Discord

“ If it is true, and I believe it will be found to be true, that whatsoever we sow we shall reap; let us pause, and beware that we do not sow the seeds of discord among our brethren--it will be a root of bitterness that will spring up and fasten on the vitals of our republic; will eat like a canker and bring forth the poisonous fruits of discontent, contention, confusion, and universal discord, and perhaps in the last resort end so dissolution or separation, which is more to be dreaded than all the evils that can be placed upon us by the united world. ”

“ The discord was a nightmare for sensitive ears, but the harsh jangle of these bells, as they tumbled over each other, brutally callous to the jarring sounds, and to the irrelevancy of the melodies they played, seemed in keeping with the discordance—illustrated by our position—between the ideal of life, designed by God the Spirit, and the botching of that design, by murderous man. ”

“ Or who can account for every mood that thralls him,--at times like one entranced in a dream by airs from Paradise,--at other times steeped in darkness, when the spirit of discord seems to marshal his every thought, one against another? ”

“ A tender and pleasant feeling insinuated itself into their souls, and the least opposition turned it into an impetuous fury: with love arose jealousy; discord triumphed, and human blood was sacrificed to the gentlest of all passions. ”

“ The nature of duality is just the contrary,—to the air disturbance, to souls evil, to bodies disease, to cities and dwellings factions and hostilities. For every evil comes from discord and disagreement. ”

“ Sowing discord in your hearts, their presence is a curse to all. Where ill-harmony, want of sympathy and distrust abound in families, these selfish, malicious spirits delight to throng, and thither they flock, by their presence to increase the unhappiness of the home of strife, while at the same time fostering their own disposition to live a sensuous life. ”

“ Weary of your prayers for vengeance,
Of your wranglings and dissensions;
All your strength is in your union,
All your danger is in discord;
Therefore be at peace henceforward,
And as brothers live together. ”

“ That is something like a great number of people I know. They will tear off in their own direction, and drag others after them who wish to go in another direction, and the fire of discord is between them. ”

“ This late dissension grown betwixt the peers
Burns under feigned ashes of forged love
And will at last break out into a flame:
As fester'd members rot but by degree,
Till bones and flesh and sinews fall away,
So will this base and envious discord breed. ”

“ That discord breeds malignant, treacherous, and violent tempers to fill the magistracy. Are men, rendered miserable, by such evil moral qualities, the best agents for rendering a nation virtuous and happy? ”

“ Shall we, for any vexation, provocation, or in jury, tolerate within ourselves that baleful agent which has so often wrought misery, sown discord and disunion, arrayed brother against brother, and friend against friend, sundered the bonds of man's fellowship to man, desolated kingdoms, and covered the face of the earth with blood? ”

“ This horrible discord, which has lasted for so many centuries, is a very striking lesson that we should pardon each other's errors; discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it. ”

“ I wonder if, some day, one won't need to rebel against customs and laws? If this discord will have gone? Some day, perhaps—who knows?—the old won't coddle and hamper the young, and the young won't need to fly in the faces of the old. They'll face facts as facts, and understand. ”

“ But there is a truce between the nations; a truce in which the elements of discord are nevertheless smouldering, ready to blaze out afresh at the first opportunity, and they have seen each other accidentally, and been thrown together by circumstances, till curiosity has become interest, and interest grown into liking, and liking ripened into love. ”

“ So profound, then, even in a psychological point of view, and apart from the multiplied phases which the moral aspect presents, appears the discord which reigns in our whole mind as at present constituted! Dissension seems to be interwoven into its fundamental fabric. Instead, therefore, of saying the human consciousness is fourfold, with equal, if not with greater correctness, we might and ought to say, it is divided, or, rather, split, into four or more pieces. ”

“ How bewildering, how confusing is such behaviour! No two men can be found who may be said to be outwardly and inwardly united. The evidences of discord and malice are apparent everywhere, though all were made for harmony and union. ”

“ It is a duty which your union or near relation doth especially require. Will you fall out with yourselves? Cannot you agree with your own flesh? 2. Your discord will be your pain, and the vexation of your lives. Like a bile, or wound, or fracture in your own bodies, which will pain you till it is cured; you will hardly keep peace in your minds, when peace is broken so near you in your family. As you would take heed of hurting yourselves, and as you would hasten the cure when you are hurt; so should you take heed of any breach of peace, and quickly seek to heal it when it is broken. ”

“ Discord as one of the great causes of confusion is also spoken of with much force (1 Henry VI., act iv. sc. 1, l. 188, vol. v. p. 68) ,—
“No simple man that sees
This jarring discord of nobility,
This should’ring of each other in the court,
This factious bandying of their favourites,
But that he doth presage some ill event.
’Tis much, when sceptres are in children’s hands;
But more when envy breeds unkind division;
There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.” The Paris edition of Horapollo’s Hieroglyphics, 1551, subjoins several to which there is no Greek text (pp. 217–223) . ”

“ Why so much domestic discord, ending in ruin—so many suicides? Why do men and women hurl themselves over the precipice of vice and deadly indulgences—when even a novice might easily see the inevitable? ”

“ It will also come to pass that your message of peace will awake discord; one brother will dispute with the others, children will be against their parents, because some will be for Me and others against Me. ”

“ Relation, then, to our topic or interest is constantly felt in the fringe, and particularly the relation of harmony and discord, of furtherance or hindrance of the topic. When the sense of furtherance is there, we are 'all right;' with the sense of hindrance we are dissatisfied and perplexed, and cast about us for other thoughts. ”

