Nonbeing

“ Your silence is the indication of guilt, and in that indication I ought to acquiesce. Yet the fortitude of your manner, and something, I know not what, of emotion, that your manner produces in my own bosom, would fain persuade me you are innocent. Why will you leave me a prey to this contention of thought? If all men, constituted as I am, were to feel in you, as it were, the magnetism of innocence, shame, the simple inference of understanding, and the general sense of mankind, would oblige them to treat you as guilty. ”

“ By never, never making the concession, one may end by becoming a perceptible force for good."
"What concession are you talking about, in God's name?" Nick demanded.
"Why, that we're here all for dreariness. It's impossible to grant it sometimes if you wish to deny it ever."
"And what do you mean then by dreariness? That's modern slang and terribly vague. Many good things are dreary—virtue and decency and charity, and perseverance and courage and honour."
"Say at once that life's dreary, my dear fellow!" Gabriel Nash exclaimed. ”

“ Ungodly revenge.—His neighbour’s good practice condemns his bad life; his neighbour’s worth disparages his unworthiness; this he conceives highly prejudicial to him; hence in revenge he labours to vilify the worth and good works of his neighbour.
5. Sense of weakness, want of courage, or despondency of his own ability.—He who is conscious of his own strength and industry will allow to others the commendation becoming their ability. As he would not lose the fruits of his own deserts, so he takes it for granted that others should enjoy theirs also. ”

“ Friends who love us, possessions on which we have set our hearts, will be taken from us. We will leave as we came, alone. Why, then, attach ourselves to those things in such a way as to bring upon us the displeasure of God, and the sufferings which His displeasure entails? Better far to live here with the thought of the bitterness which goes with wrongdoing and a sense of security for the future, than thoughtlessly to incur the punishment which is to be found in purgatory. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Yet, upon my soul, I wonder what they see in me to treat me so! Measures, not men, have always been my mark; and I vow, by all that's honourable, my resentment has never done the men, as mere men, any manner of harm—that is, as mere men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are more eyes upon you than you imagine—the weak to find confidence, and the fool and the scoffer, to find jest and scorn. And, besides, what are you called upon to do—to leave a house where dependence would grind your spirit, or envy calumniate, and make you seem vile in the eyes of others. ”

“ 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 will to live, of life conscious and unconscious, the physical instinct, cruel, wasteful, and careless—at times it seemed to her to make of human beings mere foolish puppets, without will or dignity. ”

“ The denial at the door in the form of "Not at home," was already in vogue, and the argument is unanswerable as to the harm to the servant. "To hope that he will always lie for your convenience and not for his own, is perhaps expecting more from human nature in a low and unformed state than we have any right to expect. ”

“ Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose, everything—save to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could hold me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not only doth he lie, who speaketh contrary to his knowledge, but more so, he who speaketh contrary to his ignorance. And thus speak ye of yourselves in your intercourse, and belie your neighbour with yourselves.
Thus saith the fool: “Association with men spoileth the character, especially when one hath none.”
The one goeth to his neighbour because he seeketh himself, and the other because he would fain lose himself. Your bad love to yourselves maketh solitude a prison to you. ”

“ This unjustifiable conduct of yours will be the occasion of many an honest man suffering hardships, to which the mere circumstance of his being a captive would not subject him; probably friends of your own may be among the number; and nobody will give you any thanks for what you are doing. ”

“ Thousands of men were at this instant indebted to my generosity and exertions for every blessing they enjoyed; and I was cast forth as the refuse of the earth, pining under the alternate succession of solitude, negligence, and malice, my very existence and the manner of it unknown, except to one individual, who had, from the strangest and most unexpected motives, sworn eternal hostility to me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Avaunt, forbearance!—You suffer, and want us to be lenient towards you, when you, in your suffering, wrong both things and men. But what is the good of our leniency? You should be more cautious for your own sake. ”

“ But whence the Cause of this strange Misconduct and Omission? It springs, as I take it, from Ignorance, or Inconsiderateness, or Partiality, or Passion, or from all together; but the most frequently of any, from false Tenderness, and blind Indulgence.
Every Man has his own way of judging, and generally abides by it right or wrong. I knew a Gentleman of refined Understanding, who frequently forfeited it, by a boundless injudicious Fondness for his Children. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Brothers, the questions have been answered well. There are none but Nihilists present. Let us see each other's faces. (The Conspirators unmask.) Michael, recite the oath.
Michael. To strangle whatever nature is in us; neither to love nor to be loved, neither to pity nor to be pitied, neither to marry nor to be given in marriage, till the end is come; to stab secretly by night; to drop poison in the glass; to set father against son, and husband against wife; without fear, without hope, without future, to suffer, to annihilate, to revenge. ”

