Sentimentalism

“ The sentimentalists invariably have befogged our topic. I ask you to divest your minds, for the moment, of sentimentalism, even of sentiment, and to assume, in Taine's phrase, that we are to begin by realizing "not an ode, but a law." ”

“ There is nothing in the homely face, with the squat nose and thick lips, that would betray sentimentalism, and yet those honest eyes were probably continually suffused with the tears for which her ultra-sensitive nature was responsible. ”

“ In Nature it does not. In human nature it remains—chiefly because of undue sentimentalism. Now sentimentalism should be a luxury, and not a law. This is obvious to any mind not suffocated by the gases of decadence. ”

“ The most effective of all these sentimentalists, a writer whom, indeed, a profound passion once or twice lifted above sentimentalism though its flavor still clung to her, remarkably represents the clerical aspects of the decade, for she was daughter, sister, wife, and mother of clergymen. ”

“ That sensibility, or sentimentalism, which had been introduced in the previous century, had undergone a ripening process, in consequence of which, though now less intense than it had previously been, it was more likely to influence unreflecting people than it had ever been. ”

“ There emotion has no place, nor sentimentalism, nor anything that belongs to the senses — only the light of pure reason. ”

“ To lose themselves in bliss, which memory
Alone can find, so to renew their life.
Thou couldst not ever thus enjoy, thus give
Thy nature fully up; thine attributes,
Whate'er of loveliness or high estate
They owned, surrendering all before Love's feet,
And in his breath to melt. How shall we name
Thy passion,—ice-pure, self-entire, exacting
All worship, for a limited return? ”

“ I have laughed long at what I call sentiment, but I am more sentimental than the sentimentalist. I own the awful power of one soul over its opposite; but it is a power to which I will not give way. Now, in plain words, what should be the outcome of love? ”

“ One rash judgement,—a suspicion unguardedly expressed,—and a character is blasted—it may be a soul lost. A cold look—a frown—and a heart is brighter. A loving glance—a smile—and the destiny of two hearts is fixed for ever. A tear—"One touch of nature makes the world a Kin." ”

“ Yes, the human soul is at times so strange a mystery, that another affection may have found its place beside your love for me—a love that you looked upon as a dream. But, at least, the remembrance of your love will remain sweet and dear to you, because it will have been noble and pure. ”

“ Against confounding age's cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life:
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, And they shall live, and he in them still green. ”

“ How much of the romance of human act and passion, vicissitude, joy and sorrow, grandeur and despair, has there not lived, and moved, and perished, age after age, under thy perennial curtain of solemn smoke! ”

“ To feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being past and present in one unspeakable vibration, melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow and your present sorrow with all your past joy? ”

“ So much mawkish sentimentality and bombastic nonsense, so many white-muslined tears and boarding-school sentimentalities, have been heaped around its counterfeit, that healthy minds not unnaturally scoff at the passion—until they feel it! ”

“ Gloom and savagery, passion and crime, luxury and lust, romance and adventure, adultery and divorce, self-indulgence and cynicism, the reality of foulness and decay, are so suggested as to become centers on which receptive minds will organize and congenial ones will combine in sympathy. It is the effect of a great and active literature of belles-lettres, which is practically current throughout the civilized world, to multiply these sects of sentimental philosophy, with the fads and poses which correspond, and to provide them with appropriate cant. ”

“ THE LAST CYWYDD (After Dafydd ab Gwilym)
Memories fierce like arrows pierce;
Alone I waste and languish,
And make my cry to God on high
To ease me of mine anguish.
If heroic was my youth,
In truth its powers are over;
With brain dead and force sped,
Love sets at naught the lover! ”

“ Vividly his memory struck them out;—the faces of the satisfied women, taking on, as years pass over them, as experience detaches from the craving, sentimental self, and frees the instincts to push, climb, cling in roots and tendrils for other selves, a vegetable serenity and simplicity;—and, more vividly, with discomfort in the memory, the faces of the unsatisfied; the womanly married woman whose romance is over, the spinster who has missed romance; faces chiselled to subtlety by dreams and frustration. ”

“ Love, which had been a new garden, an unknown land, a sunlit sea to launch upon, was now a rich treasure-house of memories. And memories, although they afford a perpetually increasing enrichment to emotion, are not sufficient in themselves for the daily needs of life. ”

“ But here also lies the danger of sentimentality, both in life itself and in the representation of it in poetry; when a man is always mourning and lamenting without courageously rising to resignation. In this way we lose both earth and heaven, and retain merely a watery sentimentality. ”

“ The affection which we feel for virtue, the reverence and awe inspired by great talents and powerful characters, persist long after the objects of our love and admiration have passed away from earth, and we now render to their memories the homage which we paid, or perhaps grudged, to the men themselves in their lifetime. ”

“ For it had all come back; the old greedy love of sympathy and admiration, the old worship of strength and youth and hot blood and good looks, the old longing for desire and love, the old almost irritable passion to possess, to dominate, to be first, to submerge another human being in her own personality. ”

“ For as it can only be seen by profoundest passion—and the profoundest are the passions of Love, and Pity, and Grief—then why may not each and all of these passions—when we consider the constitution of this world and this life—be awakened in their utmost height and depth by the sight of living beauty, as well as by the memory of the dead? ”

“ The heavens that now draw him With sweetness untold, Once found,—for new heavens He spurneth the old. "Pride ruined the angels, Their shame them restores; Lurks the joy that is sweetest In stings of remorse. Have I a lover Who is noble and free?— I would he were nobler Than to love me. ”

