Hunch

“ All of us eat, all of us know what hunger is and love, and sleep, and sleeplessness. All of us have mouths that give forth words, have ears that receive them. Do we not walk in ecstasy so vast none can give thought to it? ”

“ I will tell you so much as this, madam—that what I am like to die of now is hunger, plain, unvarnished hunger, so, in Heaven's name, get out what you have and let me fall-to, for my last meal was yesterday morning. ”

“ True, I might pass some hours in sweet reflection upon the pleasant incident of the day—I might dream rosy dreams—but, alas! the soul is sadly under the influence of the body; the spiritual must ever yield to the physical, and even love itself becomes a victim to the vulgar appetite of hunger. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How was one to keep up one's courage when one was so broken down? Here I stood before a young lady, dirty, ragged, torn, disfigured by hunger, unwashed, and only half-clad; it was enough to make one sink into the earth. ”

“ Before the soul is outside, The heart which wants to burst in the body Raises and lifts the chest Which nearly touches the backbone.—The face is discoloured and pale, And the eyes veiled in the head. Speech fails him, For the tongue cleaves to the palate. ”

“ On the one hand, there are those that seem to spring from dimly lit or dark feeling, to arise,—as it were, hydra-like, to sting and madden, or mist-like, to benumb all life, and turn it into mere drift and dreaming,—from out of the obscure, undrained, swampy places of human ignorance and passion. ”

“ Hunger has refined their features; they are more like a procession of ghosts who have shaken off the heavy bonds of earth and are ready to take possession of the world of the spirit, than people who hope to conquer the Promised Land for themselves and posterity. ”

“ A mighty hunger and thirst—a more than hunger and thirst—a ravening appetite, a passion beyond all passions which he had ever known, was upon him, had him in its clutches. He knew for the first time the most monstrous and irresistible passion of the race, the passion for release from mortal existence, the passion for death. ”

“ One day, as she was searching among the thorn bushes for roots with which to stay her hunger, she lifted up her eyes to the sun and with tears and lamentation cried: ‘Beloved Creator of all things! Why hast thou brought me into the light of this world if I am to die of hunger and want? ”

“ The Tooth of Remorse may be sharp but the Fangs of Hunger bite deeper still, and who shall cherish beauty in his soul or who find patience to rhapsodise on a sunset when his stomach is empty as a drum? ”

“ My soul once had its plenteous years, And throve, with peace and comfort filled, Like the fat kine and ripened ears, Which Pharaoh in his dream beheld. With pleasing frames and grace received, With means and ordinances fed; How happy for a while I lived, And little feared the want of bread. But famine came and left no sign, Of all the plenty I had seen; Like the dry ears and half-starved kine, I then looked withered, faint and lean. ”

“ Once more, since body's unable to sustain Division from the soul, without decay And obscene stench, how canst thou doubt but that The soul, uprisen from the body's deeps, Has filtered away, wide-drifted like a smoke, Or that the changed body crumbling fell With ruin so entire, because, indeed, Its deep foundations have been moved from place, The soul out-filtering even through the frame, And through the body's every winding way And orifice? ”

“ His far-focused gaze sees warmth, love, pleasure, wine, crystal, mirth, and living beauty—things that he is hungering for with a wolf-like hunger that adds self-contempt to his starved soul’s gnawings. ”

“ I know not what unholy thoughts shot through my worn and weakened brain. I saw in the gloomiest colours a future of ceaseless struggle, of dependence, and of humiliation, which I was approaching by the dark gate of hunger; I felt a profound and utter disgust of life ”

“ Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing:—the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth. ”

“ He has laid up this food for the last hours, for this crisis of his soul. All souls must lay up something spiritual, even as they must lay up food for the winter of life, for the bleak bright hours of the soul's sterile fight. ”

“ And the people we have known, the men and women who have spoken to us and touched us with warm hands—the bright eyes and red lips! Can we cast these things like dead leaves on the fire? Can we lie down full of heaviness because of them, and sleep and rise in the morning without them? ”

“ What strange things are the nerves—I mean those more secret and mysterious ones in which I have some notion that the mind or soul, call it which you will, has its habitation; how they occasionally tingle and vibrate before any coming event closely connected with the future weal or woe of the human being. ”

“ Do you think that's the reason we have so much to bear? Should we be like weakly flowers, things that would wither up with the heat of the sun, or the cold winds o' winter, if suffering did not set us to deep trenching? ”

“ Does it do more than transpose into reason, so to speak, a continuous and strong impulse—a craving for a mild sun, a bright and bracing atmosphere, southern plants, sea breezes, short meals of meat, eggs, and fruit, hot water to drink, quiet walks for days at a time, little talking, rare and cautious reading, living alone, pure, simple, and almost soldier-like habits—a craving, in short, for all things which are suited to my own personal taste? ”

“ I stood still, to gaze upon the place, and presently heard a sorrowful voice, proceeding from a mourning heart, warbling melodiously and chanting the following verses:
My body is become th' abode of sickness and dismay, By reason of
a fawn, whose land and stead are far away. ”

“ Health, strength, vigor, rosy cheeks, elastic step, cheery voice, zest and happiness, hope and ambition, hardy flesh and good ruddy blood, made by a perfect digestion of strong foods, will certainly follow, and as they come, all the old myths and phantoms, the melancholy, dread and brooding will disappear like unhealthy nightly vapors before the sun. ”

“ How can the sap through the branches run?
The natural look of human faces
Is altered. Delicate thoughts are fled.
Torn and gashed in blood-strewn places,
More than the heart can count lie dead. ”

