Gaslighting

“ At any excess or perversion of a natural appetite, their lyre sounds of itself with relishing denunciations; but for all displays of the truly diabolic—envy, malice, the mean lie, the mean silence, the calumnious truth, the backbiter, the petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of family life—their standard is quite different. These are wrong, they will admit, yet somehow not so wrong; there is no zeal in their assault on them, no secret element of gusto warms up the sermon; it is for things not wrong in themselves that they reserve the choicest of their indignation. ”

“ But the sense of commiseration is swallowed up in indignation when we hear her give false evidence, and swear to what is demonstrably a lie, in order that she may glut her hate upon the unhappy girl who has for too long been misunderstood, misrepresented, and misused. ”

“ I have been patient, but I can be provoked. I may forgive an act of passion, of jealousy, of envy even, but I cannot forgive a lie."
I loved him, but my blood rose at this.
"Am I a liar?" I asked, looking full in his face; "have I ever been one?"
"Never," he replied, with some emotion, "and I will not consider this an act of deception, but as the result of fear, obstinacy, or mistaken pride. ”

“ Sir, God grant that when I denounce an act of infamy I shall do it with feeling, and do it under the sudden impulses of feeling, instead of sitting up at night writing out my denunciation of a man whom I hate, copying it, having it printed, punctuating the proof-sheets, and repeating it before the glass, in order to give refinement to insult, which is only pardonable when it is the outburst of a just indignation. ”

“ Spread discord and blighting, unspeakable woe,
Dissension and turmoil wherever you go!
Sow, jealousy, envy, and causeless distrust;
Tread confidence, honor, and manhood in dust;
Aye, bawl yourself hoarser than ear-splitting gongs
To whine of injustice and shriek about wrongs—
Let decency blush at the tatters and rags
Your madness has clothed them in, vilest of hags—
Strut, stagger and bluster across the broad stage
All foaming and frothing in wildest of rage—
Go, blasting sweet maidenhood’s vision of bliss
And pois’ning the lip of affection’s pure kiss. ”

“ Instinct, too, is cruel at times! Instinct had been silent so long during the most critical juncture of her own folly. Now it spoke loudly, warningly; now that it was too late.
Ashamed of her own stupidity and blindness! her vanity mayhap had alone led her to believe the passionate protestations of a liar.
A liar! a mean, cowardly schemer, but her husband for all that! She owed him love, honor and obedience; if he commanded, she must obey; if he called she must fain go to him. ”

“ We are too much in the habit of looking at falsehood in its darkest associations, and through the colour of its worst purposes. That indignation which we profess to feel at deceit absolute, is indeed only at deceit malicious. We resent calumny, hypocrisy, and treachery, because they harm us, not because they are untrue. ”

“ Where is the man that has found but a single opportunity of losing his heart? But you love to deceive us, and we submit to be deceived, poor foolish creatures that we are; for your hypocrisy is, after all, a homage paid to the superiority of our sentiments, which are all purity. ”

“ Dost thou in scorn Preach patience to my rage, and bid me tamely Sit like a poor, contented, idiot down, Nor dare to think thou'st wrong'd me? Ruin seize thee, And swift perdition overtake thy treachery. Have I the least remaining cause to doubt? Hast thou endeavour'd once to hide thy falsehood? To hide it might have spoke some little tenderness, And shown thee half unwilling to undo me: But thou disdain'st the weakness of humanity. ”

“ For my part, I hate you, not only because of the injury you have done me and all the beliefs and laudable enthusiasms that you killed in me, but because you represent what are the most execrable and hideous things under the sun to me, hypocrisy and falsehood. ”

“ And you accept the vile slander of men with a grievance—men who hate him—you let them poison your mind! 'Common talk of the people of New Rome!' You listen to some vile gossip—I don't know what—and then come to me and say you know! ”

“ Then remembering every angry thought against her neighbour, against the impertinences of Prudence, against the overbearing authority of her aunt, against the persevering crazy suit of Manasseh, the indignation—only that morning, but such ages off in real time—at Faith's injustice; oh, could such evil thoughts have had devilish power given to them by the father of evil, and, all unconsciously to herself, have gone forth as active curses into the world? And so, on the ideas went careering wildly through the poor girl's brain—the girl thrown inward upon herself. ”

“ But it is ridiculous, and seems ungrateful, for people to affect an appearance of indignation against those who provide for them one of the greatest enjoyments of their lives. To chuckle over scandal all the forenoon with every mark of pleasure, and decry it in the evening with affected anger, is as preposterous as it would be in a judge, first to seduce a poor wench to fornication, and then punish her for the sin. ”

“ Liar?' says I, for my blood was up; 'before that happens, you'll have to change him into a liar and me into a fool and yourself into an honest man, and you'll find that the hardest of all.' And with that I threw the dusting-brush at him—which was a piece of wicked temper I oughtn't to have given way to—and ran out of the door, and I heard him cursing to himself something fearful as I went down the passage. ”

“ As to manners, I think that to repeat a bit of scandal, and circulate backbiting stories, are worse offences than the actions that gave rise to them. If I mentally condemn a person, I feel guilty of moral lapse. ”

“ And so it has happened that our numerous family, having been by many ill treated, are constantly exposed to kicks and insult from those same parties, for no other reason than that they have kicked and insulted us before. The meekness of our disposition has been distorted into hypocrisy; our quiet has been called "meditative treachery;" and our natural and innocent instincts have been styled "the proofs of a sanguinary temperament." Our every look has been perverted by our enemies into a moral squint ”

