Retraction

“ As these words bear testimony to the sin of man, so others to his infirmity, to the limitation of human faculties and human knowledge, to the truth of the proverb, that 'to err is human.' Thus 'to retract' means properly no more than to handle again, to reconsider. ”

“ Now, under the Restoration, the reaction set in, and the lower and earthly side of human nature—none the less human because it is at the bottom and not at the top—seemed determined to take its full revenge. ”

“ Out of ten thousand conflicting spurs of action comes, in the snapping of a finger, a sinister unity of purpose, which knows not the individual brain that conceived it, nor the logic of its action. Ten thousand clods, jumbled in confusion, are instantly turned into a single straight furrow. ”

“ But we feel, in all hard cases of volition, as if the line taken, when the rarer and more ideal motives prevail, were the line of greater resistance, and as if the line of coarser motivation were the more pervious and easy one, even at the very moment when we refuse to follow it. He who under the surgeon's knife represses cries of pain, or he who exposes himself to social obloquy for duty's sake, feels as if he were following the line of greatest temporary resistance. ”

“ If you get hit soon after you've done wrong, you think it's retribution, and if it holds off till you've forgotten all about it, you think it's a strange Providence, and you puzzle over it, but you don't reform. ”

“ And if all restraint is removed, it is as certain as fate that their condition will be far worse than it ever was before. It will be the old system, with all its mitigations rescinded and all its horrors intensified. ”

“ If directed, it shows tendency. The tendency may or may not be resisted. If not, we call the activity immanent, as when a body moves in empty space by its momentum, or our thoughts wander at their own sweet will. If resistance is met, its agent complicates the situation. If now, in spite of resistance, the original tendency continues, effort makes its appearance, and along with effort, strain or squeeze. ”

“ When such distressing, if not terrible, symptoms disappear or alter in character as soon as repression ceases, it is natural to conclude that the two processes stand to one another in the relation of cause and effect, but so great is the complexity of the conditions with which we are dealing in the medicine of the mind that it is necessary to consider certain alternative explanations. ”

“ And if restraints, however named, and through whatever apparatus of means exercised, are one in their action upon men, it must happen that those who are patient under one kind of restraint, are likely to be patient under another; and conversely, that those impatient of restraint in general, will, on the average, tend to show their impatience in all directions. ”

“ If the irritation acting upon the one is stronger than the force of will which should excite the other to activity, the reflex motion will take place in spite of what is called 'best intentions,' whether the occasion be a start of alarm, a desire to yawn, laugh, or weep at unfitting times, a scream, an angry gesture, or even a blow bestowed upon the object whence proceeds the incitement to wrath. ”

“ The retreat was in consequence determined on, to the great glee of our men, who were tired of inaction, and imagined they should feel their sovereign's sufferings less if engaged hand to hand with, the foe, in his service, than watching him as they had lately done, and dreading yet greater evils. ”

“ 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? ”

“ There is also in mental exertion an absolute necessity for re-action: how often do the thoughts, long confined to one subject, crave, as it were, to spring out of themselves, or to run off in any opposite direction! ”

“ After all, if the old order crumbled, was it not because of its own weakness? Was not the fact of its decay the sign of some secret disintegration, of rottenness at the core? And if the new spirit could destroy, perhaps it could build as well. ”

“ Trust small craft for discovering one man to another. Before three days and three nights had passed, we stood before each other, he and I, stripped to our souls. His every movement was an aggravation to me, especially when he played with the bespangled sextant and toy chronometer he had brought, and when each day, on plotting out my position on the chart according to dead reckoning, I found his, by observation, already there. ”

“ At the best one encounters a sort of revolt. This feeling of revolt, I suffered, in varying degrees of intensity, at the hands of almost every one who came near me; it would seem that nothing inflicts a deeper wound than suddenly to make one's distance felt. ”

“ I emphasize the expression "overcome resistance" because without competing motives and a sense of resistance we have no clear consciousness of volition. Where only one desire is present in consciousness, or where it is of overwhelming strength, feeling is succeeded by action without any recognizable hiatus. It is the sense of conflict, the break, that is essential to creating a lively sense of volition, and also, as shall see later, to the sense of choice and deliberation. ”

“ In regard to your criticism of my outline-definition of the conception of psychoanalysis, it must be observed that the road over the steep mountain is the line of least resistance only when a ferocious bull waits for you in the pleasant valley-road. In other words, the line of least resistance is a compromise with all demands, and not with inertia alone. It is prejudice to think that the line of least resistance coincides with the path of inertia. ”

“ Some things we know of them, that their action for example is largely one of restraint, of inhibition—that, in part at least, they act like the brakes on a machine, powerful brakes that can arrest the headlong course of primitive impulse. ”

“ Que l'on juge du motif de l'emprisonnement par celui de la rétractation! Oui: il est bien vrai que ce sont de simples soupçons, et des querelles sur les mots, qui ont pu faire languir un honnête citoyen pendant trois ans dans la plus étroite captivité. ”

“ It would seem, on the contrary, that such a tendency may continue to exist for a long period (even for a whole lifetime) in the unconscious regions of the mind, where its presence may be demonstrated by the use of suitable methods. Such an outcome of conflict, in which one tendency is driven down to the Unconscious and confined there by the other, is—as we have already stated—usually designated by the term Repression. ”

