Hardness

“ It dents them; is impenetrable by them; and we call the hardness then a physical hardness. In the mind, on the contrary, the hard thing is nowhere in particular, it dents nothing, it suffuses through its mental neighbors, as it were, and interpenetrates them. ”

“ Hardness here is moral indignation, kindling up into an uncontrollable flame, which burns up, like stubble, all other feelings. These are simple-minded people, and they feel strongly within their narrow range of feelings. ”

“ Again and again one has seen indolent, flabby, and irresolute natures stimulated to activity and "steeled" into hardness by the deep, though perhaps unuttered, desire to repay an insult or avenge an injury. ”

“ There came over him at moments a strange emotion which he resisted and to which he opposed the hardness acquired during the last twenty years of his life. This state of mind fatigued him. He perceived with dismay that the sort of frightful calm which the injustice of his misfortune had conferred upon him was giving way within him. ”

“ If any man should say, that hardness in bodies is a certain vibration of their parts, or that it is certain effluvia emitted by them which affect our touch in the manner we feel: such hypothesis would shock common sense; because we all know, that if the parts of a body adhere strongly, it is hard, although it should neither emit effluvia, nor vibrate. ”

“ The first conception of it, as well as the belief of it, and of the common relation it bears to all that we are conscious of, or remember, is suggested to every thinking being, we do not know how.
The notion of hardness in bodies, as well as the belief of it, are got in a similar manner; being by an original principle of our nature, annexed to that sensation which we have when we feel a hard body. ”

“ It is a wise plan in many cases, but sometimes dangerous—for instance, if you begin to regard ‘difficult’ as synonymous with ‘right.’ You are told to ‘endure hardness as a good soldier,’ but never to follow hardness as an aim in itself. ”

“ It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in men’s dispositions. ”

“ Closely allied to cohesion is the character of “hardness,” which is often defined, and measured by, the resistance which a crystal face offers to scratching. That hardness is a character depending largely on crystalline structure is well illustrated by the two crystalline modifications of carbon: graphite is one of the softest of minerals, whilst diamond is the hardest of all. The hardness of crystals of different substances thus varies widely, and with minerals it is a character of considerable determinative value ”

“ Why are not others, O king, feeling the burden of this palanquin. If I am exhausted with a burden that is being carried on another's shoulder, then why with the weight of this palanquin, people may be worn out with the weight of mountains, trees, houses and even of the earth, When the nature of men is different, either in its essence or its cause, then it may be said that fatigue is to be undergone by me. ”

“ And with that strange passivity of the nerves which nature mercifully sends to those who have learned submission to suffering, to those whose strength is the strength, not of resistance, but of endurance, she felt that as long as she sat there, relaxed and motionless, she had in a way withdrawn herself from the struggle to live. ”

“ Still less, then, is the fact that the difficulty is physical to be used as an excuse for giving way to ill-temper, and, in fact, leaving ourselves to be tossed and shaken by every tremble of our nerves. ”

“ Therefore let us examine alone by ourselves the weight of our misfortunes, as if they were burdens. For the body is weighed down by the burden of what presses on it, but the soul often adds to the real load a burden of its own. ”

“ If thou art strong, and he is weak, descend from thy strength, and enter into his weakness; lay aside thy burden for the while, and buckle on his own; let thy sight see as through his eyes—thy heart beat as in his bosom. ”

“ Yet in process of time, as I have been told, he came to some recovery and confessed this error; an evident proof of human weakness, and a notorious instance of our frailty, when we assume to ourselves the doing of any thing to which Heaven alone can enable us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What a profound consciousness of inward weakness and of outward antagonism there breathes in that humble and modest hope, as being the loftiest result of the presence of Omnipotence for our aid: 'I shall not be moved'! When we think of our inner weakness, when we remember the fluctuations of our feelings and emotions, when we compare the ups and downs of our daily life, or when we think of the larger changes covering years, which affect all our outlooks, our thoughts, our plans ”

“ How dost thou dart unknown pangs all through our feeble mechanism, now seeming to shiver us like broken glass, to nothingness—now giving us a fresh strength, which can do nothing, and so torments us by a sensation, such as the strong man must feel who cannot break his fetters, though they bend in his grasp. ”

“ I, too, ‘find myself facing as stoutly as I can a hard, combative existence, full of doubts, difficulties, and disappointments, quite a hard enough life without dark countenances at my elbow.’ Give me pleasant company. ”

“ But her fearfulness and excitement was not that of weakness, rather that of a finely nervous nature, having strong elements of imagination, and, therefore, great capacities for suffering as for joy; but yet elastic, vigorous, and possessing unusual powers of endurance. Such natures rebuild as fast as they are exhausted. ”

“ Oh, how they seem to strain each nerve! How desperate their all but Herculean efforts to try and save themselves! One moment they appear to be lost; the next we notice them again struggling on as determinedly as ever. ”

“ Ahead of her loomed, only dimly discerned as yet, the ordeal of strenuous monotony; the deadly-dull, prolonged grind wherein endurance, as it hardens, is subjected to a constantly harsher strain, until the soul revolts as, in the earlier stage, the body had rebelled. ”

“ When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at which endurance [40] is possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage. ”

“ Such too is the frailty of our bodies, and the vanity of all our enjoyments, that our troubles also thence arise as naturally as the sparks fly upwards—so many are they, so thick and so fast does one follow another. ”

