Cathartic

“ I am the Angel of Intemperance, Discord, and Destruction, who oppose myself to God and all his laws—to man, and all that has been made for his good; my delight is in misery and unhappiness, in crime, desolation, ruin, murder, and death in a thousand shapes of vice and destitution. ”

“ Is it that involuntary homage which they say vice is compelled to pay to purity, truth, and virtue? I know not; but I feel disturbed, humbled with an impression like that of guilt—an impression which makes me feel as if there actually were such a thing as conscience. As my objects, however, are for the foolish girl's advancement, I am determined to play the game out, and for that purpose, as I know now by experience that neither harshness nor violence will do, I shall have recourse to tenderness and affection. ”

“ If so, how wretched, at times, must the indulgence of this temper render you! When reason, awhile suspended, resumes its empire, and calm reflection succeeds the riot of passion, how severe must be your self-condemnation, and how keen your sensations of regret! Perhaps an unkindness of expression to some particular friend, disrespectful treatment of an honored superior, ill-timed resentment to a beloved equal, or imperious and unbecoming severity to a deserving inferior, may give you the most painful emotions, and degrade you in your own, as well as in the estimation of every observer! ”

“ Indeed, if those who are not equally tempted to the sins of temper, and who think and speak harshly of us for such transgressions, could know the agony they entail upon those who commit them—the yearning of an affectionate heart towards a friend thus estranged—the humiliation of a proud spirit after having thus exposed its weakness—the bitter reflection, that not one of all those burning words we uttered can ever be recalled—that they have eaten like a canker into some old attachment, and stamped with ingratitude the aching brow, whose fever is already almost more than it can bear. ”

“ The noble and majestic features of manhood have often been transformed by these vices into the frightful and disgusting image of demoniac furies,—the angelic beauties of earth's fairest daughters as often transformed by vice into objects of mingled pity and contempt: but cease my soul, no longer dwell on these awful scenes; my heart is faint, my soul is sick, my spirit grieves within me; and mine eyes are suffused with tears while contemplating upon the scenes of wretchedness and misery which sin has produced in our world. O misery, how hast thou triumphed! O death, how many are thy victories! ”

“ I was not I must confess displeased nor a little disappointed to witness the evident emotions of pity and commiseration, which this woeful declaration appeared to excite in their minds: as I had supposed them too much accustomed to witness scenes of misery and distress, to have their feelings much effected by a brief recital of my sufferings and deprivations—but in justice to them I must say, that although a very illiterate, I found them (with a few exceptions) a humane and benevolent people. ”

“ Would I could foresee a term to our misery!—Who but yourself shall find a remedy for our misfortunes? Shall we delay, until time brings to light that which is now a secret, and the affront we have received entail on us a shame more intolerable than death itself? ”

“ I at times conceive myself attended by an evil spirit shaped out by a guilty conscience, and this is the only familiar which attends me, and by it I have been dogged into madness through every turning of life. ”

“ Take pity on their condition, O Lord, and in thine own good time, if it be thy will, let their unhappy lot in this life be improved! But, above, all things, soften their hearts, inspire them with good and pious purposes, and guard them from the temptations of revenge! ”

“ Each laborious step which galls his wounded feet in rough and untrodden paths pours a drop of balm into his troubled soul, and the journey of many a weary day brings a nightly relief to his anguished heart. Will you dare call this enthusiasm, ye crowd of pompous declaimers? Enthusiasm! O God! thou seest my tears. Thou hast allotted us our portion of misery: must we also have brethren to persecute us, to deprive us of our consolation, of our trust in thee, and in thy love and mercy? ”

“ He felt as if a clear light broke upon his mind, and with it a conviction that good was, after all, stronger than evil, and that good was possible to men. He seemed to discover that there was a kind of rapture in which he could love forever without faltering and without sin. ”

