Non-being

“ I have no desire to live; perhaps there never was a more willing victim dragged to the scaffold than I am. Why should I desire to live? A beggar, crippled, and with my health and spirit broken—why, oh why, should I desire to live? ”

“ When all is over and in the hush of desolation we have leisure to reckon up the cost of our madness, will it appear that we have learned the meaning of the sentimental shirking of realities? Or shall we continue,as we have done for a century and more, to place sympathy above justice, and to forget the responsibility of the individual in our insistence on the obligations of society ”

“ 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. ”

“ Can I leave them to vice, to suffering, to crime, and yet be innocent? Will not their souls be required at my hands, now that God shows me their condition? I feel the pressure of a responsibility scarcely thought of an hour ago. ”

“ But the despair and disgust of life, to which both these and her private letters give such uncompromising and eloquent expression, indubitably reflect her feelings at this moral crisis—the feelings of one who having openly braved the laws of society, to become henceforward a law unto herself, recognises that she has only found her way to fresh sources of misery. ”

“ Unable to change our place, or move hand or foot at our own pleasure, and forced to submit to every caprice of our possessors, we cannot be said to have even a will of our own. But every condition has its share of good and evil, and I have often considered my helplessness and dependence as mere trifles compared with the troubles to which poor sensitive human beings are subject. ”

“ Sometimes the disability is removed, the law suspended: by the deathless power of love or hate we break the spell—we are seen by those whom we would warn, console, or punish. What form we seem to them to bear we know not; we know only that we terrify even those whom we most wish to comfort, and from whom we most crave tenderness and sympathy. ”

“ Because I have condescended to feel an interest in your welfare, and have asked you a question which I thought that our intimacy justified, you tell me that that is a kind of thing that you will not talk about to—everybody. I beg you to understand that I will not be your everybody. ”

“ Willing emancipates: but what is that called which still puts the emancipator in chains?
"It was": thus is the Will's teeth-gnashing and most lonesome tribulation called. Impotent towards what has been done- it is a malicious spectator of all that is past.
Not backward can the Will will; that it cannot break time and time's desire- that is the Will's most lonesome tribulation.
Willing emancipates: what does Willing itself create in order to get free from its tribulation and mock at its prison?
Ah, a fool becomes every prisoner! Foolishly delivers itself also the imprisoned Will. ”

“ How deplorable that social affections, which contribute so much to make life pass agreeably, should be liable to a wild upbreak from perhaps some trivial cause, not in itself worthy of a moment’s regard, and only rendered of consequence by the sensitiveness of pride and a deference to false and worldly maxims! ”

“ That no consideration, either of worldly advantage, or dread of what society may say, or do, or think, shall ever induce me to let cross my threshold, or bring into personal association with my family, any man who, to my knowledge, leads an unvirtuous life. ”

“ A rough schooling for free-will! But those who have gone through it bear the marks of it all their life in the mania for independence, and the impossibility of their ever living in the lives of others. ”

“ Endued with a mind powerful but perverted, a temper careless but impetuous, and feelings kindly but irritable, he, by the early association with depraved companions, rendered himself, by one false step, induced by a too ready compliance, an outcast, excluded from the pale of orderly society, and condemned to herd with the very refuse of mankind. ”

“ And there the poor passing soul had exerted its failing will to restore a broken connection - a golden thread of sentiment between its innocence and a monstrous baseness owning a blind, brutal allegiance to the Law of Self. ”

“ 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? ”

“ THERE is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution hath withheld from it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But how can we attain to the freedom, firmness, and dignity of having no wants? Answer: By learning what our real necessities are, and limiting our sense of want by such knowledge. Otherwise there is little hope for us; for, as soon as we admit imaginary and factitious needs, we become the slaves of mere fancy, the sport of mere human opinion, and devoid of all true dignity. ”

“ Some take mild views of human infirmity, and shrink from visiting it too roughly. They would rather that the sinners did not cross them; but, since the contrary is the fact, what can they do but be civil? ”

“ I returned to my friend's house in an uneasy state of mind. In order to protect my children, it was necessary that I should own myself. I called myself free, and sometimes felt so; but I knew I was insecure. ”

“ Now—so perverse is human nature—I was no sooner self-assured of my moral quittance from the bonds which had held me so long and so wistfully to an imaginary grievance, than my soul rose in mutiny against my own emancipation. ”

“ Duty to my conscience has driven me to acts that have betrayed me to society. I cannot shake my guilt from me even for a day; and now society coldly cancels all my claims to its attentions. If I could believe her dead ”

“ There, after all, is the rub. A want of hardy self-respect, an unwillingness to face with dignity the actual facts and necessities of our situation in life,—this, after all, is the worst and most dangerous feature of the case. ”

“ Vibrating between an innate propensity to rights and an habitual adherence to wrong; sick of pursuits I was too indolent to relinqush, and linked to vice, yet still enamoured of virtue; weary of the useless, joyless inanity of my existence, yet without energy, without power to regenerate my worthless being; daily losing ground in the minds of the inestimable few who were still interested for my welfare ”

