Callosity

“ For if ye do evil, as in truth ye do, when ye condemn Me and My Divine works, ye must needs confess yourselves to be bad and wicked calumniators, for a calumniator is known by his calumnies, as a tree is known by its fruit. ”

“ There is in calumny that poison that, even when the character throws off the slander, the heart remains diseased beneath the effect. They say that truth comes sooner or later; but it seldom comes before the soul, passing from agony to contempt, has grown callous to men's judgments. Calumniate a human being in youth—adulate that being in age;—what has been the interval? ”

“ What he lacked was the polished callousness of men of the world, the callousness from which springs an easy tolerance for one's self and others; the tolerance wide as poles asunder from true sympathy and human compassion. ”

“ What are your poor little wrongs, in the reckoning for greater wrongs which is demanded of me? I am not trying to frighten you, I am only miserable about myself. Do you know what it is to have a firm presentiment of calamity that is coming to you—and yet to hope that your own positive conviction will not prove true? ”

“ All the petty annoyances of life—a sudden fall, an unlucky [pg 103] word, a headache, a paltry quarrel—were set down to the agency of fiends; and all the fierce emotions that rend the mind—love, hate, jealousy, and madness—were equally the work of these invisible tormentors. Men and women stood in constant danger of them. ”

“ Can any one in whom there is lust or desire be otherwise than libidinous or desirous? or can a man who is occupied by anger avoid being angry? or can one who is exposed to any vexation escape being vexed? or if he is under the influence of fear, must he not be fearful? Do we look, then, on the libidinous, the angry, the anxious, and the timid man, as persons of wisdom, of excellence? ”

“ And when thou hearest the malice that wrongs affect the candour which should judge, thou wilt be surprised to feel how unconsciously He who has, even in a tale, once wound himself around those feelings not daily excited, can find in thy sympathies the defence, or, in thy charity the indulgence,—of a friend! ”

“ If one looks closely, one finds that the truly marvellous things are those which happen to us every day, and that duels, dagger thrusts, even automobile accidents, with accompanying hatred, jealousy, betrayed love, and treachery, are in reality the vulgar incidents in the enormous drama of our common life from birth to death. ”

“ And whatever pain I have felt or feel, in experiencing human malice, has been, and is, in the fact that human malice should exist at all,—not for its attempted wrong towards myself. For I, personally speaking, have not a moment to waste among the mere shadows of life which are not Life itself. ”

“ Yet how true a moral instinct has presided over the changed signification of the word. The calumniator and the flatterer, although they seem so opposed to one another, how closely united they really are. They grow out of the same root. The same baseness of spirit which shall lead one to speak evil of you behind your back, will lead him to fawn on you and flatter you before your face; there is a profound sense in that Italian proverb, “Who flatters me before, spatters me behind”. ”

“ I am smitten with silence when trouble and difficulty assail me, and I have an intolerable instinct against asking for the sympathy and commiseration of others; whereas those better accustomed than myself,—as I have shown you,—how readily are they able to requisition your sympathy, to appropriate wholly your pity, and to confiscate your possessions, your theories, and your ethics! ”

“ Permit me to exhibit in their genuine deformity the [Pg 298] errors which are seducing you to destruction. State to me with candour the train of sophisms by which the evil spirit has deluded your understanding. Confess the secret motives of your disbelief; suffer me to administer a remedy to your intellectual disease. I fear not the contagion of such revolting sentiments: I fear only lest patience should desert me before you have finished the detail of your presumptuous credulity. ”

“ A persecutor, or one who had unpardonably wronged any of the Children of the Star, might go mad, might fling himself from a precipice, might be visited with the most terrible series of calamities, all natural in their character, all distinctly traceable to natural causes, but astonishing and even apparently supernatural in their accumulation, and often in their immediate appropriateness to the character of his offence. ”

“ That spirit of ferocity which breaks the bruised reed, partakes more of relentless pride than virtuous disapprobation. Many sever themselves from all sympathy with the erring, from the mistaken apprehension that the wider the chasm, the more advantageous the light in which they will appear. ”

“ And it is too certain that the calumny will be willingly believed and eagerly propagated by all those who would shun the presence of an eye keen in the detection of imposture, incapacity, and misconduct, and of a resolution as steady in their exposure. We soon hate the man whose qualities we dread, and thus have a double interest, an interest of passion as well as of policy, in decrying and defaming him. But good men will rest satisfied with the promise made to them by the Divine Comforter, that by her children shall Wisdom be justified. ”

“ How does that man feel who meets another whom he has cruelly robbed, or whose home he has basely dishonoured? But, for all this, I confess with shame that I am overflowing with faults. My imagination is too vivid, and my temper is choleric when suddenly thwarted and opposed in ridiculously small matters: a false accusation or a false suspicion drives me mad. ”

“ And so I became very vain, and despised most of the boys that were at all near my own age, and before I was eight years old I was a character. Sensibility, imagination, vanity, sloth, and feelings of deep and bitter contempt for all who traversed the orbit of my understanding, were even then prominent and manifest. ”

“ It is just here that the mystery of pain and pleasure helps us to understand the mystery of love and malice, the same insensitiveness in certain souls that prevents their feeling any vivid pain or any vivid pleasure, also prevents their feeling any intense malice. But this insensitiveness which prevents their feeling any intense malice is, more than anything else, the especial evocation of the power of malice. ”

“ To those who are overgrown with Pleasure, and hardned in Ill Custom? Who have neither Patience to hear, nor Conscience to take hold of? You may almost as well feed a Man without a Mouth, as give Advice where there's no disposition to receive it. 'Tis true; as long as there is Life there's Hope. Sometimes the Force of Argument, and the Grace of God, and the anguish of Affliction, may strike through the Prejudice, and make their way into the Soul. ”

