Magnanimity

“ First properly opens my heart, brings me with noble magnanimity an old bond of his father's, which he is ready to pay me, tickles me into emotion, that I may become still more magnanimous, still more generous and heroic, and throw my daughter into his arms. ”

“ And where is it said, that Brutus and Cato should carry magnanimity farther than Princes and Kings? Firmness consists in resisting misfortune: but only cowards submit to the yoke, bear patiently their chains, and support oppression tranquilly. ”

“ Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another. ”

“ There still remains one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice of prejudice and passion, to be made by the individuals throughout the nation who have heretofore followed the standards of political party. ”

“ We can certainly afford to suffer a little when at times we perceive magnanimity displayed towards us by our government, which has been the case in the past, and which I firmly believe will be in the future despite the pressure that is being brought to bear against us and the nature of the means that are being now employed. ”

“ As it is we have played at war—that’s what’s vile! We play at magnanimity and all that stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kindhearted that she can’t look at blood, but enjoys eating the calf served up with sauce. ”

“ As it is a maxim with me not to ask what, under similar circumstances, I would not grant, your majesty will do me the justice to believe, that this request appears to me to correspond with those great principles of magnanimity and wisdom which form the basis of sound policy and durable glory. ”

“ If upon some occasions, therefore, it has animated them to actions of magnanimity which could not well have been expected from them, we should not wonder if upon others it has prompted them to exploits of somewhat a different nature. ”

“ A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnanimity. ”

“ This work, which had been initially undertaken from purely altruistic motives, had proved to possess a value of the highest military importance—an importance of the spirit utterly out of proportion to the money and labour expended. Magnanimity arouses magnanimity. ”

“ The man ought to stand for a certain magnanimity, quite lawfully expressed in throwing money away: but if under given circumstances he can only do it by throwing the week’s food away, then he is not magnanimous, but mean. ”

“ Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. ”

“ So these high virtues of non-resistance, magnanimity and self-sacrifice must always rest upon the granite foundation of the masculine virtues of self-affirmation, endurance, heroism, strong conflict with evil. It takes strength to make magnanimity and self-sacrifice possible, if their lesson is not lost. A weak man cannot be magnanimous, since his generosity is mistaken for servile cowardice. ”

“ Put away all considerations which might obscure your clear eye-sight; maintain with magnanimity, and like men, the safety of yourselves, your wives, your children, your estates, your liberties; see that this poor people, whose eyes are fixed upon you, does not perish; preserve them from the greediness of those who would grow great at your expense ”

“ For magnanimity is contempt of unjust, or dishonest helps. And that which the Latins call versutia, translated into English, shifting, and is a putting off of a present danger or incommodity, by engaging into a greater, as when a man robs one to pay another, is but a shorter-sighted craft, called versutia, from versura, which signifies 61taking money at usury for the present payment of interest. ”

“ To enjoy their magnificence, they must live in a crowd; and to secure their possessions, they must be surrounded with friends that espouse their quarrels. Their honours, as well as their safety, consist in the numbers who attend them; and their personal distinctions are taken from their liberality, and supposed elevation of mind. In this manner, the possession of riches serves only to make the owner assume a character of magnanimity, to become the guardian of numbers, or the public object of respect and affection. ”

“ Its humanity, if it has much, is magnanimity to spare the vanquished, exulting in power but not prone to mischief, with good sense enough to be aware of the instability of fortune, and with some regard to reputation. What may serve as a criterion to try this question by is 109the following consideration, that we sometimes find as remarkable a deficiency of the speculative faculty coupled with great strength of will and consequent success in active life, as we do a want of voluntary power and total incapacity for business, frequently joined to the highest mental qualifications. ”

“ No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul. ”

“ Yet their philosophy leaves our course of life in our own free option; but that after the choice is made, the chain of consequences is inevitable: neither is that good or evil, which passes for such in the estimation of the vulgar: many, who seem wounded with adversity, are yet happy; numbers, that wallow in wealth, are yet most wretched: since the first often bear with magnanimity the blows of fortune; and the latter abuse her bounty in baneful pursuits. ”

“ This specious offer, made at a moment when his power was at its height, everywhere unquestioned and unopposed, indicated a degree of magnanimity, which in the case of those thousands in every such contest, who love repose better than virtue, was everywhere calculated to disarm the inhabitants. ”

“ But when it was all over, and he had followed his party in their conversion from the policy of coercion to the policy of concession, he appeared on the same platforms with the men who had formerly assailed him with groundless slander and measureless abuse. This magnanimity, which his critics called rather a carelessness of personal dignity, was characteristic of the man, and we might almost say of the Whig in the man. ”

“ Americans either do not understand or else look down with pity on the marital depravity of the Old World, and such stage scenes are as intrinsically foreign as those others, so familiar to Europe, in which the rich young nobleman who after all marries the poor governess, is held up as a remarkable example of magnanimity. ”

“ Great is the magic of precedent, and like the rebellious Helots, who cowered at the sight of their masters’ whips, those who are used to dragging the social chariot will meekly open their calloused mouths whenever the bit is offered them.”
The magnates, as has been shown, brook small interference with prevailing customs. Their near dependents, retainers, and “poor relations” think as they think, and feel as they feel; and the great majority of the professional moulders of opinion, drawing their inspiration from above, preach and teach as the magnates would have them. ”

“ Poor devils who stood outside the demoniac spell of his financial magic art called him an unprincipled swindler: people who had penetrated within the conjuror's circle called him a financial genius, flattered him almost servilely in their longing to share in his colossal enterprises, and if they did so procured for him in return a slight social recognition. And it was curious to observe how much at heart the magnate had this same social recognition, how he sued for the favour of every lofty dignitary, of every capital letter in the social alphabet. ”

