Exhauster

“ But there was a weary look about him, an aspect of excessive watchfulness, an appearance of want of sleep, of over-work, of over-indulgence, too, that gives an air of exhaustion to face and form, and leaves an impression on the mind of a close observer that the machine of the body will break down soon, and suddenly—or the mind will give way—under the pressure of pent-up thoughts and energies eternally in action, and never suffered to be observed or noticed by friends or followers. ”

“ You may well ask me how I fared with the men, don't you see me out of breath. I had to run to save my life, for they ran after me, ready to strike me down with their sticks and flails, and now I feel nearly dead with exhaustion. ”

“ And not only that, but—and here is indeed a mighty discovery—that the very source of exhaustion, is, properly understood, the actual fountain of perpetuity, endurance, long life, and power, mental, physical, moral, emotional, and magnetic. ”

“ Not only is it true that, in extreme cases of physical exhaustion, the mind gives way with the body, but those keen, exquisite sensibilities of the soul become weak and blunt. No physician of large experience will fail to recal instances of extreme hemorrhagic exhaustion, in which all sense of modesty disappears. ”

“ With the infinite slowness of exhaustion, his feet moved, dragged, went forward, while ever at his back those other lifeless feet rose and fell in a grotesque travesty of life, of movement, spurring forward his all but fainting soul. ”

“ What force of will to fight and struggle until the last gasp! The exhaustion one sees often in heat strokes and in hot climates is commonplace, but this type of exhaustion is, by itself, the final triumph of brave spirits. ”

“ She partook of some refreshment which she had brought with her, and, although she felt no fatigue in making the ascent, owing to her anxiety, now that she had reached what she deemed a place of security, nature began to give way, and a sense of exhaustion to oppress her. ”

“ Shaken and dizzied by the inrush of woe, the mind straggles wearily through hour after hour; the familiar duties are intolerable; food has no savour; action and thought no interest; and if for an hour the tired head is [219] diverted by some passing event, or if, oppressed with utter exhaustion, it sinks into an unrefreshing slumber, repose but gives the strength to suffer—the accursed mood leaps again, as from an unseen lair, upon the unnerved consciousness, and tears like some strange beast the helpless and palpitating soul. ”

“ Delicate boys, with more spirit than strength, flushed with fever or pale with exhaustion or haggard with suffering, dragged their weary limbs along as if each step would exhaust their slender store of strength. ”

“ In my exhaustion there was nothing to wonder at, since I had neither eaten nor slept for two days, and the efforts I had made—efforts almost beyond the limits of mortal endurance—might well have exhausted any man. ”

“ I see every week—almost every day—women who when asked what is the matter reply, "Oh, I have nervous exhaustion." When further questioned, they answer that everything tires them. Now, it is vain to speak of all of these cases as hysterical, or as merely mimetic. ”

“ Whoever freely takes up the cause of the wretched, is left to feel the grievous pressure of the burden. The frustration of his plans by the obstinate folly of those whom he would fain serve, the apathy, the remissness, or the sinister oppositions of professed coadjutors, the dangerous hostility of profligate power, and worse than all, the secret misgivings of an exhausted spirit ”

“ Even in our religious lives and work, we experience the same fatigue, we are exhorted not to grow weary in well doing, not to faint by the way, why? Because we are in a land of weariness, of toil, of exhaustion! ”

“ Look at those spars, how they creak and groan with every heave of the long glassy swell. How those sails flap, and thunder, and rage, with useless outcries and struggles—only because they are idle. Let the wind take them, and they will be steady, silent in an instant—their deafening dissonant grumbling exchanged for the soft victorious song of the breeze through the rigging, musical, self-contented, as of bird on bough. So it is through life; there is no true rest but labour. ”

“ If the body is weak from exhaustion and fatigue, the brain and mind become dull and sad, and the thoughts of a wanderer in such a desolate region as this, weary with a march in heat and thirst from daylight until dark, who at last sinks upon the heated ground to watch and wait until the blazing sunlight of another day, perhaps, may bring him to some place of rest, cannot be otherwise than of a mournful kind. ”

“ But I would go on foot, Hans. Lame as I am, I can walk for miles without fatigue, and I feel as if the exertion would be a solace to me, and that my mind, bent upon a good object, could the more easily turn away from my own desolation. ”

“ It destroys the tone of the heart; leaves an exhaustion which craves stimulus, and utterly unfits for duty. High-wrought feeling must end in wickedness; a life of excitement is inseparable from a life of vice. ”

“ It is the universal habit to hold on to one's self with a grip that would almost lift one's weight, muscles tightened, nerves strained to no purpose. The mind is too eager and fast for the body. The result is exhaustion. ”

“ They lay on the ground, most of them sound asleep. They lay in the strangest attitudes, curled up, some of them; others with arms and legs flung wide, the attitudes of men utterly exhausted, whose overpowering need is rest. ”

“ Ahead of her loomed, only dimly discerned as yet, the ordeal of strenuous monotony; the deadly-dull, prolonged grind wherein endurance, as it hardens, is subjected to a constantly harsher strain, until the soul revolts as, in the earlier stage, the body had rebelled. ”

“ Her fatigue had merely created a wholesome desire for rest,–the sleepiness and indifference that come from weary muscles. But Pats’s exhaustion was of a different sort. All the strength of his body had departed. ”

“ It should not, however, be carried beyond the powers of endurance of the individual, so as to exhaust or fatigue. Everything that can invigorate should be adopted; everything that exhausts should be shunned. ”

