Contention

“ Standing alone, leaning over the rail, was a fine looking elderly gentleman, whose countenance wore an air of quiet content and goodness—it was, indeed, one of those inviting countenances that we sometimes see possessed by honorable old age, which tells of wise thought and kindly sympathy, instead of a callous heart and suspicious mind, and our hero selected its owner for a travelling acquaintance. ”

“ From this redoubled attachment, a persuasion that I had but a short time to live, and profound security on my future state, arose an habitual and even pleasing serenity, which, calming every passion that extends our hopes and fears, made me enjoy without inquietude or concern the few days which I imagined remained for me. ”

“ As far back as I can remember, I find that my dominant faculty, the one that has been present in every crisis of my life, great or small, and which is present to-day, has been the faculty, I mean the power and the need of duplication. There have always been in me, as it were, two distinct persons; one who went, came, acted, felt, and another who looked at the first go, come, act, and feel with an impassable curiosity. ”

“ I have just opened a book in which I find a paragraph so suitable to our detention, and the close intimacy and dependence on each other which have followed it, that I cannot help transcribing—‘Quand on est parfaitement heureuse par ses affections, c’est peut-être une faveur de la Providence que certains revers resserrent encore vos liens par la force même des choses.’ This struck me as very just, and what ought to silence all our murmurs on the subject of our detention. ”

“ This life which you have been speaking of among yourselves, referring perhaps to the conferences concerning heaven which they had among themselves for their own and one another's encouragement in prison: "Go, and preach the same to the world, that others may be comforted with the same comforts with which you yourselves are comforted of God." ”

“ Every countenance recalls the cares, the intrigues, the labours employed in the advancement of fortunes—in the overthrow of rivals: the relations, the coldness, the hatreds, the evil offices done, the baseness of all; hope, despair, rage, satisfaction, express themselves in the features. See how all eyes wander to and fro examining what passes around—how some are astonished to find others more mean, or less mean than was expected! ”

“ Irrespective of the fact that conducting for any length of time tired him out, he had neither the collectedness and prompt presence of mind, nor the sympathetic faculty, nor the enterprising dash, without each of which conducting in the true sense is impossible. ”

“ Modest requests are disheartened by silence, but such motions which, by their nature, imply a disgrace, and carry no reason for their acceptance but what they expect to find in the consent of those to whom they are made, if they be not presently refused, they give encouragement to hope for entertainment. ”

“ The first shot may well be an accident, the second may possibly be, but as the third inexorably follows, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and sons, look at each other with blanched faces, and instantly a hundred scenes of quiet preparation for meeting, are transformed into the confusion of a very different kind of preparation. ”

“ In the intercessions you make with the Ruler of All, we ask to be remembered, and hope that you will receive all the returns of good which your work so richly merits. If you can find time in the future, you can give us no greater pleasure than writing us, even if only so much as may be placed upon a postal. ”

“ His companions asked him, "What are you thinking about?" And he said, "I am thinking about this—When people put on new clothes, where do the old ones go to?" And his companions said, "These words are true." ”

“ He would listen with unparalleled eagerness to the momentous sentences uttered for the first time in the ears of men, and to the discussion upon them, impatient of mere formalities and technicalities. Should a thought be sprung of important bearing, or an overlooked contingency be brought forward, how intently would its effect be watched. ”

“ I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to hold out his plate, as if I knew already. Every natural function can be dignified by deliberation and privacy. ”

“ Au dedans et au dehors le cerveau est entretenu dans une sorte d’ébullition incessante. Les points de vue, les aspects des choses, les combinaisons, les possibilités, tant pour les individus que pour les collectivités, se succèdent si rapidement qu’il faut pour en tenir compte et les utilises au besoin se tenir toujours en éveil et comme en une mobilisation permanente. ”

“ The same principle will hold, of course, in a myriad cases; if we have to-morrow, or even at a later date, to plead a cause, to make an after-dinner speech, to write a report or an article, to learn a lesson, to entertain guests, to handle a difficult case of discipline, we have only to take this counsel of our pillow, to reënforce it with our first morning thought, and we shall find ourselves making a new record of success. ”

“ During the first term the novelty, the loneliness, the dread of unknown punishments, the respect for authorities, the desire to measure himself with his companions—all tend to keep him right and diligent. ”

“ Faced with a difficulty through which her own experience does not serve to guide her, she falls back on convention and expresses the thoughts of others in the stilted language that convention has put into her mouth. ”

“ Why is it necessary to add to these things their meetings and the respective occupations of the men and of the women during those meetings, and the practices which are even to the present day habitually observed by us, especially such as we are accustomed to observe at the feast of the Saviour’s passion, with fasting and night watching and study of the divine Word. ”

“ If you see the ‘door’ of opportunity for sacrifice and service open before you, enter in. But enter quickly; for the night of darkness and of intense opposition to the truth will ere long be upon us and will hinder you from engaging in the service. ”

“ When I say 'demands,' I mean chiefly the duties of a ceremonial and representative nature which are inseparable from my position—and that's the bond of connexion with the conversation we had just now at Ditlinde's. The performance of these duties may be a happiness when a contact with the people, a relationship, a beating of hearts in unison exists. ”

“ In other words, there are phenomena subsequent to and arising from the characteristics of individual men, viz., the phenomena of the accommodation of volition to volition in every form of human contact. ”

