Lame man

“ Blame not us that the lower spirits manifest for those who bid them welcome. Blame man's insensate folly, which will choose the low and grovelling rather than the pure and elevated. Blame his foolish laws, which daily hurry into a life for which they are unprepared, thousands of spirits, hampered and dragged down by a life of folly and sin, which has been fostered by custom and fashion. ”

“ How he went smiling to himself! with what ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold chain! what a dream it was! you were infected with the illusion, and did not wish that it should be removed! you had no room for laughter! if an unseasonable reflection of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable infirmity of man's nature, that can lay him open to such frenzies—but in truth you rather admired than pitied the lunacy while it lasted—you felt that an hour of such mistake was worth an age with the eyes open. ”

“ Why should this man, who loved her, seek to do him service? The greater nature, with its finer impulses, escaped him; he felt baffled and humiliated; he groped in the dark of dim conjecture after possible motives which he conjured up one moment to reject the next. ”

“ Its glare and glitter, and its lavish waste, had put out of sight the true and intimate relations of man to man. And so, as the gilded portion of the age made its musters of beautiful empty heads, of vanities throned upon vanities, the ungilded part made its deadly muster of discontent, displeasure, and despair. ”

“ But every bolder vice of bold mankind.
O Juvenal! for thy severer rage!
To lash the ranker follies of our age.
Are there, among the females of our isle,
Such faults, at which it is a fault to smile?
There are. Vice, once by modest nature chain'd
And legal ties, expatiates unrestrain'd;
Without thin decency held up to view,
Naked she stalks o'er law and gospel too.
Our matrons lead such exemplary lives,
Men sigh in vain for none, but for their wives;
Who marry to be free, to range the more,
And wed one man to wanton with a score. ”

“ You mistake your heart if you think you can write a lampoon. Your whips are rods of roses. Your spleen has ever had for its objects vices, not the vicious-abstract offences, not the concrete sinner. But you are sensitive, and wince as much at the consciousness of having committed a compliment, as another man would at the perpetration of an affront. ”

“ So long as one has no regret, one can be happy; and as for me, I envied no man. This was ignorance, no doubt. If I had ever known what wealth and its powers and its pleasures were like, no doubt I should have hungered for them like the rest of men. ”

“ We only represent to you the higher, the adequate objects of those very faculties and affections. Let the man of ambition go on still to consider disgrace as the greatest evil, honour as his chief good. But disgrace in whose estimation? Honour in whose judgment? This is the only question. If shame, and delight in esteem, be spoken of as real, as any settled ground of pain or pleasure, both these must be in proportion to the supposed wisdom, and worth of him by whom we are contemned or esteemed. ”

“ And then you will feel arise in you a hungering and a thirsting after righteousness, a spirit of love, and a desire of doing good, which will carry you up and on, above all that man can say or do against you—above all the laziness, and wilfulness, and selfishness, and cowardice which dwells in the heart of everyone. ”

“ This life, gentlemen, leads therefore necessarily to a thorough depreciation and contempt of all striving to realise an ideal, to a compassionate smile at the bare mention of the great name of the Idea, to a deeply seated want of sympathy and even antipathy to all that is beautiful and great, to a complete swallowing up of every moral element in us, by the one passion of selfish seeking for our own advantage, and of immoderate desire for pleasure. ”

“ We move among wraiths of "purposeful" or "wistful" men, "straight," "fine" women or women misunderstood, or dulled beyond reprieve. Penetrating, imaginative passages there are, to be sure, an arresting use of a word here and there, a sense of the beauty of old weathered things, of the pitiless craft and hypocrisy of man in his most predatory moments. "How cunning they were, the men who had been successful in life. ”

“ Perhaps he looks on them, not with wrath and indignation, but with pity and sorrow, when he sees man’s weakness, folly, and sin, bringing to naught his gracious purposes, and falling short of his glorious will. ”

“ Thus a brave man cast his valour in the dust, and made his name a scorn and a by-word. But who shall say that the men who belittled his deeds, and followed him with jealousy and carping, were wholly blameless? ”

