Lining

“ That I have always disliked the diurnal ceremony of ablution, and a hasty succession of linen, is a truth which he who has a sensitive texture of skin will easily credit; which he who will not credit, may, if he pleases, deny; and may, if he can, controvert. But I assert the fact, and I expect to be believed, because I assert it. Life, among its quiet blessings, can boast of few things more comfortable than indifference to dress. ”

“ And I also am conscious of two worlds. My husband and boys are real to me, and I love them fondly. But there is another world for me, as there is for you, Maskull, and it makes my real world appear all false and vulgar. ”

“ The Line of the Head and Brain. If this line (ascending from its place with uniform proportion) connect the line of the Liver and Life in a triangular form, having a lively colour and not intersected, it declares a person of admirable prudence, and of a manly wit and fair fortune. The more perfect this triangle, the better shall the temper, wit and courage be. But if it be obtuse, it argues an evil disposed nature and a rude man. If there be no triangle, much worse, a fool, a prodigal and a liar, and frequently a short life. ”

“ Now after all my struggle, I fall back not on reason but on instinct, on a primal desire, and perhaps this is my rudimentary soul, the mystical hanker after something higher. That is a real thing. The purpose of nature seems to be to put it into me and make it very important to me. ”

“ One feels that it is done by an effort, and that if the strain were relaxed for a moment the wild creature would burst loose in rage or despair—and that the voice would break into the scream of passion or quiver down into the falter of pathos. ”

“ Why, you can't have looked at yourself in the glass! Will you have the glass and see? You are nothing but skin and bone—you are as weak as a sparrow, and do you think that you are fit to make your notes! ”

“ As fast as the linen becomes damp, he replaces it with fresh, pressing the folds about us as tenderly as a mother arranges the drapery of her sleeping babe; for we, though of the stature of a man, are now infantile in our helpless happiness. Then he takes our passive hand and warms its palm by the soft friction of his own ”

“ This is Shaping’s world. He that is a good child here, knows pleasure, pain, and love, and gets his rewards. But there’s another world—not Shaping’s—and there all this is unknown, and another order of things reigns. ”

“ Where do you come from, O man, and where do you keep yourself, that we know not your features nor hear your voice? Have you wife or mother who awaits your return? Or children who set your torch in the corner and climb to your lap and embrace your neck? ”

“ Our canons of the beautiful are false if they do not in some way include the toad. Shall we [123] measure all the out-of-doors by the linnet's song, the cardinal-flower's flame, and the hay-field's odor? Deeper, wider, more fundamental and abiding than these standards, lie the intellectual principles of plan and purpose and the intellectual quality of perfect execution. We shall love not alone with all our heart, but with all our mind as well. ”

“ The recollection came like a track of fire across his brain. Memory! how glorious, how terrible art thou! With the wand of the enchanter thou canst change every current of feeling into joy or woe. The same agency—nay, the same object—shall awaken the most opposite emotions. The simplest forms and the subtlest agents are alike to thee. Nature seems fashioned at thy will, and her attributes are but the instruments of thy power. ”

“ Can blind my soul nor hurl it from on high,
Possessing thee, the self of loftiness,
And very light that Light discovers by.
Howe’er thou turn’st, wrong Earth! still Love’s in sight,
For we are taller than the breadth of night. ”

“ Teach you line—the infinite variety of line—the tremendous responsibility of line—the humour—the severity of line. Teach you nature—the goddess from whom all beauty is drawn, and whose lightest touch has more mystery in it than all the creations of man. ”

“ When he chose to reflect a man small enough for him to see him in his entirety, a flaw in the glass, which was his own hidden bitterness, gave back a contorted, ironic outline, as though, knowing too well the limitations of his own soul, he could see with fantastic accuracy the limitations of souls like his own. ”

“ We trace out all the veins of the earth, and yet, living upon it, undermined as it is beneath our feet, are astonished that it should occasionally cleave asunder or tremble: as though, forsooth, these signs could be any other than expressions of the indignation felt by our sacred parent! We penetrate into her entrails, and seek for treasures in the abodes even of the Manes as though each spot we tread upon were not sufficiently bounteous and fertile for us! ”

“ Numbers and lines have many charms, unseen by vulgar eyes, and only discovered to the unwearied and respectful sons of Art. In features the serpentine line (who starts not at the name) produces beauty and love; and in numbers, high powers, and humble roots, give soft delight. ”

“ The lips may have trembled in the reawakened force of passion, the gaze have grown dim with longing, the pulses throbbed to ache and ebbed away upon the sickening wave of despair, but the letter only breathed of weakness conquered, the pressure of a restraint imposed by life-long habit, and could not be called artificial. ”

“ Deep as thy soul, obscure as modesty,
With every star in heaven trembling pale
O’er sweet profounds where only Love can see.
Oh, runs not thus the lesson thou hast taught?—
When life’s all love, ’tis life: aught else, ’tis naught. ”

“ Once, as my eye rested on the fragments of pearl, I sighed to think how easily the pearls of sensibility, as well as all the frail and delicate treasures of life, might be crushed by the hand of passion. ”

“ Holding the body, neck, and head straight and unmoved, perfectly determined, and not working in any direction, but as if beholding the end of his own nose, with his heart in supreme peace, devoid of fear, with thought controlled and heart in me as the supreme goal, he remains. ”

“ These burdens they carry with the mouth, but when it is too large to admit of that, they turn their backs to it, and push it onwards with their feet, while they use their utmost energies with their shoulders. ”

“ Nor can the nerves alone discriminate; for they can only cry aloud with a blind cry. In the management of this art, what we need is the nerves and the head together, playing up to one another; and, between them, carrying further—always a little further—the silent advance, along the road of experience, of the insatiable soul. ”

