Outsider

“ Lowther asked, still unconvinced, 66“Cannot you see that they live in a world of their own, cemented by their religious and national customs? You may attempt to enter that world, but you must for ever remain an outsider. ”

“ When people have so much for outsiders didn't it indicate a lack of inner intensity? ”

“ Do you know what it is to acknowledge no tie of blood that binds one life to another and makes for a common interest in joy or sorrow? To ask yourself: Do I belong here? To wonder, perhaps, why, in fact, you are here? To feel your isolation in a crowded thoroughfare, your remoteness in the midst of an alien family life? To feel, in truth, a stranger on this earth? ”

“ Strangers to each other, unlike in life and character, coming from widely separated places, some probably from countries beyond the ocean, yet all here, silently gazing in one direction beyond that rocky foreland, with the same look of infinite weariness on their grey faces and in their dim sad eyes, as if one thought and feeling and motive had drawn them to this spot. ”

“ I passed the term as a sort of interlude amongst strangers, and came home to my friendly lanes, to my deep and shadowy and secret valleys, as a man returns to his dear ones and his dear native fields after exile amongst aliens and outlanders. ”

“ I had descended, then, not only into an inhabited world—not only into a world of men, who, however they might differ in outward form, must resemble in their wants, ideas, and habits, in short, in mind if not in body, the lords of my own planet—but into a civilised world and among a race living under a settled order, cultivating the soil, and taming the brutes to their service. ”

“ Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world. ”

“ The incidents of emigration into a distant country—perils of the sea, passages of rivers and mountains, assaults of fortresses and cities, landings on a hostile shore, night-vigils by the side of blazing beacons, foragings for food, picquet services in the front of watchful foes—involved adventures capable of shedding the lustre of romance on friendship. ”

“ Go not eastward, go not westward,
For a stranger, whom we know not!
Like a fire upon the hearth-stone
Is a neighbor's homely daughter,
Like the starlight or the moonlight
Is the handsomest of strangers! ”

“ There we sat in plenitude of health and circumstance, while at the gate, through which none but the clean may ever stray, outside the pale of ordinary human association, these poor pariahs, these shapes that once were men in a world of men, sang to us, the whole, the fortunate, who possess return passage for that free world, the Outside—lost world to them. ”

“ In these rare spots, that are always in the remote country, untouched by the advantages of civilization, one is conscious of an enwrapping web or mist of spirit, the glamorous and wistful wraith of all the vanished shapes which once dwelt there in such close comradeship. ”

“ It has happened to many of you to be in foreign lands. You look: there are people there also, God’s creatures, too; and you talk with them as with the men of your own country. But when it comes to saying a hearty word—you will see. ”

“ Another, and different race of men, splendid alike in strength and gentleness, will walk the earth and climb its sky, bearing down the soul’s constrictions and frontiers, even unto the ramparts around the throne of life. ”

“ Those in the beyond were still linked to those on earth; all together made one undivided life, neither in the visible world alone nor in the hidden world alone, but in both; each according to their destinies and duties. ”

“ The world concedes it to us. I suggest then that your mind wanders through those dark scenes with an interest like that with which a traveller contemplates a strange country. And may they ever remain a strange region to you. May you ever continue to be what you are now, a bright being, at whose approach sorrow and sadness fly away. ”

“ THE AGENT. If you are wise, you will build yourselves a little nest secretly in the woods, away from civilization, and you will run away together to that nest whenever you are in the mood. A nest so small that it will hold only two beings and one thought—the thought of love. And then you will come back refreshed to civilization, where every soul is different from every other soul—you will let each other alone, forget each other, and do your own work in peace. ”

“ So we set our faces resolutely in the other direction, and kept on our course, vowing that nothing should tempt us to linger in the proximity of man. And very glad we both were when we found ourselves at last once more in a region where as yet man had not been seen, where we could wander abroad as we pleased by night or day, where the good forest smells were still untainted, and where we could lie in the water of the streams at sunset or fish as long as we pleased without thought of an enemy. ”

“ Look abroad into ordinary life, and examine the condition of its castaways. One finds himself alone in the crowd of mankind, with wind and tide against him, surrounded by influences like evil spirits, the earth dry and famished under his foot, and the heavens black with thunder above his head. ”

“ The land, the people, the friendship, the love, were like the jealous guardians of his body. Every day added a link to the fetters of that strange freedom. I felt convinced of it, as from day to day I learned more of the story. ”

“ Again, with many the outer life is but little; the passing scene, the din of the battle which humanity is ever waging, the one scarce is gazed upon or the other heard by those who retire much from the outward world, and live almost exclusively upon their own thoughts, and in an ideal realm of fancy, or a real one of internal conflict, which is hidden from the outer vision. ”

“ We are outside the one, waiting for a life from the unknown; we are inside the other, watching the departure of a spirit from the womb of the world into the unknown. To the region whither he goes, the man enters newly born. ”

“ I, who seem to be set apart—to feel nothing like the rest—to live in a different world—to dream of foreign things—to burn with a hope which to them is frenzy, and speak a language which they neither understand nor like! ”

