Narrowness

“ Manifold are the impressions inspired by the vast deep, to those who look upon its restless, ever-changing surface. To some it is a source of terror, as, in its fury, it thunders and dashes—now back and sullen, anon white with the foam of rage—against the rock-bound shore. A thing of wonder and awe it is as its mountain billows sweep, with irresistible force, across its watery fields—away, column after column, tossing the strong ship from wave-top to wave-top, like a plaything of a child. ”

“ Whether the height on which we stand, be elevated only a few feet, or have beneath it a precipitous abyss of a thousand fathoms, our footing, if all other circumstances be the same, is in itself equally sure. ”

“ At every step you stumble and injure yourself—rocks, rugged stones, sharp points, peaks, angles, and little corners and big corners. The world should be round—quite so, and round it is; roundness is perfection; but it should be an immeasurable sphere of eider-down, so that, if a citizen falls, he may always fall amid softness—thus! (Letting himself fall in the arm-chair, or on one of the cushioned stools at the side of the table.) ”

“ My eyes were blinded, my soul rocked and reeled.
The chasm beneath me — ten thousand feet;
The ground I stood on, only a foot wide.
If you have not exhausted the scope of seeing and hearing.
How can you realize the wideness of the world? ”

“ As in the sphere all the dimensions are not only equal, the length being equal to the depth and breadth, but are also identical, seeing that what in a sphere is called deep, may also be called long and wide. Likewise is it, as to height in divine wisdom, which is the same as the depth of power and the breadth of goodness. All these perfections are equal, because they are infinite. ”

“ Standing upon a narrow ridge at that great elevation, mid Nature crowned by solitude, where a single false move would land one in the great beyond, man feels his weakness and realizes how small is human effort when compared with the evidences of Nature's forces. ”

“ The whole length of this land in sight was the very symbol of distortion. Pendent from an even line that stretches along the heavens was a ridge of mountains. 'Life hangs upon a little thread,' but what think you of mountains hanging upon a thread? ”

“ They are majestic, and even awful, when contemplated in a proper mood, yet, by their breadth of base and the long ridges which support them, give the idea of immense bulk rather than of towering height. ”

“ Like a spring issuing from an elevated spot and diffusing its waters, according to the height, from ledge to ledge, until it finally reaches the low ground, so does the tendency of mind or of soul in a people, due to race, epoch, or environment, diffuse itself in different proportions, and by regular descent, over the different series of facts which compose its civilization. ”

“ But, on the other hand, if an impressible person, standing alone over the brink of one of these processions, should behold it, not in its atoms, but in its aggregate,—as a mighty river of life, massive in its tide, and black with mystery, and, out of its depths, calling to the kindred depth within him,—then the contiguity would add to the effect. ”

“ The narrow ways trodden of men are miserable; they have high walls on each side, and but an occasional glimpse of the sky above; and in such paths lady Arctura was trying to walk. The true way, though narrow, is not unlovely: most footpaths are lovelier than high roads. ”

“ She does not shackle reason; she preserves it from error and ruin. How often is the way of science a narrow ridge, with deep gulfs on either side! Feeble man walks along the narrow crest with trembling limbs, or crawls on, dubiously and slowly, in the dark. ”

“ Objects become Smaller as they Recede to say, in the foreground—are largest; the things in the middle, or middle distance, are smallest. And to explain these apparently simple facts we must exerecise our wits. You know that when you stand on the seashore and look seaward the extent of your vision is bounded by the meeting of the sea and sky, which boundary is called the horizon. The horizon is the line that follows the line of your eyes, the boundary line. ”

“ This broad flat ledge reached but a short distance, and then the perpendicular wall appears to stop your farther progress; but there is a spirit of defiance in the mind of man; he will not be stayed either by rocks or waves. ”

“ Grandeur of bulk and mass is conjoined with splendor and fulness of detail; form and shape are crowned with soaring peak and matchless line; and the summits mingle with that sky which seems to be the only fitting background for the eternal hills. ”

