Silliness

“ And I fail to see that a future generation will be in any way injured because the mothers of that generation are no longer required to please their husbands by stunting and narrowing such brains as they were born with, because ignorance and silliness are no longer considered essential qualifications for the duties of wifehood and motherhood. ”

“ Anyhow, let no husband or lover believe it. Vain are the deeds of dumb devotion, the unwearying forethought, the tender care, the gifts of price, and the priceless gifts of attentive, watchful guard and guide, the labours of Love—all vain. Silent is the speech of Action. ”

“ A few words lightly spoken by the tongue of slander, a significant expression of the eyes, a cruel shrug of the shoulders, with a pursing of the lips,—and then, friendly hands grow cold, the accustomed smile is displaced by a sneer, and one stands alone and aloof with a dazed feeling of wonder at the vague, intangible something that has caused it all. ”

“ Shame upon you, shame upon you, world!
The poet! He comes with a heart trembling with gladness; he comes with tears of rapture in his eyes! He comes with bosom heaving and throat choking and heart breaking. He comes with tenderness and with trust, with joy in the beauty that he beholds. He comes a minstrel, with a harp in his hand—and you set your dogs upon him—you drive him torn and bleeding from your gates! ”

“ Does the passionate imagination and deep feeling flashing in those dark eyes—the already hectic kindling of that cheek, look with pleasure to long years—a life of cold monotonous routine—of nightly vigils—fastings—of painful mortifications? ”

“ I replied; “only you haven’t my dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity and modesty and delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, when you had, without my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you miserable. ”

“ The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. ”

“ I must weave a veil of dazzling falsehood to hide my grief from vulgar eyes, smoothe my brow, and paint my lips in deceitful smiles—even in solitude I dare not think how lost I am, lest I become insane and rave. ”

“ Do you not perceive that this sordid shame is your lot? Do you not perceive that you may writhe and twist, struggle and pant, toil and serve, till you foam at the lips? Who will heed you! Who will hear you! Who cares anything about you!—Who wants your Art! Who wants your work! Who wants your life!—Fool! ”

“ But in the passionate ardour of their temperament, and the robustness, too closely allied with coarseness, of their fibre; in their susceptibility to beautiful and tender emotions, and the mobility of nature with which they yielded to impulses the most opposite to these; in their large capacity of love and scorn, of pleasure and pain; in their genuine sincerity and firm hold on real life; in the keenness of their satire, and their shrewd observation of the world around them;—in their simple and direct force of feeling and expression ”

“ How many sallies, impregnated with venomous spleen, have filled with anger and rage those whom thou dost love! True wit is that which is appropriate, brief in expression, full of sense, innocent and inoffensive, like a blooming rose of the heart’s garden, whose charms attract from afar all the nightingales. ”

“ There was laughter without joy—there was frivolity without merriment—there was the surface of enjoyment and the substance of woe, for beneath those painted cheeks was the pallor of despair and broken health, and beneath those whitened bosoms, half veiled with gaudy silks, were hearts that were aching with remorse, or, yet more unhappy, benumbed and callous with habitual sin. ”

“ There was the light, half-serious, half-jesting smile, which mocks at all things, even while they are felt most weighty; the sort of scoffing carelessness with which the wicked strive to alleviate the burden of their own conscience. ”

“ She had learned to disdain the follies of the world, always chusing plainness and neatness in dress, rather than gaiety and extravagance, and preferring an hour’s solitude, spent in communing with her own heart, or in searching the word of God, before all those trifling amusements, which so much engross the attention, and waste the time of the generality of persons of all ages. ”

“ We get no pleasure from them except that of hearty anger and strong contrast. Their hot, raw, garish colour—the chalky dry skin of his women—the grinning leathern faces of his men—and the entire absence of toning—are as offensive to our eyesight as the heartlessness, the grimace, the want of all naturalness in expression or feeling, in his human beings, are to our moral taste. ”

“ In the silence that followed, the evil spirit latent beneath her beauty began to make itself evident even in the smile which no longer called into view the dimples which belong to guileless mirth, while upon his face, after the first paralysing effect of her words had passed, there appeared an expression of manly resistance that betrayed a virtue which as yet had never appeared in his selfish and altogether reckless life. ”

“ The smile of incredulity which thinks itself so wise and is so foolish, the suspicions which flatter themselves they are so cunning, and are really the fruit of so much dulness, will gleam over these pages, and wither all their meaning — for the readers who smile. ”

“ Let bearded men, wrecked on their own fierce lawless passions, seek these dark cells, these painful vigils, these unmeaning mortifications. They are not for thee. The world awaits thy coming. The pawing steed, throwing the white froth flakes o’er his broad chest, impatiently awaits thee. ”

“ Silently, with a dumb, pleading look, she submits, and when he feels the soft, cool foot between his hands, everything seems to whirl before him; a sort of fiery madness comes over him, and, bending down to the ground, he presses his fevered brow upon it. ”

“ These poems, however, whether good or bad, serious or trivial, are all written with such transparent sincerity that they bring the poet before us almost as if he were our contemporary. They make him known to us in many different moods,—in joy and grief, in the ecstasy and the despair of love, in the frank outpouring of affection and the enjoyment of social intercourse, in the bitterness of his scorn and animosity, in the license of his coarser indulgences. ”