“ It is feared by many who realize that in these painfully acquired repressions and symptoms lie their safety and their protection from directly facing and dealing with tendencies and characteristics with which they feel unable to cope. The repression and the accompanying symptoms indicate a difficulty and a struggle, and in this way are a sort of compromise or substitute formation which permit, although only in a wasteful and futile manner, the activity of the repressed tendencies. ”

“ REPERCUSSION The principle of sympathetic vibration mentioned above also provides the explanation of the strange and little-known phenomenon called repercussion, by means of which any injury done to, or any mark made upon, the materialized body in the course of its wanderings will be reproduced in the physical body. ”

“ We have but one more process to undergo, and the attendant already stands at the head of our couch. This is the course of passive gymnastics, which excites so much alarm and resistance in the ignorant Franks. It is only resistance that is dangerous, completely neutralizing the enjoyment of the process. Give yourself with a blind submission into the arms of the brown Fate, and he will lead you to new chambers of delight. ”

“ Repose is unknown to any; and such, for instance, as seem the most torpid, as they hang in dead clusters against the glass, are intrusted with the most mysterious and fatiguing task of all: it is they who secrete and form the wax. ”

“ A sudden and complete disturbance of the measure may result in the gravest consequences, even in death. We have here an instance in point. We must therefore lay ourselves out to restore as quickly, and as effectually as possible, the steady measure that has been disturbed ”

“ That the operation in itself, by its removing of mechanical obstacles, cannot be the true stimulus of any restitutions, is simply shown by all those restitutions that do not happen at the place of the wound. ”

“ I heard something of it, however, and, young as I was, could not help wondering how men who carried the worst passions of life into their retreat, could imagine that retreat was a refuge from the erosions of their evil tempers, the monitions of conscience, and the accusations of God. ”

“ While this Accelerator will enable us to concentrate ourselves with tremendous impact upon any moment or occasion that demands our utmost sense and vigour, the Retarder will enable us to pass in passive tranquillity through infinite hardship and tedium. ”

“ One would think that if obliged to pronounce such a doom upon any, he would do it with tears—that he would retire into his closet, and throw ashes upon his head, and come forth in sackcloth, overwhelmed at the hard necessity which compelled the stern decree. ”

“ Still others seemed to pass through a mental and psychical struggle, a battling with inherent reluctance to do that which was demanded of them, but with the inevitable result that finally the reluctance faded out of them and gave way to redoubled energy, redoubled effort to listen, learn, obey. ”

“ Beyond the question of certainty is the question of detachment. The process by which principles are discovered and appropriated is other than that by which, in practice, they are applied; and our most sacred and disinterested convictions ought to take shape in the tranquil regions of the air, above the tumult and the tempest of active life #4. ”

“ An inadvertent twist or a simple tangle quickly knots the thread, unless thoughtful patience rescues. Recklessness means hopeless disarray, and the soft fluff of warming color becomes unkempt disorder, a confused mass from which the thread broken again and again is extracted. ”

“ Your own change is quite sufficient—it gives us all we need. It will give us, if we retrace the steps of it, everything, everything!"
Mrs. Briss considered. "I don't quite see, do I? why, at this hour of the night, we should begin to retrace steps." ”

“ We are tendencies, or rather, symptoms, and none of us complete. We touch and go, and sip the foam of many lives. Rotation is the law of nature. When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor ”

“ The new scenes and occupations in which they are suddenly and abruptly placed, like the transplanting of a tree, make them pine and suffer for a time, until restraint becomes a habit, and in both body and mind the convict becomes a new man. ”

“ The horrors of the retreat can only be known by those who experienced them, and there was little light amid the darkness of apparent failure. It must be remembered that our men were fighting all the time, sometimes it seemed to them succeeding, but really only succeeding in allowing the main body to retreat to the rear. ”

“ Reaction is equal to action; obstacles on the way may delay its return or break up its energy, but the time comes when the fractions return to the centre that generates the disturbance, which thus receives from the Law a perfectly just retribution. ”

“ Whether, therefore, there be resistance or no resistance, the endeavour will still be the same. For simply to endeavour is to go. But when two bodies, having opposite endeavours, press one another, then the endeavour of either of them is that which we call pressure, and is mutual when their pressures are opposite. ”

“ You want balance, Leicester, you want balance. It would be the making of you to have some serious purpose in life. You will run against something of the kind soon—you'll get engaged, perhaps, and then you'll regret your happy-go-lucky ways. ”

“ If he hadn’t fallen a victim to an inborn streak of recklessness, a habit of taking chances,—well, I can’t say just how things would have panned out. I’m not fatalist enough to believe that we crawl or run or soar through our allotted span of years according to some prearranged scheme which we are powerless to modify. ”

“ It is only at intervals that the clamour on the subject is loud and vehement. But it seems to us that, during the remissions, the feeling gathers strength, and that every successive burst is more violent than that which preceded it. ”

“ A quiet hint to Conservatives.—That which we did not know formerly, and know now, or might know if we chose,—is the fact that a retrograde formation, a reversion in any sense or degree, is absolutely impossible. ”

“ This kind of forgetfulness was called repression, and is the normal mechanism by which nature protects the individual from such painful feelings as are caused by unpleasant and unacceptable experiences and thoughts, the recognition of his egoistic nature, and the often quite unbearable conflict of his weaknesses with his feelings of idealism. ”