“ It is indeed the lot of man to be always circumscribed to a narrow space, even when he wanders over the most extensive regions; even when the huge sea envelops him all around, and wraps him close to its bosom, in the act, as it were, of swallowing him up in a moment: still he is separated from all the circumjacent immensity of space only by one small part, or insignificant portion of that immensity. ”

“ A habit of reasoning out the most likely cause, and all other possible causes, for the condition of things as seen, is essential. If there is a slope of the ground, a ridge, a hollow—Why is it there? What can have produced it? and Which cause is the most probable for it? The mere form of the ground will often show plainly what is beneath it. ”

“ Then would I take you from the table-land to the mountain, where we descend into deep canons that compare in their strange beauty with any in the world; the queer separation of the earth, not more than 100 feet from edge to edge of precipice, but 400 feet deep. ”

“ The distant sight of a human figure far away on the wide space of the moors, clambering over the granite slabs of a stile, turned his thoughts to a more perceptible danger. If he could see that man more than half a mile away, his own figure must be apparent over a long distance in that clear brown expanse. ”

“ Let us think of some of the rules by which we must walk in the narrow way. We must walk humbly. It is a narrow way remember, and if we walk with our heads lifted up by pride, we shall miss our footing, and slip from the path. The gate, too, is strait, or narrow. ”

“ Instead of descending toward a deep, dark valley we stand, in fact, before a delectable mountain, from the summit of which, if we can only reach it, we can view the world in a clearer light and in truer perspective than the race has yet attained. ”

“ To puzzle one's brains at such moments by seeking to recognise distant peaks, or to correct one's topographical knowledge, or by scientific pursuits of any sort, appears to be sacrilege of the most vicious sort. ”

“ As in the ascent of the elevation, step by step, we can judge imperfectly of its height, until from the very summit we look down upon our place of starting, so with the wretched outcasts of society of whom we speak. ”

“ All are perfectly irregular; the projections of one do not fit into the interstices of another; they are heaped up loosely in their extraordinary top-heavy form, on slanting ground half-way down a steep hill. Look at them from whatever point you choose, there is still all that is heaviest, largest, strongest, at the summit, and all that is lightest, smallest, weakest, at the base. ”

“ The mountains rose sheer from every side, heaving their gigantic crests far up into the night, the black peaks crowding together, and looking now less like beasts than like a company of cowled giants. ”

“ When you are to examine the landscape from a height, in order to obtain a wide prospect, you may have to use a glass, or a compass, or some other instrument of abstraction, in order to define what the distance tends to render obscure, or what the manifoldness of the scenery surveyed makes it hard rightly to view in its true relations. And, in such cases, the glass or the compass is but an auxiliary, intended to help in the end your whole outlook. Now the world of good and evil is a world of wide prospects, of vast distances, of manifold features. ”

“ Distance or space, in its simple abstract conception, to avoid confusion, I call expansion, to distinguish it from extension, which by some is used to express this distance only as it is in the solid parts of matter, and so includes, or at least intimates, the idea of body : whereas the idea of pure distance includes no such thing. ”

“ Why, the height of a man, in nine cases out of ten, can be told from the length of his stride. It is a simple calculation enough, though there is no use my boring you with figures. I had this fellow's stride both on the clay outside and on the dust within. Then I had a way of checking my calculation. When a man writes on a wall, his instinct leads him to write about the level of his own eyes. Now that writing was just over six feet from the ground. ”

“ It needs but a moment for the conversation to become general,—about roots under the shoulder, stubs in the back, a ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeper to balance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the ground, the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. ”

“ Everybody says it is like the long ridges of the sea, some overtopping their neighbors a little, each with an independent undulation of its crest, yet all driven by a common impulse, and breaking, not with the sudden snap of an unyielding material, but one after the other, with a stately curve, to slide back and mingle with those that follow. ”

“ Consider that thou goest on a lofty ridge and upon a narrow path having a fearful depth sheer down on either side, so that it is impossible to swerve to the right or to the left without falling headlong into the abyss. ”