“ But the process of coming to consciousness as to what we can rationally desire, mean, and believe, as the fulfilment of our highest purposes, is a process in which private desires must be subordinated. ”

“ You have counted on a meeting with the beloved one unwitnessed by others, an interchange of confessions and vows which others may not hear. You have arranged almost the words in which your innermost heart is to be expressed ”

“ A new set of commandments is being written in the sight of men,—commandments learned but slowly and often transgressed, even by those whose wills are pure and whose hearts are loving. Thou shalt sufficiently rest! ”

“ If any one of those who have been railing against me, will come forward; if any person, male or female, will come forward and establish one act of seduction against me, even from the earliest period of my life, up to this hour ”

“ Who will set me free from the business of this world? For thou wast the manager of our affairs, the censor of the servants, the decider between brother and sister, the decider not in matters of strife but of affection. ”

“ So also in the psychical life of man they play a very important part—the leading part in the more composite volitional processes, and they very often arise out of these latter when these have been often repeated. The actions that arise out of several conflicting motives of strong feeling-tone we call voluntary acts, or if we are clearly aware of a previous conflict of opposite motives, selective or discriminative acts. ”

“ If, to inflict scruples on your conscience, they should enclose a stamped envelope, give a penny to the first beggar you meet on leaving school. Relieve the conscience, but, whatever you do, don't answer. ”

“ Truckling, compromise, time-serving, capitulations of conscience, are conventionally opprobrious names for what, if successfully carried out, would be on his principles by far the easiest and most praiseworthy mode of bringing about that harmony between inner and outer relations which is all that he means by good. ”

“ I see a solemn conference of deep import between a stroke and a coach. I see a neat, clean-limbed young man go airily up to a well-earned tea, without, I hope, a care, or an anxiety in his mind, expecting and intending to spend an agreeable evening. ”

“ Who shall give them to have such a mind, to fear me, and to keep all my commandments at all times, that it may be well with them and with their children for ever?
5:30. Go and say to them: Return into your tents.
5:31. But stand thou here with me, and I will speak to thee all my commandments, and ceremonies and judgments: which thou shalt teach them, that they may do them in the land, which I will give them for a possession.
5:32. Keep therefore and do the things which the Lord God hath commanded you: you shall not go aside neither to the right hand, nor to the left. ”

“ Moreover, as the sensuous impulsion controls us physically, and the formal impulsion morally, the former makes our formal constitution contingent, and the latter makes our material constitution contingent, that is to say, there is contingence in the agreement of our happiness with our perfection, and reciprocally. The instinct of play, in which both act in concert, will render both our formal and our material constitution contingent; accordingly, our perfection and our happiness in like manner. ”

“ If one person or two or three or four, or any small number you choose, were in distress, and I were summoned out to help one after another, I would do all in my power to give the best counsel to each. ”

“ Being mindful that before I address the Deity, my soul ought to be calm and serene, free from Passion and Perturbation, or otherwise elevated with Rational Joy and Pleasure, I ought to use a Countenance that expresses a filial Respect, mixed with a kind of Smiling, that Signifies inward Joy, and Satisfaction, and Admiration. ”

“ Those who in choosing relations, callings, dwellings, or settlements are guided and governed by the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, or the pride of life, and consult not the interests of their souls and their religion, cannot expect God's presence with them, nor his blessing upon them, but are commonly disappointed even in that which they principally aimed at, and miss of that which they promised themselves satisfaction in. ”

“ Here the principle of relations shows itself in the form of the law of contrast, above all in the fact that the change between contrasting feelings itself intensifies the contrasts. Thus a feeling of pleasure is more intense, and its specific quality is more clearly felt, if it has been preceded by a feeling of displeasure. ”

“ Such words as 'commanding appearance,' 'prepossessing countenance,' applied to the figures or faces of the males of the human species, have no meaning in my ears: no man commands me, no man prepossesses me, by anything in, on, or about his carcass. ”

“ That peculiar gentleness of disposition, which is their general characteristic, immediately manifested itself in all their looks and actions, and gave full employment to those who made the human heart their study. ”

“ Whichever groups of sensations within a soul awaken most readily, begin to speak, and give the word of command—these decide as to the general order of rank of its values, and determine ultimately its list of desirable things. ”

“ He looked upon such people as offered these opinions and explanations as impetuous counsellors, who hurried everything and suggested everything, who wished to discount the future in order to satisfy their ambition, their aversion, their different passions. ”

“ When he stirred up conscience, that ordinary deputy of his, in the soul, to do its office, he took that opportunity, either when deep sleep fell on men (for, though dreams mostly come from fancy, some may come from conscience) or in slumberings, when men are between sleeping and waking, reflecting at night upon the business of the foregoing day or projecting in the morning the business of the ensuing day; then is a proper time for their hearts to reproach them for what they have done ill and to admonish them what they should do. See Isa. ”

“ Now this confessor, and one or more of his penitents, may be the children of the same father and mother, and yet they shall be as unlike in attitude and in character as two human beings can be. In the closest alliance of blood you may thus find the opposite poles of one humanity. ”

“ We live in changed times, under a different rule. What do the Lord's servants owe him now?
The speaker had gone on with the utmost quietness of manner from one of these instances to another; using hardly any gestures; uttering only with slow distinctness and deliberation his sentences one after the other; his face and eye meanwhile commanding the whole assembly. He went on now with the same quietness, perhaps with a little more deliberateness of accentuation, and an additional spark of fire now and then in his glance. ”