Conjuror

“ At the first glance of the eye they seize the false shade, the confusion of ideas or of words; they redress at once the illusive perspective created by the mirage of a lying style. The fascinations of error excite in them only a smile of pity or of contempt. ”

“ The further our literary inquiries are extended here, the more vast and stupendous is the scene which opens to us; at the same time, that the true and false, the sublime and the puerile, wisdom and absurdity, are so intermixed, that, at every step, we have to smile at folly, while we admire and acknowledge the philosophical truth, though couched in obscure allegory and puerile fable. ”

“ But his laughter has an echo that is grim.
When they're offered to the world in merry guise,
Unpleasant truths are swallowed with a will—
For he who'd make his fellow creatures wise
Should always gild the philosophic pill! ”

“ The confusion in the barbaric mind between the objective and the subjective, and between the name [Pg 169] and the person or thing, which has been illustrated in the foregoing pages, will enable us to see more clearly how the like confusion must enter into the interpretation of such occult and compound phenomena as dreams, and all their kind.
They supply the conditions for exciting and sustaining that feeling of mystery which attends man’s endeavour to get at the meaning of his surroundings. ”

“ I notice in all things a curious duality, a right side and a wrong side. Confusion is the wrong side of order, misery of happiness, falsehood of truth, evil of good; and it seems to me that novel-reading, which can be a vice, I know, may also be made a virtue. ”

“ We see, as knowledge dawns upon it, truth and error strangely commingled; here, a bright spot illuminated by truth-and there, one darkened and distorted by error; and the state of such a soul may be compared to a landscape at early dawn, where the sun is seen superbly gilding some objects, and causing others to send forth their lengthened, distorted, and sometimes hideous shadows. ”

“ Ridiculous systems wound over the earth like a snake Devouring the children of Fear! Ridiculous customs, Ridiculous judgments and laws, philosophies, worships. You saw through and laughed at—you saw above all That a soul must make end with a groan, or a curse, or a laugh. ”

“ Philosophers stumble, fools blunder, and the truth dances on ahead through Life's woodland of mysteries—one instant revealing itself in a golden shaft of sunlight, hiding the next with smothered laughter in the black shadow of a fern, while seekers after it tramp past in grumbling blindness. ”

“ In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and looks not to effects. How else could He correct your error, who have overlooked the cause entirely? He bids you bring each terrible effect to Him that you may look together on its foolish cause and laugh with Him a while. You judge effects, but He has judged their cause. ”

“ Again, Truth may also be proved indirectly, by showing the folly and error of its opposite; and when this is done, not by methodical and gradual exposition, but in immediate and intuitive clearness, then this is indirect, and, in relation to the Idea, negative Wit; exciting laughter in those to whom it is addressed:—it is Wit as the source of the Ridiculous; for Error in its direct and intuitive aspect is essentially ridiculous. ”

“ In the justifying of the paradox, in the extricating of the real truth from the apparent falsehood of the statement, in the answer to the appeal made here to the imagination,—an appeal and challenge which, unless it be responded to, the proverb must remain unintelligible to us,—in all this there is a process of mental activity, oftentimes so rapidly exercised as scarcely to be perceptible, yet not the less carried on with a pleasurable excitement. ”

“ In many such cases we seem almost to acquire a sense, and, perhaps, for a similar reason we speak of a sense of the ludicrous. We are also, perhaps, influenced by a logical error—the ludicrous seems to us a simple feeling, and as every sense is so, we conclude that all simple feelings are senses. ”

“ A word, a look, nay the very appearance of a slight, throws me into the greatest uneasiness and confusion; and though I can govern my temper enough to hide it from the world, my heart is ready to burst with indignation. ”

“ The confusion, the clamour, the jar of words that half suffice and thoughts that half exist—all these and other more absolutely offensive qualities—audacity, monotony, bombast, obscure play of licence and tortuous growth of fancy—cannot quench or even wholly conceal the living purport and the imperishable beauty which are here latent. ”

“ It is a note of crumbling and confusion, of change and seemingly aimless swelling, of a bubbling up and medley of futile loves and sorrows. But through the confusion sounds another note. Through the confusion something drives, something that is at once human achievement and the most inhuman of all existing things. Something comes out of it. ”

“ That time of judgment which is to dispel all disguises, and to drag sin from its coverts into the full light of heaven, will assuredly find no leisure for the discursive eye; one perception, one emotion, will doubtless rule exclusive in the soul. ”

“ But as I watched the endless faces filled with half-startled and half-placid confusion, and as I noted what the poets call the gayety of spring in the hearts of men, there came to me out of the swarm and roar of the day the mockery which it is the duty of philosophers to hear. ”

“ Nature has given you a gentle and sensible soul, and has imparted an exquisitely lively imagination, and a certain admixture of melancholy which disposes to despondent revery. It is from this peculiar mental constitution that arise the woes that now afflict you. Your goodness, candor, and sincerity preclude your suspecting in others either fraud or malignity. ”

“ A mistake or embarrassment, which for the present moment fills the face with blushes, and the mind with confusion, will have no other effect upon those who observe it, than that of convulsing them with irresistible laughter. ”

“ One lies, but one laughs. One affirms, but one doubts. The unexpected bursts forth from the syllogism. That is fine. There are still human beings here below who know how to open and close the surprise box of the paradox merrily. ”

“ Now this analysis of the elements of a judgment is no explanation of our difficulties; and in fact for the moment only embarrasses us more. But the nature of the difficulty may come home to us somewhat more clearly, if we try to follow the thread of this analysis a little further. Even if it is a very imperfect account, it may serve to lead us up to the true insight that we seek into the nature of error. ”

