Sensibility

“ As I reflect on these scenes of infantine ignorance, I feel my heart interested, and become sensibly affected—and however futile these feelings may appear as I communicate them to you—they are feelings, I venture to assert, which every one must have experienced who is possessed of a heart of sensibility. ”

“ To a frame of mind naturally strong and contemplative, but rendered by extraordinary events sceptical and intensely thoughtful, he unites an undeviating love of rectitude, a disposition of the gentlest [393] kind, feelings the most delicate and pure, and a sensibility painfully alive to the smallest deviation from virtue or propriety of conduct. ”

“ If you have any sensibility or imagination, this will establish such an intercourse between you and the Supreme Being, as will be of infinite consequence to you in life. It will communicate an habitual cheerfulness to your tempers, give a firmness and steadiness to your virtue, and enable you to go through all the vicissitudes of human life with propriety and dignity. ”

“ Passive sensibility, active sensibility, understanding, and will, are, if we be not mistaken, all that our understanding contains; and this is why we cannot conceive of any attribute characteristic of being, except these four. ”

“ The affections, and those virtues which signally reach them, we have for ages been accustomed to place to the heart’s account. We yield to it all the virtues of sensibility, and thus it becomes the great source and centre of feeling. ”

“ It was thus, the innate purity of the mind betrayed the unconscious sensibility of the heart, while the passions became so intimately incorporated with the spirit, as to leave their influence and agency almost equal. ”

“ For this purpose you must often imagine—natural dimness of perception, absence of acute sensibility, indifference to wounding the feelings of others from mere carelessness and want of reflective powers, little natural conscientiousness, an entire absence of the taste or the power of metaphysical examination into the effect produced by our actions. ”

“ We may now follow the evolution of the life of feeling in its chief stages, which are—pre-conscious sensibility, the appearance of the primitive emotions, their transformation either into complex and abstract emotions or into that stable and chronic state which constitutes the passions. ”

“ of sensibility or enthusiasm, so much as of indifference:—it argues presence of mind, rather than enlargement of ideas. ”

“ To give the shortest definition of sensibility, replied the sage, I should say that it is the result of acute senses, finely fashioned nerves, which vibrate at the slightest touch, and convey such clear intelligence to the brain, that it does not require to be arranged by the judgment. Such persons instantly enter into the characters of others, and instinctively discern what will give pain to every human being ”

“ If the feeling is awakened in view of action proposed to be done, it may be described, in the absence of a more specific designation, as a sense of obligation to do or not to do the deed—this feeling of obligation being based on a perception of the obligation. From the intellectual74 discernment the emotional sensibility springs as a sentiment which forms part of the impelling force of conscience. ”

“ Thus we are constantly brought back to the first question: why is it precisely the degree of suffering that determines the degree of sympathetic pleasure which we take in an emotion? and one answer 351only is possible; it is because the attack made on our sensibility is precisely the condition necessary to set in motion that quality of mind of which the activity produces the pleasure we feel in sympathetic affections. ”

“ Lastly, where Virtue is, Sensibility is the ornament and becoming Attire of Virtue. On certain occasions it may almost be said to become [37] Virtue. But Sensibility and all {24} the amiable qualities may likewise become, and too often have become, the panders of Vice and the instruments of Seduction. ”

“ "your heart, new to the world, and full of warmth and sensibility, receives its first impressions with eagerness. Artless yourself, you suspect not others of deceit; and viewing the world through the medium of your own truth and innocence, you fancy all who surround you to deserve your confidence and esteem. What pity, that these gay visions must soon be dissipated! What pity, that you must soon discover the baseness of mankind, and guard against your fellow-creatures as against your foes!" ”

“ Juliet could only shed tears, though tears so delicious, that it was luxury to shed them. Lady Aurora would have kissed them from her cheeks; but her own mingled with them so copiously, that it was not possible; and though the smiles of expressive joy that brightened each countenance, shewed their sensibility to be but fulness of happiness, the meeting, the acknowledgment, with the throbbing recollection of all that was passed, so touched each gentle heart, that they could but weep and embrace, embrace and weep, alternately. ”

“ Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear conscience. All this may seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed very few of us have the will or the capacity to look consciously under the surface of familiar emotions. ”

“ And in this have I long believed that my power consists; in sympathy, and that part of the imagination which relates to sentiment and contemplation. I am formed, if for anything not in common with the herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the living beings which surround us, and to communicate the conceptions which result from considering either the moral or the material universe as a whole. ”

“ The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, in indignations and enthusiasms, in judgments—and even in love. The manner in which, as in the features and character of a human face, the inner truth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind. ”

“ The second order introduces the sympathetic emotions. They are evoked on sight of the sufferings or emotional states of others. If we see a woman insulted, we are filled with indignation; and this emotion has a sympathetic origin. The third order comprises the complex feelings known as sentiments. They have reference to certain qualities of objects or activities of individuals which inspire admiration or disapprobation. They are abstract in their nature, and belong to the conceptual sphere. Such are love of truth, beauty, virtue, liberty, justice. ”

“ The tension of those mutually antagonistic impulses which make balance, and so unity, and so the conditions for loss of sense of self, clears the way for tasting the full savor of pleasure in bright color, flowing line, exquisite tone-sequence, moving thought. ”

“ But, while reason and judgment teach us to control the expression of certain feelings, they urge that this control be exercised in transforming those feelings into helpful ones and giving them an adequate outlet. Such a substitution has been suggested above. Let us not forget that nothing in existence is of personal value until it gives some one an emotion; that feeling is the beauty of life; that living, without the happy, wholesome affective glow, would not be worth the effort; that beauty and strength and sweetness of feeling make for a worthy self. ”