“ Misfortune seems to have dogged my steps; but in this pause of my life—in this state of calmness—I can see that misfortune is my good; for, not until my feet were turning into ways that lead to death, did I stumble and fall."
"Are you not too hard in self-judgment?" ”

“ Do you persevere. Ah! when pain has thoroughly relaxed those nerves and softened the fibres that you take to be so pliant and yielding; when a shriveled heart has learned to expand and contract and to beat under this discipline; when the brain has capitulated—then, perhaps, passion may enter among the steel springs of this machinery that turns out tears and affectations and languors and melting phrases ”

“ Each man's own burden seems the hardest to bear, I imagine, and to me these events have shrivelled the very marrow in my bones. They scorched me, and the glare, thrown from the larger world into the privacy of my life, made me feel that I could call on the hills to cover me. ”

“ When the nerves once break, how breaks the character with them! How many ascetics, withered and soured, do we meet in the world, who but for one shock to the heart and form might have erred on the side of meekness! ”

“ The feats of intellectual or physical strength, the surprising exploits of special sensation and mind-power, performed by individuals under the influence of any condition which suspends the sense of pain, weakness, or fatigue, are explained by the circumstance that unsuspected reserves of power and endurance are placed at the disposal of the will. ”

“ What though my shrinking flesh complain,
And murmur to contend so long?
I rise superior to my pain,
When I am weak, then I am strong
And when my all of strength shall fail,
I shall with the God-man prevail. ”

“ To you first entering on life, to whom care is new, and agony unknown, how can you understand what I have felt, and still feel? Cold, want, and fatigue, were the least pains which I was destined to endure ”

“ But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!
For strong the infection of our mental strife,
Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest;
And we should win thee from thy own fair life,
Like us distracted, and like us unblest. ”

“ When conscious of our own weakness, and tempted to think of our task as heavy, or when complacent in our own power, and tempted to regard our task as easy, let us think of His ever-present work in and for His people, till it braces us for all duty, and rebukes our easy-going idleness. ”

“ When our enlightened minds shall bless his sway,
Then, the strained heart of fortitude proves weak:
Our groans, our blushes, our pale cheeks declare
That he has power to inflict what we lack strength to bear. ”

“ Phrases like "to sit on thorns," "to be on pins and needles," "to drain the cup of misery to the dregs," show with graphic power the folly and curse of worry. Why should one sit on thorns, or on pins and needles? If one does so accidentally he arises in a hurry, yet in worrying, one seems deliberately, with intent, to sit down upon prickles in order to compel himself to discomfort, distress, and pain. Is there any wisdom, when one has the cup of misery at his lips, in deliberately keeping it there, and persistently drinking it to the "very dregs"? ”

“ But we were not doing that; we were in constant motion. The arduous exercise that we were undergoing, our fatigue, the anxieties and fears that preyed upon the mind—each was contributing its quota to the dire and steady work of enervation. ”

“ Here we have the complaints, or rather the gloomy predictions, of a tired-out, discouraged, and depressed man: the strongest of constitutions succumb to such moments of doubt, and experience these hours of despair: after great fatigue the body overrides the mind, the sheath tarnishes the blade. ”

“ One becomes used to being hard up, like one becomes used to everything else, by the help of that wonderful old homeopathic doctor, Time. You can tell at a glance the difference between the old hand and the novice; between the case-hardened man who has been used to shift and struggle for years, and the poor devil of a beginner, striving to hide his misery, and in a constant agony of fear lest he should be found out. ”

“ But indeed I have met with what men usually style great misfortunes, or evils, though I never so named them. Like every mortal, I have had my share of what is called human misery. The weight of a sudden load has sometimes, for a moment, staggered me and pressed me down, as is the case with others. ”

“ If to these mental distresses are added a delicate frame of body, and a mind ambitious of some higher distinction than that of being the tyrant of childhood, the reader may have some slight conception of the relief which a solitary walk, in the cool of a fine summer evening, affords to the head which has ached, and the nerves which have been shattered, for so many hours, in plying the irksome task of public instruction. ”

“ The physical weakness which enables us to realize the uncertain tenure by which we are connected with this world is gradually changed into strength, and the power to act brings with it the desire;—and who shall easily set bounds to this desire? ”

“ After a while it came to his mind that this was merely a species of weakness,—such, for example, as follows an operation in surgery, or an illness that a man has passed through,—and that positive life will fill out in time that void which he feels. ”

“ How I fuss, and fidget, and fan myself, and adopt the hundred and one flapping and fussy measures that mortals suffering under discomfort always affect, until they resign themselves to the inevitable, and learn that hardest of hard lessons—endurance. ”

“ But this sparkling sensibility to one struggling under infirmity, or with grief or poverty, is very dreadful. The soul is too nicely and keenly hinged to be wrenched without mischief. How it shrinks, like a hurt child, from all that is vulgar, harsh and crude! ”

“ Yet all of us are troubled by their struggle, all of us recognize the misery of their surroundings, the paucity of their moral and esthetic inspiration, their lack of opportunity for physical development. All of us have a longing, pronounced or latent, to help them, to alleviate their distress, to better their condition in some, in every way. ”

“ That intangible tendency to weakness, to unhealth, so indefinable, so delicate, so inappreciable to our senses, is yet the mightiest factor in our being, and measures the amount of our physical pains and sufferings with a greater delicacy than we have been wont to think. ”

“ Who has the courage to look into the wilderness of the most bitter and superfluous mental agonies in which probably the most productive minds of all ages have suffered untold misery? Who would listen to the sighs. ”