Reluctance

“ There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it with reluctance. ”

“ But what of the unfortunate few who, through some strange moral twist, are "complexionally prepense" to sameness; who feel a passionate regret for what has been lost, and a passionate reluctance to part with what is fast slipping away; and who, as the great world rolls relentlessly on its appointed course, find themselves "forever broken on the wheel of time"? ”

“ He discovers a great reluctance to return on former periods of his life. To all that has not been shared with her, rights and duties, bygone fortunes and dispositions, he can look back only by a difficult and repugnant effort of the will. ”

“ There is nothing which we receive with so much Reluctance as Advice. ”

“ We often have great reluctance in setting about an appointed task, the apparent difficulty continuing to increase with delay; but once engaged in it, we proceed with pleasure until it is completed. It is the case in those “trifles which make the sum of human beings.” ”

“ Though I hung back with an awkwardness that was really unfeigned, yet when she so readily left me, I thought it was not so kind, and I began to think she should have pressed me still on to it; so foolishly backward are we to the thing which of all the world we most desire, mocking ourselves with a feigned reluctance when the negative would be death to us. ”

“ If our sincere and restful indifference to things which concern us not were shaken by every blast, we should have no available force for things which concern us deeply. If eloquence did not sometimes make us yawn, we should be besotted by oratory. And if we did not approach new acquaintances, new authors, and new points of view with life-saving reluctance, we should never feel that vital regard which, being strong enough to break down our barriers, is strong enough to hold us for life. ”

“ Only the hopeless suppression of natural desires, the conflict through years of ardent youth with sordid circumstances, could have brought him to the pass he had now reached—one of desperation centred in self. ”

“ Chance has given you back eyes to see, a heart that can be broken. Chance and the stirrings of a long-gone life have torn down the veil age spins so thick and fast. Pride and ambition; what dull fools men are! Effort and duty, what dull fools men are!’ He listened on and on to these phantom pleadings and to the rather coarse old Lawford conscience grunting them mercilessly down, too weary even to try to rest. ”

“ Thus a disconcerting chance or a temporary obstacle rouses no disposition to measure strength with adversity, or to cope with untoward combinations, but an angry amazement, an indignant displeasure, a sense of trespass upon one’s lawful domain of success and happiness that result in blundering egotistic self-assertion, which often fails in the clearance of the obstruction to the paths of bland and self-satisfied progress. ”

“ But the ignoring of the immense value of restraint as an element in character is complete; and in the case of many whose choice is slowly and doubtfully made in those younger years when the desire for life in its fullness of experience is strongest, and the wisdom of knowledge of life in its effects is weakest, the advice to obey impulse at all costs, to throw doubt and authority to the winds, and "live my life and have my day," is of dubious utility. ”

“ I form no expectation of alteration for the better; but the monotonous present is intolerable to me. Neither hope nor joy are my pilots—restless despair and fierce desire of change lead me on. I long to grapple with danger, to be excited by fear, to have some task, however slight or voluntary, for each day’s fulfilment. ”

“ In short, as in every human pursuit there is a certain vanity, and as every acquisition contains within itself the seed of disappointment, so there is a period of life when we pause from the pursuit, and are discontented with the acquisition. ”

“ Let them remember that a time of distress is a time of dreadful temptation, and all the strength to resist is taken away; poverty presses, the soul is made desperate by distress, and what can be done? ”

“ I have been too much accustomed to self-indulgence, to bear restraint, and should it ever be imposed by a master's hand, my rebellious spirit would break the bonds of duty, and assert its independence. ”

“ Omit a duty for once, and it will be more difficult to execute when necessity compels its performance. From what knowledge I have of my own character and propensities, I find that I am inclined to delay, to procrastinate, and to neglect favourable opportunities, either from not duly appreciating them, or from a vain hope that they will return again. ”

“ But somehow discontent fell upon him; he felt vague yearnings for his own kind, for the life he had been shut out from--a general sort of desire, which men sometimes feel, to break out and taste the prime of living. ”

“ It seems as though I were a thousand leagues away from the things of the world, and that there is a sort of truce and respite in the miserable routine of my existence, at once so agitated and so commonplace. ”

“ I have returned with the living, singing, greedy of life,—a bed of hay paradise and a can of Pinard the ecstasy of forgetfulness. I have rebelled, hesitated, been caught with the cold nausea of fear, thrilled at a word from a peasant boy kneeling and crossing himself, and awakened121 to the call of leadership which was mine by noblesse oblige, become suddenly and disdainfully impersonal when responsibility had fallen to me and I could do no less than the least. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus the crisis of disappointment which breaks up the hope and effort of so many men who start well, or else throws them into poor and sterile courses, proved in this grave, fervent, and most reasonable spirit only the beginning of more serious endeavours in a new and more arduous vein. ”

“ Even taking your own view of the sorrows which have come upon you, as a consequence of refusing to be guided by your natural and appointed guides and friends, even admitting that there is no more prospect or hope for you in this world—if it were possible for an instant to suppose such folly—even if it were so, is that a reason for forfeiting all hope in the next world also? ”

“ Are we then so sunk in dejection, so remote from the splendid and unconscious joy which the struggle for life gave to the centuries that are over? Time was when men needed the curb, and not the spur, in that valorous contention. ”