“ Precisely in those apostles of revenge and resentment, in those who are par excellence pessimists from indignation, who make it their mission to sanctify their filth with the name of "righteous indignation."... We others, whose one desire is to reclaim innocence on behalf of Becoming, would fain be the missionaries of a purer thought, namely, that no one is responsible for man's qualities ”

“ If you had used your prerogative with discretion, you might perhaps, though I confess I do not see how, have escaped the obloquy of the world. Into your domestic scene, where the interest is more lively, and the watch upon you more unremitted, it must have introduced alienation and distrust. As it is, I see you surrounded with dangers of a thousand denominations. Police has its eyes upon you; superstition will regard you as the familiar of demons; avarice will turn upon you a regard of jealousy and insatiable appetite. ”

“ From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondsmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who would have had any bond and who free. ”

“ But according to every hypothesis as to the law, and the temptations and pressures towards vice, here are the individuals who, of all the society, have yielded to said pressure. These are of the worst substance for enduring pressure! ”

“ The habit of neglect and scarcely-veiled impatience with which she had for many years been treated, and of which she had been fully and silently aware, had produced in her tortured mind an exasperated rebellion against the opinions of her neighbours, who were unable to see anything beyond their own comfort. ”

“ The primitive tendency to pursue the objects of desire without regard to the interests of fellow-men is gradually checked under the influence of four deterrents: the dread of retaliation, the dread of legal punishment, the dread of social dislike, and the dread of divine vengeance. ”

“ After all our precautions against ostentatiousness, censure of others, and the like, our very practice, if accounted of any moment, will probably be regarded as implying blame of those who allow themselves in the things from which we think it our duty to abstain ”

“ Enforced departure from his habitual standard of decency, either in the paraphernalia of life or in the kind and amount of his everyday activity, is felt to be a slight upon his human dignity, even apart from all conscious consi­deration of the approval or disapproval of his fellows. ”

“ There are a number of lesser ways in which careless ungodly persons may annoy and inconvenience those who desire to do their duty humbly and fully. Such, especially, are those, which seem intended in the text, unkind censure, carping, slander, ridicule, cold looks, rude language, insult, and, in some cases, oppression and tyranny. ”

“ But when I found that I was to remain, bound hand and foot, amidst beings corrupted beyond all cure, and daily to accustom my eyes and my mind to scenes and thoughts which could leave no high or holy feeling unblasted in my heart, I said, 'Man has no right to do this,' and I broke my chain. ”

“ Thinking over the first morning lesson of the day, as I sat watching by my kinsman's bedside, I was forcibly struck by the awful way, in which it appears to impress upon men the duty of separating themselves, in some way or other, from unbelievers. ”

“ But when our neighbors do wrong, we sometimes feel the fitness of making them smart for it, whether they have repented or not. The feeling of fitness seems to me to be only vengeance in disguise, and I have already admitted that vengeance was an element, though not the chief element, of punishment. ”

“ The sins, which the repentance of years had made more odious in the eyes of the old man, were narrated; the idleness and insubordination at first, then the reckless pursuit of pleasure, the craving for excitement, the defiance of rule and authority, till folly had become vice, and vice had led to crime. ”

“ But I often parted with money against my inclination, either because I wanted the resolution to refuse, or dreaded the appellation of a niggardly fellow; and I may be truly said to have squandered my estate, without honour, without friends, and without pleasure. The last may, perhaps, appear strange to men unacquainted with the masquerade of life: I deceived others, and I endeavoured to deceive myself; and have worn the face of pleasantry and gaiety, while my heart suffered the most exquisite torture. ”

“ Perhaps some will say, no body forces them into this kind of life; they come into it voluntary, they beg to be admitted, and they are at liberty to go away when they are weary of it; but this is a cruel answer. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ I grant, then, that, ordinarily, beggary is not the means of moral improvement; and that the orderly habits which attend upon the hot pursuit of gain, not only may effect an external decency, but may at least shelter the soul from the temptations of vice. ”

“ A dull sensation of irritation, sometimes self-conscious, but more often only recognized as a vague, irresistible discontent, keeps the aspiring in a state of gloomy restlessness, so that the struggle for existence assumes brutal and desperate phases, never known before. ”