Loss

“ Take away this opinion, and you remove with it all grief; for no one is afflicted merely on account of a loss sustained by himself. Perhaps we may be sorry, and grieve a little; but that bitter lamentation and those mournful tears have their origin in our apprehensions that he whom we loved is deprived of all the advantages of life, and is sensible of his loss. And we are led to this opinion by nature, without any arguments or any instruction. ”

“ Mortal, if this earthly sorrow,
Loss and anguish crush thy heart,
If thy friends forsake and hate thee;
If thy children break thy heart,
If no wish of thine should prosper—
Find fulfillment in this life ”

“ Well for those to whom loss is gain, because it puts them in possession of the enduring riches! Well for those to whom the passing of all that can pass is a means of revealing Him who 'is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever'! ”

“ Yea, a loss like that is a glorious gain, and pitiful proud am I. For Peace must be bought with blood and tears, and the boys of our hearts must pay; And so in our joy of the after-years, let us bless them every day. ”

“ The inevitable law of loss is fixed and certain. We are losing something every moment—not only possessions, but all our dearest ties are knit but for a time, and sure to be snapped. They go, and then after a while we go. ”

“ I have long been satisfied on that head. If we lose on one hand, we gain on another. And my experience in life leads me to this conclusion, that the loss is generally in lower things, and the gain in higher. ”

“ But loss is not all the indolent servant's doom. Once more, like the slow toll of a funeral bell, we hear the dread sentence of ejection to the 'mirk midnight' without, where are tears undried and passion unavailing. ”

“ A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. ”

“ and the less money, the less trouble; the less favor, the less envy; nay, even in those cases that put us out of their wits, it is not the loss itself, but the opinion of the loss, that troubles us. ”

“ But the loss of property does not comprise half their sufferings. They were human beings possessed of human feelings and human sympathies. Their agony of soul was the bitterest drop in the cup of their sorrows. ”

“ Our hap is loss, our hope but sad despair,
Our ranks are broke, and ruin follows us. ”

“ Grief is so far from retrieving a loss, that it makes it greater; but the way to lessen it is by a comparison with others' losses. ”

“ But if your heart does relent, resolve, God being your helper, to escape with your life. Regard not money! All that a man hath, will he give for his life. Whatever you lose, lose not your soul; nothing can countervail that loss. ”

“ And, re-assembling our afflicted powers, Consult how we may henceforth most offend Our enemy, our own loss how repair, How overcome this dire calamity, What reinforcement we may gain from hope, If not, what resolution from despair." ”

“ He does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss. Don't you see? And what have you to say?"
"That you are at least consistent," was all I could say, and went on washing the dishes. ”

“ For whilst we are grieved and distressed through the loss of wealth; or by reason of sickness, and death, and the other evils that befall us, we not only reap no consolation from our sorrow, but we also increase the force of these calamities. ”

“ They look ahead, and they see that to obey the light will involve loss of some kind—perhaps reputation, wealth, family associations, ease, or loss of friends, loss of temporal comforts, loss of good business. ”

“ Some refer the loss to the work, not to the man; and understand the passage thus: If any man's work be burned, It shall suffer loss - much shall be taken away from it; nothing shall he left but the measure of truth and uprightness which it may have contained. ”

“ Excited, confident, reckless, he loses—doubles his loss—forgets all prudence, unrolls the savings of years on the little farm—mother’s needle, father’s plow, sister’s music lessons, earned that hoard. ”

“ They serve to suggest, but they do not serve to gauge, the far graver and sadder loss, the invisible and immeasurable loss through mental and moral qualities undeveloped, through activities warped and crippled and vitality and courage lowered. ”

“ No, it is the small losses in life that cut one to the heart—the loss of all that other people look upon as almost nothing. ”

“ With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall. I caught him, yes, I held him—it may be imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped. ”

“ There is another sorrow, which arises from the loss of temporal goods and fortunes, which equally afflicts, and may go hand in hand with the preceding; loss of time, loss of honour, office, of good name, of labour, frustrate hopes, will much torment; but in my judgment, there is no torture like unto it, or that sooner procureth this malady and mischief:
[2337] Ploratur lachrymis amissa pecunia veris:
Lost money is bewailed with grief sincere. ”

“ The loss of fortune or favour is particularly apt to give birth to this tormenting sensation; for, as neither the one nor the other occurs frequently without some imprudence or neglect of our own having been the primary cause, so the reflection on that always furnishes the gloomy retrospect with its principal sting. ”