“ As usual, the money poured in unto him.
He now with the highest magnates took rank,
For money he had in every bank.
But magnates, like others, sometime must die,
And in the same earth with poverty lie. ”

“ The numbers and brilliancy of the nobility, and the consideration enjoyed by them, set a seal of inferiority upon an occupation which they despised. Rich merchants and manufacturers sighed for the honors of nobility, and upon obtaining them, abandoned their lucrative professions. ”

“ But the power of the king, and the opinion of the wise, was as nothing before the savage will of the magnates of the kingdom, who, by their thoughtlessness and unconquerable lack of all far-sighted policy, their childish self-love and miserable pride, converted the Diet into the mockery of a government. ”

“ We also know that at the present time all of the combined capital of the world is held in the hands of a mighty ring of magnates. The civilized world's billion of people slave for the benefit of a few thousands, who have usurped the prerogatives and the rights of the whole. Nowhere is this condition more aggravated than in this country. We were all born freemen and we find ourselves to-day at the mercy of a few thousand plutocrats. The advantage of improved production is being kept from the people. ”

“ And if this was true more or less of all the higher and wealthier nobility, particularly of the younger members, it [Pg 128] cannot be said that the lower classes, or the less wealthy, were at all behind-hand in following the example of their betters.
The King himself hated display, though he did not despise a becoming state and magnificence when occasion required; but those who were attached to his Court, or to the retinue of the great lords, spiritual and temporal, delighted to imitate the young magnates as far as they could. ”

“ Between the magnificence of the aristocratic throne and those of the imperial purple, between the great of the earth and the People, the bourgeoisie is proving itself petty; it degrades power to its own level instead of rising up to it. ”

“ We had our monarchy, our hierarchy and our aristocracy,—God be praised for the benefits which have been derived from all three, and God in his mercy continue them to us! but we had no plutarchy, no millionaires, no great capitalists to break down the honest and industrious trader with the weight of their overbearing and overwhelming wealth. ”

“ I would rather be a mother to the poor than to the rich, rather reign over my country as Heaven made it, with its crags and torrents and forests, than over a land of wine-vats and offices where legends and traditions are ousted by account-books and bills, and the people in their insolence of wealth acknowledge in their hearts but one king—money. ”

“ Already we begin to hear, on the one hand, the sneering taunt at the fickleness, inefficiency, and illiberality of our proceedings, and the high encomium upon aristocracy and its concomitant advantages, and on the other, the expression of envy towards rising wealth and power, and utter contempt towards law and all wholesome restraint. ”

“ I saw suddenly spring up in all hearts an insatiable thirst for riches. I saw men form in a moment a detestable conspiracy to acquire wealth, not by honest labour and liberal industry, but by the ruin of the sovereign, of the state, and of their fellow-citizens. ”

“ These petty animosities, the offsprings of overgrown wealth, and of its too frequent accompaniments, arrogance and vanity, imperceptibly increased in time into national jealousies and into a political rivalry, of a character dangerous to the well-being of all the republics. ”

“ A mist of moral enthusiasm was wrapped about the crude realities of commercial enterprise, and the acquisition of wealth by private persons was disguised in the trappings of national magnificence. Much honest enthusiasm was thus generated which commercial and financial magnates turned to their advantage. ”

“ With enmity and disgust the landed proprietors saw the magnates of the stock-exchange usurping all power. Legitimists and the superior bourgeois class, politicians and artists, ceased to associate. One by one the salons of the old monarchy were closed, and with them disappeared the gaiety and naturalness of the refined beau monde. With the old form of government vanished its accompaniments of magnificent elegance and graceful frivolity, vanished the fine lady's lively wit and charming audacity. ”

“ When the magnates of the people, arrayed in this massive style, and reeking with oily fat, swagger about with sovereign contempt amongst their fellow mortals, they are only as grand as the slimy diplomatists, solemn and stiff, who strut along without vouchsafing to unlock one secret from their wary lips. ”

“ It is everything. It is nature. It makes all the difference between romance and a dull, sordid reality. Your king”—there was scorn now in her voice unmistakably—“is, I suppose, intent upon making his country of commercial importance. The grapes from your vines are to be transferred to the taverns and shops of London and Paris, and as the drunkards of the world increase so will your country’s prosperity. Prosperity? That means money. I hate that. Why cannot this king of yours leave his people happy as they are? Does money mean content? ”

“ Pluck out of the vilest of the bellowing bullies surrounding the hustings, him (of course a non-elector) most conspicuous for his insolence and brutality; imagine him suddenly or gradually become the owner of a great, or a small property, with the influence it gives him over customers, tenants, dependents: do you suppose that he will not at once, either gently or roughly, according to his temper, begin to exercise his power, (that which is so dear to the heart of man,) by dictating the exercise of the elective franchise on behalf of those political opinions which he may happen to favor? ”

“ What those consequences are, the average man knows full well. They are ostracism, a reduction, sooner or later, to the poorest livings; a hemming in and constraining to the narrowest fields of effort and influence—in a word, the full sum of the forceful rebuke which it is possible for the magnate class and its retainers, in the present state of society, to deliver. In the more developed state of the future the rebuke will be yet more emphatic; for the influence of the pulpit, whatever it may be in degree, must in kind be confirmatory of the right of the magnate class to rule. ”

“ If I set myself to obtain wealth or power, does it mean that I must make up my mind to lie, and fawn, and cringe, and swagger, and flatter, and dissemble? To consent to be the servant of others who have likewise fawned, and lied, and flattered? ”