Embarrassment

“ 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. ”

“ I think—of course, I cannot be sure—that it’s going to do the business. I’ve watched every one who stopped to read it. Many showed interest and many, emotion; she seems to have had a troop of friends. But embarrassment! only one showed that. I thought you would like to know.”
“Embarrassment? Humph! a man?”
“No, a woman; a lady, sir; one of the transients. I found out in a jiffy all they could tell me about her.”
“A woman! We didn’t expect that. Where is she? Still in the lobby?”
“No, sir. She took the elevator while I was talking with the clerk.” ”

“ If he had had an idea that this question, to which, as coming from his lips and even as being uttered with perceptible impatience, a certain unexpectedness might attach, would cause her a momentary embarrassment, he was completely out in his calculation. ”

“ Others fall into this embarrassment as the result of exhibitions of clumsiness in which they cover themselves with ridicule. The terror of renewing their moments of torture drives them into a reserve, from which they only emerge with a constraint so evident that it is reflected in their gestures, the evidences of a deplorable awkwardness.
It is exceedingly simple to find a remedy for these unpleasant conditions. One must make up one's mind to combat their exhibitions of weakness by determining to acquire ease of movement. ”

“ At present it is very doubtful whether we shall fall in with them at all, as we are proceeding upon the merest conjecture only, and not on any positive information. Some days must now elapse before we can be relieved from our cruel suspense; and if, at the end of our journey, we find we are upon a wrong scent, our embarrassment will be great indeed. ”

“ The embarrassment, therefore, which, in ingenuous youth, checks the attempt to please, by fear of failure, or shame of exertion, gave way to natural spirits, which gaily rising from entertainment received, restored her vivacity, and gradually, though unconsciously, enabled her to do justice to her own abilities, by unaffectedly calling forth the mingled sweetness and intelligence of her character ”

“ But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with. ”

“ Not a word had dropped from my lips, or from hers, that could unsettle either of us—and yet the same unacknowledged sense of embarrassment made us shrink alike from meeting one another alone. ”

“ The thin person has a similar grievance. Those who are too large and those who are too small are equally dissatisfied. The shape of an eye, the curve of the mouth, a blemish here, an impediment there, is the direct cause of poignant embarrassment. ”

“ That same hour which first awakens a child to the consciousness of being observed, and to the sense of admiration, strips it of its freedom and unpremeditated graces of motion. Awkwardness at the least—and too probably, as a consequence of that, affectation and conceit—follow hard upon the consciousness of special notice or admiration. The very attempt to disguise embarrassment too often issues in a secondary and more marked embarrassment.
Another mode of reserve arises with some literary men, who believe themselves to be in possession of novel ideas. ”

“ No emotion is more painful than bashfulness. Without feeling guilty, its subject feels crushed. Says one, “I am troubled with a painful sense of timidity and bashfulness in the presence of company on being spoken to, especially at the table; and no matter whether the person be my equal or my in [Pg 6] ferior, I blush from the cravat to the hair, and the very consciousness that I am blushing, and that my embarrassment is discovered, tends to deepen the blush and heighten the embarrassment. Now, I have a good personal appearance; I have a good education; I occupy a good position in society ”

“ In any case his pleasure in her confusion seems to me a reflection of her feelings, for the sense of shame and embarrassment before a man is very exciting, and doubly so if one realizes that the man enjoys it. ”

“ I was naturally overcome with embarrassment as to what he had come for now; the little girls were seized with a devastating fear lest his arrival should interfere with their treat. They leapt to their feet, and rent the air with protestations. ”

“ I was betrayed, I don't know how, into this little venture, and it was a flat failure. The position of a shy man, who has just made an unintelligible joke at a dinner-table, was not more pregnant with self-reproach and embarrassment. ”

“ The only embarrassment her dissecters find, is in reconciling the round, full, substantial body of her voice, with their declarations that she soars out of the reach of ordinary sympathy, and is aerially incapable of expressing the passion of the every day human heart. ”

“ Such fears, in the vast majority of cases, are wholly groundless, and in the exceptional instances the insufficiency is generally more seeming than real. Where the previous life has been correct and virtuous there is not more than one case in a thousand where any serious embarrassment may reasonably be expected to arise. ”

“ Embarrassments—my character suspected—a quarrel—a reconciliation—fresh embarrassments.—O Biddy, what an irreparable loss to the public, that a victim of thrilling sensibility, like me, should be thus idling her precious time over the common occupations of life!—prepared as I am, too, by a five years' course of novels (and you can bear witness that I have read little else) , to embody and ensoul those enchanting reveries, which I am accustomed to indulge in bed and bower, and which really constitute almost the whole happiness of my life. ”

“ An uncomfortable thing happened now. He realized suddenly all the possibilities of this chance acquaintanceship, plainly and cinematographically.—He was seized with panic.—He must make a good impression.—From that moment he ran the risk of doing the reverse. For he was unaccustomed to act with calculation.—There he was like some individual who had gone nonchalantly into the presence of a prince; who—just in the middle of the audience—when he would have been getting over his first embarrassment—is overcome with a tardy confusion, the imagination in some way giving a jump. ”

“ To be sure, I don’t mean to say that there are not circumstances,—such as half-pay, old age, infirmity, the loss of your limbs, and the like; but that, with good health and a small balance at your banker’s, you should be led into such an embarrassment—”
“Men will flirt,” said I, interrupting; “men will press taper fingers, look into bright eyes, and feel their witchery ”

