Hesitation

“ Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old. ”

“ While such and so great is the power of circumstances to vary the impressions made upon the senses, some hesitation must be used in their reception until fully confirmed, or they must be limited by other accounts, as unbiassed judgment may direct, especially as the temperament of individuals may serve to heighten the colouring, whether sombre or sunny, in which circumstances may have depicted the landscape. ”

“ Even in prose, to speak plainly, the hesitation—unless it comes from the foolish dislike to things religious, as such, which has been the bigotry of the last generation or two—comes from the almost equally foolish determination to draw up arbitrary laws of literary kind. ”

“ Where the word disturbances cannot be reduced to sound disturbances, as, for example, in the substitutions and contaminations of words, they, too, have without hesitation sought the cause of the mistake in speech outside of the intended context, and proved this state of affairs by means of fitting examples. ”

“ Now, it has been asserted that such a person would be seized with hesitation, fear, and doubt, whether he ought to open his hand all at once, or only half open it at first, or whether he ought not even to keep it a long time closed. ”

“ The knowledge of our nescience as to the psychical condition of our first thinking ancestors may suggest hesitation as to taking it for granted that early man was on our own or on the modern savage level in 'psychical' experience. ”

“ The place that he entered was one that would have made a man's heart stand still, much less that of a person built upon his small scale, and for a single moment he hesitated, but the hesitation was scarcely long enough to be called one. ”

“ With whatever stifled regrets, with whatever occasional hesitation, with whatever appalling apprehensions, which might sometimes arise with force to shake the firmest purpose, they had yet committed themselves to Heaven and the elements ”

“ Chapter LXIX. D'Artagnan was to meet an Old Acquaintance. There is always something in a landing, if it be only from the smallest sea-boat--a trouble and a confusion which do not leave the mind the liberty of which it stands in need in order to study at the first glance the new locality presented to it. The moveable bridges, the agitated sailors, the noise of the water on the pebbles, the cries and importunities of those who wait upon the shores, are multiplied details of that sensation which is summed up in one single result--hesitation. ”

“ Take that one word Sin, for instance: all those who have studied the subject from nature and not from books know perfectly well that a certain fraction of what is so called is nothing more or less than a symptom of hysteria; that another fraction is the index of a limited degree of insanity; that still another is the result of a congenital tendency which removes the act we sit in judgment upon from the sphere of self-determination, if not entirely, at least to such an extent that the subject of the tendency cannot be judged by any normal standard. ”

“ In many things we all offend, and thou, O Lord, hast proved me, and known me, and numbered all my steps, for all things are naked and open to thy eyes. Thou best knowest what is in man, and understandest my thoughts afar off; but who is there of us who understands his sins? From my secret ones cleanse me, O Lord. For I fear all my works, knowing that thou dost not spare the offender; my iniquities are multiplied above the hairs of my head, and I was not able to see. ”

“ All the strictly analogical cases of religious ecstasy, not hysteria, point to a strong mental impression, such as that order and belief having preceded and occasioned the peculiar psycho-physical state. ”

“ A word, a look, nay the very appearance of a slight, throws me into the greatest uneasiness and confusion; and though I can govern my temper enough to hide it from the world, my heart is ready to burst with indignation. ”

“ So long as the feelings remain objective they are, like the bloom to the peach, the last perfection of a beautiful character; but when they become subjective, when every feeling concerns itself with the ego, we have, as in the case of sensations, morbid conditions set up; the person begins by being “over sensitive,” hysteria supervenes, perhaps melancholia, an utterly spoilt life. ”

“ But she possessed the consciousness that, whenever she went down into the depths of her heart, she would find the spirit of peace, love, and truth, and this consciousness was so vivid that a divine calmness and confidence, visible to the dullest senses, illumined her brow. But a new trait in her was a peculiar sense of humor, a mirthfulness which had rarely flashed out in her youth, yet now appeared to be the predominant mood of her nature. ”

“ I have, for example, to wait in a railway-station, and to pass the time I read the advertisements on the walls, I compare the advantages of different trains and different routes which I never expect to take, merely fancying myself to be in a state of hesitancy, because I am bored with having nothing to trouble me. Feigned hesitancy, whether feigned for mere amusement or with a lofty purpose, plays a great part in the production of scientific inquiry. However the doubt may originate, it stimulates the mind to an activity which may be slight or energetic, calm or turbulent. ”

“ Since I have known you, your health has visibly improved, and who can tell whether the sentence pronounced on you by your doctor may not one day be laid aside with the rest of the sayings which false prophets have recklessly uttered. You shake your head. Well we will leave the future to decide this question. I carry the sure tokens of death too plainly within me to mistake them. So it causes me much deliberation whether I am not wronging you, in enjoying your society, your conversation, may I say your friendship? without heeding the injury your kindness may do you. ”

“ The hysterical stream of thought, even if it reaches into the unconscious, may be expected to show the same logical connections and sufficient causations as those that would be formed in a normal individual. ”

“ O what an aversion I had this morning to study, and following the Lamb! If it were not for promises which the gospel affords, I should be often brought into bondage: very often is my soul cast down and my spirit disquieted within me; so that I must needs utterly faint, if it was not that I firmly hope I shall yet praise God for the health of his countenance. I felt neither comfort nor power in preaching. O what a poor creature am I when left to myself! How dark of conception; how slow of heart and speech! ”

“ For until now they feared my jibes and the wiles by which, or soon or late, I mated all the immortals with mortal women, making them all subject to my will. But now my mouth shall no more have this power among the gods; for very great has been my madness, my miserable and dreadful madness, and I went astray out of my mind who have gotten a child beneath my girdle, mating with a mortal man. As for the child, as soon as he sees the light of the sun, the deep-breasted mountain Nymphs who inhabit this great and holy mountain shall bring him up. ”

