Naïveté

“ O men, fools, how long will you fix the affections of your hearts on this earth? why do you love the goods of this world, which are all vanity and lies? Do you imagine that you shall find peace by the acquisition of these goods? But how can you expect to find peace, while you walk in the ways of affliction, and misery? ”

“ They are carried up to the heaven, and down again to the deep: and their soul melteth away because of the trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. So when they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, He delivereth them out of their distress. ”

“ In sheer wilfulness it has tried to empty life of all its values. It has made us ashamed of loving anything; for all love, it has told us, is illusion produced by the will to live, or the will to power, or some other figment of its own perverse thought. And now, as a result of that perversity, the storm breaks upon us when we seem to have stripped ourselves of all shelter against it. ”

“ I have found a freedom from rhetoric and vanity, a simple-hearted acceptance of life “in the first intention,” taking life and death without much criticism as they come, and concealing kindliness and the longing for happiness under a veil of silence or protective irony. ”

“ Is misery and vice so consonant to man's nature, that he will hug it to his heart?—but when the wretched one in bondage, beholds the emancipator near, will he not endure his misery awhile with hope and patience, then, spring to his preserver's arms, and start into a man. ”

“ They keep far off while we are worldly, evil, selfish ; but draw near, imparting the reward of heaven-born joy, when we are animated by noble thoughts and capable of disinterested actions. Surely such gather round me to-night, part of that atmosphere of peace and love which it is paradise to breathe. ”

“ You nursed in yourself a passion, which, taken in the degree in which you experienced it, is the unnatural and odious invention of a distempered civilization, and which in almost all instances generates an immense overbalance of excruciating misery. Your conduct will scarcely admit of any other denomination than moon-struck madness, hunting after torture. You addressed a man impenetrable as a rock, and the smallest glimpse of sober reflection, and common sense, would have taught you instantly to have given up the pursuit. ”

“ Every intermediate image of want, banishment, or sorrow, receives a lustre from its distant influence. With this in view, the patriot, philosopher, and poet, have often looked with calmness on disgrace and famine, and rested on their straw with chearful serenity. Even the last terrors of departing nature abate of their severity, and look kindly on him, who considers his sufferings as a passport to immortality, and lays his sorrows on the bed of fame. ”

“ In such a temper of mind, the pomps and vanities of life are cast behind us as the baubles of children.—We lose our relish for the frolics of gaiety, the race of ambition, or the grosser gratifications of voluptuousness. In the case even of those objects, which may more justly claim the attention of reasonable and immortal beings; in our family arrangements, in our plans of life, in our schemes of business, we become, without relinquishing the path of duty, more moderate in pursuit, and more indifferent about the issue. ”

“ The absence of this feeling expresses itself in all our intercourse with the bad, our tolerance of evil, our apathy about remediable, and yet unremedied, depravity; our national unconcernedness about men's souls; our carelessness amid the spiritual starvation of hundreds of thousands of our own people. ”

“ Father, wife, God himself, have given you the best they have: an honorable name, a lifetime of devotion, the full ten talents. For these, you have returned dishonor, unchastity and self-indulgent hypocrisy. You have begged extenuation on the basis of nervous ill- health and temporary irresponsibility, both of which you have brought upon yourself by violating the laws of right-living. It is your soul that is sick. You are not fit to live free and equal with righteous men and women. ”

“ Need it be said that neglects—injuries—and insults—like these which we have been contemplating, come from what quarter they may, let them be exhibited towards whom they will, must produce not merely mistrust and jealousy, but alienation and hatred. The passions and feelings may be quieted or diverted for a short time; but, though out of sight or seemingly asleep, they must exist; and the life which they have received cannot, but by a long course of justice and kindness, be overcome and destroyed. ”

“ Every one, however, does not experience its force, and happy may those be accounted who are free from it, since it is not only the most unjustifiable and dangerous, but also the most restless and self-tormenting emotion of the soul.
There are, notwithstanding, some kind of provocations, which it is scarce possible, nor indeed consistent with the justice we owe to ourselves, to bury wholly in oblivion; and likewise there are some kinds of revenge, which may deserve to be excused; of these, that which Natura put in practice, as shall presently be shewn, may be reckoned of the number. ”

“ Are you not weary of ardent ways,
Lure of the fallen seraphim?
Tell no more of enchanted days.
Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze
And you have had your will of him.
Are you not weary of ardent ways? ”

“ At last I commenced to regard all human life, the whole world, even Heaven, as an enormous injustice, a derision and a mockery. Forgetting that in my position I could hardly be unprejudiced, I came with the self-confidence of youth, with the sickly pain of a prisoner, gradually to the complete negation of life and its great meaning. ”

“ And he felt too bitterly that what has been must still be had, even for peace: that it is deprivation, not denial of joys, that is unhappiness. Could he consent to live on in such circumstances? Was there anything within the scope of probability which could make life endurable? ”

“ What will you then think of the esteem of the world? will not all below seem to pass away, and be rolled up as a scroll, and the extended regions of the future solemnly set themselves before you? Then how vain will appear the applause or blame of creatures, such as we are, all sinners and blind judges, and feeble aids, and themselves destined to be judged for their deeds. When, then, you are tempted to dread the ridicule of man, throw your mind forward to the hour of death. ”

“ Indignation was corrupted into wrath, self-love became selfishness, self-respect became pride, and emulation envy and jealousy. They were at variance with each other; pride struggled with self-interest, fear with desire. ”