“ Look there—think of those gallant fellows that have left home and country to bring freedom across the seas, and say, if you will be less warm in the cause than the alien and the stranger. How nobly they come along! ”

“ I am like a being thrown from another planet on this terrestrial ball, an alien, a pilgrim among its possessors; I have no share in their pursuits; and life is to me a pathless, a waste and howling, wilderness,—surface barrenness, its verge enveloped under dark-brown shade. ”

“ Take a country walk with one or other of these men; their different conversation will soon show you that they behold the earth with other eyes, and that the direction of their thoughts is as different as their favourite pursuit. ”

“ If the country, which you say looks very beautiful, be to you a melancholy place, consider in what light it must appear to me who have so lately lost my all—the faithful and affectionate partner of my heart—who alone could make either town or country pleasing to me. ”

“ To most of us, the outer world offers the highest attractions; only the few turn inwardly to the more beautiful world of mind.”
“Outward things fade—change—die; only spiritual things dwell in unfading beauty. ”

“ I came to one place and to another and to another, each quite without men, and each casting such an increasing spell upon the mind as is cast by voices heard in the night, when one does not know whether they are of the world, or not of the world. ”

“ Those familiar faces and hills and fields, which we now miss, but cannot erase from our mental vision, seek for dominancy in our souls; and in our very efforts to conform our selves to the new environments, the home with its jealous love binds us more to its sweet recollec tions. ”

“ Yes, from childhood to manhood, we wish to penetrate into the mysteries of those golden regions, and ever ask them to tell us ‘what you are.’ We see them gem the night with their lustrous beauty; we watch them as they pace their azure courts, and lose ourselves in high imaginings, too vast for us, while earth still keeps our souls its prisoner. ”

“ What object lessons some lives on the Continent would be to impatient souls at home, who feel discontented with their surroundings, and anxious to break away and wander abroad! Let them think twice before they cut the thousand ties it has taken a lifetime to form. Better monotony at your own fireside, my friends, where at the worst, you are known and have your place, no matter how small, than an old age among strangers. ”

“ To approach it from without is to see its mere accidental outline ragged against the sky. It is to come close enough to be superficial. The remote man, therefore, may stand for manhood; for the glory of birth or the dignity of death. ”

“ Whoever before, whoever again, will express with such heart-searching simplicity the secret fear which besets us all, that "dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns"? ”

“ But what I see and hear of the outer world is purely and simply a selection made by my senses to serve as a light to my conduct; what I know of myself is what comes to the surface, what participates in my actions. ”

“ Consider this, we have never been away from home, and if we were suddenly taken from our warm little nest, from our own country, and placed in another environment far from all who loved us, the change would be great. ”

“ Under its dreaming eyes men might, fearfully and with reverence, carry on their affairs,—fearfully and with reverence, catching the breath, speaking low, growing silent and stern in the presence of the North. ”

“ So the outlander will always sees outlandish in custom or costume; but serious relations depend on our getting beyond the fact of difference to the things wherein it differs. A good symbolical figure for all this may be found among the people who say, perhaps with a self-revealing simplicity, that they are bound to go to a lecture. ”

“ The outer world, the world of accident and ugliness, was so successfully excluded, and within the rich protecting square, beneath the patronising sky, the dream-figures, the summoned company, could hold their particular revel. ”

“ Thou hast been with me in idea in the four corners of the earth, by sea and by land, in dangers and in safety, in all seasons, regions, and situations, and there is no sufficient reason why those who are ever present in the spirit should be materially separated. ”

“ Presently up came our comrade, this other Calender, and saluted us, saying, “I am a stranger.” “We also are strangers,” answered we; and we walked on together, till darkness overtook us, and destiny led us to your house. ”

“ We explore strange frontiers into undiscovered countries; we cross from our own existences into other [149] people’s lives,—lose identity, feel, see as other people do,—and then lift our heads, rub our eyes, and become our old selves again—but not quite. ”

“ The beautiful aspect of the outward world, and the delight which it inspires, are no doubt proofs of a goodness somewhere which supports these, just as food and air are proofs of it. But they are more: they have a mystic meaning, they are hints and intimations of something more than eye, or ear, or mere intellect discover. ”

“ To be sure, by the aid of mirrors, we get a few glimpses of our outside aspect; but this occasional impression is always modified by that look of the soul from within outward which none but ourselves can take. ”

“ I should really like to lie down here, and sleep my way into another sphere of existence, if I could take with me one or two that love and need me, and was sure of a good haven for them on that other side.
The world seems to go so strangely wrong! The bad side triumphs ”

“ Had the roaring elements without permitted the stranger to have again ventured abroad, he saw that he could not have possessed himself of the keys of the outer door without the employment of force, which his feeling heart never could have allowed him to have attempted. ”

“ But when you are a stranger in a strange land, whose language you are imperfectly acquainted with and whose inhabitants are as uncommunicative as oysters and inclined to regard the foreigner as an enemy till he has proved the contrary, the difficulties are considerably aggravated. ”