“ So some rough and thorny exteriors that are human, hide tenderest and grandest spirits. So, especially, does the thorny and self-denying life of faith and patience and sorrow burst forth into the blossoming of heaven. ”

“ The passionate tone which, in the grand mystics, makes these too sensuous images of hunger and thirst, of blood and voluptuousness, bearable, is altogether lacking. The symbolism of spiritual love has become with him a mere, mechanical process. ”

“ Blood and soul, in a flood ample as the way made for them, follow the withdrawing blade,—l’ anima purcina, the spirit of pork; the blood into a hogshead, promising black puddings; the soul, either into the passing winds, or, as others think, into the body of some greedy chuff of a millionaire, that vilest and most repulsive of muck-worms. ”

“ As of a hungry agonized spirit standing outside its wretched body, and watching its feeble movements, conscious of their futility, conscious of being chained to the miserable thing, and only knowing rebellion and agony. ”

“ Once again you feel the bigness of your world, the tremendous significance of everything in it—including yourself—and a far-seeing sadness grips you. Living in the flesh seems so transient, almost a pitiful thing in the last analysis. ”

“ Or this globe, upon the round of which move sorrowful creatures whirled through space from an unthinkable past to an unthinkable future, may be apprehended as a phantasmagoria, shot through with misery, a cage of dreams, a prison wherein the echoes of what has been thought and done meet in cruel confluence within the walls of the human brain. ”

“ I have gone up and down the world—seen the countless men and women in it, standing on either side of their Abyss of Circumstance, beckoning and reaching out. I have seen men and women sleepless, or worn, or old, casting their bread upon the waters, grasping at sunsets or afterglows, putting their souls like letters in bottles. ”

“ We remember it piled with mountains of anguish—one's poor head swimming, one's heart sinking, while an organ more important than either in this connection underwent a sort of turning inside out which seemed to wrench the very strings of life. ”

“ Do we dare Question of matter, and of forces found 'Neath a rude skin-in living verdure bound. Oh, Master—I, like thee, have wandered oft Where mighty trees made arches high aloft, But ever with a consciousness of strife, A surging struggle of the inner life. Ever the trembling of the grass I say, And the boughs rocking as the breezes play, Have stirred deep thoughts in a bewild'ring way. ”

“ If one has to wake whole nights and hunger whole days, one may as well get something by it, if only fasting and flagellations, so long as these open the door to the world of mystery, of spirits, and of angels! ”

“ When one is hungry, one can tighten one's belt; when idle, write letters or dream; when cold, light a fire, or stamp one's feet, or thrust hands into pockets, or breathe on one's fingers. But when the heart, growing heavy, begins to sink into one of those unfathomable seas of despondency and despair; when one's sufferings arise not from things physical but from oneself, where may one look for succour then? ”

“ But let it be with anguish or remorse in your heart that you go forth into Nature, and instead of your speaking her language, you make her speak yours. Your distress is then infused through all things, and clothes all things, and Nature only echoes, and seems to authenticate, your self-loathing or your hopelessness. ”

“ Our day's work is over, and now, as the rich man and the glutton will wind up his multifarious meal with sweetmeats, so after our toil, after closing our accounts, we court devotional thoughts and pathetical emotions, we meditate on the dead, in order to entice this lifes-wine of tears into our voluptuous eyes and our luxurious brain. ”

“ This, you doubtless, see in your lowest state, even when low in p. 47body, weak in nerves, barren in mind, tried in the world, and grieved in the church; and when nature is reluctant; the flesh a heavy clog, and the spirits within, seem to sink into earth, as its centre. ”

“ If one doth rightly consider the frailty of the flesh, and that we grow and decrease according to the moments of hours; never remaining in one state, and that the very thing we now speak, do, or write, passeth away as part of our life, he will not doubt to confess that all flesh is hay, and the glory thereof as a flower, or the green meadows. ”

“ Be assured, my dear friend, that "those who sow to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption," and "those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind." "Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit, and you reap a character. ”

“ There should be power and light beyond, yet my heart gropes under the dim stars. There is often great hunger in me, hunger that I cannot satisfy. I yearn for something—what, I cannot tell. I wonder what we live for? ”

“ Can the will emancipate itself from appetite and control it? Or is it to remain the slave of the body?
In time an emotion appears which marks the influence not directly of the body but of the individual consciousness. ”

“ You must each look back and see for yourselves, in the aft-light cast by later experience, the mountains and fiery ordeals you made for yourselves out of mole-hills in the matter of heart-break. We, whose hair is white, cannot help you, though we have gone before and know so well the cruel stretches on the road you travel. ”

“ There shall he terrible signs in the heavens and in all the elements. These and their causes I shall explain in the first part. These signs shall be to the wicked a source of fear, anguish, and dread; but to the good a source of joy and exultation. This I shall show in the second part. Sinners! if you wish that the last day should not he a cause of dread to you, be converted! ”

“ As spirals of smoke from village chimneys, the profound senses of each organ had mounted toward him; joy, sorrow, all the emotions are deeds more fully of consciousness than are the thoughts of man's reason. ”

“ Yet, in all these cases, this feeling will rapidly lead the soul on to become unconsciously weak or feverish, unless the latter manfully escapes from this feeling’s tyranny, and nobly bends under the yoke and cramps itself within the narrow limits of the life-giving concrete act. ”

“ Coming now to human beings, and to what we know about our own actions, it seems clear that what, with us, sets a behaviour-cycle in motion is some sensation of the sort which we call disagreeable. Take the case of hunger: we have first an uncomfortable feeling inside, producing a disinclination to sit still, a sensitiveness to savoury smells, and an attraction towards any food that there may be in our neighbourhood. ”