“ Oh, how they seem to strain each nerve! How desperate their all but Herculean efforts to try and save themselves! One moment they appear to be lost; the next we notice them again struggling on as determinedly as ever. ”

“ Ahead of her loomed, only dimly discerned as yet, the ordeal of strenuous monotony; the deadly-dull, prolonged grind wherein endurance, as it hardens, is subjected to a constantly harsher strain, until the soul revolts as, in the earlier stage, the body had rebelled. ”

“ Such men found high and low stations equally unable to satisfy the wishes of a distempered mind, and were unable to shelter themselves in the closest retreat from disappointment, solicitude, and misery. ”

“ Now, if you give up your purpose and come to me with the feeling that you have only made a choice, the regret that you did not have the opportunity you longed for, may grow and grow, till—till it may become an unhappiness. ”

“ You are now exposed to some temptations which will probably never again attack you with so much force as now, and against which we call upon you to struggle with all your might. Perhaps the worst and strongest of these is the temptation to rest from your labours, satisfied with what you have already done. ”

“ If in my subsequent career I could bear disappointment without discontent, and misfortune without repining; if I could feel resignation suppressing impatience, and contentment controlling ambition, I owe it to the struggles which I have endeavored to describe. It is in the rugged vale of tribulation that the path to human happiness is found. ”

“ Now, in the midst of it, so great has become the excitement, so intense the anxiety, all fear and prudence vanishes, and the men leap to their feet, and fire and load, and fire and load, in the wildest frenzy of desperation. ”

“ The only peculiarity which might have excited suspicion in very particular persons, was the hurry and agitation in which she seemed to exist—a perpetual restlessness—an over-desire to excite interest and to produce effect. ”

“ You say you are chained by circumstances; you cry out for better opportunities, for a wider scope, for improved physical conditions, and perhaps you inwardly curse the fate that binds you hand and foot. ”

“ This new life will betake itself along the line of least resistance—or should we not rather say, the least resistances, as a "compromise with all the necessities," in a just balancing of pleasure and unpleasure? ”

“ Into such anguish many have sunk upon some sudden diminution of their fortune, an unexpected blast of their reputation, or the loss of children or of friends. They have suffered all sensibility of pleasure to be destroyed by a single blow, have given up for ever the hopes of substituting any other object in the room of that which they lament, resigned their lives to gloom and despondency, and worn themselves out in unavailing misery. ”

“ And when you come to man, what a chaos of hungers and impulses keep thrusting him through his cycle of quaint tasks! And in every human heart you find some sorrow, some frustration, some lurking pang. ”

“ Cursed with an ambition which would not let him rest, which ever urged him to new struggles, new extravagances, new ventures, and contrariwise cursed with a sensitiveness, a cowardice that made each step in the path of his career an added terror to his brain, each rough encounter a fresh misery, each rebuff a stinging agony. ”

“ How seldom do human wishes flow smoothly towards their object; for a while they may steal imperceptibly on, unstopped, though often checked; winding round, or perseveringly surmounting impediments. Or obstacles still more mighty present themselves, and then our wishes gather power;—they swell, and dash down all impediments, and take an impetuous course. ”

“ That power of endurance, that quickness of apprehension, that calmness of judgment, which enable him to seize the opportunities that others lose, and persist in the lines of conduct in which others fail—are these not talents?—are they not, in the present state of the world, among the most distinguished and influential of mental gifts? ”

“ As this web of intrigue—for so I cannot but feel it—draws more closely around me, I grow more and more impatient to break bounds and be away! It is evident enough that my destiny is to be the sport of some accident, lucky or unlucky, in the fate of others. ”

“ There, sir, you fail, and will continue to fail, unless you work your own redemption. It is as though you had been born on a dead level—aimed point-blank at birth. You should have been born at an angle of forty-five degrees. ”

“ My strength is rapidly failing, and I must leave behind me many unsettled questions and business half completed. The dead leaves of disappointed hopes fill all the landscape, and I see no prospect of settling my affairs. ”

“ Those who have ever had cast upon them more than their strength seemed framed to bear—the weak, the aspiring, the adventurous and self-sacrificing in will, and the faltering in nerve—will understand the kind of agony which I sometimes endured. ”

“ What of those numberless struggling creatures to whom such happy fortune could never come, who, be their aspirations and capabilities what they might, must struggle vainly, agonise, and in the end despair? ”

“ Some of you, it may be, do not as yet see this clearly, and when you can evade a task or dodge a difficult demand upon you, count it as so much gained. But in your heart of hearts you know better, and are dimly conscious that you are losing and not gaining by your neglect. ”

“ Ardent, devoted, disinterested, and fearless of consequences, with no enmity against any one, and no self-object in view, I felt impelled by a necessity that can alone be understood or apprehended by those who, in times of peril, find themselves forced into prominence. ”

“ The man who resolved to commit himself to such a task should come forward with apparent difficulty,—with great diffidence, and even with actual difficulty. He should keep himself almost hidden, as behind a mask, and should tell of his own ambition with doubtful, quivering voice. ”

“ In those humbler walks of my profession, from whose wearisomeness I was exempted by my sudden favour with the public, I have seen, though not known, the most painful drudgery,—the most constant fatigue,—the most sad contrast between real cares and feigned merriments,—the most anxious, penurious, and laborious existence imaginable. ”