Moroseness

“ He spoke as men do in fevers. I could see that there were some about us who set him down as mad. There were those who jeered, as fools will at the sight of a man's anguish, when, in the abandonment of his shame, he trails his soul in the dust. ”

“ And garner store of strife and scorn
To gain a scarce-remembered name,
Cumbered with lies and soiled with shame?
And if the gods care not for you,
What is this folly ye must do
To win some mortal's feeble heart?
O fools! when each man plays his part,
And heeds his fellow little more
Than these blue waves that kiss the shore
Take heed of how the daisies grow.
O fools! and if ye could but know
How fair a world to you is given.
O brooder on the hills of heaven,
When for my sin thou drav'st me forth,
Hadst thou forgot what this was worth,
Thine own hand had made? ”

“ Ah, how many a poor foolish creature, in misery and shame, with a guilty conscience and a sad heart, sits down, like the prodigal son, among the swinish bad company into which his sins have brought him, longing to fill his belly with the husks which the swine eat! but he cannot. He tries to forget his sorrow by drinking, by bad company, by gambling, by gossiping, like the fools around him: but he cannot. He finds no more pleasure in sin. ”

“ The morose are bitterly dissatisfied with the world in general, and disposed to vent their ill nature upon others. The sullen and sulky are for the most part silent; the morose growl out bitter speeches. ”

“ Folly, melancholy, madness, are but one disease, Delirium is a common name to all. Alexander, Gordonius, Jason Pratensis, Savanarola, Guianerius, Montaltus, confound them as differing secundum magis et minus; so doth David, Psal. xxxvii. 5. “I said unto the fools, deal not so madly,” and 'twas an old Stoical paradox, omnes stultos insanire, [179] all fools are mad, though some madder than others. And who is not a fool, who is free from melancholy? Who is not touched more or less in habit or disposition? ”

“ I dare not call them fools; but this I think, When they are thirsty, fools would fain have drink. BEROWNE. This jest is dry to me. Fair gentle sweet, Your wit makes wise things foolish; when we greet, With eyes best seeing, heaven's fiery eye, By light we lose light; your capacity Is of that nature that to your huge store Wise things seem foolish and rich things but poor. ROSALINE. This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye- BEROWNE. I am a fool, and full of poverty. ROSALINE. But that you take what doth to you belong, It were a fault to snatch words from my tongue. ”

“ But I did feel that if at that moment any of those faults had been brought before me which sometimes occur among us; had I heard that any of you had been guilty of falsehood, or of drunkenness, or of any other such sin; had I heard from any quarter the language of profaneness, or of unkindness, or of indecency; had I heard or seen any signs of that wretched folly which courts the laugh of fools by affecting not to dread evil and not to care for good, then the unsuitableness of any of these things with the scene I had just quitted would indeed have been most intensely painful. And why? ”

“ The foolish nurse their hearts within the screen Of this familiar world, where all we do Or have is old, for there is nothing new: Yet elder far that world we have not seen; God's Presence antedates what else hath been: Many the foolish seem, the wise seem few. Oh foolishest fond folly of a heart Divided, neither here nor there at rest! That hankers after Heaven, but clings to earth; That neither here nor there knows thorough mirth, Half-choosing, wholly missing, the good part:-- Oh fool among the foolish, in thy quest. ”

“ If you find yourself morose in dreams, you will awake to find the world, as far as you are concerned, going fearfully wrong.
To see others morose, portends unpleasant occupations and unpleasant companions. ”

“ The insanity of the King differs widely in its nature from that of the Fool, and that of the Fool from that of the beggar. But the insanity of the King differs from that of the beggar—not only in its nature, but also in the fact that one is real and the other simply a pretence. Are we to suppose then that the insanity of the third character, the Fool, is, in this respect, a mere repetition of that of the second, the beggar,—that it too is mere pretence? ”

