Impatience

“ There is an impatience, however, that has its root in sin, and which is itself sinful. The blood-cure reaches and eradicates this type. There is also a natural impatience. How much we have of this depends largely upon our general make-up. A lack of discrimination between these two kinds of impatience often causes souls great distress. Before we teach on the subject, we ought to be sure we have the distinction clearly drawn in our own minds. ”

“ Impatience under misfortunes is certainly one of the failings of our nature, which contributes more than any other to imbitter the cup of life, and has been the immediate cause of more acts of desperate depravity than any passion of the human soul. ”

“ But his greatest misfortune was that all the active forces of his personality survived to the last in their full vigor, inflicting upon him the curse of an impatience which nothing could appease, of a discontent which knew no amelioration. ”

“ Think an instant how often you give way to acts of impatience, and towards whom? towards your father and your mother, where your impatience is a crime. Your master has very good cause to be impatient at times! Reflect that he has been laboring for boys these many years, and that if he has found many affectionate and noble individuals among them, he has also found many ungrateful ones, who have abused his kindness and nored his toils ”

“ It is our anxiety, our impatience, which does the mischief, and most men die of their remedies, and not of their diseases. ”

“ Experience has, moreover, taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience. ”

“ If you are also subject to occasional fits of impatience or ill-temper you will cease to have them: on the contrary you will be always patient and master of yourself, and the things which worried, annoyed, or irritated you, will henceforth leave you absolutely indifferent and perfectly calm. ”

“ This troublesome impatience is sometimes nothing more than the symptom of some deeper malady. He that is angry without daring to confess his resentment, or sorrowful without the liberty of telling his grief, is too frequently inclined to give vent to the fermentations of his mind at the first passages that are opened, and to let his passions boil over upon those whom accident throws in his way. ”

“ In all evils which admit a remedy, impatience is to be avoided, because it wastes that time and attention in complaints, that, if properly applied, might remove the cause. ”

“ I have described in detail the various perversions produced in men's judgments by their emotions. Examples are given showing how fears and hopes betray them into false estimates; how impatience prompts unjust condemnations ”

“ Another bad habit which is very common in homes and among working people is impatience, grumbling, and swearing. Now, my children, where do you get with your impatience and your grumbling? Do your affairs go any better? ”

“ But its noisy, vibrating pace did not suffice for human impatience; human impatience desperately twisted about, drew his watch out of his pocket and nervously kicked his feet about. One, two, three, four . ”

“ You hear those who are vexed or thwarted, or oppressed, or wearied, exclaim in some moment of impatience or despondency, “I am weary of my life.” You find some so worn out, like Job, by long and accumulated troubles, that they continually sigh, and from the heart, “Oh! ”

“ No God and no human being, except an envious one, is delighted by my impotence or my trouble, or esteems as any virtue in us tears, sighs, fears, and other things of this kind, which are signs of mental impotence ”

“ It is impossible to explain in words, or to cause to be understood by the understanding, what variety of impurity is caused in the soul by a variety of desires. For, if it could be expressed and understood, it would be a wondrous thing, and one also which would fill us with pity, to see how each desire, in accordance with its quality and degree, be it greater or smaller, leaves in the soul its mark and deposit of impurity and vileness, and how one single disorder of the reason can be the source of innumerable different impurities, some greater, some less, each one after its kind. ”

“ I knew myself the very worst conceivable, but how to give to such other persons a decent or coherent reason for my being so required more presence of mind than I could in the least muster—the consequence of which failure had to be for me, I fear, under all that confused first flush, rather an abject acceptance of the air of imbecility. ”

“ Who can tell the countless temptations to evil which flow in from a neglected, disordered, deranged nervous system,—temptations to anger, to irritability, to selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite and passion? ”

“ Had I not, in the wild career of fervent feeling, had sufficient strength of mind to stop short, and to reason calmly, how often, in the bitterness of my spirit, should I have accused you of sporting with my feelings, by involving me in a hopeless maze of conjecture—by leaving me a prey to the constant, oppressive, apprehension of hearing something, which I should not have had the fortitude to support with dignity ”

“ A disposition to inactivity generates imbecility of character; diligence ceases, indolence prevails, unnatural feelings generate unnatural desires, and the individual not only neglects positive duties, but becomes sensual and vicious. ”

“ Idle thoughts, critical thoughts of those about us, silly vain thoughts of self,—how covered with confusion and shame we should be if some by-stander were able to look within and see the busy, thronging procession that streams through our mind unchallenged, nay more, welcomed and indulged. ”

“ I did not betray myself in the least, but I reflected that to be exposed to the possibility of such an event once a year, was evil enough to render life intolerable. The disgrace of using an impatient word is to me overpowering. ”

“ The inevitable fruit of negation is apathy. Indeed apathy might be defined as negation of the soul, a spiritual inhibition. This fancy swiftly crossed my mind as I looked at Mrs. Willkit, followed by the thought that possibly a change might be a good thing for her. ”

“ Those which proceed from a diseased mind, occupied with schemes of pride, ambition, grandeur, etc. These, as forming the characteristic conduct of the life, are repeatedly reacted in the deep watches of the night, and strongly agitate the soul with illusive enjoyments and disappointments. ”

“ Where the knowledge is relative, that knowledge is certainly more or less conditioned by our impotence. And hence, through that impotence, the impossibility may be more or less weakened and made conditional. ”

