Imprudence

“ Anger is sudden, or, like the storm long gathering, breaks in thunder and crooked lightning, that runs jagged over the face of the tumult, while our disturbed senses hurry across the lighter skies of our natures like clouds. ”

“ The storm of conflict raged from dawn to late in the afternoon, with unabating fury. Men on both sides seemed immune to fatigue or fear, and for fourteen hours, as if endued with supernatural energy and power, struggled amidst dust, smoke, starvation and wounds and death with unflagging fury, in the maddening work of ruin and destruction. ”

“ By the wild torch of rashness, sprung to life.
Eternal Justice saw, and was incens'd;
And suffer'd them to rage; and lo! the flame
Has caught our fairest domes; it burns—it spreads,
And who shall quench it? ”

“ A heavy, slow tread could be heard now and then, and now and then groans, and now and then words of protest and anger, bitter reproach, tremulous entreaty, fierce invective, and passionate lamentation. ”

“ You must first moderate your present alarm, and then change your attitude, and be alarmed, all of you, for the Thebans. They are far more within the reach of disaster than we: it is they whom the danger threatens first. ”

“ In the midst of thunder, lightning, and storm, many tremendous deeds have been committed; men, self-possessed before, have given a sudden loose to passions they could no longer control. The demons of wrath and despair have striven to emulate those who ride the whirlwind and direct the storm; and man, lashed into madness with the roaring winds and boiling waters, has become for the time as wild and merciless as the elements themselves. ”

“ The misery of others, like a tempestuous night, added to the pleasures of your own security. You even enjoyed the storm, by contemplating the difference of conditions, and that which carried sorrow into the breasts of thousands served but to heighten in you a species of tranquil pride. ”

“ When we slowly recover from the tumult and passion of some violent distress, a peculiar stillness falls upon the Mind, and the atmosphere around it becomes in that stillness appallingly clear. We knew not, while wrestling with our woe, the extent of its ravages. ”

“ Misery will be so frightful, fear so intense, the general lassitude such, that our conditions will be accepted as soon as imposed. Thereupon we shall take prompt and terrible measures—the only effective ones in such emergencies. ”

“ FROM REVOLUTION In these doubtful and anxious days, when all the world is at unrest and, look which way you will, the road ahead seems darkened by shadows which portend dangers of many kinds, it is only common prudence that we should look about us and attempt to assess the causes of distress and the most likely means of removing them. ”

“ Wait till an accident or misfortune happens, till want or calamity come, or contradiction ensue, or some of the crosses which belong to human life, as clouds and tempests to the constitution of nature, assail us. ”

“ Of Heavn's displeasure, in its sheath was stay'd,
A flame succeeds, its furious ravage spread,
By wrath first kindled, and by justice fed:
So wide it rag'd, that scarce its quenchless sweep,
Would heed the limits of the watry deep.
Ah! who shall stay its force, or crush its power? ”

“ The night with every passing moment seemed yawning wider and wider before him in a chasm that threatened ruin, and disaster, and the wreckage of everything that in life was worth the living, and—no,’ Not yet! ”

“ How long must they suffer—how long must they be menaced by such invasion, before they may say, we will suffer it no longer? A day of anxiety is as a year of torment; a year of such suspense, is as an age of agony. ”

“ Grose, that first scared Sunday, my flash of something it would scarce have done to call light. Here at present I felt afresh—for I had felt it again and again—how my equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature. ”

“ The world has seen her great in adversity; struggling, without a thought of yielding, beneath accumulated difficulties, bravely, nay proudly, encountering distress, and rising in resolution as the storm increased. ”

“ How frightful a thing it is to consider what—under an overruling hand and will omnipotent—may be the consequences of the smallest deed we do. The consequences immediate, proximate, future! How many lives, what an amount of misery, how much damnation, may depend upon a light word, an idle jest, a sportive trick! ”

“ Sometimes it rages loud and long, and finally, worn out with the strain of raging, goes into a sort of restless doze, with occasional reawakenings of anger. Sometimes it hides beneath a mask of fog—quiet but untrustworthy, motionless but sulky—giving out no warnings of its dangers, and stubbornly interfering with those that man sends out. ”

“ With the pale shadow of doom upon them,
How shall they foil the dread foe?
Often, when life and its cares seem darkest,
Doth aid and guidance appear,
And the storm and the threatened danger
On the horizon disappear. ”

“ The danger that there is in the beginning of strife. One hot word, one peevish reflection, one angry demand, one spiteful contradiction, begets another, and that a third, and so on, till it proves like the cutting of a dam; when the water has got a little passage it does itself widen the breach, bears down all before it, and there is then no stopping it, no reducing it. 2. A good caution inferred thence, to take heed of the first spark of contention and to put it out as soon as ever it appears. ”

“ Others with pale face and quivering lip confessed the inward tumult, and that, if they feared naught for themselves, there were those at home, helpless and exposed, for whom the heart bled, and for whom it could not but show signs of fear. ”

“ In this agony they sigh, groan, utter indistinct sounds, and remain in the jaws of death, till, by the utmost efforts of nature, or some external assistance, they escape out of that dreadful torpid state. ”

“ It may be that the fabric of our civilization will crumbling fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods and even memory forgets. Perhaps the blind Samson of some imprisoned force, released by thoughtless chance, may so wreck and strand the world that man, in stress and strain of want and fear, will shudderingly crawl back to savage and barbaric night. ”