“ In the transcendent state desire and dread are ended; and the thirst for gain and the fear of loss are things that are no more; for where the universal order is seen, universal good is seen; and where perennial joy in that good is a normal condition, what is there left to desire, what remains to be feared? ”

“ Undaunted met; who "counted losses gain;"
Who neither danger fear'd nor shrunk from pain;
Whom no reproach, or scourge, or threatened doom,
Or present woes, or vision'd ills to come,
Or height, or depth, or peril, flame, or sword,
Could sever from the love and service of his Lord. ”

“ Be not grieved nor troubled because of the loss which hath befallen thee—a loss which caused the tears to flow, sighs to be produced, sorrow to exist and hearts to burn in great agony; but know, this hath reference only to the physical body, and if thou considerest this matter with a discerning and intelligent eye, thou wilt find that it hath no power whatsoever, for separation belongeth to the characteristics of the body. ”

“ The world so quickly readjusts itself after any loss, that the return of the departed would nearly always throw it, even the circle most interested, into confusion. ”

“ For, as to the injury, I have already remarked, that a very trivial annual loss—one life, perhaps, upon ten millions, and that life often as little practically valuable as any amongst us—that pays our fine or ransom in that account. ”

“ We have been surrounded by many blessings, and yet perhaps, have indulged in fretfulness. A slight loss has irritated us. We have chafed at ordinary disappointments, at little interruptions in the current of our prosperity. ”

“ I would fain convince all, that I seek not theirs but them. I am sorry you have met with so many losses of late; but all our losses will be found to be gain in the end. Blessed are they that love God! All things are even now working together for their good. ”

“ When a courtesan is kind to any such man as des [162] cribed above, but who in addition are favourites of the King, and moreover cruel and powerful, without any good result in the end, and with a chance of her being turned away at any moment, this loss is called a loss of wealth attended by other losses. ”

“ But it possessed extrinsic qualities which could be measured by no money value, and every one felt that the loss was one to redeem which, or rather to redeem what that loss represented, demanded, if necessary, the putting forth of the strength of a great nation. ”

“ Let us weigh the gain and the loss in choosing heads that God is. Let us weigh the two cases: if you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. ”

“ XI. Love no creature too much, and let it not grow too sweet and pleasant to you: else you are preparing for sorrow from the creature. Love it less, and you shall sorrow less. All your grief for crosses and losses, in goods, estate, in children and friends, in reputation, liberty, health, and life, doth come from your over-loving them. Value them but as they deserve, and you may easily bear the loss of them. ”

“ For the term 'gain' is applied generally to such cases, even if it be not a term appropriate to certain cases, e.g. to the person who inflicts a woundand 'loss' to the sufferer; at all events when the suffering has been estimated, the one is called loss and the other gain. ”

“ Then worship what ye will beside Him. Say: The losers will be those who lose themselves and their housefolk on the Day of Resurrection. Ah, that will be the manifest loss!
S: Serve then what you like besides Him. Say: The losers surely are those who shall have lost themselves and their families on the day of resurrection ”

“ It may well be thought incredible that such men as I have described could in any case escape serious loss; but, fortunately for our possibilities of progress, the laws under which we live are such that to achieve a really serious loss is no easy matter. ”

“ Gentlemen, every thing is pure loss—chapels and creeds and churches—all is loss that comes between us and Christ—individually, masterfully. ”

“ The sorrows, losses, bereavements which befall us are but as the sharp edge of the share, or the keen teeth of the harrow, and are intended to prepare us to receive the good seed, and to bring forth much fruit. ”

“ The power to realize their fall import is mercifully wanting. The mind has a dumb sense of vast loss—that is all. It will take mind and memory months, and possibly years, to gather together the details, and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss. A man's house burns down. ”

“ The advantage of some is won by an equivalent loss of others. ”

“ And so if we, from our standing point in God, will look back on our lives, losses will disclose themselves as gains, sorrows as harbingers of joy, conflict as a means of peace, the crooked things will be straight, and the rough places plain ”

“ It was a terrible thing to undergo, but during the year I stood there I had time to think that the greatest loss I had known was the loss of my heart. ”

“ So, changes come, and we have to unclasp hands, and the footsteps that used to be planted by the side of ours cease, and our track across the sands is lonely; and losses come, and death comes, and all the glory and the good that were only externally possessed by us we leave behind us. ”

“ Weigh what your gains and your losses would be if you should stake all you have on heads, or God’s existence: if you win in such case, you gain eternal beatitude; if you lose, you lose nothing at all. ”

“ Many of the losses which must be experienced are obvious; such as that of the society of every old friend, and of the sight of those places with which every dearest remembrance is so intimately connected. ”