Lasciviousness

“ But it appears to include both cognitions of organic sensations and perceptions of states of the body, of which the enjoyment is certainly an evil in itself. So far as these are concerned, lasciviousness would, then, include in its essence an admiring contemplation of what is ugly. But certainly one of its commonest ingredients, in its worst forms, is an enjoyment of the same state of mind in other people: and in this case it would therefore also include a love of what is evil. With regard to cruelty, it is easy to see an enjoyment of pain in other people as essential to it ”

“ XI. If he seeks relief from lasciviousness, he will find, that no vice loads a man with so much uneasiness; and provided the meanness of his disposition, or the depravity of his appetite, determine him to pursue criminal pleasures, in the instant are set before his eyes the injuries it will be productive of, to the three articles, that are esteemed the most valuable in this life, honour, wealth, and property. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The indulgence of that do-nothing desire will not make my fortune in this life: and, for the world to come, when they pray over my dead body, 'Eternal rest give to him, O Lord, may not the angels reply: 'Why, this creature entered into his rest long ago, and has slept throughout life like a dormouse: what claim has he to rest for eternity, who has not labored in time?' I need self-denial to over' come my laziness."
"Absence of occupation is not rest; A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed." ”

“ How do you know that you love your sister more than yourself?”
“I think I would sacrifice more for her than I would for myself.”
“Then you must be subject to a natural indolence which only affection for another can overcome.”
“I am not lazy,” objected Grace.
“Pardon me. What is a sacrifice, in the common meaning of the word? Giving up something one likes. To make a sacrifice for oneself means to give up something one likes for the sake of one’s own advantage—for instance, to give up sleeping too much, in order to work more. Not to do so, is to be lazy. Laziness is a vice. ”

“ When the place and you are strangers and you struggle all alone, And you have a mighty longing for the town where you are known; When your clothes are very shabby and the future's very black, There is nothing that can hurt you like the shame of going back. When we've fought the battle bravely and are beaten to the wall, 'Tis the sneers of men, not conscience, that make cowards of us all; And the while you are returning, oh! your brain is on the rack, And your heart is in the shadow of the shame of going back. ”

“ In my original condition, in the body in which I was first introduced to life, I certainly had a great aversion to all troublesome employments, whether of business or amusement, being supposed by many persons to be then what as many considered me now—to wit, the laziest man in my state. ”

“ Instead, therefore, of condemning the lazy man,169 as the moralists would, it is the part of wisdom to view him as a victim of disease and as standing in need of careful treatment. Nature intended him to be vigorous, forceful, a being of achievement; circumstances have made him listless, inert, responsive but in feeble measure to the spur of honour, ambition, pride, love, or necessity. Sometimes, to be sure, he is contented with his laziness, and would almost resent an attempt to rescue him from it ”

“ I have not for a long time found myself in such comfortable conditions, and yet the evil habit of work has rooted itself so deeply in my nature, that I feel some disquiet of conscience at my laziness. ”

“ Then I rose, And drew the glittering girdle from my zone, Jealous thereof, yet full of fears, and said, 'If it be this he loves, then let him go! I have no solace as a mortal hath, No hope of change or death to comfort me Through all eternity; yet he is free, Though I could hold him fast with heavy chains, Bound in perpetual imprisonment.' Tell me my vision was a baseless dream; See, I am kneeling, and kiss thy hands,— In pity, look on me, before thy word Condemns me to immortal misery! ”

“ Thy lazy cowardice hath been the cause of thy sin, thine avarice hath rendered thee stupid, and thy gluttony hath been thine enemy. Thinkest thou that thou wilt never find another peasant like unto me? If he hath a complaint to make thinkest thou that he will not stand, if he is a lazy man, at the door of his house? He whom thou forcest to speak will not remain silent. He whom thou forcest to wake up will not remain asleep. The faces which thou makest keen will not remain stupid. The mouth which thou openest will not remain closed. He whom thou makest intelligent will not remain ignorant. ”

“ How could she rise when the cruel hand of disgrace was ever ready to drag her down at any moment. “Ah, God!” she moaned in her misery, “if we could only be born without kin—with no one to disgrace us but ourselves! It’s cruel, God, it’s cruel to suffer for the crimes of others!” ”

“ Let us hope that the refinement, falsely so called, which is only another name for vanity, laziness, and selfishness, may soon give way to the true refinement of heart and mind which considers nothing too menial which will benefit others; nothing too common that will add to the happiness of our fellow-creatures. ”

“ Charnel-houses of sin and lust—sloughs of despond and regret—excess of passion offset by lack of power—dread, despair, hopelessness, shame and desperation, making a picture of misery scarcely to be conceived by any but those unfortunate beings who in the thoughtless, careless heyday of youth, or the reckless reliance on more mature vigor, have weakened, emasculated and enslaved themselves by indulgences and excesses that have borne fruit of misery, disease and desperation in after years. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, to recognize, as you do, that the object of your affections can only lead you into guilt and misery—and to persist in voluntarily plunging into an abyss of crime and sorrow, is a contradiction of thought and conduct which does small honor to your powers of reason. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Have you through laziness neglected your prayers or religious exercises; murmured, or been impatient in time of trouble?
Greater Sins against the other Commandments.
Have you been disobedient to the plain commands of your parents and other superiors; treated or spoken of them with contempt? Have you set a bad example in any grievous matter; given way to temper so as to wish any one harm; provoked or enticed any one to mortal sin; said, or done, or thought deliberately anything impure; told lies to the injury of any one; spread evil reports out of dislike or hatred ”

