Burden (weight)

“ Therefore let us examine alone by ourselves the weight of our misfortunes, as if they were burdens. For the body is weighed down by the burden of what presses on it, but the soul often adds to the real load a burden of its own. ”

“ Suppose you add gradually to the burden on the man's back until its weight has reached one-hundred and fifty pounds. He may still be able to carry the burden, but as the weight increases he will begin to show signs of distress. ”

“ The generally good and kind-hearted man, who has all his life been used to see his beasts of burden dragging a few pounds' weight above their proper and merciful load, soon comes to regard the extraordinary measure as the proper burden, and to look upon the hapless brute, which is pining away by inches, in imperceptible and insensible decay, as merely performing the work, and filling the station, to perform and fill which it was created. ”

“ According to our best authorities, we are subjected to the weight of fifteen pounds to each square-inch of surface, and a man of ordinary size sustains a pressure on him of some thirty-thousand pounds of air. I am a man of ordinary size, but I no more knew that I laboured under the burden of thirty-thousand pounds than I did that I was subjected to the pressure of about the same burden of Mrs. Cribbage who sits on my shoulders all day and squats on my chest all night, till I turned up the matter in an encyclopædia. ”

“ He is the only beast of burden whom man has not harnessed, or taught to draw, but whose body is looked upon as a living carriage, which may be loaded and oppressed, even during his time of rest; and when in haste sleeps under the pressure of a heavy burden, his legs bent under him, and the weight of his body resting upon his stomach. ”

“ In the course of my narrative I have repeatedly shown that the inadequacy of the means of transport throws great difficulties in the way of the maintenance of a large and concentrated body of men. Fifty pounds is the standard weight of a bearer’s burden on the longer journeys, and it does not require much calculation to make it evident that in comparatively a few days this burden will be materially encroached upon by the bearer himself having to be maintained by means of what he carries ”

“ “It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when to-morrow’s burden is added to the burden of to-day, that the weight is more than a man can bear. ”

“ Every additional pound tempts to the formation of lazy or sluggish habits because of the additional weight that has to be carried around. Everyone knows how hard it is to walk a few blocks a little briskly carrying a suit case that weighs thirty pounds. Even twenty pounds soon proves to be a burden. Fat in the tissues, though it seems to be a portion of the individual, is really quite outside of him and consists of extra food material that the body is carrying round, having accumulated it for the purpose, apparently, of using it at some time when it should be necessary. ”

“ Weak-backed children will, therefore, derive much benefit from the various exercises with hand weights and lifting-straps, and, indeed, from any labor involving the addition of an extra burden to the natural weight of the body. ”

“ Man can support a burden without bending or [Pg 71] moving. This burden is a weight—that is to say, a mass acted on by the force of weight. Man resists this force so as to prevent its effect. If it were not annihilated by man’s effort, this effect would be the motion or the fall of the heavy body. The effort and the force are thus in equilibrium, and the effort is equal and opposite to the force. It gives to the man who exercises it the conscious idea of force. Thus we know of force through effort. Every clear idea that we can have of force springs from the observation of our muscular effort. ”

“ no word of commiseration can make a burden feel one feather's weight lighter to the slave who must carry it. ”

“ The overweighted beast of burden, or the overweighted slave, can for certain instants shift the physical load, and find some slight respite even in enforcing additional pain upon such a set of muscles or such a limb. ”

“ When I protest, however, against making a display and a grievance of the load you have to bear, I am far from maintaining that you are to keep it a profound secret, and hide it away in unsuitable places under your clothes. A man can carry a hundred-weight on his shoulders with less inconvenience than a few pounds about his heart. ”

“ These burdens were fastened on at birth by His enemy, and as we grow they grow; and each year we carry them they get heavier and heavier, so that sometimes a very large burden has to be carried by a very weak person. ”

“ My young friend, I easily perceive that you are put out by this Burden which you bear upon your shoulders. I am indeed surprised that one so intelligent should take such a matter so ill. What! Do you not know that burdens are the common lot of humanity? I myself, though you may little suspect it, bear a burden far heavier than yours, though, true, it is invisible, and not strapped on to my shoulders by gross material thongs of leather, as is yours. ”

“ And you, poor deluded victim, are more than half willing to believe that your increasing size is an equivalent to increasing health and strength, especially as your wife emphatically takes that view, and regards your augmenting portliness with approval. Ten years have now passed away since you were forty, and by weight twelve stone and a half a fair proportion for your height and build. Now you turn the scale to one stone more, every ounce of which is fat; extra weight to be carried through all the labors of life. ”

“ No one wants to be fat and heavy of body—then why of head? For some clumsy reason we have come to confuse strength with weight. The crude methods of early building undoubtedly had much to do with this. The old ox-cart weighed a ton—and it had so much weight that it was weak! ”

“ Oh! that the God of heaven might please to tell them how abominable in his eyes are a weight and a weight, a stone and a stone, in the bag of weights!—one weight for themselves when they are under hatches, and another for others when they come to helm. ”

“ One hundred and eighty thousand pounds—the weight of twelve hundred average sized men—of fiercely burning, intense virility. Even continuous eating—of his own world's food—could not supply the demands of that body. ”

“ And if we now and then get a knock, or even a rather hard scratch from those corners of our neighbor's load, which are made up of little faults and odd tempers, we must try not to mind it, but think only of how tired those poor, weary shoulders must be of the weight they carry. ”

“ As to strength, the woman's righters believed that, weight for weight, their crew was as strong as the other, and of course due allowance would be made for the difference of weight and all other accidental hindrances. ”