“ Any ledge or obstacle will stop it, and it will exhibit no signs of discontent if this happens. It is not attracted by the pleasantness of the valley, as a sheep or cow might be, but propelled by the steepness of the hill at the place where it is. ”

“ WHO has not at some time leaned over the parapet of a bridge to watch the wrinklings and dimplings of the current below,—to wonder at the trembling permanency of surface-shapes that never change, though the substance of them is never for two successive moments the same? ”

“ Imperceptible in themselves, the heights become perceptible by their shadows. A road illuminated by a distant arc light gives us a startling instance of this; the smooth surface taking on from its shadows the look of a ploughed field. ”

“ For if the Reader remembers my chapter on shape-perception, he will have no difficulty in answering why we should have a thought of rising when we look at the mountain, since we cannot look at the mountain, nor at a tree, a tower or anything of which we similarly say that it rises, without lifting our glance, raising our eye and probably raising our head and neck, all of which raising and lifting unites into a general awareness of something rising. The rising of which we are aware is going on in us. ”

“ When the empathic scheme of the mountain thus ceases to be mere rising and becomes rising plus descending, the two movements with which we have thus invested that shape will be felt as being interdependent; one side goes down because the other has gone up, or the movement rises in order to descend. ”

“ As you move about on all sides you see more or less of the near neighbour country according as the Mountain you stand upon is in different parts steep or rounded—but the most new thing of all is the sudden leap of the eye from the extremity of what appears a plain into so vast a distance. ”

“ The obvious of the past garish and sunny hour, when their modest measurement proclaimed itself to any reasonably experienced eye, has vanished, and you find yourself confronted by heights that lack absolutely nothing in stature and dignity, and are in effect mountains of 10,000 feet. ”

“ Before you have taken three steps to descend into the valley, the shadow, with giant strides, is mounting the opposite slopes. Who could flatter himself that he could follow the cloud and keep under its cover? ”

“ When one is travelling in the foothills of a mountain range, it is difficult to appreciate the heights and grandeur of the peaks. It is only at a distance that we are able to judge clearly relative heights, and pick out the main peaks of the range. ”

“ Everything, in fact — the grouping of certain Shapes in the middle of an empty space and around a motionless Shape, the actions performed, the cutting up of that isolated Shape — suggested that there was an execution in progress, the taking of a life. ”

“ The most superb front, at a great distance, appears a plain surface: approaching gradually, we begin to perceive inequalities: these inequalities, advancing a few steps more, take{346} on the appearance of pillars; but whether round or square, we are uncertain: our curiosity anticipating our progress, cannot rest in suspense: we naturally suppose the most complete pillar, or that which is the most agreeable to the eye ”

“ Balance on the axis expresses the natural balance of the subject as we feel it in nature when it touches us personally and would connect our spirit with its own.
We discern the former more readily where the subject confronts us with little depth of background. We get into the movement of the latter when the reach is far in, and we feel the subject revolving on its pivot and stretching one arm toward us while the other penetrates the visible or the unknown distance. ”

“ Now, in this movement of translation, the axis of the earth does not remain constantly parallel to itself; it deviates,—very slightly, it is true,—and so as to be scarcely perceptible to several generations of men. ”

“ The next time she looked at the wall the space was still blank, and steadying her shaken nerves with the thought that her imagination was running away with her, she started to rise when before her eyes appeared a cord, exaggerated in size against the blank wall ”

“ If at such times as this the eye ranges not over leagues of coast and sea, long winding valleys and wide plains, the prophetic spirit fostered by such agencies looks out on life, and images of the future flit past in cloudy shapes and changing forms. There, see that black mass that slowly moves along, and seems to beckon us with giant arm. ”

“ Gravity, an institution which flourished even then, resumed its sway, the short end swung furiously down, the long end went as furiously round up, and at its highest elevation flung the huge stone out of the sling with a tremendous jerk. ”