“ She must experience physical exhaustion before resignation came. In learning a lesson she could not remain inactive. She must walk, walk, up and down, up an down, until its moral or text was beaten into her mentality with her echoing footsteps.
On this occasion she was in the humor to dare the impossible; dare through sheer irritability of heart—not mind. ”

“ The effects of unnecessary effort are strongly felt in the exhaustion which follows the interpretation of a very exciting role. It is a law without exception, that if I absorb an emotion and allow my own nerves to be shaken by it, I fail to give it in all its expressive power to the audience ”

“ Her movements would be very slow and deliberate and a little tired, as if gently, almost imperceptibly, she were laying down the burden of her life and allowing herself, just for a few moments, the luxurious restfulness of fatigue. ”

“ Then, being wholly overcome by exhaustion of body and mind, and having endured such fatigues and sufferings from hunger and thirst, without speaking of terror, as have seldom oppressed a poor feeble human being, I fell into a swoon, from which I awoke only to be assailed by a violent fever and delirium, the direct consequences of my superhuman exertions, that kept me a-bed, in a condition between life and death, for more than two weeks. ”

“ Nevertheless, there is the look of the tired man in him, tired not of course of his mission, for death alone can sever it from him, but tired owing to over-work and nervous exhaustion. When I remarked that Nature exacts her penalty even on God’s workers like him, he had a hearty laugh. ”

“ It is the result of sheer exhaustion, that's all. Your attempts to control or suppress your thoughts only tire you out, making you sort of battle-weary. That is the effortlessness and peace of mind you are experiencing. ”

“ The circumstances in which Heaven has cast me, have disciplined my circumstances in which Heaven has cast me, have disciplined my body to obey my mind in all things; and, therefore, when the motives for exertion are strong within me, it is long, very long, before I feel hunger, thirst, or drowsiness. ”

“ They're tired; naturally very tired; though the necessity of fairly forcing their steps through the crushing, cheering, frantic mob often gives them an effect of utter exhaustion that belies their actual condition. ”

“ Every hour that I live, pent in by intolerable forms and immeasurable dulness, the maddening temper gains on me! Nay, I have had to rush out at night and swear a dozen round oaths before I could compose myself to sit down to the endless supper. ”

“ In the silence that followed, there came again to them, clear through the stillness, and haunting in its persistence, the crying of the beast that sought its meat from God.
CHAPTER XXV A SCENTED LETTER There is no exhaustion more complete or more compelling than the exhaustion of grief, and it is the most restless temperaments that usually suffer from it the most keenly. It is those who have watched constantly, tirelessly, selflessly, for weeks or even months, for whom the final breakdown is the most utter and the most heartrending. ”

“ There is no such thing as physical exhaustion.... Hunger and thirst may weight us down, but with the right kind of inspiration a man can do miraculous things.... I began rolling up balls of mud from the tunnel and carrying them into the cistern until my tongue hung out of my mouth.... With those balls I started making a winding stairway around the wall of this cistern until I had a dozen steps completed ... ”

“ Some were trying by the madness of intoxication to stimulate their worn-out frames to fresh exertion—or, when totally exhausted, to stupify the agonies of the slow but certain death that cold and hunger must inevitably produce before another sun dawned. ”

“ At last the terribly nervous sensation passed away, taking with it all the pain, and leaving no feeling save one of intense uneasiness and languor, which the once strong man strove in vain to shake off, trying day after day to sit up, if only for a moment, and as often falling back upon his pillows from sheer exhaustion. ”

“ When you feel tired, when all your hopes are sinking low, you think of those people and you say, 'I will go to their places.' And you go. You listen and you watch their faces, and such fire makes you burn! ”

“ We all fell several times in the sand, from pure exhaustion. No one can have an idea of the overpowering sensation of fatigue which we experienced. My head turned giddy--all the powers of life seemed failing--and I firmly believe that another mile would have ended all ”

“ That exhaustion, that mournful faintness which comes over us, when we see all parties fallen into error, all truth and inspiration mingled and disfigured by human passion, is not to be called indifference. ”

“ When nervous exhaustion is observed after prolonged mental effort, one of two other conditions, or both, has nearly always co-existed, namely, deficiency of physical exercise, or presence of active emotion, as, ardent ambitions or harassing anxieties. ”

“ Last night I came home with such a dreadful nervous headache from sheer exhaustion, that I could scarcely see. You know in a dancing party the excitement keeps one up, and one doesn't feel the fatigue until afterward. ”

“ Results of Exhaustion.—Through overwork, or excesses in pleasurable pursuits, one may make greater demands upon the energy of his body than it can properly supply. The resulting condition, known as exhaustion, is not only a matter of temporary inconvenience, but may through repetition lead to a serious impairment of the health. ”

“ On the dark and cheerless guard, at the dead hour of the night, my conscience often awoke, and rendered me almost desperate—when sinking under fatigue, hunger, and thirst, on the long and toilsome march, it has given a keener edge to my sufferings ”

“ When we are threatened with exhaustion through over exertion, wisdom would caution us to wait, to stop; not to take a stimulant to urge us on to greater extremes, but go where we can retire and rest and recuperate according to the laws of nature. ”

“ Then he delivered himself upon this wise:
“It is well known that much exercise and weariness consume the spirits and substance, refrigerate the body; and such humours which nature would have otherwise concocted and expelled, it stirs up and makes them rage; which, being so enraged, diversely affect and trouble the body and mind.” ”