“ For several generations we have done little but pet and coddle the loafer; we have treated his constitutional laziness not as the personal vice and social crime which it is, but as a venial weakness to be excused and indulged, while the man himself we have surrounded with a nimbus of maudlin sentimentality. ”

“ He blamed himself in the year 'Too Late' — in the heaviest hours of life — 'Twas little he dreamed that a shearing-mate had care of his home and wife; There are times when wrongs from your kindred come, and treacherous tongues attack — When a man is better away from home, and dead to the world, Out Back. ”

“ But so deplorable are the effects of sensuality, avarice, and ambition, and such is the laxity and spiritual callousness of many Christians, that there is real cause for every one to be filled with alarm for the safety of his soul. ”

“ Is it possible to imagine, even for a moment, what an innocent man, gifted with ambition, endowed with power to love and to respect, must have suffered during one week of such punishment? We ordinary men, leading ordinary lives—walking, riding, laughing, marrying and giving in marriage—can form no notion of such misery as this. ”

“ Would I could foresee a term to our misery!—Who but yourself shall find a remedy for our misfortunes? Shall we delay, until time brings to light that which is now a secret, and the affront we have received entail on us a shame more intolerable than death itself? ”

“ The vacant stillness, the docility to vice, the premature suppression of youthful sensibility, the doll-like mechanism of the whole figure, which seems to have no other feeling but a sickly sense of pain,—shew the deepest insight into human nature, and into the effects of those refinements in depravity, by which it has been good-naturedly asserted, that ‘vice loses half its evil in losing all its grossness.’ The story of this picture is in some parts very obscure and enigmatical. ”

“ I could overlook in myself a little laxness in many things, but I never forgive myself the vulgar act and speech, despite my lack of moral code at present and my artistic indifference, to which is added lately, but only temporarily, I hope, a lethargic indifference, born of that ever-recurring tired feeling. ”

“ Storms of hisses or bursts of ironical applause greet every sentence that he utters, and the curtain finally falls on his disgrace. This generally cures the disease of which we have been speaking. A night of agony, a week of pain, and the young gentleman, disenchanted and disenthralled, looks back upon his temporary mania with feelings of humiliation and surprise, cuts his aiders and abettors, and betakes himself seriously to the rational business of life.
But there are some stage-struck gentlemen whom nothing can convince of their total unfitness for the stage. ”

“ I then said to myself, “to what miseries and disasters are we born, and how brief are our pleasures in this our toilsome life! I thought that by this poor little contrivance I might find a way to pass out of my misery, and I even ventured to rejoice at my good-fortune, and now my ill-luck has returned.” Using all the diligence in his power, for misers as a rule are not wanting in that commodity, he shut the door of my consolation while he boarded up the holes in the chest. ”

“ Poor youth, thou hadst prepared thyself only for wounds, only for death,--and thou art made a prisoner! Thus always do the gods, in their severity, send only unforeseen evils to stultify our self-complacency. I weep--I must weep, although I fear to be despised for it by you. But despise me not! You turn away?
STRATO. I am vexed: you should not move me thus. I become a child with you.
PHILOTAS. No; hear why I weep! It is no childish weeping which you deign to accompany with your manly tears. ”

“ We become all things to all men. Laziness? The word, we protest, is not in our vocabulary. Are we not engrossed from morning till night? Do we not conspicuously spend our days under the high pressure of an exacting life? But God, who searches the heart, knows how much of our outward strenuousness is but a rationalization of a latent slackness. ”

“ A brother asked an old man, saying, “Father, what answer shall I return unto those who abuse us and say that we do not return to the world because of our laziness, and that by the work of our hands and the labour of our souls we do not relieve strangers?” ”

“ Hidden licentiousness, which one would expect to evince itself in over-ripe sentiment and feeling, manifests itself instead in cruelty and hardness of heart. The little habit of self-indulgence which you in your foolish fondness have allowed in that boy of yours may, in after-life, come out as the very impurity which you have endeavored so earnestly to guard him against. ”

“ He broods over the world’s ingratitude until he gets to be a cynic. He sees the world like the outside of a window, as it were, with the blind drawn and the dead, cold moonlight shining on it, and he passes on with a sour face ”

“ I will not hamper myself in my new life by even the memory of my old cowardice. You may call me weak, call me sentimental, foolish, romantic, call me all the things which for years you have been trying to discover in me, and for which you have sought in vain beneath the mask I wore—I am going to have my share of living. ”

“ Why, girl, my task is sport beside his toil! If my limbs be weary, I sleep; but I have seen him sit before his canvas with straining eyes and the big beads standing on his brow. When at last he gave o'er, and I have smoothed his pillow, and served and soothed him, what sleep could he snatch? His brain is haunted with evil visions, whereof some be merely of his own imaginings, and others the phantoms of folk who are living or have lived, and who rouse his jealousy or mayhap his remorse, God only knows! ”