“ Hence we may learn that the highest perfection of human nature is sentimental refinement; that endowed with this gift, though youth may fall into those mistakes [3] from which humanity can never [214] be free, and to which sentimental susceptibility is peculiarly exposed from its exquisite fineness, yet the heart will regain its purity and elevation, and after the rectification of venial mistakes, resplendant brilliancy of character will ensue. ”

“ And these memories of a time for ever fled, these lights which gladden or stir again your old heart sad and cold, these are the simple and fruitful beliefs, the transports of the soul, the insane devotions, the ardent passions, and all those orgies of heart and sense, all those frenzies of imagination, and all those follies of youth, which cause the wise to cry out so loudly, and which are the only feast-days of life. ”

“ And passion in our secret veins,
Like burning amber, glows and glows.
This love is sweet to have and hold,
Better than sandalwood or gold,
After the barren, bitter loves,
The mad and mournful loves of old. ”

“ With the last generation, all the old impulses of the heart—all susceptibility of love or hatred, friendship or enmity, pity or revenge—all feelings of pride, avarice, ambition, or love of fame—all emotions of joy, grief, anger, remorse—all generosity, charity, desire of happiness, and self-preservation—all, all are passed away! ”

“ In short, the reader must have known the luxury of tears, must have felt the silent pangs of a passing memory, the vision of a dear yet far-off Shade,—memories which bring regret for all that earth has swallowed up, with smiles for vanished joys. ”

“ Eyes gleamed upon you at that moment that saw you for the first time—eyes in whose dark orbs lay an expression that boded you no good. Your fair form, the angelic beauty of your face—perhaps your very grief—awakened interest in a heart whose love never meant else than ruin to its object. ”

“ And as the excited interest which these passions put into the world is our gift to the world, just so are the passions themselves gifts,—gifts to us, from sources sometimes low and sometimes high; but almost always non-logical and beyond our control. How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well? ”

“ In moments of after coolness or anger, the mind should fly from the sated present to the million tender and freshening associations of the past. With these associations the affection renews its youth. How vast a store of melting reflections, how countless an accumulation of the spells that preserve constancy, does that love forfeit, in which the memory only commences with possession! ”

“ Even the times of separation or of bitter quarrel, the aching heart whereon the keepsake lies, the spasms of jealousy, the tenterhooks of doubt; remembrance looks upon them all as treasures of a golden age. ”

“ But some happy property of nature—whether the rare mould of her features or the gift of the spirit that informed them—had held her loveliness intact, preserving the clear lines of youth after its bloom was gone, and making her seem like a lover's memory of herself. ”

“ And if thou bidest here, for something new
Will folk begin to cry, and all thy fame
Shall then avail thee but for greater blame;
Thy love shall cease to love thee, and the earth
Thou lovest now shall be of little worth
While still thou keepest life, abhorring it
Behold, in men's lives that so quickly flit
Thus is it, how then shall it be with thee,
Who some faint image of eternity
Hast gained through me?—alas, thou heedest not!
On all these changing things thine heart is hot—
Take then this gift that I have brought from far,
And then may'st thou remember what we are ”

“ Standing in the presence of a bereaved friend, shallow souls can chatter idle phrases, but deep, healing, tender sympathy is expressed in the silence of a handclasp and unspoken word. Looking into the deep, expressive eyes of one whom we love, our lips are silent and only the tear-filled eye tells of the song the soul is singing. ”

“ The distinguishing mark of the sentimental temperament is great susceptibility to variety of influences—especially on the side of feeling, and independent of clear logical analysis or fixed and well-comprehended principles—with a tendency to a will that is impulsive and liable to collapse. ”

“ Perhaps that would be a more philosophical way of looking at it, but at times little patches of sentimentality will creep in, and when they do we are bound to wish for or regret the loss of incidents that we would probably not care to live over if we could. ”

“ Is it not already seen that the dark speck had enlarged, throwing into gradual, but deepening shade, the soul's original brightness, obscuring the sunshine of domestic joy, converting the home of love into a prison-house of shame, and blighting, chilling, palsying the loftiest energies and noblest purposes? ”

“ The first sight of such a scene will be unforgotten to your dying day—for such passive impressions are deeper than we can explain—our whole spiritual being is suddenly awakened to receive them—and associations, swift as light, are gathered into one Emotion of Beauty which shall be imperishable, and which, often as memory recalls that moment, grows into genius, and vents itself in appropriate expressions, each in itself a picture. ”

“ You have a treasure in her, and you don’t realise it.”
“I suppose not. My work takes so much of the power of feeling out of me. My emotional life is sacrificed to it. The world I create is more real to me than the world about me. ”

“ I pity those who, being moved to adoration at every step, have no hand to press, no heart in which to shed the exuberance of emotions which calm themselves when shared. These two years have been to me a lifetime, in which my memory has stored rich harvests. ”

“ For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy? ”

“ O’er lapse of time and change of scene,—
The weary waste which lies between
Thyself and me, my heart I lean.
Thou lack’st not Friendship’s spell-word, nor
The half-unconscious power to draw
All hearts to thine by Love’s sweet law. ”

“ Like the dying echo of the last tones of the departed, it is full of hallowed memories, and cherished associations, that haunt the inner chambers of the imagination, and linger with a mournful tenderness about the better feelings of the heart. ”

“ What a wondrous sensation it is to feel that a chance expression we have used, a few stray words, have been stored up as precious memories! Is there any flattery like it? What an ecstasy to feel that we could impart value to the veriest commonplace, and, without an effort, without even a will, sit enthroned within some other heart! ”

“ Oh, nothing has the memory of love! ”

“ There are emotions which make for ambition, for right living, for honor and position, but how pitifully small and inconsequential besides the mighty tomes which, circling the globe, comprise the lexicon of love. ”