Encounter

“ They who visit it stand and survey the now silent and solitary scene, and derive from the influence and spirit of the spot new strength and energy to meet the great difficulties and dangers of life which they themselves have to encounter. ”

“ in the same way, it is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression upon us. ”

“ Life goes headlong. We chase some flying scheme, or we are hunted by some fear or command behind us. But if suddenly we encounter a friend, we pause; our heat and hurry look foolish enough; now pause, now possession is required, and the power to swell the moment from the resources of the heart. The moment is all, in all noble relations. ”

“ When their evil passions are roused, they scold, yell, and shake these sticks in defiance. They beat the ground with them, stamp savagely, and at last, throwing off their rugs, approach each other and begin the encounter. ”

“ We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery, and omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. ”

“ The smooth, round belly, the voluminous yet compact thighs, the robust calf, and small foot and ankle, the satin smoothness of the skin, and other graces not to be mentioned, but whose pouting and moist freshness betokened a guarded virginity, which, however, longed for the pressure of manhood, all these so fired him with passion, that he had scarcely the necessary patience to prepare himself for the amorous encounter. ”

“ As related in the passage quoted above, Flinders at first thought he had reached Westernport, though the narrowness of the entrance did not correspond with Bass's description of the harbour he had discovered four years previously. But Baudin had told him that he found no port or harbour of any kind between Westernport and Encounter Bay. Consequently, it was all the more astonishing to behold this great sheet of blue water broadening out to shores overlooked by high hills, and extending northward further than the eye could penetrate. ”

“ We hear of personal encounters, but a personal encounter between two ladies is not an encountress. Every one knows that an epistle is a female apostle, but why the male mate of the unlisted himmit should, except for consistency in perversion, be called a hermit, who can say? ”

“ I, who have been everywhere, meeting you, who have been nowhere, and meeting you just as you have broken cover for the first time! Well, they say extremes meet. To think a rolling-stone like me, and a stick-in-the-mud like you, should meet, is most wonderful. ”

“ Are we not, all of us in the world, acted upon and influenced by events and people,—purely passers-by, known to-day, seen perhaps for a week, or known for a month, and yet never after met with in all life's journey? ”

“ We are, all of us, in the way of meeting people in respect of whom a week, or even a day of intercourse, will so fasten upon us—maybe their pungency, their alertness, or some one of their decided, fixed, fine attributes, that they thenceforth people our imagination; not obtrusively there indeed, but a look, a name, an allusion, calls back their special significance, as in a photographic blaze. ”

“ Do we ask ourselves what we mean by ‘meeting again’? Is it anything more than a fantasy which we affirm for our own comfort or the supposed comfort of others, or for the sake of mere conformity with popular sentiment? ”

“ He stood and gazed, then, with his arms folded on his chest, while the people walking to and fro passed and repassed him, and many a one commented as they went, and assigned him a history and a character from their own imagination. How seldom is it, in the busy world with which we mingle, that any of the conjectures regarding our thoughts, our feelings, our state of existence, are correct! ”

“ There they meet tenderly to challenge, and proudly to refuse, though not in fact repel. But here they meet to mingle, are always rushing together, and changing places; a new creation takes place beneath the eye. ”

“ Sometimes, indeed, the thought would cross the mind of the boy, as he looked on excited faces, and listened to animated conversation on the all-engrossing theme,—“How strange it is that so much more interest is taken in the things of this life than in what regards another! ”

“ You demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you draw to you the first-born of the world, — those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar great show as spectres and shadows merely. ”

“ You meet your man then, exactly at the same spot as on the morning before; when, the conviviality of the penult evening being totally spent, both in respect of its effect on your mind, and as a subject of conversation, you stand in an agony of a minute’s duration, talking to each other of you know not what, till, fortunately, perhaps, a friend comes up who is going your way, and you hook yourself upon him, and take a hurried leave of your new acquaintance. ”

“ How many would like to forego the walk to and from the place of business? forego the opportunities for conversation, which chance thus throws in their way, with other men bent on the same or other errands? ”

“ Our social intercourse, as commonly managed, is a mere semblance of the reality sought. What is it that we want? Some sympathetic converse with our fellow-creatures: some converse that shall not be mere dead words, but the vehicle of living thoughts and feelings—converse in which the eyes and the face shall speak, and the tones of the voice be full of meaning—converse which shall make us feel no longer alone, but shall draw us closer to another, and double our own emotions by adding another's to them. ”

“ Does he not fill heaven and earth with his presence? The presence of our fellow-creatures affects our senses, and our senses give us the knowledge of their presence; which hath different kinds of influence upon us; love, joy, sorrow, restraint, encouragement, reverence. ”