“ I’ve nothing to gain and everything to lose. When one’s fifty years old—single stout and red in the face—one has outlived a good many necessities. They tell me over here that my increase of weight’s extremely marked, and though they don’t tell me I’m coarse I feel they think me so. There’s very little coarseness here—not quite enough, I think—though there’s plenty of vulgarity, which is a very different thing. On the whole the country becomes much more agreeable. ”

“ I was painlessly operated upon by you for my complaint, from which time I have steadily improved in health, strength, weight and vigor, until I have gone from 135 pounds, my weight when operated upon, to 174, at which I tip the balance as I write to you to-day. If the afflicted everywhere could only realize that so many lives may be spared by your wonderful treatment, none would stay away. ”

“ And it must have been a burning earnestness that impelled him to ceaseless labor, in the presence of such a drag-weight as that. I am not thinking or saying, my friend, that it is wholly bad for us to carry weight,—that great good may not come of the abatement of our power and spirit which may be made by that weight. I remember a greater missionary than even the sainted Martyn, to whom the Wisest and Kindest appointed that he should carry weight, and that he should fight at a sad disadvantage. ”

“ Now this immediate notion of effort is of no use to us in the measurement of force. It is clear, for example, that I shall experience more fatigue in lifting a weight of 100 lb. than a man who is accustomed to lifting heavy burdens. ”

“ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Here we have two things standing in contrast to each other, a burden and a rest. The burden is not a local one, peculiar to those first hearers, but one which is borne by the whole human race. It consists not of political oppression or poverty or hard work. It is far deeper than that. It is felt by the rich as well as the poor for it is something from which wealth and idleness can never deliver us. ”

“ What the roads are likely to be, is manifest enough by a portion of the general order, which says that in future no mule is to carry over 100 pounds; and yet the authorities put more than half that weight upon a man’s shoulders. ”

“ A man takes on a heap of weight when he lays off, but at the end of seven months I had the Kid down to one hundred and thirty-four, and I knew that if he was matched up for a weigh-in six hours before the battle, I could steam out at least two pounds. ”

“ The fact is, the difficulty is not so much to find people in want of relief, but to find relief for the thousands who require it. Ten, twenty, or thirty thousand pounds are a mere drop in the ocean, so wide spread is the distress. ”

“ Never having strained myself beyond my powers, I did not feel any ill effects from the heavy labour I underwent, though 100 lbs. was a weight which very few cared to carry on such a track. Two men who had taken to this means of gaining their livelihood fell victims of their ambition, for, instead of commencing with the calf and ending with the bull, as I had done, they staggered under the full weight of 100-lb. bags of flour, sugar, &c., till their strength gave way, and their coffins had to be prepared for them. ”

“ Constance said, amiably. "What I feared was that it might become a custom—an unnecessary burden."
Gordon signalled an approaching car. "A burden? Mrs. Stuart, the burden of walking home by moonlight with the wrong woman is one which men generally manage to shift." ”

“ What logic! Weight is only force, that is, a thing hidden from the senses, whose phenomena alone are perceptible,—a thing, consequently, to which the idea of division and indivision is inapplicable; and from the presence of this force, from the hypothesis of an indeterminate and immaterial entity, is inferred an indivisible material existence! ”

“ How heavy a load may be easily transported depends, of course, upon the man, but it is safe to say that the inexperienced will find twenty-five pounds a heavy enough burden, and within this limit must be included shelter, bed, and one week's provisions ”

“ Then weighing what they had borne, whether we should find it to be ten or thirty pounds—I cannot guess how much it might be at this distance—one might safely say, without fear of mistake, "The strength of this young lady is equal to ten, twenty, or thirty pounds"—in other words, "she represents a weight of ten, twenty, or thirty pounds" and by a similar plan people have ascertained the strength of the air—that is, the weight which it represents. They have weighed what it is capable of carrying. ”

“ Well, I suppose it saves time and trouble, but the main reason is greed. They starve them for water, then give them a chance to drink all they want just before they are weighed, thus increasing their weight dishonestly. ”

“ Burnett in Washington, and the examinations in the laboratories of Cambridge and Yale all tell the same story of a reformed and increasing efficiency even with five years of added age handicap, so that the logic of the advice originally given in this book stands proved, so far. I have had my weight reduced from 217 pounds to 130 pounds and felt best when lightest. I carry my weight at any figure desired, but most of the time carry a 20-pound handicap in winter and sometimes in summer to calm the fears of solicitous friends, who think I must be ill when I am not looking "robust." ”

“ When I had been lucky enough to raise five shillings by some manoeuvre or another they only lasted any time with difficulty; not long enough for me to be restored to health before a new hunger period set in and reduced me again. My back and shoulders caused me the worst trouble. I could stop the little gnawing I had in my chest by coughing hard, or bending well forward as I walked, but I had no remedy for back and shoulders. Whatever was the reason that things would not brighten up for me? Was I not just as much entitled to live as any one else? ”

“ Youth's errors do come home to us sometimes in later life.'
'Not to the tune of five thousand pounds,' retorted Mr. Henry Hunter. 'It will cripple the business; you know it will. It is next door to ruin.'
'Nonsense, Henry! The loss of five thousand pounds will neither cripple the business nor bring ruin. It will be my own loss: not yours.'
'How on earth could you think of giving it away? Five thousand pounds!'
'I could not help myself. Had I refused to pay it——'
'Well?' for Mr. Hunter had stopped in embarrassment. ”

“ When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at which endurance [40] is possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage. ”

“ A smothering weight flung itself on me, against which I struggled as hard as I could, shrinking in anticipation from the thirsty plunge of the knives. However, though the weight increased until further struggle was impossible, I was not harmed, and in a few moments found myself, wrists and ankles tied, beside a roaring fire. ”