“ Not a day passes but we see some monstrous lie, decked out with strong assurances of sincerity and zeal, pass current with the multitude. Oh, lady! there is an appetite for falsehood in the world that makes the many-headed monster gorge the food, however dirty, and, like a hungry dog, pluck morsels from the very kennel. Yet there is some truth, too, in what these people say. I am not one to cover them with bad names; for, alas! however wrong they may be now, the king put himself in fault at first. ”

“ A wicked heart by the tongue becomes very hurtful; for the mouth of fools belches out foolishness, which is very offensive; and the corrupt communication which proceeds from an evil treasure within (the filthiness, and foolish talking, and jesting) corrupts the good manners of some and debauches them, and grieves the good hearts of others and disturbs them. ”

“ Madness of a nation, overfed, oversexed, cursed with national paranoia, intoxicated with the poisonous wine of self-glory!
Laughing, screaming, shouting madness that wound up in blood, and misery, and cruelties unspeakable—and punishment! ”

“ The millstones of envy and malice are weighing down that mortal mind to the depths of its evil nature, where the cankering chains of sin will hold it until suffering balances the account, loosens their cold clasp, subdues the perverse will, and quenches in agony the fires of remorse. Aggravation of error foretells its doom, repeating the pagan opinion, “Whom the gods destroy they first make mad.” ”

“ They are made up of the symptoms of suppressed anger with morose determination, and they keep the sufferer from rest. He is led to neglect the necessities of his own existence; he is rendered feverish and feeble ”

“ And the worst, the most mournful, feature about this fool's condition is that it tends to a perpetual self-repetition: "As a dog that returneth to his vomit, so a fool is always repeating his folly." [669] Every hardening of the heart prepares for a fresh hardening, every refusal of truth will lead to another refusal. Last Sunday you managed to evade the message which God sent you: that makes it much easier to evade the message He sends you to-day. Next Sunday you will be almost totally indifferent. ”

“ I had to bear the sunken glare of his fierce crow-footed eyes if I wanted to know; and so I bore it, reflecting how much certain forms of evil are akin to madness, derived from intense egoism, inflamed by resistance, tearing the soul to pieces, and giving factitious vigour to the body. ”

“ The old theological idea of the fall was hard to endure, but the idea of the fall was clenched by such general laws of human nature as this,—that 'men are so necessarily mad, that it would be to be mad by a new form of madness not to be mad;'—that man is nothing but masquerading, lying, and hypocrisy, both in what concerns himself and in respect of others, wishing not to have the truth told to himself, and shrinking from telling it to anybody else ”

“ Why, what worth calling a reason could make any mortal hang over this trash?—idiotic immorality dressed up to look fine, with a little bit of doctrine tacked to it, like a hare's foot on a dish, to make believe the mess is not cat's flesh. ”

“ 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! ”

“ If I hate morose people, who make a sin of every thing, I hate no less those easy and complaisant Teachers, who make a sin of nothing; who countenance the depravation of nature; and become secret favourers of immorality. ”

“ Then will they say within themselves, repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit: These are they whom we had some time in derision, and for a parable of reproach. We fools esteemed their life madness, and their end without honour. ”

“ Now we must hasten on to our destination; and if you see any of the modish people nudge each other whispering, ‘Old fool!’ as we pass, you will only smile, knowing as you now do that they are the fools and that I am none. ”

“ And gibberings grim and ghastly.
Then, if you plan it, he
Changes organity,
With an urbanity,
Full of Satanity,
Vexes humanity
With an inanity
Fatal to vanity—
Driving your foes to the verge of insanity! ”

“ Thus the dogma of the fall is not simply the expression of a special and transitory state of human reason and morality: it is the spontaneous confession, in symbolic phrase, of this fact as astonishing as it is indestructible, the culpability, the inclination to evil, of our race. Curse upon me a sinner! cries on every hand and in every tongue the conscience of the human race. ”

“ They have reached the stage when they are the victims of human pity—a lamentable condition. But those dense persons inhabiting the thickly populated region bordering on foolishness—those self-satisfied, uncomprehending egotists occupying the half-way house between wisdom and folly, known as stupidity—against such my wrath burns fiercely. ”

