Halt

“ The halt intended to be temporary, is to continue till near sunset, despite expostulations, almost prayerful appeals, from those who have left desolate homes behind, and who burn with impatience to ride forward and rescue their captive kindred. ”

“ A man who burns a wood mustn't complain a month afterwards because he has no fuel. However, I hope that in another day or two we shall be moving on. As long as we are going there is no time to feel it dull; it is the halt, after being so long in motion, that gives us time to talk, and puts fancies into our heads. ”

“ The whole object of the Prophets and the Sages was to declare that a limit is set to human reason where it must halt. ”

“ It is best that the world should move on; that there should be no pause, no halting in the onward march. What are we that the earth should stand still at our bidding, or pause to contemplate our tears? ”

“ A Moment's Halt—a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste—
And Lo!—the phantom Caravan has reach'd
The Nothing it set out from—Oh, make haste! ”

“ VII. The halt—How to halt a young horse.—To halt, lean back slightly and pull on the reins with gradually increasing force, in order to slow and then stop movement.
When the trooper pulls on the reins the horse should neither raise nor lower the head. The muzzle should remain to the front and the whole mass of the neck should flow back toward the withers. In other words, under the action of the reins the horse should neither throw his nose up in the air nor bring it down against his chest, closing up on the hand. ”

“ Men began to look into each other’s faces and ask the question, ‘Are we ever to be halted again?’ and many of the weaker sort were now seen to stagger, make a few desperate efforts, and then fall, perhaps to rise no more. ”

“ All is accomplished, all has terminated there. It is there, in that circle narrow as a well that the descent into the raging heart of hell was halted, the descent into slow tortures, into unrelenting fatigue, into the flashing tempest. We came here because they told us to come here. We have done what they told us to do. I think of the simplicity of our reply on the Day of Judgment. ”

“ Saw night and rain in a dead world agrope.
Now walks her ghost beside me, whispering
With lips derisive: "Thou that wouldst forego—
What god assured thee that the cup I bring
Globes not in every drop the cosmic show,
All that the insatiate heart of man can wring
From life's long vintage?—Now thou shalt not know." ”

“ The sun in universal carnage sets, And, halting higher, The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats, Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned, That, balked, yet stands at bay. Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline, A wan valkyrie whose wide pinions shine Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray, And in her lifted hand swings high o’erhead, Above the waste of war, The silver torch-light of the evening star Wherewith to search the faces of the dead. ”

“ Day after day, week after week, of rain and sleet and mud; day after day, week after week, of vague non-committal news from west and east; everywhere the enemy baffled but still menacing, everywhere death, suffering, destruction, without any perceptible oscillation of the scales, any compensating hope of good to come out of the long slow endless waste. The benumbed and darkened Paris of those February days seemed the visible image of a benumbed and darkened world.
Down the empty asphalt sheeted with rain the rare street lights stretched interminable reflections. ”

“ Suspense, more wearing even than sorrow, had held him on the rack. Sleep had seldom visited his eyes; and when it came, it had been broken and fitful.
Now the worst had befallen him. Suspense was over; certainty had come. This brought at first a kind of rest to the overtaxed mind and frame. He was as one who hears a sentence of death, but who is taken off the rack. ”

“ The very noise and hum of the great city seemed to have stopped—or, at least, we did not hear it. Could the world have stopped in its rotation, and the hand of Time have arrested itself in its dismal march? ”

“ Death and Devastation are the certain Consequences of Delay; every Moment is infinitely precious; an Hour lost may deluge your Country in Blood, and entail perpetual Slavery upon the few of your Posterity who may survive the Carnage. ”

“ Shall we stand talking here instead of acting, when every moment of delay increases your danger? Come! As I carried you hither, in defiance of all, so will I carry you hence again at once while yet there is time. ”

“ Ma montre s’arrête; my watch stops. Il s’arrête, la mémoire lui manque; he hesitates, his memory fails him. Il ne faut pas s’arrêter à ce qu’il dit; one must not mind what he says. Vous vous arrêtez à des riens; you stop at trifles. ”

“ Nothing, as a matter of fact, goes every night through more agonies of adventure, more hairbreadth escapes, desperate expedients, crucial councils, random compromises, or barely averted catastrophes. Seen from the outside, it seems to come round as automatically as the clock and as silently as the dawn. ”

“ Follow the guidance, and at once, for delay is fatal. Like a man walking behind a guide across some morass, set your feet in the print of the Master's and keep close at His heels, and then you will be safe. ”

“ Every chain must wear out in time. Mine was worn to attenuation before to-night—this last blow snaps it. To-morrow, when the world wakes to its petty round of cares and joys, my troubles will be over. ”

“ The ‘dead pause abrupt of mighty winds’ is the pause of mighty winds and not of gentle breezes; and it is not the absence of mighty winds, but their pause before they burst into renewed fury; or if their silence is not their will, it is a silence imposed on them by something mightier even than they. ”

“ In a moment the world's motion, the rush of the heavenly bodies, and the bustle of human activity shall give way to eternal silence, as when the power is shut off in a mighty factory, and presently each of us shall depart for his allotted home forever and ever. Dies magna, yes, and day of the Lord too. ”