“ Yet it hurt him to leave the man there in his hourly torment, in his hopeless misery, and who could tell, if he were left thus, growing more and more brutish and desperate every day, how he might not in sheer despair call upon his daughter to drink his cup of bitterness with him? ”

“ Consequently I have accustomed myself to bear always in mind that pain of this kind does not concern me and is no real evil. For it is of the nature of things that have no dependence on me. ‘But you will be lame for life,’ say you. That is very probable, and indeed our physician tells me it is certain. But what then? When I am lame, my lameness will be an obstruction to my feet in walking, but not to my will in doing what it is inclined to do. It follows that sorrow and the signs of sorrow such as weeping and groaning, are all the mere results of false conceptions and imaginations. ”

“ I will prove that it is the best thing in the world to be lame: for I can show you men who are lame, and yet much happier than many men who have the full use of their legs. I will prove health to be a calamity. For I can easily find you people in excellent health whose fortunes have been wrecked, whose character has been blasted, and who are more wretched than many invalids. ”

“ And that unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a Thing is man! ”

“ What he said or left unsaid, what he did or left undone, during all those years, was noted by busy tongues and pens, many of them envious, many of them hostile, and many more, inspired by that strange perversity of human nature which rejoices to find some weakness, or flaw, or stain in a great man, anxious and eager to catch him doing something mean or unworthy. ”

“ I have to do with things imperfectly apprehended. I cannot cheat my mind away from these convictions. I have a sort of hesitation of the soul as other men have a limp in their gait. God, I suppose, has a need for lame men. ”

“ "Should we distrust the man because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark?" ”

“ He lighted a candle at noon, saying, "I look for a man;" implying that the world was darkened by vice, and men effeminated. To a luxurious person, that had wasted his means, supping upon olives; [280] "If," saith he, "thou hadst used to dine so, thou wouldst not have needed to sup so." To a young man, dressing himself neatly; "If this," saith he, "be for the sake of men, thou art unhappy; if for women, thou art unjust." Another time, seeing an effeminate young man; "Art thou not ashamed," saith he, "to use thyself worse than nature hath made thee? ”

“ You ought to be writing rhymes, and sulking and nursing your own petty thoughts and sensations, and busying yourself with psychological fancies and subtleties of all sorts, but at least don't mistake your sickly, nervous whims and irritability for manly indignation, for the honest anger of a man of convictions! ”

“ Every man's road in life is marked by the graves of his personal likings. ”

“ I know from experience the intellectual distractions of scientific research, philosophical speculation, and artistic pleasures; but am also well aware that even when all are taken together and well sweetened to taste, in respect of consequent reputation, means, social position, &c., the whole concoction is but as high confectionery to a starving man. He may cheat himself for a time—especially if he be a strong man—into the belief that he is nourishing himself by denying his natural appetite ”

“ Yet he had a certain frankness and generosity, qualities indeed which turn to a man's ruin, unless tempered with discretion. ”

“ Than even that passion, if it has no aim;
For though such motives folly you may call,
The folly’s greater to have none at all.
Hear then the truth: “’Tis Heaven each passion sends,
And different men directs to different ends.
Extremes in nature equal good produce,
Extremes in man concur to gen’ral use.” ”

“ The cruellest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue? ”

“ It is greed and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the dignity out of a man, and make him look mean. ”

“ Much indeed was not to be said for it,—but something might;—and when a few words will rescue misery out of her distress, I hate the man who can be a churl of them. ”

“ In order to illustrate the nature of evils of this class, I may take two instances—cruelty and lasciviousness. That these are great intrinsic evils, we may, I think, easily assure ourselves, by imagining the state of a man, whose mind is solely occupied by either of these passions, in their worst form. ”

“ “What humiliation, what disgrace for us all, that it should be necessary for one man to exhort other men not to be inhuman and irrational towards their fellow-creatures!
Do they recognise, then, no mind, no soul in them—have they not feeling, pleasure in existence, do they not suffer pain? ”

“ The vulgar, or rather those who find it their interest to calumniate the vulgar for the sake of confounding philosophers with them, may fancy them mere human beings, subject like man to the sufferings of pain and love, to the limitations of personality. ”