“ These hypocrites will feel for their beloved vices, lost and found again, the thirst, the yearning we feel for happiness long denied us. And they will return to their old habit, with a voracious eagerness, as the convalescent turns to food, the traveller to the spring, the exile to his native land, the prisoner to freedom.
Then will reckless despair develop their genuine natures ”

“ Let us hope that the refinement, falsely so called, which is only another name for vanity, laziness, and selfishness, may soon give way to the true refinement of heart and mind which considers nothing too menial which will benefit others; nothing too common that will add to the happiness of our fellow-creatures. ”

“ Could she have guessed that this friend who dreamed with her of setting up a lay cloister was training himself, during his long walks, to face the melancholy of a life of revolt and of solitude? He formulated the rules of such a life:
You must neither love nor hate the people. ”

“ Why should envy, jealousy, pride, malice, anger, or revenge, shut themselves out exclusively from these resorts, as if these were more than ordinarily sacred, or more than ordinary repositories of human worth. ”

“ I sighed ecstatically.
"Selfishness, Discontent," she continued, "the premier rules of this great art are mastered in the realization of my own loveliness and the rebellion against fate, injustice of our sacred laws which sacrifices me for the welfare of humanity." ”

“ It upsets at every instant the little philosophy that I can glean in free and tranquil hours, and vexes me with men still children. How I hate myself in these miseries! How I long to spring upon some shore of liberty, pushing back with my foot the odious bark which has carried me. ”

“ I could feel it glooming ever and ever upon me from behind my back, and never turn my head;—such an impetus of hate was upon me, driving me forward after the wretch fleeing in self-complacency and triumph into a future of wealth and social consideration. ”

“ When we give our selves the liberty [143] of even talking of the Person we have once lov’d, and find the least pleasure in that Discourse, ’tis ridiculous to imagine we are free from that Passion, without which, the mention of it would be but insipid to our Ears, and the remembrance to our Minds, tho’ our Words are never so Cold, they are the Effects of a secret Fire, which burns not with less Strength for not being Dilated. ”

“ We indulge our reason, we indulge our passions, we indulge our ambition, our vanity, our love of power; we throw ourselves into the society of bad, worldly, or careless men; and all the while we think that, after having acquired this miserable knowledge of good and evil, we can return to our duty, and continue where we left off ”

“ Is it possible to imagine, even for a moment, what an innocent man, gifted with ambition, endowed with power to love and to respect, must have suffered during one week of such punishment? We ordinary men, leading ordinary lives—walking, riding, laughing, marrying and giving in marriage—can form no notion of such misery as this. ”

“ Not gaiety, not sweetness, but the sign
Of feelings moulded at their master's will.
A weary world was hidden at that heart;
Sorrow and strife were there, and it had learnt
The weary lessons time and sorrow teach ”

“ I look despairingly on all sides, and see no escape! I am bound, hand and foot, by the chains of my own noble birth, and shut within the iron walls of circumstance. I struggle vainly in my captivity; no way of freedom is open to me! ”

“ As he resolves, and breaks his resolutions; as he finds evil thoughts and feelings continually coming up from the deep places of his heart; he discovers his spiritual impotence,—his lack of control over what is deepest, most intimate, and most fundamental in his own character,—and cries out: "I am a slave, I am a slave to myself." ”

“ I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found, And walked with inward glory crowned— Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. ”

“ And now appears the first ray of relief, of recovery, and one of its first effects is that we turn against the preponderance of our pride: we call ourselves foolish and vain, as if we had undergone some unique experience. ”

“ God of my soul, never will I reproach Thee with having made it in Thine image, in order that I might be free, good, and happy, like Thyself.
"It is the abuse of our faculties which renders us unhappy and wicked. Our vexations and our cares come to us from ourselves." ”

“ Belief in Inebriation.—Those men who have moments of sublime ecstasy, and who, on ordinary occasions, on account of the contrast and the excessive wearing away of their nervous forces, usually feel miserable and desolate, come to consider such moments as the true manifestation of their real selves, of their “ego,” and their misery and dejection, on the other hand, as the effect of the “non-ego”. This is why they think of their environment, the age in which they live, and the whole world in which they have their being, with feelings of vindictiveness. ”

“ I am lost, finished, a derelict floating at the mercy of the stream, without plan or purpose.... And the worst of it is, I know, if men have treated me badly, I have treated myself worse; it is our sins against ourselves we can never forgive.... ”

“ But if we have narrowed the sources of internal comfort, and internal enjoyment, if we have debased the powers or corrupted the purity of the mind, if we have blunted the sympathy or contracted the affections of the heart, we have lost some of that treasure which was absolutely our won, and derived not its value from comparative estimation. ”

“ Passion and wounded pride drew from me burning tears. I felt that I was growing fierce and hard like my persecutors, and my conscience, yet tender, deplored the lamentable change. My heart, crushed beneath the sense of injustice and unmerited neglect, was closed against the best feelings of humanity, and I regarded my fellow men with aversion and mistrust. ”

“ You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile and cunning. ”

“ Far from adding to his comfort, these observances, by trammelling his every act, annihilate his freedom and often render the very life, which it is their object to preserve, a burden and sorrow to him. ”

“ Yet feel within a manly force of mind Urging to deeds heroic and sublime, Which but to name, one half my timid sex, Would fall the victims of their own despair. I scorn the feeble soul that cannot brave, With magnanimity, the storms of life. ”

“ You have already seen how, in the fearful struggle which had ensued—in that dread bosom tempest—all the latent selfishness which marred that noble nature was thrown up and exposed upon the crest of the tossing waves of passion. ”