Exhaustion

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The blacker the shadow, the brighter is the light that casts it. In all pleasurable feelings there must be the alternations from exercise to remission and repose; and in proportion as such feelings are keen, will pain take the place of simple exhaustion. When the waves of emotion are but ripples on the surface of life, stirred by the zephyrs of light desires, the remission will be but a passing sense of fatigue ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Who shall blame the tired laborer, if after a week with sixty hours of unremitting toil, he takes refuge from the dreariness and lassitude of physical exhaustion, the hopelessness of ambition-quenched life, and perhaps the discomforts and disquiet of the place he calls home, in a long draught of that which does, for the time, create in him an image of exhilaration, strength, self-respect, and manhood? ”

“ Fatigue yourself, but once, to utter exhaustion, and to the end of life you shall not recover the former vigour of your frame. Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, and the heart loses its life for ever. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The moment of exhaustion comes, but the end is not accomplished, and the will goads on the weary muscles, perhaps to one supreme effort which terminates in a sharp and sudden illness, perhaps to days and weeks of continued and incessant application, during which the whole system is undermined. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In fact the strain on one's emotions, day in and day out, makes one wonder if the world is real—or is this a vast dream? From sheer emotional exhaustion I slept almost all day last Sunday, though I had not for several days lost sleep at all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He rambled on, perhaps half-delirious, coughing out his thoughts and theories concerning a world he was leaving.... In all things balance, inevitably; the purpose of life which, so far, we sought blindly—by passion and recoil from it, by excess and consequent exhaustion.... ”

“ We go hustling along through life doing things which ought not to be done in a hurry, and when physical exhaustion forces us to pause for a moment, we run our eyes over printed matter of some kind—newspapers, magazines, or books—and never give a single hour from one year's end to another to meditation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That which secures life from exhaustion lies in the unseen world, deep at the roots of things. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The difficulty of accomplishing superior acts, the exhaustion resulting from their accomplishment, renders them fearful to the patient who has the fear, the phobia of these acts, just as he has the terror of that depression which gives the feeling of the diminution of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This condition of nervous exhaustion renders them, of course, the very negation of the negative pole of sympathy, and the first person approaching them, who possesses the ordinary Odic conditions of health, is clutched hold of by their famine-struck vitality, in the agonised plea for life! life! ”

“ I am one of those who work very hard while they are at it, and are then left in much exhaustion. I have been for four months overdone, and though my general health, thank God, is good, yet my brain warns me so distinctly that it must not be too much pressed, as to leave me in prudence no course to take except that which I have reluctantly indicated. ”

“ Nor will he act on the theory that he is “so tired he can sleep anywhere.” For a few hours the man who does that may sleep the sleep of exhaustion. But before day breaks he will feel under him the roots and stones, and when he awakes he is stiff, sore and unrefreshed. ”

“ 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 ”

“ So bodily strength, tho exhausted every day, is renewed every night; and even if impaired by disease, it may be recovered. There is nothing necessarily hopeless in the exhaustion of anything that has life in it; but all living things need renewal.—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This was owing partly, perhaps, to their having become, in some degree, familiar with the sight of men, but more probably to the exhaustion produced by long-continued fatigue and excitement, and to their having been for so many days deprived in a great degree of their accustomed food and rest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nervous prostration is seldom the result of present trouble or work, but of work and trouble anticipated. Mental exhaustion comes to those who look ahead, and climb mountains before reaching them. Resolutely build a wall about to-day, and live within the inclosure. ”

“ In our laboratory experiments and in our clinical observations we have found that exhaustion produced by intense emotion, prolonged physical exertion, insomnia, intense fear, certain toxemias, hemorrhage, and the condition commonly denominated surgical shock, produce similar outward manifestations and identical brain-cell changes. ”

“ The exhaustion may proceed from dissipation, from prolonged domestic or financial worry, or—not to multiply instances—it may be the result of the enormous discharge of nervous energy and the upheaval of the whole nature in the commission of a murder or the betrayal of a friend. ”

“ Mental disturbance—grief, worry, excitement—produce immediate physical effect in headache, palpitations and the like. Physical exhaustion—privation, hunger and over-work—on the other hand produce mental depression and collapse. ”

“ Severe brain exhaustion may be associated with good spirits, but usually there is marked depression, and this perversion of function generally goes on, if the disease be not checked, to decided melancholy. ”

“ I have tried relaxing before after a week, two weeks, but one relaxation in word or act has been followed by others until the circle has been completed by a blind unreasoning- 76 - yield to the sexual impulse under conditions of mental chaos and physical exhaustion, and then new resolutions and reaction set in. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sleep is the result of every kind of exhaustion; exhaustion follows upon all excessive excitement....
In all pessimistic religions and philosophies there is a yearning for sleep; the very notion "sleep" is deified and worshipped. ”

“ He knows, and He alone, what it is, day after day, hour after hour, to fight against bodily feelings of almost overpowering weakness and languor and exhaustion; to resolve, as He enables me to do, not to yield to the slothfulness, the self-indulgence, the depression, the irritability such a body inclines me to indulge ”

“ 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. ”

“ When affections of the outlying organs are neglected, and even in many cases where these have not suffered at all, we are apt to witness, as a result of too prolonged anxiety combined with business cares, or even of mere overwork alone, with want of proper physical habits as to exercise, amusement, and diet, that form of disorder of which I have already spoken as cerebral exhaustion ”