“ Will delay render it less gigantic, or give us more Herculean strength to meet and subdue it at a future time? Oh, no—delay breeds danger—procrastination is the thief of time, and the refuge of sluggards. ”

“ The succession of events, once it had begun to march, has been so remarkable that now, looking back, we must each and all of us feel how puny are men and women to resist the winds of circumstance which blow upon them. ”

“ For delay there was, though of a few hours only; and this delay was caused by my uncomfortable new habit—pausing for the guidance and the "thrill." Intuition, waiting upon the thrill of Beauty that guided it, at first lay inactive. ”

“ And all this long story was about—what do you think?
"We cannot hope to succeed, unless——" "But we must succeed."
Note that it is the long dash that is used at the end of a sentence.
The full stop is not added where the dash marks an unfinished sentence. But it is common to add the point of interrogation or the mark of exclamation. ”

“ The switch which thus sets active the play of forces I shall call circumstance. If it has been long delayed, I have the precedent of all the story of human life as my excuse. For we are the children of circumstance. We move each in our little circle by a stout hedge encompassed. ”

“ Suddenly a rift shows itself in the otherwise forever closed door between this life and the other, to close again quickly—the door, which will wholly open in death, and only then will open never more to be closed. ”

“ It seemed that he had been counting for hours, his will against her will, the man in him against the woman in her, and during the pauses between the sound of his voice the very air grew charged with waiting. ”

“ It won't be long, now—I'm on the right track at last—only till I've made my strike.' Always—'it won't be long now.' Always—'I'm on the right track, at last.' Always—'just ahead is the strike'—that lure, that mocking chimera that saps men's lives! ”

“ Yet Time, forsooth, wrests even this anchorage from you. Comes an hour when, confronted by the inevitable, helpless in its grip, unreconciled even in your resignation, you dully stand by a bedside and wait—wait—wait. ”

“ But the Place is waiting there; till the Hour shall show it,
And our footsteps, following Fate, find it and know it.
Where we shall worship the greatest of all the Gods in his pomp and power,—
I sometimes think that I shall not care to survive that hour! ”

“ Now shutting out things is all very well, but it has one simple corollary--that from everything that we shut out we are ourselves shut out. When we shut our door on the wind, it would be equally true to say that the wind shuts its door on us. ”

“ It is certain, I confess it, that there are hours when terrible signs appear to me. Perhaps, indeed, the end of time is nigh, and we shall witness that fall of the old world with which others threaten us. ”

“ I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
[Pg 40]
“My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite;
I laugh at what you call dissolution;
And I know the amplitude of time.”
What lies through the portal of death is hidden from us; but the laws that govern that unknown land are not all hidden from us, for they govern here and now; they are immutable, eternal. ”

“ The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless, till it is driven by external causes into a new channel. But the time of suspense is dreadful. ”

“ Some sufferer has counted the vibrations of the pendulum impatient for its dawn, who, now that it has arrived, is anxious for its close. The votary of pleasure, conscious of yesterday's void, wishes for power to arrest time's haste till a few more hours of mirth shall be enjoyed. The unfortunate are yet gazing in vain for goldenedged clouds they fancied would appear in their horizon. ”

“ Repose is more complete than rest; a pause is a momentary cessation of activity; a black-smith finds a temporary rest while the iron is heating, but he does not yield to repose; in a pause of battle a soldier rests on his arms ”

“ Why should we get up? we have neither suit to solicit, nor affairs to manage. The drama has shut in upon us at the fourth act. We have nothing here to expect, but in a short time a sick bed, and a dismissal. We delight to anticipate death by such shadows as night affords. ”

“ Do we stop our Motion, and sit down satisfied in the Settlement we have gain'd? or are we not removing the Boundary, and marking out new Points of Rest, to which we press forward with the like Eagerness, and which cease to be such as fast as we attain them? ”

“ There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage, If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail the long run, We should surely bring up again where we now stand, And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther. ”

“ This extract, therefore, well illustrates what was said above,—that the pause, as we here consider it, is not mere silence, but cessation of voice while the expression continues in the body. In the second place, it is plain that the collateral thinking determines the length of the pause.
Another element that determines the duration of the pause is the distance apart of the thoughts separated by the pause. Let us illustrate this:
If this law were put upon our statute books there would not be, five years from to-day, a dissenting voice raised against it from the Atlantic to the Pacific. ”

“ We have had not only one incident for every day in the week, but two or three; we have not simply been stunned with the alarming noise of one terrific clash, but another, and another, and another, have followed upon each other's heels, like Job's messengers, till we have needed Job's patience and resignation to hear the dreadful tale of woes. ”

“ Every hour you continue on this ill-chosen ground, your difficulties thicken around you; and therefore my conclusion is, remove from a bad position as quickly as you can. The disgrace, and the necessity of yielding, both of them, grow upon you every hour of your delay. ”

“ The years that are as mile-stones to us are as gravel spurned beneath him. But to us, of few days and an occasional night off, they serve as warnings to note the hour upon the face of a mighty clock upon which the hands move silently and are never turned back. ”

“ If life had not to finish, in fulfilment of a solemn, universal, and inevitable decree, the constraint that I have put upon myself might at length become oppressive, and my yoke prove somewhat heavy. But all that will finish soon, for all undertakings come to an end. ”