, to this repetition of an even movement, in which one finds—of necessity and very quickly—the equilibrium of one’s whole being. ”

“ We should have more people of what I may call the “broken-in” type than an easier release would create, but to many thinkers the spectacle of a human being thoroughly “broken-in” is in itself extremely satisfactory. ”

“ But now, caught in the tremendous crush of humanity, by the thousands upon thousands of human beings who thronged the streets, carried this way and that by currents and counter-currents, they were likely to be carried anywhere. And should the crush become too great, they might well be rendered unconscious by the vise-like pressure of the throng. ”

“ Breakage is a bad dream. To dream of breaking any of your limbs, denotes bad management and probable failures. To break furniture, denotes domestic quarrels and an unquiet state of the mind.
To break a window, signifies bereavement. To see a broken ring order will be displaced by furious and dangerous uprisings, such as jealous contentions often cause. ”

“ We may believe there are no Battling Burrows, striking the helpless with brutal whip—but do we not ourselves use the whip of unkind words and deeds? So, perhaps, Battling may even carry a message of warning. ”

“ Yet, even in the general whirl of reason and reflection attendant upon these rapid conflagrations, there sometimes chances to be an eye unengaged for a moment which may light upon the plunderer in the very nick of time, and when least expected by himself. ”