“ If the present unhappy state of our country had been brought upon the people by their folly and extravagance, it ought to be borne with fortitude, and without complaint, and without reproach. But it is my deliberate judgment that it has not been; that the people are not to blame, and that the principal causes of existing embarrassments are not to be traced to them. ”

“ The people get rather hazy occasionally, and have no features to speak of. But I do n't know that I look very impressive myself," he added in the jesting mood which seems the natural condition of Americans in the face of an embarrassments. ”

“ The opposite of esprit d'escalier is the way that life's embarrassments come back to haunt us even after they're long past. I could remember every stupid thing I'd ever said or done, recall them with picture-perfect clarity. Any time I was feeling low, I'd naturally start to remember other times I felt that way, a hit-parade of humiliations coming one after another to my mind. ”

“ His life, for years past, had been mainly a succession of resigned adaptations, and he had learned, before dealing practically with his embarrassments, to extract from most of them a small tribute of amusement. ”

“ Yet as a joke it had still to be taken, though one couldn’t help feeling that the joke had made the situation serious, had produced on the part of each a consciousness, an awkwardness, a positive dread of the last accident of all, the only one with any freshness left, the accident that would bring them face to face. ”

“ The amusing aspect of all lapses from dignity in religious and other ceremonies cannot, I believe, be understood merely as an illustration of an inconsequence and irrelevance, but must be connected with the powerful tendency to throw off a heavy and depressing mental load by a moment’s mirth. The laughter at what is lawless, and still more at the indecent and the profane, certainly derives a part of its gusto from a sense of relief from restraint, which is a main ingredient in the enjoyment of all license. ”

“ Again, why does the correspondent in the Atlas take me up short for saying that ‘we laugh at a person who is rolled in the gutter?’ He observes on this, ‘if it is an accident, the laughter is silly, and not a case in point; if inflicted as a punishment for some petty injustice, we do not laugh, but rub our hands.’ So that we are to laugh in neither case. Is the ridicule merited where the cobbler, in the ‘Election Dinner,’ has smutted the face of his next neighbour? ”

“ Men who had been convulsed with uproarious laughter became maudlin and dropped into some out of the way spot, weeping bitter tears; others, pale and sickly, tottered about, seeking quarrels with all whom they met. ”

“ I'd creep, and go on seeming
To be what I despise.
You laugh, and say I'm dreaming,
And all your laughs are lies.
"Are women mad? A few are,
And if it's true you say—
If most men are as you are—
We'll all be mad some day. ”

“ Dressed in loveliness and laughter, there is mortal decay at thy heart: sorrow, sin, and shame have mingled thy cup of misery. Strange rulers have bruised thee, and laughed thee to scorn, and they have made all thy sweetness bitter. ”

“ Those who eagerly crowded around to gaze at this grim exemplification of the covert sarcasm and irony which dwells in every human breast, nearly died with laughter at the sepulchral immobility of the sneering smile. ”

“ We hear so much about the sanitary qualities of laughter, we have been taught so seriously the gospel of amusement, that any writer, preacher, or lecturer, whose smile is broad enough to be infectious, finds himself a prophet in the market-place. Laughter, we are told, freshens our exhausted spirits and disposes us to good-will,—which is true. It is also true that laughter quiets our uneasy scruples and disposes us to simple savagery. Whatever we laugh at, we condone, and the echo of man's malicious merriment rings pitilessly through the centuries. ”

“ It is no easy matter to define the point at which the anxiety to become modest may be distinguished from the dread of becoming ridiculous. But surely, at the outset, this dread and this anxiety are one and the same thing. A complete investigation into the illusions of vanity, and into the ridicule that clings to them, would cast a strange light upon the whole theory of laughter. ”

“ Now he was simultaneously moved to anger, to weeping, and to laughter, and he neither wept nor laughed nor stormed. Where then was he to find a word that should express both anger and weeping and laughter? ”

“ As in the other instances, we have here to note the limitations introduced by the variable nature and circumstances of the spectator. Misfortune, the suffering of indignity, clearly appeals to a kind of feeling quite dissimilar to that of mirth. Where pity is strong and alert much of the laughter at mischances, at difficulties, and so forth, is restrained. On the other hand, this pity for men in misadventure comes of knowledge and of insight; and where experience and training have not given these, the restraining influence on laughter will be wanting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Your private circumstances, if known to be embarrassed, are known at the same time not to embarrass you. Your chop and your pewter plate will reproach others sooner than they can reflect disgrace upon yourself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I say openly without any false modesty, which I despise even as I despise hypocrisy, there were lectures at which I myself being in a state of exaltation, called forth in my audience, especially in my nervous lady visitors, a mood of intense agitation, which turned into hysterical laughter and tears. ”

“ If these women suspect their hearts to be distilling a sigh, laughter sparkles into the recess and exposes the illicit business. It is just like the men to roam about in disordered attire, with blue, inclement features, shaking with the "quotidian-tertian" of their love-turn. ”

“ Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and in manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry. In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter. ”

“ If the patron is irritable, he says, ‘I am all bile;’ if superstitious, ‘I am a mass of fears;’ if love-sick, ‘I am frantic.’ |D| ‘It was wrong of you to laugh,’ he will say, ‘but I was absolutely dying with laughter.’ But where virtues are concerned it is the other way about. ”

“ But, unhappy man, how do you deceive yourself! for you tire every body, and you disgust every body; and, the worst is, that those who had been just listening to you with such seeming applause, as soon as your back is turned, to relieve themselves from the pain the forced tribute of their adulation to you gave them, vent themselves in repeated bursts of laughter and derision at your folly. ”