“ I was continually meeting more of these men of the future, who would follow me a little distance, chatter and laugh about me, and, having smiled and gesticulated in a friendly way, leave me again to my own devises. ”

“ There was much conversation, most of which sounded like all the rest of it. ”

“ Maud however was full of vagueness. "What great fact?"
"The fact of a relation. The adventure's a relation; the relation's an adventure. The romance, the novel, the drama are the picture of one. The subject the novelist treats is the rise, the formation, the development, the climax and for the most part the decline of one. ”

“ Four men were conversing together, when the following resolution was suggested:—"Whosoever can make Inaction the head, Life the backbone, and Death the tail, of his existence,—that man shall be admitted to friendship with us." ”

“ Tell it, if possible, with a sense of bestowing a blessing, and a delicate perception of the reception it meets in the group before you, and the pleasure and interest it arouses in them, so that in the telling there is that human setting which is a quickening of the spirit and a union of ideas, which is something quite new and different from the story, yet born of the story. ”

“ Let us now, however, withdraw ourselves from the sick chamber of friendship, and from the general considerations which refer rather to disorder than to health of mind; let us betake ourselves into the open air, to the lofty and broad gallery of the minster, as if the time were still present, when we young fellows often appointed an evening meeting to greet the departing sun with brimming goblets. ”

“ So many of us can remember the secret conclaves with our friends when we puzzled out and pieced together what scraps of information we could glean, awakening instinct darkly supplementing this knowledge. ”

“ These, meeting you, as it were, one after the other, and forming points of rest to the eye when it has grown weary of ranging over the plain, produce a powerful effect upon your imagination; which is certainly not lessened by the aspect of the living creatures, whether of the human or some inferior species, which begin to gather round you. ”

“ Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as water meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature. ”

“ First, in so far as I am a social being, I take my fellow’s experience to be as live and real an experience as is mine. In appealing to the consensus of other men’s experiences, I am so far appealing to what I regard as a real experience other than my own momentary experience, and not as a merely possible experience. ”

“ Even for prisoners of war there are possibilities for quite interesting adventure, adventure in companionship. Thrown into such intimate relationships as we are here, and under these peculiar circumstances, we make rather surprising discoveries about ourselves and about each other. ”

“ Take a country walk with one or other of these men; their different conversation will soon show you that they behold the earth with other eyes, and that the direction of their thoughts is as different as their favourite pursuit. ”

“ If any one wishes to know what were the topics of conversation among so many men in such circumstances, it pains me to state, that our conversation was about any thing but that one thing which most concerned us, and which ought to have engrossed our whole attention. ”

“ As the ordinary man is the meeting-place between two stages of reality—the sense-world and the world of spiritual life—so the mystic, standing head and shoulders above ordinary men, is again the meeting-place between two orders. ”

“ As day and night succeeded, as conversation and action supplemented each other on their journeys, so each of them began to unfold from the fleshy disguise, and in a short time they could each have spoken of the others to an inquiring stranger, giving, within bounds, reasonably exact information as to habit and mentality. ”

“ A discovery that helps them to talk, just to talk, more and more, will be hailed by these beings as one of the highest of triumphs. Talking to each other over wires will come in this class. The lightning when harnessed and tamed will be made to trot round, conveying the most trivial cacklings all day and night. ”

“ Our souls have met and recognised each other. This is a mighty fact, which you felt as well as I three days ago as your carriage crossed the Kurfürsten Bridge. If we were to meet now in society, the ordinary conventional preliminaries of getting acquainted would take away our naïve impression, we should be bereft of that elemental undeviating conviction which constituted the mysterious charm of our meeting. ”

“ 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 ”

“ When the same party—precisely the same in number, character, and means of enjoyment—set out on the same excursion in beautiful weather, how different are their bodily sensations, and consequently the tone of every mind! ”

“ It is far better to approach any persons or things or circumstances that are ours—they would not come to us, or we to them, unless they were ours!—in the spirit of Welcome, and in the true and sporting Play Spirit, than in the spirit of discontent. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Guard the avenues of your soul, your sight and hearing and the other senses, through which contamination from without is always seeking to enter and defile the beauty of God's handiwork. About us is an atmosphere of worldliness, which we imperceptibly breathe in from the words of companions, from the printed page, and the example of the careless. ”

“ I have myself frequently seen all these changes take place, and I have seen the new man who had entered the body looking round to discover the condition of affairs into which he had come — trying to take up the thread of conversation, for example. ”

“ The world he moved in was the world of men and women meeting on the surface-paths of daily intercourse. Even here, we do not detect the slightest interest in passionate or painful aspects of experience. ”