Haughtiness

“ Men's haughtiness will be brought down, either by the grace of God convincing them of the evil of their pride, and clothing them with humility, or by the providence of God depriving them of all those things they were proud of, and laying them low. ”

“ It was when I charged her with pride as the reason of refusal. Then suddenly her eyes filled up, and her lip trembled, and such a change came over her features that I grew shocked at my own words.
“'Pride!' cried she. 'If you mean that inordinate self-esteem that prefers isolation to sympathy, that rejects an obligation from mere haughtiness, I know not the feeling. ”

“ No one, who duly considers of this matter, will make any scruple of allowing, that any piece of in-breeding, or any expression of pride and haughtiness, is displeasing to us, merely because it shocks our own pride, and leads us by sympathy into a comparison, which causes the disagreeable passion of humility. ”

“ Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the haughtiness of humility. ”

“ Reserve is that which is developed only after close application to, and experience in, the laws of good conduct. Haughtiness is merely a sham drapery used to cover the defects of uncultured manners.
The other extreme of haughtiness is self-consciousness. Both faults are the result of too much self-thought. To overcome self-consciousness, which makes you awkward, easily embarrassed, and ill at ease—think less of yourself! Think of the books you have read, of the people you have met, of the new scenes you have observed. Take a more keen interest in people. ”

“ To give the fairest play to every side of the question, I will own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature, which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please; ”

“ She was far from that vain haughtiness that is the common characteristic of narrow and superficial minds, and which, too often, displays itself in persons of cultivated intellect, where there is not a corresponding goodness of heart. ”

“ If in ordinary human affairs "before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honour goeth humility;" [406] if even in our dealings with one another happiness and success and prosperity depend on the cultivation of a modest spirit, how much more when we come to deal with God must haughtiness appear the presage of destruction, and humility the only way of approach to Him!
It is not possible to think too humbly of yourself, it is not possible to be too lowly, you cannot abase yourself too much in His Holy Presence. ”

“ But it is a strange experience, to a man of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests are within the control of individuals who neither love nor understand him, and by whom, since one or the other must needs happen, he would rather be injured than obliged. Strange, too, for one who has kept his calmness throughout the contest, to observe the blood-thirstiness that is developed in the hour of triumph, and to be conscious that he is himself among its objects! ”

“ Your peculiar faculties, as I shall direct them, are capable of being so wrought into this enterprise that not one of them need lie idle. Strike hands with me, and from this moment you shall never again feel the languor and vague wretchedness of an indolent or half-occupied man. There may be no more aimless beauty in your life; but, in its stead, there shall be strength, courage, immitigable will—everything that a manly and generous nature should desire! ”

“ Nor sickness, nor icy-fingered fear, nor sorrow, and pale waste of form and mind hovering ever o'er humanity, shall so much as shadow thee with the shadow of their wings. As a God shalt thou be, holding good and evil in the hollow of thy hand, and I, even I, I humble myself before thee. ”

“ Erring Thought and perverted Wisdom were made to put on masques, and play the fool. The men of whom we speak, after losing the heart's fresh gayety, imagined a wild philosophy of pleasure, and came hither to act out their latest day-dream. ”

“ If we get into the habit of thinking evil thoughts, we live in that atmosphere. Health is a habit, so also is success. Honesty, virtue, vice, procrastination, contentment, fault-finding, grumbling, candy eating, gossiping, drinking, sleeping, religion, friends, life itself, are habits. Life is what we make it. "As the man thinketh in his heart, so he is." ”

“ He must have suffered keenly in his lifetime, and enjoyed keenly, keeping his emotions so much upon the surface as he seemed to do, and convenient for everybody to play upon. Being of a cheerful temperament, happiness had probably the upper hand. His was a light, mildly joyous nature, gentle, graceful, yet seldom attaining to that deepest grace which results from power; for beauty, like woman, its human representative, dallies with the gentle, but yields its consummate favor only to the strong. ”

“ But a certain fine temper of being was now,—not brought out in full relief, but changeably and imperfectly betrayed,—of which it was the function to deal with all beautiful and enjoyable things. In a character where it should exist as the chief attribute, it would bestow on its possessor an exquisite taste, and an enviable susceptibility of happiness. Beauty would be his life ”

“ And if the end were attained, if at last you emerged from the trial ever beautiful and ever young, defying time and evil, and lifted above the natural decay of flesh and intellect, who shall say that the awesome change would prove a happy one? Choose, my son, and may the Power who rules all things, and who says ‘thus far shalt thou go, and thus much shalt thou learn,’ direct the choice to your own happiness and the happiness of the world, which, in the event of your success, you would one day certainly rule by the pure force of accumulated experience.— Farewell! ”

“ Nevertheless, it is in the midst of all these vexations that happiness must be at least professed. Every thing attributed to you, either by truth or vanity, is called in question: your birth, your talents, your reputation, your services, your success, your prudence, and even your honour. ”

“ Few men, without some eccentricity of character, would have the moral strength to do this; and it is very striking to find such strength combined with the utmost gentleness, and an uncommon regularity of nature. ”

“ Had you the inner wisdom, you would not judge by the outward appearance and you would know that ofttimes the gods bring misfortunes upon those they love in order that thereby they may work their ends. Beauty is yours, wit is yours, and a great destiny awaits you, though with it, as I think, great sorrow. Yet one thing is lacking to you—humility—and that you must learn beneath the rods of destiny. But of these matters we will talk afterward. Meanwhile, as you say, I need food and shelter, which are necessary to all while still they labour in the flesh. ”

