Mishap

“ 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 accidents and events of life are, as is obvious, one special way in which the calls I speak of come to us; and they, as we all know, are in their very nature, and as the word accident implies, sudden and unexpected. ”

“ The pain which it produces is a pain of apprehension: a pain grounded on the apprehension of suffering such mischiefs or inconveniences, whatever they may be, as it is the nature of the primary mischief to produce. It may be styled, in one word, the alarm. The danger is the chance, whatever it may be, which the multitude it concerns may in consequence of the primary mischief stand exposed to, of suffering such mischiefs or inconveniences. For danger is nothing but the chance of pain, or, what comes to the same thing, of loss of pleasure. ”

“ To speak from your own description, was there ever a life, in its present period, less chequered with substantial bona fide misfortune? The whole force of every thing which looks like a misfortune was assiduously, unintermittedly, provided by yourself. ”

“ Can we have here one of those blind and extreme precautions which, ignoring the cause of the evil, overstep the remedy; and, in the endeavour to prevent an unfortunate accident, bring about a catastrophe? ”

“ Why am I called upon to do this, oh cruel, most cruel destiny? Cannot I fly from the horrid scene? Cannot I rather run a dagger into my heart? But no, 'tis plain my fate is ordained, sealed, fixed! and in vain I struggle,—I must fulfil the task appointed for me! ”

“ My eyes have faltered in anger, my soul and my stomach.
10 Because imprisoned in sorrows is my life, and my years in sighing. My strength has failed in my miseries, and my bones have faltered.
11 From all my opponents I have become despicable, and much so to my neighbors, and a fear to my acquaintances. ”

“ A blundering despatch, mistakenly announcing the death of a friend, occasions the same grief that his Erroneous despatch. real death would bring. You think your anguish is occasioned by your loss. Another despatch, correcting the mistake, heals that grief, and you learn that your suffering was merely the result of your belief. Thus it is with all sorrow, sickness, and death. You will learn at length that there is no cause for grief, and divine Wisdom will then be understood. Error, not Truth, produces all the suffering on earth. ”

“ The sense of violent bodily pain, or of perpetual misfortune, or of the baseness of all in whom he trusted, and other steady influx of many-fountained sorrow, may wear him for a time, and even fetch his spirit lower than the more vicarious woe can do. ”

“ The misfortunes that follow wherever he goes may be averted by the interposition of some attractive object whereby the glance from his eye is arrested, and either the misfortune does not happen at all, or the force of the evil influence is expended elsewhere. ”

“ Misfortunes never come single; the Italians have no less than three proverbs to express the same popular conviction: Blessed is that misfortune which comes single; and again: One misfortune is the vigil of another; and again: A misfortune and a friar are seldom alone. ”

“ A catastrophe so afflicting in its nature, and one so calculated to excite the amazement of his wife, unmanned him—not upon his own account, but from the distressing event about to be revealed in a manner so harsh and abrupt. ”

“ The misfortune must be occasioned by a fault incident to human nature, and therefore venial. Misfortunes of this kind, call forth the whole force of the social affections, and{227} interest the spectator in the warmest manner. An accidental misfortune, if not extremely singular, doth not greatly move our pity. The person who suffers, being innocent, is freed from the greatest of all torments, viz. ”

“ To awful convulsions will have succeeded sober and dignified regret for wrong-doing, coupled with a manful resolution to repair as far as is possible any injury inflicted on others, whether of actual aggression or of evil example. ”

“ Dragging with her one woman who was paralysed with fright, she induced the others to follow her, and when they were out of the line of fire, proceeded to examine the terrific wounds from which one and all declared themselves to be suffering. ”

“ Misfortune, mischance, misadventure, calamity, ill luck. Mish-mash, n. Mixture, medley, MÉLANGE, MISCELLANY. Misinterpret, v. a. Misconstrue, explain wrongly, put a wrong construction on, put a false construction on, give a false coloring to. Misjudge, v. a. Mistake, misapprehend, misunderstand, misconceive. Mislay, v. a. 1. Misplace. 2. Lose. Mismanage, v. a. Misconduct, manage ill, make a mess of, make a botch of, make sad work of. Mismanagement, n. Bad management, ill management. ”