“ The discord which so easily finds its way into all society as an effect of the different moods in which people happen to be for the moment, also in part explains why it is that memory always idealizes, and sometimes almost transfigures, the attitude we have taken up at any period of the past—a change due to our inability to remember all the fleeting influences which disturbed us on any given occasion. ”

“ The union may have been virtually a separation for five-sixths of its term; the ill temper of the man or the carping spirit of the 27woman, or any one of the other innumerable causes of dissension which make dislike so much easier and more general than affection, may have made of this ‘married life’ an everlasting apple of discord blistering the lips which have been fastened to it. ”

“ So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after death.—Rousseau. ”

“ For what is wedlock forced but a hell,
An age of discord and continual strife?
Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss,
And is a pattern of celestial peace. ”

“ The popular dissensions, founded on the most serious interest, or holy pretence, have scarcely equalled the obstinacy of this wanton discord, which invaded the peace of families, divided friends and brothers, and tempted the female sex, though seldom seen in the circus, to espouse the inclinations of their lovers or to contradict the wishes of their husbands. ”

“ The discord is not indeed in every case so strongly marked and distinct, still every one who at all observes his own consciousness may easily determine, and satisfactorily answer the question, whether this opposition between the understanding and the will, or at least the disposition thereto, is not deeply fixed and rooted in our inmost nature, and on the whole universal. ”

“ All I wanted to say was, that the feeling of discord, in modern times, arises from the fact that religion has exalted faith above morals, that art has pursued a similar course with beauty, and politics with freedom. ”

“ Such discord has been the effect of the unanimity into which so many have of late been seduced or bullied, or into the appearance of which they have sunk through mere despair. They have been told that their dissent from violent measures is an encouragement to rebellion. ”

“ Throughout the history of civilisation, wherever we can trace the feelings and ideas which have prevailed on this matter and the resultant conduct, the problem has existed, often to produce discord, conflict, and misery. ”

“ The interior discord which so often finds place in men is nothing but this conflict of outside spirits who wish to get possession of his will, his reason, in short, his whole innermost being. As the man feels the agreement of spirits within him as rest, clearness, harmony, and safety, he is also conscious of their discord as unrest, doubt, vacillation, confusion, enmity, in his heart. ”

“ The number of good men, the onely charitable nourishers of Concord, wee see is thinne, and daily melts and waines; but of bad discording it is infinite, and growes hourely. Wee are ascertained of all Disputable doubts, onely by arguing and differing in Opinion, and if formall disputation (which is but a painted, counterfeit, and dissembled discord) can worke us this benefit, what shall not a full and maine discord accomplish? ”

“ Whether a discord is too violent or no, depends on what we have been accustomed to, and on how widely the new differs from the old, but in no case can we fuse and assimilate more than a very little new at a time without exhausting our tempering power—and hence presently our temper. ”

“ Following their own selfish purposes they create discord wherever they go. Their plots take all kinds of forms, which are as numerous as the hair on our heads. By all that is good and pure: came this devilish race in our land? ”

“ Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony. ”

“ By degrees the discords become less and less harsh to the ear, and at last even pleasant, at least by their associations with the concords, that go before or follow them; so that more, and also more harsh discords, are perpetually required to give a relish, and keep the sweetness of the concords from cloying. ”

“ They are so easily deceived by appearances! Do you know, that of late I have thought there was a great deal of confusion in the ordinary way of men's thinking? But I see clearly the cause of the errors into which they are perpetually falling. All the discord arises from having wills of their own. ”

“ Instead of tenaciously defending the rights of discord, while complaining of the sufferings they bring, were it not wiser to relinquish one's grasp on these a little, when, by so doing, he can improve his own and other people's conditions? ”

“ It may be, nay, it probably is true, that the person so detecting the discord will not know where the trouble lies or of what it consists, but his ear, untrained as it is, tells him that something is wrong, and he shows his discomfort and disapproval. ”

“ The four opposite poles or extremes of man’s divided and discordant consciousness are, I said, its four fundamental faculties or powers, understanding and will, and reason and fancy. With regard to the two first, every one may, both from internal experience of his own self and from observation of his fellow-men, easily arrive at a conviction that they seldom work together in perfect harmony, and that the discord is often the most violent when either one or both of these two faculties possess more than ordinary strength. ”

“ All these, and a thousand variations on characters of this type, we see around us, or within ourselves, constantly, and a liberal proportion of the trial or discord incident to family life, or to friendship and companionship, is simply in constantly demanding of another that which he cannot give, which he does not possess. ”

“ Forasmuch as there have been oftentimes found in the country devisors of tales, whereby discord, or occasion of discord, hath many times arisen between the king and his people, or great men of this realm; for the damage that hath and may thereof ensue, it is commanded, that from henceforth none be so hardy to tell or publish any false news or tales, whereby discord, or occasion of discord, or slander may grow between the king and his people, or the great men of the realm ”

“ There should be painless progress, attended by life and peace instead of discord and death. ”

“ The problem lies not in your defending yourselves against enemies who wish you harm,—no one wishes yon harm,—but in recognizing the cause of social discontent and removing it. Men, as a whole, cannot desire discord and enmity, but always prefer to live in concord and love with their fellows. ”

“ From hence, let fierce contending nations know
What dire effects from civil discord flow. ”

“ Only when the individual discord ceases, when the attributes of an exceptional being are lost, when the mould is spoiled and becomes vulgarized and takes on a common character, does it obtain the appreciation of the multitude. ”

“ Taking note, in one place, of the discord which can arise among learned men, they illustrate their point with some instances, taken precisely from a disputatious tendency, from that exaggerated scholasticism which had run into dialectic excesses. ”