“ To complain then of bodily sickness, &c., is to complain that we have received this invitation from the DIVINE FATHER of our being to come unto him. It is to complain, also, that our sorrows and sufferings are all of them noted by the INFINITE and ETERNAL, Who hath been pleased to permit them as the instrumental means of calling us to HIMSELF, to receive from Him that fulness of blessing and consolation which none but HIMSELF can give. ”

“ There's some scandal about everybody. We're all sinners—if you want to call it sin to follow your most sacred instincts.
"Why should you be afraid of a little gossip or a few jokes or a little abuse from a few hypocrites? They're all sinners—worse than you, too, most of them, if the truth were known. ”

“ In the mean time I trust that you have not been assimilated in degradation by losing the ataxy of your temper, and that necessity which dignified you by a sentience of the pain has not lowered you by the accession of anger or resentment. ”

“ The expression of their emotions is certainly almost human, as they sit and stare at him, coughing and snarling with anger and contempt, drawing back their heads and throwing the hand before the face with a gesture of abhorrence, and other movements indicative of shocked and outraged feelings. ”

“ When free from exciting emotions, they beam forth an expression of calm dignity, above the sway of lust, vanity, and envy, that gave birth to the cruel frivolities of the day, which she evidently patronizes from compulsion. ”

“ The irregularities only not universal among the young men of my standing, which I always knew to be wrong, I then learned to feel as degrading; learned to know that an opposite conduct, which was at that time considered by us as the easy virtue of cold and selfish prudence, might originate in the noblest emotions, in views the most disinterested and imaginative. ”

“ Whether from a self-inquisitorial habit that he grew into from jealousy of the sins to which men of thought are liable, he has acquired, in disentangling and demonstrating that particular form of moral disease, an acumen which no conscience can resist. ”

“ Callous signifies a thickening of the outward skin of any particular part, especially on the hands and feet, by repeated exercise or use, through which such parts are rendered insensible. This may be metaphorically applied to the conscience of a sinner, which is rendered stupid and insensible by repeated acts of iniquity. ”

“ Discreet and reticent as we have all been, and careful in our criticisms of so bizarre an event, there still must be many to question the reality of such superstitious fears, and some to ask if such a sound could be without human agency, and a very guilty agency, too. ”

“ That is to say, we enter by sympathy or personal imagination into the state of mind of others, or think we do, and if the thoughts we find there are injurious to or uncongenial with the ideas we are already cherishing, we feel a movement of anger. ”

“ Closing our Ears to the Complaints of others.—When we let our sky be clouded by the complaints and suffering of other mortals, who must bear the consequences of such gloom? No doubt those other mortals, in addition to all their other burdens! ”

“ About two years ago he was subject to maniacal fits of outrageous passion, when his manner was proud and stalking, his voice loud and blustering, and his language contemptuous and imperative; calling the house his own; commanding every one of us as his servants, in grand style. The mention of a single fact, out of an immense number, will be sufficient to characterise his spirit and manners. ”

“ His habits of circumgyration, with sudden stops and starts,—his strange air of abstractedness, a sort of excogitative look, apparently puzzled to find something out,—odd way of talking to himself, as if he himself were some other person, saying, “what a noise the fellow makes,” “I think the fellow’s a fool,” and striking his face in apparent anger,—strange mode of mentioning names once familiar to him,—putting a question,—seeming to listen, and giving an answer quite foreign to it, are most striking, and such as no descriptive powers can enable another to conceive, without seeing him. ”

“ Question and listen to your conscience, and no matter how keen the ridicule, or severe the condemnation to which your views may subject you, stand firm. Moral cowardice is the inclined plane that leads to the first step in sin. Be sure you are right, and then suffer no persuasion or invective to influence you in questions involving conscientious scruples. You are young and peculiarly isolated, therefore I have given you a letter to my valued old friend Mrs. Mason, who will always advise you judiciously, if you will only consult her. ”

“ These facts make Us blush and sweat for shame. But these troubles have been brought about through Our partiality and self-will, giving rise to rascality and blunders leading to calamities. All have been Our own fault from the first to the last. ”

“ Love, jealousy, deceit, and nobleness were the spirits that played their freaks with these people. The person of whom I speak was more haunted than the rest, and much tormented, being willful, proud, and jealous. ”

“ When one finds himself avoided in society, his friends shunning his approach, his substance wasting, his wife and children in want around him, and traces all his misfortunes and misery to the slanderous tongue of the calumniator, who, by secret whisper or artful innuendo, has sapped and undermined his reputation, he must be more or less than man to submit in silence. ”

“ The attempt to reveal a self-centred, harassed personality is commendable, but is not helped by scenes like the one in which the sophisticated heroine attends a church meeting, and there, overwhelmed by the frenzy, begins to yell like one insane, and to weep torrents of tears. ”

“ In order to illustrate the nature of evils of this class, I may take two instances—cruelty and lasciviousness. That these are great intrinsic evils, we may, I think, easily assure ourselves, by imagining the state of a man, whose mind is solely occupied by either of these passions, in their worst form. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Afterwards, some trick of temper, or some madness, which they say is in my nature, which hurts nobody except myself, gives them an excuse for speaking evil of me and calumniating my character. Such is the reward of all honest men. ”

“ We see it productive, where it is habitually resorted to, of a frivolous levity, of vanity and pride, and of a littleness of mind and character. We see it also frequently becoming the occasion of the excitement of the malevolent passions, such as anger, envy, hatred, jealousy, malice, and revenge. ”

“ I cultivated a passionless and cold exterior,—a listless, uninterested and frigid demeanor,—for I discovered that this was accepted by many people as dullness or stupidity, and that by assuming such a character, certain otherwise crafty persons would talk more readily before me, and betray themselves and their vices unawares. ”