“ Knock yourself, and the world will accept you at your own estimate. Show streaks of yellow cowardice, and the mob will pounce on you like a pack of hungry wolves. Accuse yourself, curse your luck, belittle your worth, be afraid, and you will remain a mere bump on a log, unnoticed, uninteresting, uninvited. ”

“ All honest men, pray for me, and pray well,
Lest true men’s curses send the false to hell.
II. ON A PROFITEER.
I FATTENED on the blood and tears
Of these long laborious years;
Out of loss came forth my gain,
Watered by another’s pain:
Who shall bid me rise again?
Pray for me, all poor men, and pray right well,
Lest poor men’s curses bring the rich to hell. ”

“ Each of you goes through a foolish, innocent routine, with a clear conscience and the applause of the poor multitude; and the result is misery, misery, misery. Not random misery, here and there, such as you harmless creatures might chance on by the way, but a fearful consistent scheme of deeply-calculated, universal misery—a thing of hellish contrivance, worthy of the fiery genius of the sulphur pit. ”

“ A young man in a London warehouse was solicited to spend such a night as I have glanced at. He refused. “What a fool you are to be so dull,” said the tempter. “We’ll wait a while and see who is the fool,” said the young man. In ten years’ time the tempter was in a dishonored grave, and the other was rising to affluence.
You young men who sneer at religion as weakness and call godliness hypocrisy, it is you who are the hypocrites. You have risen [20] many a morning after a night of sin, and have felt how satiety and loathing were making deep footprints in your nature. ”

“ A general and extreme corruption of manners, the wantonness, and folly, and enormity of licentious opulence, and the foul depravity which never fails to characterise the misery that follows the steps of luxury, operate powerfully in the way of reaction to exacerbate the motives and to swell the excesses of the ascetic life, when once that mode of religion has been called into being. ”

“ The people outside pity us poor fools here."
"Poor fools!" she echoed. "I don't care if I am a fool. God tells us that there are mansions in Heaven for those who are fools on earth for His sake."
"Won't you go with me?" ”

“ If, then, you are constrained—now accustomed as you are to self-vindication—to acknowledge your unreasonableness, how much more will you be speechless in the last day when madness will admit of no palliation, and folly will appear without disguise! ”

“ Something of the freak, the monster, or the only half human, seems to taint his blood, displaying itself in follies and excesses of the most violent or pitiful nature, which, when dispassionately narrated in the chronicles of centuries, show him to be a crank or a fool at the very time when wisdom might most be expected of him. ”

“ What a real voluptuous feeling they had for dirt and gloom and sordidness and boredom, and all the horrors of vice. They pretended they were trying to dissuade people from vice by enumerating its horrors. ”

“ Now, I protest against this disgusting, demoralizing, and heartless mention of the sins and follies of poor wretches, the temptations of whose lot are as the sands of the sea-shore for multitude; who, ill-paid, ill-fed, worse-lodged, disheartened, discouraged, fall victims to the snares, in the shape of low groggeries, set for them by the very men who laugh over their well-spread breakfast tables, at this pitiful [Pg 15] and revolting recital of their success. Oh, write over against the poor wretch's name, as God does, why he or she fell! ”

“ Never before had he been so agitated: fear, anger, or remorse had never ruffled the tenor of an existence which passed amidst rural avocations and unsophisticated pleasures,—knew nothing of intrigue, falsehood, or dissimulation—those parasitic plagues that follow the societies of men. ”

“ Then come the various follies of misers, fops, dotards, men who are foolishly indulgent to their children, mischief-makers, and despisers of good advice; of nobles and men in power; of the profane and the improvident; of foolish lovers; of extravagant eaters and drinkers, &c, &c Foolish talking, hypocrisy, frivolous pursuits, ecclesiastical corruptions, impudicity, and a great number of other vices as well as follies, are duly passed in review, and are represented in various forms of satirical caricature, and sometimes in simpler unadorned pictures. ”