Man-servant

“ You can be of a lot of use; you can do a lot of good. You will have time and inclination and money. You will be able to get around, not as quickly, but as surely. With a good man-servant you'll be entirely independent of drafts on charity or pity. ”

“ A servant makes life false and corrupt. As soon as you have servants, then you increase your wants, complicate life and make it a burden. Instead of joy when you do things yourself, you have vexation and the principal thing, you renounce the main duty of life; the fulfilment of the brotherhood of man. ”

“ I am a man; therefore you are not a man.”607 As moralists, they exhibited a very genuine love of moral excellence, but the same pedantic and retrospective character. They were continually dilating on the regulations of the censors and the customs of the earliest period of the Republic. ”

“ When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon. ”

“ To take a trivial illustration, just as a man who, in a company of gentlemen, made no advances, asked a warrant for every concession, and believed no one’s word without proof, would cut himself off by such churlishness from all the social rewards that a more trusting spirit would earn ”

“ The practice, which strikes one man with horror, may seem to another, who was born and brought up in the midst of it, not only innocent, but meritorious. We must judge others, not by our light, but by their own. ”

“ Consider who you are. To begin with, a Man; that is, one who has no quality more sovereign than moral choice, but keeps everything else subordinate to it, and this moral choice itself free from slavery and subjection. ”

“ So the state betrays its enmity to me by demanding that I be a man, which presupposes that I may also not be a man, but rank for it as an "un-man"; it imposes being a man upon me as a duty. Further, it desires me to do nothing along with which it cannot last ”

“ The sanctum of his individuality is outraged and profaned; and with that profanation ends the existence, that once seemed impenetrably sure. To explain the origin of a man is utterly to annihilate him. ”

“ At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say,— `Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. ”

“ Shall we launch into unknown regions to ascertain our duty and to keep our station in society? Is it not sufficient if we wish to be happy that we should endeavor to preserve ourselves in those maxims which reason approves, and on which virtue is founded? Every man who would perish, who would render his existence miserable, whoever would sacrifice permanent happiness for present pleasure, is a fool, who reflects not on the interests that are dearest to him. ”

“ If we proceed arbitrarily in taking the sacred objects thus or so, how is it then that we want to take it ill of the parson-spirits if they take us just as arbitrarily in their fashion, and esteem us worthy of the heretic's fire or of another punishment, perhaps of the—censorship?
What a man is, he makes out of things; "as you look at the world, so it looks at you again." ”

“ "And the moral of the story?" I said to Severin when I put the manuscript down on the table.
"That I was a donkey," he exclaimed without turning around, for he seemed to be embarrassed. "If only I had beaten her!"
"A curious remedy," I exclaimed, "which might answer with your peasant-women--"
"Oh, they are used to it," he replied eagerly, "but imagine the effect upon one of our delicate, nervous, hysterical ladies--"
"But the moral?"
"That woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present educating her, is his enemy. ”

“ But, if I say to it "You will pray, honor your parents, respect the crucifix, speak the truth, etc., for this belongs to man and is man's calling," or even "this is God's will," then moral influence is complete; then a man is to bend before the calling of man, be tractable, become humble, give up his will for an alien one which is set up as rule and law; he is to abase himself before something higher: self-abasement. ”

“ But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits. ”

“ And with respect to restraint and confinement: whoever will consider the restraints from fear and shame, the dissimulation, mean arts of concealment, servile compliances, one or other of which belong to almost every course of vice, will soon be convinced, that the man of virtue is by no means upon a disadvantage in this respect. ”

“ His natural disposition was not particularly bad, but prosperity had hardened his heart. He made his own progress in life the rule by which the conduct of all other men was to be judged, without any allowance for their peculiar disadvantages, or the visitations of Providence. He thought, for his part, that every man of sense could command success on his undertakings, and control and dispose the events of his own life. ”

“ I had not then learned the measure of "man's inhumanity to man," nor to what limitless extent of wickedness he will go for the love of gain. ”

“ A saner man would have found opportunities enough to put himself in formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society, and so test his resolution, in the natural course of events, without violating the laws of his own nature. ”

“ The Sperrit man told me that if I had means of my own I might come and live on Ther Land. I didn't tell him how much I would pay not to! I cannot think it right that any human being should exercise mastery over others in the merciless fashion our tom-fool social system permits ”

“ The false position, for our belated man of the world—belated because he had endeavoured so long to escape being one, and now at last had really to face his doom—the false position for him, I say, was obviously to have presented himself at the gate of that boundless menagerie primed with a moral scheme of the most approved pattern which was yet framed to break down on any approach to vivid facts ”

“ Consciousness of the knowledge he possesses, gives him a certain reserved and mysterious dignity. Every one treats him with respect; the poor man because he fears to offend one who might injure him by a slander or an accusation ”