“ The final impression left upon the mind after one closes one of these fascinating volumes is, it must be confessed, a little sad. So much ambiguity in human life—so much unnecessary suffering—so many mad, blind, wilful misunderstandings! ”

“ As I rose, a great and terrible voice, from a vast distance, pronounced my doom in these words of startling import: "In life you declared the negation of the supernatural. For truth you took a false philosophy. ”

“ The outward covering of infantile and childish innocence, with which those passions and propensities were enveloped, is broken through; those hidden evils, coming forth, cast off their gilded covering, and, with it, also, the beauty and the joy which it communicated. And then the anxieties and pains which evil and sin always bring in their train, nay, which belong to their very nature and are inseparable from them, begin to be felt. ”

“ I say, no man has passed through this way of education but must have seen an ingenuous creature expiring with shame, with pale looks, beseeching sorrow, and silent tears, throw up its honest eyes, and kneel on its tender knees to an inexorable blockhead, to be forgiven the false quantity of a word in making a Latin verse. ”

“ However this may be, there can be little doubt that man in all ages of which we have any knowledge has possessed that faculty which perceives ridiculous incongruities in the relative positions of certain objects, and in the actions and sayings of individuals, which we term the “sense of the ludicrous.” ”

“ And again I thought about that illusion which all are subjected to, especially people whose activity is reflected on others—the illusion that, having been accustomed to see the effects of your acts on others, you verify the correctness of your acts by their effect on others. ”

“ In all the vast and voluminous records of critical error there can be discovered no falsehood more foolish or more flagrant than the vulgar tradition which represents this high-souled and gentle-hearted poet as one morbidly fascinated by a fantastic attraction toward the 'violent delights' of horror and the nervous or sensational excitements of criminal detail ”

“ Look at the confusion there is in the world. What is the use for me to trouble myself in trying to understand a subject that our wisest men cannot agree upon?" We confess your words have considerable force, in view of the confusion there is in the religious world at the present time. ”

“ And beneath all the light wit which circulates, beneath all the laughter, which often has a false ring, each retains his or her particular worry, or distress of mind, at times so acute that it becomes perfect agony. ”

“ In making this statement I expect to be believed, not only on the evidence of my general character but also for the reason, which anybody can see, that the whole treatment of the tale, its inspiring indignation and underlying pity and contempt, prove my detachment from the squalor and sordidness which lie simply in the outward circumstances of the setting. ”

“ After the supreme advent of Truth in the heart, there comes an overwhelming sense of error's vacuity, of the blunders which arise from wrong apprehension. The enlightened heart loathes error, and casts it aside ”

“ Superstition, folly, and cunning will go on to the end of time, spinning their poison webs around the consciences of mankind. Courage and veracity—these qualities, and only these, avail to defeat them. ”

“ The baseness, stupidity, folly, injustice, suffering, and wreck, this world everywhere presents, are always a splendid challenge to strength, diligence, endurance, faith, wisdom—to all sublime and manly qualities. ”

“ It is thus, O my God! that by our eternal contradictions we justify the adorable ways of thy wisdom upon the lots of men, and that we provide for thy justice powerful reasons to overthrow one day the illusion, and the falsity of our pretexts. ”

“ This perpetual insincerity stamps itself on the face—affects every feature. We all know the theological countenance,—cold, unsympathetic, cruel, lighted with a pious smirk,—no line of laughter—no dimpled mirth—no touch of humor—nothing human. ”

“ It shall be a figure of which the preconceived idea was either worthy or dreadful—which suddenly we have presented to us shorn of its superior attributes. Ideals are unconsciously enshrined in the mind, and when images proclaiming themselves the same ideals appear in sharp degraded contrast—we laugh. ”

“ This wantonness and folly did I put in place of that Will, when I taught that “In everything there is one thing impossible—rationality!”
A LITTLE reason, to be sure, a germ of wisdom scattered from star to star—this leaven is mixed in all things: for the sake of folly, wisdom is mixed in all things! ”

“ Take heed, lest by nice and subtle sophistry you burthen your knowing soul, or knowingly burthen your soul, with the guilt of advancing a false title, or of maintaining, by specious fallacies, a claim which, if shown in its native and true colours, would appear to be false. ”

“ Why remember we not, what, and how many, contradictions we finde and feele even in our own judgement? How many things served us but yesterday as articles of faith, which to day we deeme but fables? Glory and curiositie are the scourges of our soules. ”

“ One set are 'wise' and the other 'foolish,' because He wishes to show not only the sin, but the absurdity, of unreadiness, and to teach us that true wisdom is not of the head only, but far more of the heart. ”

“ But is it not strange, Madam, that a man accounts it absurd, ridiculous, and a prejudice to Gods Omnipotency, to attribute self-motion to Matter, or a material Creature, when it is not absurd, ridiculous, or any prejudice to God, to attribute it to an Immaterial Creature? ”

“ The dead abstract notions of the intellect, the dialectical disputes of the reason, the purely subjective and one-sided apprehension of objects by a deluded fancy, and the absolute will, are the four sources of human error. ”

“ It is surprising to find quoted, in support of the conscience view, the line 'Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,' and to observe the total misinterpretation of the soliloquy To be or not to be, from which the line comes. ”

“ Let us be characteristic in tone even to the point of foolishness! If by means of tones we allow plenty of scope for guessing, this will be put to the credit of our intellects. Let us irritate nerves, let us strike them dead: let us handle thunder and lightning,—that is what overthrows.... ”

“ Sometimes we heard odd curses — men cursing themselves, and others, nameless places and nameless people, unknown memories and unknown misfortunes. Sometimes they spoke cheerfully, and laughed to themselves softly ”