Ordeal

“ A blast of anger or ill-temper has blown, or a gust of sentiment, or even a gentle zephyr of sentimentality, and the whole scene has at once become a confusion of flapping canvas, tangled cordage, and shouting, struggling humanity. ”

“ With this word, firmly pronounced, Miss Cornelia's ordeal came to an end; she descended white and dazed. Elizabeth leaned over as she returned to her place and pressed her hand with a faint little smile. "It's all right, auntie, I'm glad you spoke the truth." And so the episode passed.
"She really has done no more harm than we expected," Bobby Van Antwerp observed to his wife. "It is one of those things which sound much worse than they really are. After all, what does it amount to? The hysterical assertion of an excited girl! A guilty woman is more careful what she says." ”

“ It is the rut—straight, dark, narrow, with no horizons, and no general view of the outside world—which is the greatest of social dangers. More than anything else it tends to narrowness of sympathy and bitterness of heart. ”

“ Fate, which for thirty years forced my inclinations, for thirty others has seemed to oppose them; and this continued opposition, between my situation and inclinations, will appear to have been the source of enormous faults, unheard of misfortunes, and every virtue except that fortitude which alone can do honor to adversity. ”

“ Would I could foresee a term to our misery!—Who but yourself shall find a remedy for our misfortunes? Shall we delay, until time brings to light that which is now a secret, and the affront we have received entail on us a shame more intolerable than death itself? ”

“ I might boast that during all this scene of horror not a sigh or expression of fear escaped from me, had not my support been found in that miserable, though strong, consolation, that all mankind were involved in the same calamity, and that I imagined I was perishing with the world itself. ”

“ Ridiculous systems wound over the earth like a snake Devouring the children of Fear! Ridiculous customs, Ridiculous judgments and laws, philosophies, worships. You saw through and laughed at—you saw above all That a soul must make end with a groan, or a curse, or a laugh. ”

“ I had difficulty in picturing to myself without bitterness and fatigue my life to come, similar to millions of others, void of deep sorrows as of sublime joys, this dreary life which in ten years or in forty would end in solitude, sickness, and suffering, in the clutches of that cursed enemy, Boredom, whose first treacherous onslaught I thought I could feel.... ”

“ I do not repent that I roused you from your dream, though your present position is painful. I have done nothing more than hasten a crisis, which every soul like yours has sooner or later to pass through, and where the essential thing is, at what time of life it is endured. ”

“ How frightful a thing it is to consider what—under an overruling hand and will omnipotent—may be the consequences of the smallest deed we do. The consequences immediate, proximate, future! How many lives, what an amount of misery, how much damnation, may depend upon a light word, an idle jest, a sportive trick! ”

“ Previously contemplating and Meditating that the cause we were contending for, was a just cause, and a cause that all mankind ought to be interested in. Having meditated on all these things, I thought myself in duty bound, to suffer with patience & fortitude, with my fellow prisoners in my country’s cause. ”

“ The child who, from love, bears trials and burdens placed upon him by the father, the slave who, from fear of the lash, bears trials and burdens placed upon him by the master, the hireling who, from desire for the wages, bears trials and burdens, and the stoic who, from sheer force of will, or from a cold sense of duty, bears trials and burdens, because he must,—are developing altogether different characters. ”

“ A contemplation of emergencies that may arise should plainly lead us to avoid their creation, either through a careless disregard of present duty or even an undue stimulation and ill-timed expression of feeling. ”

“ It is now time I should come to the grand revolution of my destiny, to the catastrophe which has divided my life in two parts so different from each other, and, from a very trifling cause, produced such terrible effects. ”

“ But this, I think, may be easily accounted for, by the turbulence and justling of passions, upon the various and surprising turns, incidents, revolutions, and events of good and evil fortune, that arrive in the course of a long evening at play; the mind being wholly taken up, and the consequences of nonattention so fatal. ”

“ We see only physical conditions,—mere palpable signs given in the flesh; nor know aught of the spirit, with its agonising recollections of home,—father, sisters, brothers,—hopes once entertained of a successful future to shed happiness upon them,—all blasted and destroyed, and the only contrast a jail and ignominy. ”

“ What a hallowed and important crisis is that, when a glimpse of the intellectual or moral world breaks in upon the mind—what complicated reflections of regret and astonishment arise, while it strives to arrange and disclose its conceptions and ideas! ”

“ A history of moral epidemics, drawn up by a philosophic pen, would add much to our knowledge of the mysteries of human character and human power, as well as of the probable contingencies of human destiny. ”

“ Not what is called a beautiful man; nor yet, by all appearance, what is called a happy. On the contrary, the face bears evidence of many sorrows, as they are termed, of much hard labour done in this world ”

“ Again; we hear the complaint that not only men, but circumstances change. Why knit myself, people will ask, to one who to-morrow may be whirled away from me by some eddy of circumstances, and so go on his way, while I see him no more? ”

“ Between the blaze and the report you enter time, born, living, gone, and all the long revolving years between of happiness and sorrow, sin and penance, the passions, loves, ambitions, triumphs, failures, from birth to death exist within this instant we call a human life. ”

“ During these few days he is full of trouble, not only troubled, but full of trouble, either toiling or fretting, grieving or fearing. No day passes without some vexation, some hurry, some disorder or other. Those that are fond of the world shall have enough of it. ”

“ Wait till an accident or misfortune happens, till want or calamity come, or contradiction ensue, or some of the crosses which belong to human life, as clouds and tempests to the constitution of nature, assail us. ”