“ In all classes of society we find discontent. I leave completely out of the question those who lack the necessities of life. One cannot with justice count in the number of malcontents those from whom hunger, cold, and misery [72] wring complaints. I am considering now that multitude of people who live under conditions at least supportable. Whence comes their heart-burning? Why is it found not only among those of modest though sufficient means, but also under shades of ever-increasing refinement, all along the ascending scale, even to opulence and the summits of social place? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yes, it was trying to get her under, this world with its mighty self-satisfaction, with its smug rules of conduct, all made to be broken by those who strutted and preened themselves on being what they considered normal. They trod on the necks of those thousands of others who, for God knew what reason, were not made as they were; they prided themselves on their indignation, on what they proclaimed as their righteous judgments. ”

“ The reason of punishing this so severely is, because they think that if they were not strictly restrained from all vagrant appetites, very few would engage in a state in which they venture the quiet of their whole lives, by being confined to one person, and are obliged to endure all the inconveniences with which it is accompanied. ”

“ Life is one long persecution of men like me, by men like you. Why can’t you leave me alone, as I leave you alone? I don’t force you to drink and gamble, and lead what you are pleased to call an immoral life. ”

“ It is true, the bands of private, or of local and natural affection, are often, nay in general, too tightly strained, so as frequently to do harm instead of good: but the present question is whether we can, with safety and effect, be wholly emancipated from them? Whether we should shake them off at pleasure and without mercy, as the only bar to the triumph of truth and justice? ”

“ In our judgment, their views must bring great darkness to the mind, and, we think, distress; for is it not a great distress itself, to be under the government of one we think unjust? We know not but that we owe them, as fellow travellers through this momentary existence, the duty of trying to remove from their minds the cause of such darkness and distress. Shall we counsel together? Will you, indeed, stop for a moment in company with a brother? Will you hear the Bible? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus, I think, we have arrived at forming some conception of the state that awaits us hereafter: the indestructible moral law fixes our place or condition; affinity governs our associations; and the mask under which we conceal ourselves having fallen away, we appear to each other as we are;—and I must here observe, that in this last circumstance must be comprised one very important element of happiness or misery ”

“ Without suspecting in himself the dignity of lawgiver, he only experiences the constraint and the impotent revolt of a subject fretting under the yoke, because in this experience the sensuous impulsion precedes the moral impulsion, he gives to the law of necessity a beginning in him, a positive origin, and by the most unfortunate of all mistakes he converts the immutable and the eternal in himself into a transitory accident. ”

“ Every one is suspicious of me, thinks evil of me. But you—yourself, who have known me from infancy—you who baptized me to save me from becoming a wanderer—see, a wanderer, homeless, with my poor babe, I come to you—do you provide that I may be housed and sheltered. ”

“ Is it truly possible to be willingly treated unjustly, or is all suffering of injustice the contrary involuntary, as all unjust action is voluntary? And is all suffering of injustice of the latter kind or else all of the former, or is it sometimes voluntary, sometimes involuntary? ”

“ The keen observer of humanity would have pronounced him one cold, rather than collected; selfish at once, and careless of the rights and happiness of others; sluggish, perhaps, and difficult to arouse, but, once aroused, impetuous, and of indomitable will—truly a fearful combination! ”

“ Only they who have a sanguine, hopeful temperament will be able to understand how the poor houseless, friendless boy—the very outcast of the world, the convict's child—could ever dare to indulge in such day-dreams of future greatness. ”

“ I wish to live peaceably, but I have lately experienced so many instances of your most bare-faced and wanton oppression, to my prejudice, that there’s no longer a doubt with me what course I must be under the disagreeable necessity to take, that I may obtain redress and do justice to myself and family. ”

“ I advise you earnestly, therefore, against any system of conduct, or indulgence of feeling, that would involve your seclusion from society—not only on the grounds of such seclusion obliging you to unnecessary self-denial, but on the still stronger grounds of the loss to our moral being which would result from the absence of the peculiar species of discipline that social intercourse affords. ”

“ But there are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. ”

“ As these people are now-a-days at liberty to leave their voluntary servitude, none are admitted but such as by the weakness of their understanding, and the natural timidity arising from a degree of imbecility, are expected to continue for life in a state of religious bondage. ”

“ We stand amid the jar and conflict of a thousand natural laws, to us inexplicable, and which every hour threaten us in ourselves or those dearer than ourselves. We stand often in no less perplexity of moral law in ways where the path of duty and right is darkened and beset. ”

“ What should one do with the misery of the world in a scheme of the agreeable for one’s self? ”

“ A reserved disposition, founded on pride, seems to have been my constitutional sin—In my earliest youth it discovered itself, by taking pleasure in vexing my guardians when they crossed my inclination. I was so much under the influence of this base passion, that more than once I gave them the greatest alarm and vexation of mind, by concealing myself, and previously saying that I would put an end to my life by personal violence ”

“ And so would we if we had been born, brought up, and embedded in a society which allowed us so little for ourselves that not growing up morally—keeping on over and over again, year after year, just wanting things for ourselves, and not really being weaned yet—was all that was left to us. ”