“ Calamity and disaster are used of sudden and severe misfortunes, often overwhelming; ill fortune and ill luck, of lighter troubles and failures. We speak of the misery of the poor, the hardships of the soldier. Affliction, chastening, trial, and tribulation have all an especially religious bearing, suggesting some disciplinary purpose of God with beneficent design. ”

“ Phrases like "to sit on thorns," "to be on pins and needles," "to drain the cup of misery to the dregs," show with graphic power the folly and curse of worry. Why should one sit on thorns, or on pins and needles? If one does so accidentally he arises in a hurry, yet in worrying, one seems deliberately, with intent, to sit down upon prickles in order to compel himself to discomfort, distress, and pain. Is there any wisdom, when one has the cup of misery at his lips, in deliberately keeping it there, and persistently drinking it to the "very dregs"? ”

“ But, were it worth while to dwell on a subject so ridiculous, we might recollect that in so terrible an agony of shame as is likely to convulse a human being under such a trial, and such personal insults, the blood is apt to return to the heart, and a slight wound, as with a pin, may be inflicted without being followed by blood. ”

“ Our original corruptions are the sickness and disease of the soul, an habitual indisposition; our actual transgressions are the wounds of the soul, which put conscience to pain, if it be not seared and senseless. ”

“ They have chosen the curse, and the curse is come upon them to the uttermost. So it is. Is the Commination service uncharitable, is the preacher uncharitable, when they tell men so? No more so, than the physician is uncharitable, when he says,—‘If you go on misusing thus your lungs, or your digestion, you will ruin them past all cure.’ Is God to be blamed because this is a fact? ”

“ It is good for us, when we are afflicted, to remember how and wherein we went astray before we were afflicted, that we may answer the end of the affliction. 2. Of the benefit of an afflicted state: " Now have I kept thy word, and so have been recovered from my wanderings." God often makes use of afflictions as a means to reduce those to himself who have wandered from him. Sanctified afflictions humble us for sin and show us the vanity of the world; they soften the heart, and open the ear to discipline. ”

“ I must be pardoned for giving these distressing details; but how otherwise can I depict the misery, moral and physical, which we are enduring? And with it all, I dare not venture to hope that we have reached the climax of our sufferings. ”

“ It is not occasionally that he has heard from trembling lips the tale of woe, and seen its painful and often hideous signs. It has been with him an almost every day occurrence. Misery on every hand has made its appeal to him. ”

“ I am conscious myself of a weight at my heart and a feeling of impending danger—ever-present danger, which is the more terrible because I am unable to define it.
And have I not cause for such a feeling? Consider the long sequence of incidents which have all pointed to some sinister influence which is at work around us. ”

“ If such and similar errors can occur in chronic cases, where time and opportunity have permitted the most thorough examination and study, still more likely are they to take place during the hurry and anxieties of an acute and alarming attack, where the conscience and shame of the patient are alike interested in causing or keeping up a deception. ”

“ And no less deep and dangerous is the wound, but, on the contrary, all the deeper and more dangerous, because inflicted by hands which aimed not to harm, but to help her. Moreover, though it is always consoling to be able to trace an error to the understanding, the error may, nevertheless, be quite as pernicious as if the heart were involved in it. ”

“ But the sudden and violent change in your whole disposition, has proved only too plainly, that some concealed and unfortunate event—some mysterious adventure, at which we cannot guess, is the cause of your melancholy; which cause, however remote, still continues to exercise over you the same destructive influence. ”

“ We have had not only one incident for every day in the week, but two or three; we have not simply been stunned with the alarming noise of one terrific clash, but another, and another, and another, have followed upon each other's heels, like Job's messengers, till we have needed Job's patience and resignation to hear the dreadful tale of woes. ”

“ Accident, that convenient word given to the imaginary hack to which so many fires are referred, if truthfully interpreted, will, in general, be found to be equivalent to carelessness, recklessness, or guilt. ”

