Frenzy

“ How inconstant are your feelings! but a moment ago you were moved by my representations, and why do you again harden yourself to my complaints? I swear to you, by the earth which I inhabit, and by you that made me, that, with the companion you bestow, I will quit the neighbourhood of man, and dwell, as it may chance, in the most savage of places. My evil passions will have fled, for I shall meet with sympathy; my life will flow quietly away, and, in my dying moments, I shall not curse my maker. ”

“ All the petty annoyances of life—a sudden fall, an unlucky [pg 103] word, a headache, a paltry quarrel—were set down to the agency of fiends; and all the fierce emotions that rend the mind—love, hate, jealousy, and madness—were equally the work of these invisible tormentors. Men and women stood in constant danger of them. ”

“ Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness for ever. Are you to be happy while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains—revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food! I may die, but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery. Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful. ”

“ Thus comes the blush of love, the inspiration of song, and acting, the fire and energy of speech and oratory, the flames of lust and passion, the brutal vigor of the athlete and pugilist, the blaze of anger, and the sudden and awful courage and ferocity of those who, at other times, are poltroons and errant cowards. ”

“ The same intolerable awe and dread that had come upon him in the night, returned unweakened in the day. The monotonous ringing of the bells and tramping of the horses; the monotony of his anxiety, and useless rage; the monotonous wheel of fear, regret, and passion, he kept turning round and round; made the journey like a vision, in which nothing was quite real but his own torment. ”

“ Must it ever be thus,—that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment,—a demon which perpetually pursues and harasses me. ”

“ They impress the soul with a certain mark, and sail forthwith out of vision. Your hold upon your own mind is at this time very insecure, and you flutter with the flames in and out of sanity. For to feel and to be unable to refer your feeling to its components is to verge on madness. ”

“ I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. The wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and, with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew. ”

“ Yet feel within a manly force of mind Urging to deeds heroic and sublime, Which but to name, one half my timid sex, Would fall the victims of their own despair. I scorn the feeble soul that cannot brave, With magnanimity, the storms of life. ”

“ And yet each whispering wind has blown
Abroad the story of my shame.
I dread to see men shrink away
With startled looks of scorn or fear,
When in life’s crowded marts some day,
That name falls on their ear. ”

“ Instead of the turbulent temper, coarse appetites, low cunning, unrestrained ferociousness, and unrelenting vengeance, relieved by those magnanimous atchievements, sage reflections, and spirit-stirring sentiments, which, like transient gleams succeeded by sudden squalls, compose the unsettled weather of a savage mind, an endless procession of undistinguishable automatons is marched in the same slow solemn pace, across the unchanging scene. ”

“ Transparent as the darkest night,
When angry tempests roar.
"Thy verse, but ah! my powers are vain,
To tell the wonders of thy brain
Where mists of dullness sit;
Cimmerian darkness round thy head,
It's sable mantle long hath spread,
To veil thy wooden wit.
"Thy satire, mystic type of lead,
Keen as a dart without a head,
And vigorous as age;
'Twould almost make a mill-stone cry
To have thy muse its enemy,
When cloathed in her rage.
"Thy bold, heroic numbers swell,
As lofty as the deepest well
Where noxious vapours rise ”

“ As of a hungry agonized spirit standing outside its wretched body, and watching its feeble movements, conscious of their futility, conscious of being chained to the miserable thing, and only knowing rebellion and agony. ”

“ I look upon the ill-feeling I bear certain people in quite a new way now, and fear it, because I know it hides light and warmth from me. And I am persuaded that in this feeling of love and pity I have found the secret of true life, which alone gives uninterrupted peace and joy... ”

“ And the form of the singer flickers and dims;—and the house, and the lawn, and all visible shapes of things tremble and swim before me. Yet instinctively I fear that man;—I almost hate him; and I feel myself flushing with anger and shame because of his power to move me thus. ”

“ Hereupon it is that the appetites will be tormented with the fury of their own passions, which will come forth in bands, and with great vehemence, namely, fears, melancholy, irksomeness, agonies, anger, desperation, envy, and rage, with such a cruel war among themselves that they will rend one another in pieces. ”

“ Yet a feeling of awe, a breathless sentiment of wonder, a painful sense of the degradation of humanity, was introduced into every heart. Nature, our mother, and our friend, had turned on us a brow of menace. ”

“ When we enter upon this article, we gather from experience, that each passion, or class of passions, hath its peculiar signs; and that these invariably make certain impressions on a spectator. The external signs of joy, for example, produce a chearful emotion, the external signs of grief produce pity, and the external signs of rage produce a{132} sort of terror even in those who are not aimed at. ”

“ Ay, ay, 't is the night o' the fairies—when spirits pervade the air. Then will I tell you other truths; but now—They call me. She is fair, and passing fair, and by her beauty, suffering shall come upon thee; but 'tis by suffering that men are made, and because of pride, shame shall come on her ”

“ And the small-souled, mole-eyed gossips and critics called him hard, churlish, and cynical—him, for whom the richest thing in Nature’s splendid dower had been obliterated, except a soul, which never in its deepest sufferings lost its noble faith in God and man, or allowed its indomitable courage to be one whit weakened. ”

“ Even when painful and terrible in their subjects, "they are of power, by raising pity and fear or terror, to purge the mind of suchlike passions,—that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight or, in the words of Charles Lamb, "they dispose the mind to a meditative tenderness." ”

“ Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine ”

“ Their Spectres will sometimes attend you, and affright even your innocent Children! Fly where you will, your Consciences will go with you. Talking in your Sleep shall betray you, in the Delirium of a Fever you yourselves shall make your own Wickedness known. ”