“ Who doubts the sincerity of many of the reformers, whether religious, social, moral or philosophical? No man. Many of these men have been sincere, noble, brave and ingenious, and have tried to stop the torrent of iniquity ”

“ Good Men are never Safe but when Wicked Men are at Odds. So that the Divisions of the One are the Security of the Other.
REFLEXION.
'TIS a Hard Matter in This Case to Reconcile Policy, and Good Nature; or to bring a Plain-dealing Innocence into a Consistency with Necessary Prudence; For Singleness of Mind passes in the World for want of Brains, and where Knavery is in Credit, Honesty is sure to be a Drug: But Every Man must stand or fail to his Own Conscience, and so Divide the Mater as neither to Offend Christian Charity, nor Civil Discretion. ”

“ If I want to be free from any other man’s dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control. ”

“ How ought the following declarations to appall the heart of an unrepenting sinner, whose conscience terribly assures him that he is included in the awful denunciation, Acts, 17th chapter 31st verse, “Because He hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead!” ”

“ Nowadays, with our modern mania for morality, everyone has to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other seven deadly virtues. And what is the result? You all go over like ninepins—one after the other. ”

“ Freed of its associations and looked at in the light of its right and true meaning, than the word "servant" there is no greater in the language; and in this right use of the term, as we shall soon see, every life that has been really true, great, and happy has been that of a servant, and apart from this no such life ever has been or ever can be lived. ”

“ It was one of those moments—which sometimes occur only at the interval of years—when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he did now. ”

“ Grant that, working his brain unceasingly from dawn till dark, the man in pecuniary difficulties must disregard rebellious bodily sensations in obedience to the conscientious desire to liquidate the claims on him; yet he may carry this subjection of simple feelings to complex feelings to the extent of shattering his health, and failing in that end which, with less of this subjection, he might have achieved. Clearly, then, the subordination of lower feelings must132 be a conditional subordination. The supremacy of higher feelings must be a qualified supremacy. ”

“ Some pretend want of power to make a competent return, and you shall find in others a kind of graceless modesty, that makes a man ashamed of requiting an obligation, because it is a confession that he has received one. ”

“ True fortitude, I take to be the quiet possession of a man's self, and an undisturb'd doing his duty, whatever evil besets, or danger lies in his way. ”

“ and I will add further, that I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man. ”

“ Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority—where he may forget "men who are the rule," as their exception;—exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense. ”

“ It profits not me to have any man fence or fight for me, to flourish, or take my side. Stand for truth, and ’tis enough. ”

“ This conscious relinquishment of immediate and special good to gain distant and general good, while it is a cardinal trait of the self-restraint called moral, is also a cardinal trait of self-restraints other than those called moral—the restraints that originate from fear of the visible ruler, of the invisible ruler, and of society at large. ”

“ Oh! you are loved as no other man ever was or will be. I don’t know the meaning of those words ‘duty,’ ‘virtue.’ Jules, I love you for yourself; I am happy in loving you; I shall love you more and more to my dying day. I have pride in my love; I feel it is my destiny to have one sole emotion in my life. What I shall tell you now is dreadful, I know—but I am glad to have no child; I do not wish for any. I feel I am more wife than mother. Well, then, can you fear? Listen to me, my own beloved, promise to forget, not this hour of mingled tenderness and doubt, but the words of that madman. ”

“ It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each man’s feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow-creatures, except so far as a self-interested inducement is offered to him for consulting them. ”

“ There can really be no objection to this superfine theory, but that it is inconsistent with the order of Providence, and destructive of the nature of man—that it unfixes our moral land-marks—melts into air every practical virtue and definite duty—substitutes 88words for salutary deeds—and by directing our most natural and useful passions to objects indistinct or unattainable, leaves these powerful agents afloat, and ends by abusing them to the production of crime and misery. ”

“ Let us put a complex entree into a simple old gentleman; let us not put a simple entree into a complex old gentleman. So long as human society will leave my spiritual inside alone, I will allow it, with a comparative submission, to work its wild will with my physical interior. ”

“ Because strongly impure inclinations often usurp the name of virtue, was it a reason for disinterested inclinations in the noblest heart to be also rendered suspicious? Because the moral epicurean had willingly relaxed the law of reason, in order to fit it as a plaything to his customs, was it a reason to thus exaggerate harshness, and to make the fulfilment of duty, which is the most powerful manifestation of moral freedom, another kind of decorated servitude of a more specious name? ”

“ Men, who in private life were just, modest, and good, have been observed, upon their elevation into high places, to have left all their virtuous and beneficent qualities behind them, and to have acted afterwards upon a new spirit, of arrogance, injustice, and oppression. And yet, perhaps, their latter actions had as much the sanction of their own judgment as their first. ”