“ As for the fiacre-men,—how like fiasco, fiacre looks written!—they drive as if their souls' salvation depended on just grazing the wheel of every vehicle they pass. When two of them yell out at once, as they go by each other, it is enough to deafen one. ”

“ Cases may be pointed out in which something which could have no real effect but to make persons think of misfortune, was regarded not merely as a prognostic, but as something approaching to an actual cause of it. ”

“ Shall I speak of all the frailty and all the mysteries which seem puerile to those who do not respect them? Shall I tell you that when you left me in anger I shut myself up to read your first letters; that there is a favorite waltz that I never played in vain when I felt too keenly the suffering caused by your presence? Ah! wretch that I am! How dearly all these unnumbered tears, all these follies so sweet to the feeble, are purchased! Weep now; not even this punishment, this sorrow, will avail you. ”

“ If there is any man amongst you whom I have injured, I desire of him most earnestly to tell me the wrong I have done, that I may repair it before I die. I am quite certain that I have never done any one an intentional injury ”

“ You might perhaps think that these were only examples of the ludicrous, and sometimes tragic, accidents which must sometimes happen in the working of any complex system, however excellent. They are by no means so. Ludicrous, and tragic, mischance must indeed take place in all human affairs of importance, however honestly conducted. ”

“ Upon my return home, I fell into a profound contemplation on the evils that attend these superstitious follies of mankind; how they subject us to imaginary afflictions and additional sorrows, that do not properly come within our lot. As if the natural calamities of life were not sufficient for it, we turn the most indifferent circumstances into misfortunes, and suffer as much from trifling accidents as from real evils. ”

“ If, to the adverse accidents arising out of the storms and robberies, we add the effects of the whims or ill-humor of the receivers, it is not easy to imagine to what a length the injuries extend which befall the man who has the folly or misfortune to become a planter of this article. ”

“ But indeed I have met with what men usually style great misfortunes, or evils, though I never so named them. Like every mortal, I have had my share of what is called human misery. The weight of a sudden load has sometimes, for a moment, staggered me and pressed me down, as is the case with others. ”

“ Therefore sickness, weepings, sorrow, mourning, and in conclusion all adversities be unto us as spurs; with the which we being dull horses, or rather very asses, are forced not to remain long in this transitory way. ”

“ My sorrow was too great; I sprang to my feet and once more began to walk the floor. “Yes,” I continued, “look at her; think of those who are consumed by a grief that is not shared with another. The evils you endure others have suffered, and nothing is singular or peculiar to you. Think of those who have no mother, no relatives, no friends; of those who seek and do not find, of those who love in vain, of those who die and are forgotten.” ”

“ It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most susceptible heart to see how quick a bound nature has set to the utmost infliction of malice. We rapidly approach a brink over which no enemy can follow us. ”

“ But an observer, especially a lawyer, could also have read in this stricken man the signs of deep sorrow, the traces of grief which had worn into this face, as drops of water from the sky falling on fine marble at last destroy its beauty. A physician, an author, or a judge might have discerned a whole drama at the sight of its sublime horror, while the least charm was its resemblance to the grotesques which artists amuse themselves by sketching on a corner of the lithographic stone while chatting with a friend. ”

“ Few persons, and none who have known vicissitudes, can look back upon past years without recollecting signal occasions on which they have been rescued from the impending and apparently inevitable consequences of their own misconduct, or imprudence, or want of ability, by some extraordinary intervention in the very crisis of their fate, or, perhaps, they have been placed by accident in circumstances of peril, where as it seemed, there remained not a possibility of escape. ”

“ But, inasmuch as we are not wise enough to be able to unravel all these long and complicated series of causes and effects which lead to the falling of the branch upon the man, we call such an event an accident. ”

“ Why are we advised to bear wrong patiently and to forgive all injuries? A. We are advised to bear wrongs patiently and to forgive all injuries, because, being Christians, we should imitate the example of Our Divine Lord, who endured wrongs patiently and who not only pardoned but prayed for those who injured Him. ”