“ But this time the stroke was of far more consequence and of far more terror. The sheer might of the thing shook the earth. Not a man or government that would not resign in the face of such destruction. ”

“ One of the best instances of Wreathing is in the combination of the three phrases
succour all that are in danger, help all that are in necessity, comfort all that are in tribulation.
Danger, Necessity, and Tribulation are in progressive order of calamity. In danger, the calamity may be avoided—we want support for our own strength: in necessity, the blow has fallen—we want help at once from outside: in tribulation, the disaster has come—we want comfort.
If we have understood Progressive Duplication, we shall at once see that Wreathing is used in unison with it. ”

“ I have always possessed the most violent temper a mortal had to struggle with. And in those earlier years, when I got into a rage, it blinded me to everything else, to every other earthly consideration. ”

“ Like every man, from the head of a household to the Arch-Judge or the Camptâ, you must rule by fear. But your wrath will 'stand to cool;' and you will hate to make a girl cry as you would hate to send a criminal to the electric-rack, the lightning-stroke, or the vivisection-table. ”

“ I was ready to sink from fatigue and hunger; but, being surrounded by a crowd, I thought it politic to rouse all my strength, that no physical debility might be construed into apprehension or conscious guilt. Little did I then expect the calamity that was in a few moments to overwhelm me, and extinguish in horror and despair all fear of ignominy or death. ”

“ There is another door of escape for the worst and most wretched, and it is opened to the penitent by the hand that was nailed to the rugged cross. These crises do come, when the next step must be death or life-penitence or perdition. ”

“ It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most susceptible heart to see how quick a bound nature has set to the utmost infliction of malice. We rapidly approach a brink over which no enemy can follow us. ”

“ Such a heart is, at least to the limited ken of others, a chaos,—but a chaos from which he who imbosoms it, and who alone can understand it, calls up,—less like a god than a demon,—the evil elements, which create the lurid sphere his greatness. ”

“ Who can picture to himself without horror the dreadful moments which lingered as they passed, and seemed endless in the anxiety of suspense! There the poor fellow lay, in speechless agony, the fated witness of barbarity the most revolting. ”

“ If there is writing for students of evolution to read, then it should be taken as a warning indication which direction to avoid and which to take. Unrest is a sign, not of decay, but of life. Stagnation alone gives warning of death. ”

“ The crisis in which the ascending force reaches its zenith is followed quickly, or even without the slightest pause, by a reverse or counter-blow not less emphatic and in some cases even more exciting. ”

“ Let us face our danger like men; overcome it if we may, and if not, bow to the force of the storm and gather strength, rooting ourselves deep and wide while it blows, in order that we may rise erect and free when it shall have passed. ”

“ But if we will take thought betimes we may meet the trouble half way, and thus avert, perhaps, the danger that the fever will be checked only by the overturning of all law, sane or insane. The following chapters are designed to help in defeating a catastrophe so unlovely. ”

“ Beautiful, however, as was the countenance presented to the observer, there was in the hardness of its lines and the thin and compressed nervousness of the lips a stern relentlessness of expression that the smouldering and sinister fire which glowed in the eyes alone might be needed to enflame into a conflagration of rage and of cruelty. ”

“ For in these uneventful moments links are forged and soldered strong enough to resist the buffeting of storms, or the deadlier, corrosive influence of those minor miseries which poison the very core of life. ”

“ Convulsive anger storms at large; or pale,
And silent, fettles into fell revenge. ”

“ Swayed by no panic fear, but influenced by terrors of dreadful reality, the people exerted all their force to escape from that spot; and thus the struggling, crushing, pushing, crowding, fighting, and all the oscillations of a multitude set in motion by the direst alarms, were succeeded by the most fatal results. ”

“ The calamity which strikes us all, more or less, is indeed tremendous! But its aspect above all has something so dreadfully threatening, to fill even the coldest and most courageous, with a sense of apprehension and awe. ”

“ The time arrives to put them in execution, and owing to some apparently trivial negligence,—to some unforeseen trifle—the plan, matured at the cost of so many sleepless nights and so much treasure, ends in disaster, and, it may be, in the ruin of a people. ”

“ Then, when cool deliberation succeeds to the wild vagaries, the electric fire of frolic fancy, she will discover the dangerous precipice, the deadly abyss to which her present conduct and inclinations lead. ”

“ Thus a hostile situation, an intensely disagreeable situation, may be met with energy: viz. planning, constructive flight, destructive action, or it may be met with a deënergization, confusion, paralysis, hopeless anger. It may cause an intense inner conflict with high constant emotions, fatigue, incapacity to choose the proper action, and the peculiar agony of doubt. ”

“ But what could be the consequences but some enterprise, the issue of which is uncertain, and the ultimate result of which, whatever it might be, presents disasters such as one can not endure to contemplate? ”

“ He rushes into the stormy night, such a night that nature seldom sees, such a storm that “man’s nature cannot carry the affliction nor the fear.” He escapes from the cruel presence of his daughters to the bare heath, where “for many miles about, there's scarce a bush.” Here, in com pany with the fool, “who labours to out-jest his heart struck injuries,” in reckless, frantic rage, he “bids what will take all.” ”