“ “Man, as a purely natural creature, fairly educated, but wholly unspiritualised, is a mental composition of: Hunger, Curiosity, Self-Esteem, Avarice, Cowardice, Lust, Cruelty, Personal Ambition; and on these vile qualities alone our ‘society’ hangs together; the virtues have no place anywhere, and do not count at all, save as conveniently pious metaphors.” ”

“ We blame him not if he lament. Howbeit, doubt ye not he shall find some with us that shall bid him be a better man, though they bid him not be of better cheer. If your good master take upon him to make this lamentation, as indeed I think there is no man that hath better cause to wail than he hath, assure ye him he shall lack no consolation. ”

“ “Yes, the reaction is already upon me. I shall be as limp as a rag for a week.”
“Strange,” said I, “how terms of what in another man I should call laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy and vigour.” ”

“ "For this I find, where jealousy is fed, Horns in the mind are worse than on the head. ”

“ Now the spectacle was before him in its glory, and as he looked out on it he felt shy, old-fashioned, inadequate: a mere grey speck of a man compared with the ruthless magnificent fellow he had dreamed of being.... ”

“ "Misfortune is liable to make me a damn bad man," he said slowly. ”

“ The wickedness and folly of this world are not at the doors of the wicked and foolish alone, but also at the doors of those honest and good men, whose weakness and laziness,—let me say whose gentility,—cause them to suffer what they have the power to prevent. ”

“ But our resentment to the fancied slight, or the assumption by another of work which we thought our own; our sense of hurtness when we are put aside; our jealousy and envy; our detracting speeches, and subtle insinuations of low motive, all show how much of this loveless spirit rankles in our hearts. We have been planted in the soil of this world, and we betray its flavor; we have come of a proud stock, we betray our heredity. ”

“ He is exceedingly obstinate, wilful and unyielding, which qualities he mistakes for independence of mind. He boasts of his indifference as to what is said of him, and yet manifests an extreme sensitiveness when he is made the subject of a jest. Notwithstanding his long continued intercourse with the world, he has learned nothing of human nature, and he thinks to govern men by fear and brute force, rather than by reason, [Pg 72] persuasion or kindness. ”

“ I know you.
In wickedness the haughty man and the weakling meet. But they misunderstand one another. ”

“ When therefore you see the violence of other mens passions, the folly of their tempers, and vanity of their minds, remember that you see so many plain reasons for denying yourself, and resisting your own nature, which has in it the seeds of all the same evil tempers. ”

“ That we must pitch our lives just as much as we can in the heroic key, and hem and control mere lasciviousness as it were a sort of leprosy of the soul, seems fairly certain. And all that love-making which involves lies, all sham heroics and shining snares, assuredly must go out of a higher order of social being, for here more than anywhere lying is the poison of life. But between these data there are great interrogative blanks no generalization will fill—cases, situations, temperaments. ”

“ It takes the rose out of the cheek; turns the man in on himself, and gives him more of truth. Then, in a poetic fancy, the man sees visions; has wondrous revelations; every mountain thunders; God burns in every bush; flames out in the crimson cloud; speaks in the wind; descends with every dove; is All in All. The Soul, deep-wrought in its intense struggle, give outness to its thought, and on the trees and stars, the fields, the floods, the corn ripe for the sickle, on Men and Women it sees its burden writ. The Spirit within constrains the man. It is like wine that hath no vent. ”

“ Thy shining youth, men much too freely prais'd,
And then the cry of blame, too loudly rais'd.
The fickle crowd, thy person loudly curs'd,
And then thou fled, and dar'd them do their worst.
Unfortunate in love, thy youthful heart
Was pain'd, and likewise with the burning smart
Thy vanity receiv'd from critic's pen,
Which often makes sarcastic, stronger men. ”

“ His short-lived passion, violent for the time, burnt itself out quickly. What he wanted was to walk among the cities of men, to go whither he would, to hear the laughter of the streets, to move and roam, and like and hate, and change and choose, and lead the life that others led—in a word, to be free. ”