“ Mad in the chase of pleasure, stretches on,
And strains each nerve, and clears the path of life
Like wind, thou point'st him to the dreadful goal,
And shak'st thy hour-glass in his reeling eye,
And check'st him in mid course. Thy skeleton hand
Shows to the faint of spirit the right path,
And he is warned, and fears to step aside. ”

“ Can you yield yourself to the tyranny of passion, amid dangers which I have depicted in colors far too tame of what the result would be if that direful event to which I have referred should ever occur? ”

“ Oh, we had much rather think of these, and close our eyes on all this maelstrom-misery, and tinselled grandeur. We feel stifled. We throw up the window, and wonder what can ail us? for unrest, unquiet, and strife seem to be in the very atmosphere that we breathe. ”

“ Had you to weep because the being whom you had learned to worship had with wanton frolic and a mocking smile plucked out your heart-strings and left you forlorn and desolate, a prey to ignominy and to lifelong regret? And had you to weep tears of bitter humiliation in the knowledge that those who hated and despised you were laughing their fill at your folly? Oh! I, too, Mademoiselle Fernande, was young then ... ”

“ Being one sane amidst a crowd of the mad, I hardly dared assert to my own mind, that the vast luminary had undergone no change—that the shadows of night were unthickened by innumerable shapes of awe and terror ”

“ This broken and dusky light shewed many a countenance elated with spiritual pride, or rendered dark by fierce enthusiasm; and some whose anxious, wandering, and uncertain looks shewed they felt themselves rashly embarked in a cause which they had neither courage nor conduct to bring to a good issue, yet knew not how to abandon, for very shame. ”

“ Something—a passion, a mad desire—flickered into the man’s face, as if, for an instant, a hidden fire had leapt up. The next instant this was succeeded by the former cruel gaze of contempt and anger, the more intense because so icily controlled. ”

“ The ecstatic frenzies, which were mistaken for divine inspiration, the mangling of the body, the theory of a new birth and the remission of sins through the shedding of blood, have all their origin in savagery, and they naturally appealed to peoples in whom the savage instincts were still strong. ”

“ It will be entirely dependent on the circumstances in which we are placed, the objects which strike our eyes, the words which fall on our ears, whether the most lively sentiments of gayety or of sadness shall be produced, or passions of the most opposite character shall be excited, sometimes with extraordinary violence; for irritation shall rapidly pass into rage, dislike to hatred and desire of vengeance, and the calmest affection to the most transporting passion. ”

“ Why do you walk the difficult ways of the world, or of the flesh? Behold, destruction and unhappiness are in the ways of sinners; but my ways are fair ways, my yoke too is sweet, and my burden light. It is I that make the crooked ways straight, and the rough ways plain. The wandering I bring back, the toil-worn I refresh, and those that persevere I crown. ”

“ And these transient gusts of feeling prevent their forming those firm resolves of reason, that, bracing the nerves, when the heart is moved, make sympathy yield to principles, and the mind triumph over the senses. ”

“ And a mighty joy fills his heart, for now the hand upon his bridle restrains him no longer—nay, rather urges him forward; and far in the distance gallop others of his kind, others whom he scorns, one and all—notably a certain gray. Therefore as he spurns the earth beneath him faster and faster, the heart of "The Terror" is uplifted and full of rejoicing. ”

“ Those puerile fears, followed by hopes, without rule or aim, that vain confidence giving place to sad discouragement. Those despondent feelings after moments of zealous fever, during which we seem to be able to do and attempt everything. Here we find the solution of those sudden and varied shades of temperament which will instantaneously cheer or prostrate the energies of the soul. ”

“ I alone have come, all amazed and fearful, from the net wherein they were taken, but I find my life more bitter than my comrades found the grave. I see you on your goings and comings about the house. I may speak with you both matins and vespers. But no other joy do I get—neither clasp nor kiss, nothing but a few empty, courteous words. ”

“ And certainly he tried to make me feel that what to me was like a maniac's nightmare, an abysmal horror beggaring language and crucifying thought—it was all a commonplace to men and women of the world. "Human nature!" "Human nature!"—like the tolling of a muffled bell. ”

“ 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! ”

“ I speak not of any dramatic emotion, of such egotistic, half-artistic pleasure as some may get from the alternation of cheerfulness and terror, from the excitement caused by evil from which we are as safely separated as are those who look on from the enfuriate bulls in an arena. ”

“ Away beyond the seas, beyond the mountains, hearts burn and wither at destiny, faint and re-arise in the sorry fabric of life; with us still lie the rebel humours, soft runs the placid blood, gently sinks the weary mortal upon a divine apathy. ”

“ Ambition, with all the Train of turbulent Passions the World is infested with, I would leave to Men: And could I make my whole Sex of my Opinion, they would be resigned without the least Grudge or Envy; for Peace and Harmony dwell not with them, but on the contrary, Discord, Perturbation and Misery are their constant Companions. ”

“ About two years ago he was subject to maniacal fits of outrageous passion, when his manner was proud and stalking, his voice loud and blustering, and his language contemptuous and imperative; calling the house his own; commanding every one of us as his servants, in grand style. The mention of a single fact, out of an immense number, will be sufficient to characterise his spirit and manners. ”

“ What rapturous flights of sound! what thrilling, pathetic chimes! what wild, joyous revelry of passion! what a delirium of sense!--what an expression of agony and woe! all the feelings of suffering and rejoicing humanity sympathized with and finding a voice in those tones. ”

“ You have already seen how, in the fearful struggle which had ensued—in that dread bosom tempest—all the latent selfishness which marred that noble nature was thrown up and exposed upon the crest of the tossing waves of passion. ”