Extreme

“ But even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less than Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable. ”

“ Ridiculous systems wound over the earth like a snake Devouring the children of Fear! Ridiculous customs, Ridiculous judgments and laws, philosophies, worships. You saw through and laughed at—you saw above all That a soul must make end with a groan, or a curse, or a laugh. ”

“ Could one sketch a sounder scaffolding on which to build all the odd divergencies—crankinesses and heroisms, stupidities and engagingnesses—which may go to make the edifice of an average decent soul's material, mental and spiritual habitation? ”

“ Think of a curious nature, warped morally, as well as physically—do you know how those natures feel? A thousand times more strongly than the even, straight natures in everyday life. Then think of such a nature brought face to face with this awful problem. ”

“ The keen observer of humanity would have pronounced him one cold, rather than collected; selfish at once, and careless of the rights and happiness of others; sluggish, perhaps, and difficult to arouse, but, once aroused, impetuous, and of indomitable will—truly a fearful combination! ”

“ Here may be seen, in small compass, the operations of love and hate, of wisdom and stupidity, of selfishness and self-sacrifice, of pride, passion, coarseness, urbanity, and all the other virtues and vices which tend to make the world at large—a mysterious compound of heaven and hell. ”

“ Man wondered long chiliads before he reasoned, because feeling travels along the line of least resistance, while thought, or the challenge by inquiry, with its assumption that there may be two sides to a question, must pursue a path obstructed by the dominance of taboo and custom, by the force of imitation, and by the strength of prejudice, passion, and fear. ”

“ But as in general the passions are more violent than the emotions arising from beauty and deformity, these impressions have been commonly distinguished from each other. The subject of the human mind being so copious and various, I shall here take advantage of this vulgar and spacious division, that I may proceed with the greater order; and having said ali I thought necessary concerning our ideas, shall now explain those violent emotions or passions, their nature, origin, causes, and effects. ”

“ The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, in indignations and enthusiasms, in judgments--and even in love. The manner in which, as in the features and character of a human face, the inner truth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind. ”

“ 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 see, therefore, that the imagination, feelings, virtues, and failings of human nature, are circumscribed within a very narrow compass; and that the same things, with few exceptions and differences, are to be found everywhere. ”

“ All elegance of mind and manners is banished. A theatrical, bombastic, windy phraseology of heroic virtue, blended and mingled up with a worse dissoluteness, and joined to a murderous and savage ferocity, forms the tone and idiom of their language and their manners. ”

“ Shewing that all the mutability of our tempers, the disorders of our passions, the corruption of our hearts, all the reveries of the imagination, all the contradictions and absurdities that are to be found in human life, and human opinions, are in effect the mutability, disorders, corruption, and absurdities of human reason. ”

“ The baseness, stupidity, folly, injustice, suffering, and wreck, this world everywhere presents, are always a splendid challenge to strength, diligence, endurance, faith, wisdom—to all sublime and manly qualities. ”

“ I doubt, however, if the habit of open and unrestrained expression of the feelings of our nature is not a more enduring basis of strong character and vigorous thought and action, than the cold polish of refined society. ”

“ Which fed the veins of earth and sky,
That mortals miss the loyal heats,
Which drove them erst to social feats;
Now, to a savage selfness grown,
Think nature barely serves for one;
With science poorly mask their hurt ”

“ And can the most powerful sensations, the most tyrannic passions incident to the very constitution of our natures, making an inseparable part of our structure, connected and interwoven with all the powers of existence—can they submit and bend to the influence of opinion; to an idea of excellence originating in, and governed by, a fatal and fanatic superstition ”

“ That those permanent and most marked aspects of face dependent on the bony framework, accompany those permanent and most marked mental states which express themselves in barbarism and civilization; and that we consider as beautiful those which accompany mental superiority, and as ugly those which accompany mental inferiority, is equally certain. ”

“ And not only so, but, by the figurative use of these forms, to exalt inanimate masses into the class of living beings, or to strip the latter of its properties of life—a principle of much importance to their public speakers. ”

“ Out of the bottom of his heart.
Dread Spirits! to torment the good
Why wander from your course so far,
Disordering colour form and stature!
—Let good men feel the soul of Nature,
And see things as they are. ”

“ The world which I see about me at the present moment—the world of politics, of business, of society—seems to me a thing demoniac in its hideousness; a world gone mad with pride and selfish lust; a world of wild beasts writhing and grappling in a pit. ”