“ You have become one of the children of this world, following after strange women, and swaggering for them, and making of them the false idols of your folly! But I tell you that, so long as I live, I will labour to bring you back to the Lord, and will shatter your idols! Has God wrought a miracle in you that you should deny him? ”

“ In this elementary observation we therefore see one of the main qualities of hysterics, namely, the tendency to allow themselves to be carried away by everything, to attach themselves enthusiastically to everything, and to always promise too much and hence do little. ”

“ The tortures of hell alternated with the delights of heaven, in imagery calculated to drive the timid and conscientious young folks to insanity, at these meetings, to which, once awakened, the subject of conviction went three times a day, until the hysteria, the prolonged excitement so produced, came as a sign of acceptance. ”

“ I talk, of course, not of the short stories of the penetrating observer, but of those of the dyspeptic pessimist, whose pessimism, where it is not the pose of the contortionist—adopted with an eye to a sensational success of journalism, to a commercial effect—is hysteria, an imitative malady, a malady of the mind. ”

“ I should not, indeed, know whether I had not better abandon life like a dirty shirt; and yet most of my acquaintances are in that state, and live on! If I ask of an individual, what object he has in living on, in laboring and growing angry, in intriguing and spying, I obtain no answer. ”

“ It is clearly a case of hysteria—not the hysteria one hears spoken of commonly, but the condition which scientists know as such. We trace the impulses from which hysterical conditions arise, penetrate the disguises which these repressed impulses or wishes must assume in order to appear in the consciousness. Such transformed impulses are found in normal people, too, sometimes. ”

“ How is she to understand why I repel with loathing and horror the thought that all I suffer is the work of an omniscient, omnipotent, and yet all merciful Father? If the elements of my nature, which debar me from happiness, have been found and united by a great blind dispensation of the course of the world, and I must go to ruin under this evil combination--it's a disagreeable, but not an unendurable thought. ”

“ But to suppose that I, with my share of our common misfortune, as you call it, will voluntarily step back and look on while you find happiness according to your heart's desire--oh! you are excellent egotists, you men!--but you should not be so naïve as to think it a crime if we, too, sometimes think a little about ourselves! ”

“ The phenomena of hysteria, faith-cure, openness to suggestion, subjective imagery, mysticism, are not indications of spiritual strength, but of decay and disintegration of the nerves. The ecstasy of unbalanced religious excitement and a stupor of a drunken debauch may belong to the same category of mental phenomena. ”

“ Changes of the bodily attitude, corresponding in their fine gradations with changes of the feelings, comprise conditions 165of the surface of the body, postures of the limbs, and also especially those expressive attitudes of the face to which our attention is particularly directed when we notice one another. The visible expression of the features is a symptom which displays the speaker’s state of mind, his feelings of pleasure or disgust, of pride or humility, of faith or doubt, and so forth. ”

“ When we talk—as we almost must talk—of Reason, the Emotions, or the Passions and the Will leading to action, we think of the three stages or aspects of our behaviour as separable and even perhaps hostile ”

“ If you find that you have a hastiness in your temper, which unguardedly breaks out into indiscreet sallies, or rough expressions, to either your superiors, your equals, or your inferiors, watch it narrowly, check it carefully, and call the 'suaviter in modo' to your assistance: at the first impulse of passion, be silent till you can be soft. ”

“ I live on the streets, get subjected to constant misunderstandings, think about my species and try to figure out how and why they are bent on outwitting themselves — and sound my barbaric yarp over the rooftops of the world — asking myself, "Is there salvation in hysteria?" ”

“ Much confusion, however, has been caused by the religious and so-called scientific explanations of the contemporary commentators, as well as by the unfortunate belief of modern writers in the capacity of women for hysteria. ”

“ Foolish Perses! Work the work which the gods ordained for men, lest in bitter anguish of spirit you with your wife and children seek your livelihood amongst your neighbours, and they do not heed you. Two or three times, may be, you will succeed, but if you trouble them further, it will not avail you, and all your talk will be in vain, and your word-play unprofitable. ”

“ I therefore content myself in formulating the axiom and in elucidating its significance:
9. An hysterical symptom is the expression, on the one hand, of a masculine, and on the other hand of a feminine unconscious sexual fancy. ”

“ Everyone must have felt the sensible quality change under his hand, as sudden contact with something moist or hairy, in the dark, awoke a shock of disgust or fear which faded into calm recognition of some familiar object. ”

“ From resistance, or the sensation produced when something 'resists our attempts to grasp it,' we get the 'outness.' Then perception is 'nothing more than the association of this complex notion with our other sensations—the notion of something extended and resisting, suggested by these sensations, when the suggestions themselves have previously arisen, and suggested in the same manner and on the same principle as any other associate feeling suggests any other associate feeling.' [486] The odour or colour of a rose recalls the sensation of touching and of resistance to our grasp. ”

“ And though I cannot say that grace immediately maketh any alteration on the senses, yet mediately it doth, by altering the mind, and so the will, and then the imagination, and so the sensitive appetite, and so in exercise the sense itself. We see that temperance and chastity do not only restrain, but take down the appetite from the rage and violence which before it had: not the natural appetite, but the sensitive, so far as it is sinful. ”

“ Why, then, O men, do you weep, why do you sigh, when perchance you have to bear with injurious words? Think diligently what opposition I suffered from sinners against myself, that you may not be wearied, and grow fainthearted. ”

“ A cataleptic attitude, moreover, may be held for many hours.—Sometimes an expressive attitude, clinching of the fist, contraction of the brows, will gradually set up a sympathetic action of the other muscles of the body, so that at last a tableau vivant of fear, anger, disdain, prayer, or other emotional condition, is produced with rare perfection. ”