“ When the wave breaks upon our head,
When we are crushed with want and dread,
Then we have most from you to fear.
Why do men strangely look me o'er
When I their mercy need the more?
Do they not know a girl may taste
The dregs of want and yet be chaste?
Should woman sell her soul away
To save its manacles of clay?
February 23, 1885.
All honest means of life have failed.
The small accomplishments I've tried
That pleased friends in my days of pride,
Are naught; but vice has not prevailed,
And, thank Heaven, should not, though my heart
Were torn a thousand times apart. ”

“ To all this, sorrow had added a dignity so full of melancholy and commanding grace—a seriousness indicative of such truth and honor—as to make the heart of the spectator wonder, and the eye almost to weep on witnessing an association so strange and incomprehensible, as that of such beauty and evident goodness with sufferings that seem rather like crimes against purity and innocence, and almost tempt the weak heart to revolt against the dispensations of Providence. ”

“ An Earth all lying round, crying, Come and till me, come and reap me;—yet we here sit enchanted! In the eyes and brows of these men hung the gloomiest expression, not of anger, but of grief and shame and manifold inarticulate distress and weariness ”

“ A chearful countenance infuses a sensible complacency and serenity into my mind; as an angry or sorrowful one throws a sudden damp upon me. Hatred, resentment, esteem, love, courage, mirth and melancholy; all these passions I feel more from communication than from my own natural temper and disposition. ”

“ Oh gods, if it is yours to feel pity, or if ever
you have saved someone in the nick of time in death itself
Look upon pathetic me! And, if I have lived life purely,
take away this pestilence and ruin from me,
which creeping down to my inner most self like a paralysis
takes away happiness from my whole heart. ”

“ The consequence was that they separated, each laboring under that yearning of the heart towards the other, which combines the most delicious sensations connected with the passion—tenderness disguised under an impression of offence, hope, uncertainty, and that awful anger that is never to forgive or change, but which, in the meantime, is furtively seeking for an opportunity to be reconciled, and vent its rage in kisses and in tears. ”

“ The changing scenes of his life display the beauty and constancy of friendship, the pangs of ingratitude, the grandeur of piety, the simplicity of its manifestation, the loss of virtue, the agony of remorse, and the fervor of that contrition which, amidst the plaintive melodies of the psaltery, poured itself forth in those deep, thrilling accents of sorrow which, to the end of our wayward history, must form the sad language of penance. ”

“ Is there a katharsis that somehow transforms our pity and fear into relief and pleasure? There is something of the sort in the mere exercise of violent emotion, which in a measure carries its own relief and cure. ”

“ However, this romance of the soul diverted their thoughts from the contemplation of their own misery; and, by a strange magic, the multitude of calamities dispersed throughout the world diminished the sensation of their own miseries. They did not dare complain when all mankind was in a state of sufferance. ”

“ There was laughter without joy—there was frivolity without merriment—there was the surface of enjoyment and the substance of woe, for beneath those painted cheeks was the pallor of despair and broken health, and beneath those whitened bosoms, half veiled with gaudy silks, were hearts that were aching with remorse, or, yet more unhappy, benumbed and callous with habitual sin. ”

“ Even when painful and terrible in their subjects, "they are of power, by raising pity and fear or terror, to purge the mind of suchlike passions,—that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight or, in the words of Charles Lamb, "they dispose the mind to a meditative tenderness." ”

“ For who could foresee a tragedy so needless, so blind, so brutal in its lack of dignity, or know that such strength could perish through such insidious weakness, that so great a man could be stung to death by a mania born in little minds? ”

“ Though a thousand voices sang it,
That such evil things could happen,
That such misery could follow,
Such misfortune could befall one
Who has tried to do her duty,
Who has tried to live uprightly,
Tried to make her people happy. ”

“ That's because, when one's heart has been broken into in the way you have broken into mine, all sorts of weaknesses are free to enter--shame, anger, stupid indignation, stupid fears--stupid laughter, too. ”