“ No aim that I have ever cherished would they recognise as laudable; no success of mine—if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been brightened by success—would they deem otherwise than worthless, if not positively disgraceful. “What is he?” murmurs one grey shadow of my forefathers to the other. “A writer of story books! What kind of business in life—what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation—may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!” ”

“ I could not be checked by any fear of overstepping the modesty of Truth in the celebration of Virtue, so solid and so extensive, that the malevolence of Envy could not diminish its weight, the fondness of Enthusiasm could not amplify its effects. ”

“ He continued to gaze steadily at the spectacle with a singular calmness, as if it concerned him merely as an observer. “Be of good courage, nor yet exult too much; for there is far less both of good and evil in the effect of this bonfire than the world might be willing to believe.” ”

“ Perhaps it is the very lack of moral severity, of any high and heroic ingredient in the character of the Faun, that makes it so delightful an object to the human eye and to the frailty of the human heart. ”

“ But if ever—in distress, peril, shame, poverty, or whatever anguish is most poignant, whatever burden heaviest—you should require a life to be given wholly, only to make your own a little easier, then summon me! ”

“ Would all who cherish such wild wishes but look around them, they would oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity and happiness, within those precincts and in that station where Providence itself has cast their lot. Happy they who read the riddle without a weary world-search or a lifetime spent in vain! ”

“ To Count D’elmont.
If Ambition be a Fault, ’tis only in those who have not a sufficient stock of Merit to support it; too much Humility is a greater in you, whose Person and Qualities are too admirable, not to render any Attempt you shall make justifiable, as well as successful. ”

“ Whether your motive was jealousy, or greed, or wickedness of heart, or fear, you signed that which, had you been a man, you would not have yourself to be torn to pieces with redhot pincers you put a pen to it. ”

“ She felt the disturbing conviction that those common men—she could almost hear their blundering speech, see their uncouth yawns at the sights and sounds of beauty on which she fed her soul—that those men had wells of life within them purer, sweeter, than she. ”

“ Could we hope that so humble a work as this would reach the lofty sphere in which he moves, we would solemnly say to him: "You are wretched, but will nothing make you happy? You hate all men; will nothing warm you with new feelings? ”

“ Obedient to this call, a great multitude come together, most of them with a listless gait, betokening weariness of soul, yet with a gleam of satisfaction in their faces, at a prospect of at length reaching those positions which, hitherto, they have vainly sought. ”

“ But when mind has given dignity to natural affections; when reason, culture, taste, and delicacy, have combined to chasten, to refine, to exalt (shall I say) to sanctity them—Is there, then, no cause to complain of rigor and severity, that such minds must either passively submit to a vile traffic, or be content to relinquish all the endearing sympathies of life? ”

“ Impute it, I beseech you, to no defect of modesty, if I insist a little longer on so fruitful a topic as my own multifarious merits. It is altogether for your good. The better you think of me, the better men and women will you find yourselves. ”

“ Do we seek to deny ourselves or to gratify ourselves? Which is the greater labor, to gratify or to deny ourselves? I will tell you that if we would bestow as much labor in denying ourselves as we do in gratifying ourselves, we should feel better and should be happier, and the heavens would plead our cause more effectually. ”

“ We are now poor, my fondlings, and wisdom bids us to conform to our humble situation. Let us, then, without repining, give up those splendours with which numbers are wretched, and seek, in humbler circumstances, that peace with which all may be happy. ”

“ Vanity, envy, meanness, greed, the foibles and frailties of human nature, repel us when we imagine their persistence in others after death. We infinitely prefer the thought that they should be purged and radiant with spiritual effulgence. We are not so sure about ourselves, for the objective classification of the qualities which go to form our own character is a difficult achievement. ”

“ And what I can never understand, is the pride which you positively seem to feel in having men and classes of men above you, born to privileges which you can never hope to share. It may be a thing to be endured, but surely not one to be absolutely proud of. ”

“ My experience shall warn him to adopt some great and serious aim, such as manhood will cling to, that he may not feel himself, too late, a cumberer of this overladen earth, but a man among men. I will beseech him not to follow an eccentric path, nor, by stepping aside from the highway of human affairs, to relinquish his claim upon human sympathy. ”

“ When free from exciting emotions, they beam forth an expression of calm dignity, above the sway of lust, vanity, and envy, that gave birth to the cruel frivolities of the day, which she evidently patronizes from compulsion. ”

“ Why should the desires of vice be accomplished by superior powers; and why should superior powers be permitted to disappoint the expectations of virtue? Yet let me not rashly question the ways of Him, in whose balance the world is weighed: by Him, every evil is rendered subservient to good; and by His wisdom, the happiness of the whole is secured. ”

“ In short, human weakness and strength, passion and policy, man’s tendencies, his aims and modes of pursuing them, his individual character and his character in the mass, may be studied almost as well here as on the theatre of nations, and with this great advantage—that, be the lesson ever so disastrous, its Liliputian scope still makes the beholder smile. ”

“ Two particular examples of the influence I am speaking of, I shall mention here, not only as honourable to the prime object of our regard, but as they may suggest to contemplative minds some useful ideas, by shewing how far the mere weight of an upright and benevolent character alone may give to the most callous nerves a trembling sensibility, and awaken the most ferocious spirit to self-correction. ”