“ There are infinite of these subtle trifles, and others more subtle than these, of notions, relations, instants, formalities, quiddities, haecceities, which no one can perceive without a Lynceus whose eyes could look through a stone wall and discover those things through the thickest darkness that never were. ”

“ Into space he enables us to stare, marvelling, at something hitherto barely suspected, now a tangible form with familiar lineaments and unforgettable tones of voice, a something that we dimly understand rises up with us and lies down with us, gives the stamp of meanness to our best endeavours, and misleads us in our noblest aspirations. ”

“ Though beings of every rank and age, of both sexes, and of all pursuits, had united to form this breathing wall of bodies, they were influenced by a single emotion. Each eye was riveted on the center of that ring, which contained the objects of so much and of so common an interest. ”

“ The other people, left behind, displayed their emotions in different ways. Two or three of them—women—sat frankly down on the steps and indulged in tears of bewilderment, fright and relief in a peculiar combination defying analysis. Two or three of the men swore, in shaken voices. ”

“ Some recline on their couches with closed eyes, as if the heat made the labour of using their organs of vision too much for them; others, in the midst of a conversation, suddenly leave a sentence unfinished, apparently incapacitated by lassitude from giving expression to the simplest ideas. ”

“ But if the lines come from being sorry for others, and the wrinkles from laughing at ourselves, then they are kind lines and happy wrinkles, and there is no sense in trying to hide them with paint and powder. ”

“ Now there are some who search for the pillars, and want to touch and to grasp them; and when they cannot, they wonder and tremble as if the heaven must certainly fall, just because they cannot grasp its pillars. If they could only lay their hands on them, they think that the heaven would stand firm! ”

“ Some are mere flashes of simile in unrhymed couplets; others are definite rounded outlines, instinct with the beauty of idea, but not yet hewn to the line of perfect form; one, at least, is the beginning of quite a long narrative in verse. ”

“ We see heads that turn on the pivot of the spine,—no more; and we see heads that seem to turn on a pivot as deep as the axle of the world,—so slow, and lazily, and great, they move. We see on the lip of our companion the presence or absence of the great masters of thought and poetry to his mind. ”

“ One experiences a revulsion as one contemplates them through a glass. Her voice in the days of her youth had drilled into it the power to thrill and vibrate, and to become exquisitely tender upon occasion, and now it does the bidding of its owner with docility and skill. ”

“ It had taught him that this example of eminence was but a parallel of human position, and, if that man who stands at the top must be dwarfed and beaten and exposed to every gale as this tree was, mayhap the fellow-men further down were in as good position, all things considered, as they should wish to be. ”

“ No; in that noble face, pale from illness or from sadness, with the traces of sorrow upon it, and the marks of long vigils by the bedside of her father—in that refined face, whose expression spoke only of elevation of soul, and exhibited the perfect type of manly beauty, there was certainly nothing that could excite repugnance, but every thing that might inspire confidence. ”

“ How much of this inevitable accord between expression and feeling should be attributed to nature, and how much to the influence of art, it would be difficult to say. The sublimely terrible roar of the lioness that has been deprived of her cubs is dramatically as far above her customary whine and purr as the kingly and transcendent utterances of Lear are above the level of his senile vaporings. ”

“ THE LINNET FANCY. To the Editor of the Table Book.
It is my fantasie to have these things,
For they amuse me in my moody hours:
Their voices waft my soul into the woods:
Where bends th’ enamour’d willow o’er the stream,
They make sweet melody.
Of all the earthly things by which the brain of man is twisted and twirled, heated and cooled, fancy is the most powerful. Like a froward wife, she invariably leads him by the nose, and almost every man is in some degree ruled by her. ”

“ I am always touched, when handling the homespun linens of olden times, with a sense that the vitality and strength of those enduring women, through the many tedious and exhausting processes which they had bestowed, were woven into the warp and woof with the flax, and gave to the old webs of linen their permanence and their beautiful texture. ”

“ I folded my arms and gave myself a mental shake. I seemed to be the center of a hundred eyes, expressing every shade of doubt and distrust, but I tried not to flinch. Then some one created a diversion. ”

“ In form, simplicity and long, unbroken lines give dignity, while complicated and short lines express vivacity. Curves, particularly if long and sweeping, give grace while straight lines and angles indicate power and strength. ”

“ The noise brought people from the house—plenty were in it then—and I retreated. 'If she can think me guilty, the world will think me guilty,' was my argument; and that night I went right off, to stop in hiding for a day or two, till I saw my way clear. ”

“ Several times when you've been standing on the heights and calling attention to the beautiful view below, I've said to myself, 'One push, and he's a deader,' but something, some mysterious agency within, has kept me back. ”

“ What if the subject be over his head, cannot he crane his neck and look? has he not common-sense to guide him? and may he not criticize in the block what he cannot dissect in detail? At the least he can look grave, and say something about the danger of a little knowledge; and fallen man's dangerous pride of intellect ”

“ Our soul being moved by these two passions, in the presence of a rare, or wished for object, doubts the possession, fancying it an illusion of the eyes; and calls for the information of the touch, which, united to the former sense, constitutes the sure criterion that distinguishes real bodies from phantoms. ”

“ When I look at myself, I find I have got hinges all over my body. I have hinges to my legs, hinges to my jaws, hinges to my feet. If I want to take hold of any thing, there are hinges to my hands to do it with. If my heart thinks, and I want to speak, I have got hinges to my jaws. If I want to walk, I have hinges to my feet. ”

“ Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a certain roughness of character,—will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands, or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy of touch. ”