“ What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces we are disconcerted. ”

“ He imagines with equal ease the terrible, the beautiful, the mean, the loathsome, and he paints them all with equal force. In his descriptions of external nature, in his exhibitions of human character and passion, no matter what the subject, he exhausts its capabilities. ”

“ In order, therefore, to escape the latter of these alternatives, we will do our best to embrace and comply with the former of them. Such being our reasons, we now nail our colours to the mast, and prepare ourselves for a good deal of polemical discussion on the subject of "the human mind." ”

“ This negative character of the universal judgments holds true of them, as we have said, just in so far as you sunder the external and the internal meanings, and just in so far as you view the Real as the Beyond, and as merely the Beyond. If you turn your attention once more to the realm of the ideas viewed as internal meanings, you see, indeed, that they are constantly becoming enriched, in their inner life, by all this process. ”

“ What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way,—nay, more, a menacing and an imminent way? ”

“ But as I watched the endless faces filled with half-startled and half-placid confusion, and as I noted what the poets call the gayety of spring in the hearts of men, there came to me out of the swarm and roar of the day the mockery which it is the duty of philosophers to hear. ”

“ In early life, perhaps from causes already referred to, her mind had been disturbed, and apparently doubts raised, though never fixed, by sceptical writers and so-called philosophical reasoners,—more common in good society then than now, and more bold and insidious, notwithstanding our complaints of present degeneracy. ”

“ Glancing now at the main position we have arrived at, and from which our inquiry will proceed, we have found that circumstances, conditions, and relations, whether determined with a reference to the external world or the subjective consciousness, only create the situation by virtue of the temperament or passion which experiences them and derives its nutriment through them. ”

“ I have long desired, and should be glad if some one of sufficient learning and skill would point out to me the line of demonstration between the human and brutal creation; and say where the human ends, and where the brutal begins! ”

“ What is not supposed to be my concern! [2] First and foremost, the good cause [3] , then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. "Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!" ”

“ For bad taste, for indelicacy, for vulgarity, for disregard of sound argument—that is, argument that sounds well—and for general obstinacy, there is nothing to compare with a conscience that remains in moderately good working order. ”

“ Now the sort of 'fact of experience' on which in my book I have proposed to compromise, is the so-called 'mental state,' in whose existence not only common men but philosophers have uniformly believed. ”

“ Whilst thus the world will be whole, and refuses to be disparted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, to appropriate; for example,—to gratify the senses, we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs of the character. ”

“ And the shadings of character, manners, feelings, ambitions, will be infinite.
“'The nature of a people' is always of a similar shade in its vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its labor. ”

“ Can that Being who planted, watered, and brought to perfection in this obscure part of the world a thing which appears of so small importance, look with unconcern upon the situation and sufferings of a creature formed after his own image? ”

“ Thus, entering into sympathy with their situations and states, we reproduce them in ourselves. In our tones, attitudes, gestures, and expressions of countenance, we unconsciously look, act, and seem like them. ”

“ The danger is, lest a studied, declamatory moral, affectedly introduced, or indulged to excess, should prejudice the natural exhibition of the characters, and so convert the image of human life into an unaffecting, philosophical dialogue. ”

“ Here let me emphasize the conclusion that in pursuing our sociological inquiries, and especially those on which we are now entering, we must, as much as possible, exclude whatever emotions the facts are calculated to excite, and attend solely to the interpretation of the facts. There are several groups of phenomena, in contemplating which either contempt, or disgust, or indignation, tends to arise, but must be restrained. ”

“ He hit upon it early and he has repeated it in endless variations since. The disturbing force may be an individual of the creative or poietic type, an overpowering passion, a new idea, a social organization or a material change in the conditions of life. ”

“ There is something equivocal in all the words in use to express the excellence of manners and social cultivation, because the quantities are fluxional, and the last effect is assumed by the senses as the cause. ”

“ Such exercise of the reflective faculties not merely subjugates, but virtually diminishes the energy of the passions; for reflection convinces that every improper gratification must produce dangerous consequences. The very exertion of thought on subjects of exact p. 183enquiry, by appropriating the vital energies to its more exalted purposes, abstracts as much from the strength of the passions and propensities as it adds might to the powers of reason and conscience to subdue and control them. ”

“ Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. ”