“ After one moment’s sickening at the poor malice and cowardice, our thoughts fix on the high and holy truths to which they direct us,—on the transience of error,—the nothingness of fame, in the serious passages of life,—the powerlessness of assaults from without while we possess ourselves,—till we end in a calm and sweet mood of contentedness for ourselves and affectionate intercession for the victims of angry passion or of sordid interests. ”

“ To raise, and afterwards to calm the Passions, to purge the Soul from Pride, by the Examples of Humane Miseries, which befall the greatest; in few words, to expel Arrogance, and introduce Compassion, are the great effects of Tragedy. ”

“ I must be pardoned for giving these distressing details; but how otherwise can I depict the misery, moral and physical, which we are enduring? And with it all, I dare not venture to hope that we have reached the climax of our sufferings. ”

“ Who utter the deepest complaints against the evils of life? They who are most distinguished by its blessings. Youth and genius are amongst the most clamorous of the complainants. I hope and believe that misery is not so miserable as it appears. I have suffered, and I know the alleviations which attend each species of suffering I have endured ”

“ Let it not be taken for granted that the temper of envy, rage, resentment, yields greater delight than meekness, forgiveness, compassion, and good-will; especially when it is acknowledged that rage, envy, resentment, are in themselves mere misery; and that satisfaction arising from the indulgence of them is little more than relief from that misery; whereas the temper of compassion and benevolence is itself delightful; and the indulgence of it, by doing good, affords new positive delight and enjoyment. ”

“ Yet there lay, underneath his own gloomy agony, a remote consciousness of collateral affliction, such as is frequently experienced by those who may be drawn, by some temporary and present pleasure, from the contemplation of their misery. ”

“ There are many disappointments in my profession, and bitter, bitter contempts!" Her face hardened, and looked much older. "If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up for it, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. ”

“ It is true, we have accompanied him with pain and pity to penury, rags, and beggary—unreformed, unrepenting, hardened, shameless, desperate. Do our readers now suppose that there is anything in the man, or any principle external to him, capable of regenerating and elevating a heart so utterly lost as his? ”

“ Though they may suffer—and capacity for suffering is a mark of greatness—they can also play and laugh, laugh at themselves and their failures, make jests of pathetic situations in which they find themselves. ”

“ Where are those who sincerely renounce the pleasures, habits, maxims, and hopes of this world? We find many who complain of it, and accuse it of injustice, ingratitude, and caprice, who speak warmly of its abuses and errors; but in decrying, they continue to love, to follow it; they cannot bring themselves to do without it; in complaining of its injustice, they are only piqued at it, they are not undeceived ”

“ And dear and intolerable to the feelings of nature are the tributes it will voluntarily offer,—fasting, scourging, wounds and humiliation;—the humiliation of all worldly distinction, when the light of reason as well as the robe of dignity are thrown aside. ”

“ It is one of those instances of the irony inherent in human fate which move at once to tears and bitter laughter; the waste of emotion, the involuntary folly, the cruel deception caused by limit of faculties—how they concentrate into an hour or a day the essence of life itself! ”

“ 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. ”

“ When I look strictly into my deceitful and wicked heart, I find it so full of this abominable vice, that I regard myself with horror and amazement; and yet perhaps the next moment, indulge in airy schemes and self-complacency. Sure there is not in the whole universe, so vain and sinful a wretch as I am! ”

“ Mere human feelings of pity, sympathy with my too visible agitation, superadded to something of perhaps reverence for the blighting misery that was now opening its artillery upon me—for misery has a privilege, and everywhere is felt to be a holy thing—had combined to procure for me some attention and some indulgence hitherto. ”

“ I will tell thee, therefore, my crimes, that thou mayst know thy own felicity, lest, ignorant it means nothing but innocence, thou shouldst lose it, unconscious of its value. Listen then to me, and learn what Misery is! Guilt is alone the basis of lasting unhappiness;—Guilt is the basis of mine, and therefore I am a wretch for ever! ”