“ Thus, entering into sympathy with their situations and states, we reproduce them in ourselves. In our tones, attitudes, gestures, and expressions of countenance, we unconsciously look, act, and seem like them. ”

“ My course of study had led me to believe, that all mental and moral feelings and qualities, whether of a good or of a bad kind, were the results of association; that we love one thing, and hate another, take pleasure in one sort of action or contemplation, and pain in another sort, through the clinging of pleasurable or painful ideas to those things, from the effect of education or of experience. ”

“ When we are struck by the generosity or baseness of an action, or feel the influence of character, or experience the pleasure of harmonious or the pain of discordant relations, our consciousness is in no way concerned with matter. ”

“ What that sensitive mind, and tender conscience, and loving heart, and religious soul, went through even in a few hours, under a situation so sudden and tremendous, is perhaps beyond the power of words to paint. ”

“ The intellectual faculties are wakeful, questioning, mistrustful; the emotions are blind, hopeful, confiding; the one reasoning, exacting, demonstrating; the other, believing, inspiring, devout. The intellect sees, the emotions feel; and, though these functions may blend, the one can never supersede the other.
The quality of the emotional faculties is represented by Benevolence, Sympathy, Joy, Hope, Confidence, Gratitude, Love, and Devotion, all of which are the very antitheses of the attributes of animal feeling, described as Melancholy, Fear, Anger, Hate, Malevolence, and Despair. ”

“ The reasoning we have developed rests, in a word, on the confusion between a pleasant thought and the thought of a pleasure; between an idea of an objective act or event, contemplation of which is pleasant, and of which I desire the realization, and the idea of myself as the subject of a feeling of satisfaction which is to be. ”

“ They reckon up several sorts of pleasures, which they call true ones; some belong to the body, and others to the mind. The pleasures of the mind lie in knowledge, and in that delight which the contemplation of truth carries with it; to which they add the joyful reflections on a well- spent life, and the assured hopes of a future happiness. ”

“ The pleasures of regularity, propriety, convenience, compose the emotion raised by a fine building.
If external properties make a being or thing agreeable, we have reason to expect the same effect from those which are internal; and accordingly power, discernment,{48} wit, mildness, sympathy, courage, benevolence, render the possessor agreeable in a high degree. So soon as these qualities are perceived in any person, we instantaneously feel pleasant emotions, without the slightest act of reflection or of attention to consequences. ”

“ Fix the countenance in the pattern of a particular emotion—in a look of anger, of wonder, or of scorn—and the emotion whose appearance is thus imitated will not fail to be aroused. And if we try, while the features are fixed in the expression of one passion, to call up in the mind a quite different one, we shall find it impossible to do so.... ”

“ The distinction between wise use and misuse lies in whether disintegrating or creative thoughts, with their correspondingly energizing or depressing [Pg 41] emotions or feelings, are allowed to hold sway in consciousness.
Energizing Emotions
When we speak of energizing emotions or feelings we mean love, courage, brightness, earnestness, cheer, enthusiasm. When we speak of depressing emotions or feelings we mean doubt, fear, worry, gloom.
No elements are more essential to a successful business or a successful life than the right kind of emotional elements. ”

“ And Affections.—​And it is not only the same desires; all people, everywhere, have the same affections and passions which act in the same way under similar provocation: joy and grief, love and resentment, benevolence, sympathy, fear, and much else, are common to all of us. So, too, of conscience, the sense of duty. ”

“ You must also be serious. You must forget yourself in your ideas. Your personal qualities—the vigour of your temperament, the manly independence of your nature, the tenderness of your heart—these facts are impertinent. ”

“ The reader’s daily experience will assure him that over and above all the particular sensations capable of being separately recognized, there is a general stream of Sensation which constitutes his feeling of existence—the Consciousness of himself as a sensitive being. ”

“ Their actions, when they are not of that sort, which seizes our admiration, or catches the affections, are not otherwise considered by us, than as they are sensible indications of the internal sentiment and disposition. Our intimate consciousness of the several turns and windings of our nature, makes us attend to these pictures of human life with an incredible curiosity. ”

“ They can judge with astounding correctness from a shadow on one's face, a catch in one's breath, a movement of one's hands, how their words or deeds are affecting us. We cannot conceal our feelings from them. ”

“ The growth of intellection and self-consciousness reacts powerfully upon the emotional and active side of mind. To Conduct. describe the various sources of feeling and of desire that thus arise—aesthetic, social and religious sentiments, pride, ambition, selfishness, sympathy, &c.—is beyond the scope of systematic psychology, and certainly quite beyond the limits of an article like the present. But at least a general résumé of the characteristics of activity on this highest or rational level is indispensable. ”

“ And in that day shall be discovered every inward working of every human soul: every appetite, passion, inclination, affection, with the various combinations of them, with every temper and disposition that constitute the whole complex character of each individual. ”

“ If we are noted for anything, it is for modest contentment, unassuming virtue, and cheerful candor—just as you see them in me. Each face reflects the genuine emotions and guileless innocence of the heart connected therewith ”

“ The more closely I scrutinise my states, the more persuaded I become, that whatever moods, affections, and passions I have, are in very truth constituted by, and made up of, those bodily changes we ordinarily call their expression or consequence ”

“ The second quality, which I discover in these passions, and which I likewise consider as an original quality, is their sensations, or the peculiar emotions they excite in the soul, and which constitute their very being and essence. ”

“ The gentle spirit, with its vein of tender pessimism, in puzzled revolt against the wrongness and cruelty of a shadowy world, the brooding thought too whimsical to be bitter, the fancy too refined to be boisterously merry—all these conspired to fascinate us as we came to perceive and appreciate them beneath the rather stiff little verses. ”