“ Do you not offer them a mortal insult by presenting to them such nonsense as argument? And if your constituents were capable of suffering themselves to be deceived by such unspeakable absurdities, or to accept the insult without resentment, would such an attempt at deception under any circumstances be the part of an honest man? Is there really no blush rising to your cheeks when you look at your performance?
These are the three falsehoods which, when writing my last letter, I selected for exposure from a larger number. ”

“ For, first, who can flatter himself with not being among the number of the persecutors of truth, under the description of scandals? I even speak not of those disorderly souls who have erected the standard of guilt and licentiousness, and who pay little, if indeed any, attention to the public opinion: the most notorious scandals are not always those which are most to be dreaded; and avowed debauchery, when carried to a certain degree, occasions, in general, more censures upon our conduct than imitations of our excesses. ”

“ She to judge him? Who could tell how maddened he might have been by jealousy; how one moment's uncontrollable passion might have led him to become a murderer! And she had blamed him in her heart after his last deprecating, imploring, prophetic speech! ”

“ She could not be alone, prostrate, powerless as she was,—a cloud of faces looked up at her, giving her no idea of fierce vivid anger, or of personal danger, but a deep sense of shame that she should thus be the object of universal regard—a sense of shame so acute that it seemed as if she would fain have burrowed into the earth to hide herself, and yet she could not escape out of that unwinking glare of many eyes. ”

“ There's some scandal about everybody. We're all sinners—if you want to call it sin to follow your most sacred instincts.
"Why should you be afraid of a little gossip or a few jokes or a little abuse from a few hypocrites? They're all sinners—worse than you, too, most of them, if the truth were known. ”

“ When in the affliction of my heart I suffer a groan to escape me, I have the appearance of a man who complains without reason, and the authors of my ruin have the inconceivable art of rendering the public unknown to itself, or without its perceiving the effects of it, accomplice in their conspiracy. ”

“ Though I resolved not to forsake him, and my decision is final—every liar and traitor insults God and thus lies—the heart seeing not him weeps and sighs, moans and groans, it comes not near to any joy, it shudders, grows sullen, cries alack! ”

“ They may, they generally do, exaggerate our faults, but the exaggeration gives them a relief and depth of colouring which may enable the accusation to force its way through the dimness and heavy-sightedness of our self-deception. Examine yourself, then, with respect to those accusations which others bring against you in moments of anger and excitement; place yourself in the situation of the injured party, and ask yourself whether you would not attach tho blame of selfishness to similar conduct in another person. ”

“ In the first place, by imposing on them a duty which they fail to recognise, you make them disinclined to submit to your tyranny, and you turn away their love; you teach them deceit, falsehood, and lying as a way to gain rewards or escape punishment; then by accustoming them to conceal a secret motive under the cloak of an apparent one, you yourself put into their hands the means of deceiving you, of depriving you of a knowledge of their real character, of answering you and others with empty words whenever they have the chance. ”

“ How many have been seen patiently to suffer themselves to be burnt and roasted for opinions taken upon trust from others, and by them not at all understood? I have known a hundred and a hundred women (for Gascony has a certain prerogative for obstinacy) whom you might sooner have made eat fire than forsake an opinion they had conceived in anger. They are all the more exasperated by blows and constraint. ”

“ Evil speaking, slander, detraction, gossip, scandal, are different names for one of the chief dangers to be guarded against in conversation; and you are doing much towards defending yourselves against it by the generous mental culture which you enjoy in this seminary. The demon of slander loves an empty house. A taste for scandal betrays a vacant mind. Furnish your minds, then, by useful reading and study, and by habits of reflection and mental industry, that you may be able to talk about subjects as well as about people,—about events too long past or too remote to be interwoven with slander. ”

“ What malignity begins, ignorant, idle, some times even well-meaning gossip, finishes. Those who professed to know nothing about her, aided by their silly curiosity the insidious objects of those who might falsely pretend to know. Unfortunately, the very unguardedness of her innocence served to arm even the feeblest malice with powerful stings ”

“ He must have established deceivers to mislead them with lies, to terrify them with the wrath of God, in case they stir hand or foot, or so much as a thought, to mend their doleful condition; as if the good God was the sanctifier of all villainy, the patron of the worst of all villains! ”

“ Publicity would be just the note to make the whole strain ring false. It would recoil upon him in open disapproval and contempt! It would rouse new voices in the clarion-tongued clamor of abuse that her jubilant ear had heard swelling through the past year—forge a new link in the chain that would bind him to disgrace, the disgrace she believed he had had share in heaping upon her niece! ”

“ That is to say, you never hear a word uttered but in a rage, either just ready to burst, or for the most part, explosive instantly: everybody—man, woman, or child—roaring out their incontinent, foolish, infinitely contemptible opinions and wills, on every smallest occasion, with flashing eyes, hoarsely shrieking and wasted voices,—insane hope to drag by vociferation whatever they would have, out of man and God. ”

“ A malignant lie, which threatens mischievous consequences, fills us with the highest indignation, and belongs to Tragedy. Why then are cunning and deceit admitted to be excellent as comic motives, so long as they are used with no malicious purpose, but merely to promote our self-love, to extricate one's-self from a dilemma, or to gain some particular object, and from which no dangerous consequences are to be dreaded? ”

“ By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery they break out, and blood toucheth blood.” Here we see the brood of evils associated with lying. “A lying tongue,” says Solomon, “hateth those that are afflicted by it.” It not only afflicts, but hates them whom it does afflict—hates them under the calamity of which itself has been the cause. “A liar,” he again says, “giveth ear to a naughty tongue.” He listens to lies, to slander, to cursing, to profanity, and the various evils constituting a “naughty tongue.” ”

“ Each felt hurt by the injustice of suspicion, and secretly rebelled with that restrained anger which breaks out, from time to time, in brutal and irrevocable words, grave accusations and absurd recriminations. ”