“ Those who find perpetual interest in misshapen minds and bodies and souls are either physicians or are themselves in some manner misshapen.... Unhappiness, ugliness, squalor, misery, evil,—in the midst of these, or of the even more terrible isolation of the lonely mind,—always one can summon courage to dream nobly.... And what one dares dream one can become,—inwardly always,—often outwardly and actually. ”

“ We all have our infirmities; but the weak are more subject to them than others—the weak in knowledge or grace, the bruised reed and the smoking flax. We must consider these; not trample upon them, but encourage them, and bear with their infirmities. If through weakness they judge and censure us, and speak evil of us, we must bear with them, pity them, and not have our affections alienated from them. ”

“ And yet, strange impotency which is called human philosophy! You know that one day,—that soon, perhaps,—time must efface many griefs, and this certain conviction can in no way calm or alleviate your torment. ”

“ A dull sensation of irritation, sometimes self-conscious, but more often only recognized as a vague, irresistible discontent, keeps the aspiring in a state of gloomy restlessness, so that the struggle for existence assumes brutal and desperate phases, never known before. ”

“ The mind of the strong blind creature must be so sensible of the injury that has been done to him! The impotency, combined with his strength, or rather the impotency with the memory of former strength and former aspirations, is so essentially tragic! ”

“ Apathy, which is satisfied if it find meat and drink and be not subjected to bodily pain, and for which honour, freedom, and independence are empty names, is incapable of it. Pain, however, exists merely to spur us on to reflection, decision, and action. ”

“ The sad side of impecuniosity is, unfortunately, so vast a subject that it would require an entire volume, instead of part of a chapter, to properly record the miseries of mind and body endured by those in past ages, who, not unknown to fame, have been permitted to pine and die in despair. ”

“ Therefore we regard our craving with complacence, we feel the great aching of the Want, and we say, with conviction, “I know I exist, I know I am I, because I feel the divine discontent which is personal to me, and eternal, and present always in me.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ The extravagant clinging to the habits of past opulence, the wastefulness, resulting in the want of many things which might have made life more pleasant; the apathy content to grumble and do nothing, while she felt her spirits rise and her cheeks brighten even from her rapid walk through the driving mist. ”

“ Meanwhile each failure to be earnest, each relapse into sentimentality, unmanliness, morbidness, despair, unreality, laziness, passiveness, may itself be a discipline, making us utterly mistrust ourselves, whether at our worst or at our best, and forcing us to inquire whether there be any help elsewhere, any power that can sweep through our lives and force us to be human. ”

“ Impotence, more than necessity, made him seek in variety, the provocative that was wanting to raise him to the pitch of enjoyment, which he too often saw himself baulked of, by the failure of his powers: and this always threw him into a fit of rage, which he wreaked, as far as he durst, on the innocent objects of his fit of momentary desire. ”

“ The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence. ”

“ You should attack not only those gross and manifest defects which disfigure the soul, but also those imperfections which are slight in appearance, but which, if left alone, will in time become pernicious inclinations. ”

“ If we are naturally irritable or [Pg 206] splenetic, wisdom will incline us to avoid occasions which excite us, and to keep a watchful guard over our spirits where the occasions are inevitable. If we neglect such precautions we shall justly be counted fools, and the consequent outbreaks of passion will lead us into fresh exhibitions of folly, and more completely justify the harsh judgment which has been passed upon us. ”

“ Every one has surely felt, some time or other in life, the insufferable annoyance of having his thoughts and reflections interfered with, and broken in upon by the vulgar impertinence and egotism of some “bore,” who, mistaking your abstraction for attention and your despair for delight, inflicts upon you his whole life and adventures, when your own immediate destinies are perhaps vacillating in the scale. ”

“ It may be taken as a sign of displeasure and scorn when anything in a dream is presented in a reversed form, or when the truth is presented very openly and in a striking way. The feeling of inhibition, which is so common, signifies a conflict of the will, the struggle of opposing motives. ”

“ Faults of character that are superficial, resulting from the force of circumstances and peculiarities of temptation, rather than from innate depravity of heart, are easily and readily burned off in the fire of affliction, while the same severe ordeal seems only to indurate the more hopelessly those propensities which lie deeply seated in an inherent and radical perversity. ”

“ Which in our own or was or should have been!
Yet, yet, recal the mind that you had then,
And, so recalling, listen yet again;
If you escaped, ’tis plainly understood
Impunity may leave a culprit good ”

“ By all which considerations it is understood that cowardice and idleness are not blamed, and that courage and patience are not praised, for their own sakes; but that the one line of conduct is rejected as the parent of pain, and the other desired as the author of pleasure. ”

“ All the cases decide that mere imbecility will not do: that an inability to manage a man's affairs will not do, unless that inability and that incapacity to manage his affairs, AMOUNT to evidence that he is of unsound mind: and he must be found to be so. ”

“ The natural consequence is restlessness, agitation, anger, indecision, etc. The dissociation of personality, with the outcropping of the “b mood,” follows—a conflict due to the excitation of certain childhood complexes, conserved in the unconscious and embracing sentiments in which are incorporated the instinct of self-subjection or abasement. This “b mood” is a study in itself. ”

“ If there is in our moral organisation a culminating point, the source and termination of all our thoughts, our longings, our desires, if we are conscious that any one idea, whether good or evil, is steadily throbbing with every beat of our heart, this palpitating spot is the one that must be most sedulously hidden, most carefully defended from sudden attack, for there is the weak, the sore place, the infallibly vulnerable spot in our nature. ”