“ Whether the incidents, or the characters, are copied from life, is of little importance—The only question is, if the circumstances, and situations, are altogether improbable? If not—whether the consequences might not have followed from the circumstances?—This is a grand question, applicable to all the purposes of education, morals, and legislation—and on this I rest my moral—'Do men gather figs of thorns, or grapes of thistles?' asked a moralist and a reformer. ”

“ I must be pardoned for giving these distressing details; but how otherwise can I depict the misery, moral and physical, which we are enduring? And with it all, I dare not venture to hope that we have reached the climax of our sufferings. ”

“ Events, sometimes comic but generally tragic, play upon the weaknesses of his characters and bring about entanglements, misunderstandings, and suffering far in excess of the deserts of these well-intentioned people. No escape is suggested. Resignation to misfits, mistakes, and misfortune is what remains. ”

“ Calamity and disaster are used of sudden and severe misfortunes, often overwhelming; ill fortune and ill luck, of lighter troubles and failures. We speak of the misery of the poor, the hardships of the soldier. Affliction, chastening, trial, and tribulation have all an especially religious bearing, suggesting some disciplinary purpose of God with beneficent design. ”

“ No doubt—no doubt—the Troubles are still flying about the world, and have increased in multitude, rather than lessened, and are a very ugly set of imps, and carry most venomous stings in their tails. I have felt them already, and expect to feel them more as I grow older. ”

“ Melancholy, I suppose, is the curse of the thinking classes; but I confess my soul wears a great uneasiness these days! The sudden and amazing turnover in human affairs, dramatic beyond anything in history, already seems to be taken as a matter of course. ”

“ And yet at the end, and with the best will in the world, one closes the narrative with a feeling of desolation; a revolt against a life which, [77] with all its energies and satisfactions, has somehow lost from it that zest and sparkle and inner glow of accepted adventure which alone would seem to give human life significance. ”

“ Poverty, care, anger, coldness, and indifference, the rage of passion, the obstinate retention of narrow purposes, indications of change and division in the spiritual world, entire dependence on that of Nature—in one word all that is implied in the transitory condition of human life—leaves its indelible, if quite incalculable, expression on the varied surface of the faces of mankind. ”

“ In the country wherein thou livest, bad; in the town whereof thou art an inhabitant, worse; in thine own street, worser; in thine own house, worst of all. Think of it in thy family, in thy fortune, in thine intestines. In thy affairs, distressing; in thy members, painful; in thy conduct, ruinous. Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security of the state. As the beams to a house, as the bones to the microcosm of man, so is order to all things. ”

“ But the sudden and violent change in your whole disposition, has proved only too plainly, that some concealed and unfortunate event—some mysterious adventure, at which we cannot guess, is the cause of your melancholy; which cause, however remote, still continues to exercise over you the same destructive influence. ”

“ How to use the hours of danger.—Persons and conditions whose every movement signifies a danger to our possessions, honour, life, and death, and to those most dear to us, appear to us in quite a different light. ”

“ The petty crafts which make the pleader's art,
The dolts who sit in judgment, when the one
Who knows all must be silent; but you know not
The intolerable burden of suspense,
The hard and hateful gaze of hungry eyes
Which gloat upon your suffering. When doom came
It was well to know the worst, and hear no more
The half-forgotten horrors. But I think
The sense of common peril, common wrong,
Knits us in indissoluble unity,
Closer than years of converse. ”

“ Hence the beautiful, noble efforts which are from time to time brought to light, as being continuously made by those who have once hung on the cross of agony, in order that others may not suffer as they have done ”

“ In a foreign climate, being unknown, I might, with some probability of success, endeavor to conceal my unhappy calamity—a calamity calculated, even more than beggary, to estrange the affections of the multitude, and to draw down upon the wretch the well-merited indignation of the virtuous and the happy. ”

“ There are experiences—desolating experiences of calamity, of wrecked homes and shattered dreams, of frantic pain, of the tragic and apparently senseless waste of precious lives—in the face of which the most rational and philosophical interpretation and even the best theistic theories must sound hollow and irrelevant. ”

“ When we turn to the page of history, and read of men visited by adversity—what do we say to those of their fellow-creatures who fall off from them on account of their misfortunes? Do we not call them little-minded, and visit them with our contempt? ”

“ Thus much I thought it my duty to say to you who are under my care, to warn you against those temporal evils, which may draw the worst of spiritual evils after them; such as heart-burnings, murmurings, discontents, and all manner of wickedness, which a desperate condition of life may tempt men to. ”

“ Take the case of one who has had to weather all through life the storms of adversity; to stand exposed to the blasts of calumny, reproach, and wrongful testimony; who has had to suffer, like the apostle of the Gentiles, the peril of the deep, the peril of the wilderness, and the more galling peril of false brethren. ”

“ They confuse the meaning of agitation and action. It is a terrible confusion, which arose in society principally since the Eighteenth Century. That century began to disturb the springs of our inward life. ”

“ Very often, not having enough of the first in the usual course of their existence, they contrived a little more, which led to an extra quantity of the second and third ingredients of their lives, and, in the end, to many a grievous tragedy. ”

“ But, that your troubles are many at once, and arrows come in from all airths, from country, friends, wife, children, foes, estate, and right down from God who is the hope and stay of your soul, I confess is more, and very heavy to be borne. ”

“ I have seen the territories of our Allies seized, wasted, and held fast by an undefeated enemy. I have seen our small army driven back; fighting with as much skill and bravery as ever in its history; suffering losses unparalleled in its history; holding its own in the end, but against what overwhelming numbers and by what sacrifices! The human triumph is apparent enough ”

“ When we slowly recover from the tumult and passion of some violent distress, a peculiar stillness falls upon the Mind, and the atmosphere around it becomes in that stillness appallingly clear. We knew not, while wrestling with our woe, the extent of its ravages. ”