“ Not one of those short winter days went by without the discovery of some new trait or little vanity to astonish or delight him,—sometimes an unlooked-for tenderness toward the weak, often a sweet, untainted philosophy of life, or perhaps just a lowering of her eyelids in which her eyes would show lustrous through the lashes, or some sweeping, exuberant gesture startlingly graceful. ”

“ For when I feel, as I do sometimes, a desire to get rid of some words that almost burn my tongue, the sudden thought that I might mar her cheerfulness, drive away the smile, and change her good disposition, renders me mute. ”

“ Those—who keep silent are almost always lacking in subtlety and refinement of heart; silence is an objection, to swallow a grievance must necessarily produce a bad temper—it even upsets the stomach. All silent people are dyspeptic. You perceive that I should not like to see rudeness undervalued; it is by far the most humane form of contradiction, and, in the midst of modern effeminacy, it is one of our first virtues; If one is sufficiently rich for it, it may even be a joy to be wrong. ”

“ THERE ARE SUCH WEARY LITTLE LINES There are such weary little lines about the mouth of you, Such tragic little mirthless lines—they mock at dreams come true, And twist your lips when you would smile, until all joy is dead, And I, who want to laugh with you, am fain to weep instead! ”

“ If anybody had told me then that a devoted household, having a generally exaggerated idea of my talents and importance, would be put into a state of tremor and flurry by the fuss I would make because of a suspicion that somebody had touched my sacrosanct pen of authorship, I would have never deigned as much as the contemptuous smile of unbelief. There are imaginings too unlikely for any kind of notice, too wild for indulgence itself, too absurd for a smile. ”

“ I will listen to the false lips that speak the words of innocence, while deep dishonour lurks in the candid smile,—a smile that seemed to me as that of an angel. Yet 'tis an appalling spectacle to watch the words, the looks, of one who, breathing only the sentiments of a chaste wife and mother, is about to sully your name with one of those deep, deadly stains which can only be washed out in blood. ”

“ People are so accustomed to my pale face, languid indifference and, what M—— calls, my impracticable silence, that after the first glance and introduction, I believe they are scarcely sensible of my presence: so I sit, and look, and listen, secure and harboured in my apparent dullness. The flashes of wit, the attempts at sentiment, the affectation of enthusiasm, the absurdities of folly, and the blunders of ignorance ”

“ The timid drape it about themselves like a curtain, behind which they take refuge and in whose shadow they conceal themselves, thinking by so doing to keep the vanity which obsesses them from being wounded. ”

“ Now our sensuous nature actually acquires this preponderance, when the ideas of suffering rise to a degree of vividness that no longer allows us to distinguish a sympathetic affection from a personal affection, or our own proper Ego from the subject that suffers,—reality, in short, from poetry. The sensuous also gains the upper hand when it finds an aliment in the great number of its objects, and in that dazzling light which an over-excited imagination diffuses over it. ”

“ The smile of true grace thus gives place to the most repulsive grimace; the fine play of look, so ravishing when it displays a true sentiment, is only contortion; the melodious inflections of the voice, an irresistible attraction from candid lips, are only a vain cadence, a tremulousness which savors of study: in a word, all the harmonious charms of woman become only deception, an artifice of the toilet. ”

“ When these gentry hold forth, by the hour, about their convictions and their theories, their beliefs and disbeliefs, their likings and dislikings, their tastes and their principles, their souls, their minds, and their bodies—if, in despair, you at last, by way of a change, turn the conversation towards some one else, they become loftily silent. ”

“ Let those forbear to follow him whose fine feelings can be moved only by romantic, elegant scenes of distress, whose delicate sensibility shrinks from the revolting sight of real misery. Here are no pictures for romance, no stage effect to be seen, no poetic language to be heard; nothing to charm the imagination,—every thing to disgust the senses. ”

“ Everything depended upon her coolness and her wit, upon a look, perhaps, the turn of a phrase, the droop of an eye, and she was passionately resolved that neither coolness nor wit should fail her, nor words nor looks nor eyes betray the heart of her. ”

“ When free from exciting emotions, they beam forth an expression of calm dignity, above the sway of lust, vanity, and envy, that gave birth to the cruel frivolities of the day, which she evidently patronizes from compulsion. ”

“ And beneath all the light wit which circulates, beneath all the laughter, which often has a false ring, each retains his or her particular worry, or distress of mind, at times so acute that it becomes perfect agony. ”

“ Whether the thoughts that chased one another so rapidly through that busy brain were kindly or angry, whether the glimpses of the future were gloomy or hopeful—the smooth, white brow and steady lips betrayed, neither by frown nor smile. ”

“ The Silent Lover.
Silence in love betrays more love
Than words, though ne'er so witty;
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.
JOSHUA SYLVESTER 1563-1618. The Soul's Errand [3]
Go, Soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand!
Fear not to touch the best:
The truth shall be thy warrant.
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.
RICHARD BARNFIELD. Address to the Nightingale. ”

“ Critics, indeed, might have been tempted to sneer at a certain oracular grandiloquence, that bore away her soberness in moments of elation; though even the most captious must presently have smiled at the humor of her descriptive touches, her dexterous exposure of folly and pretension, the swift stroke of her bright wit, her shrewd discernment, promptitude, and presence of mind. ”

“ They are not so enchanting in their nature, nor so subtle in their effects. In the one, the noxious insinuations of licentious wit are concealed under the artful blandishments of sympathetic sensibility; while we at once recoil from the rude assault which is made upon our delicacy, by the roughness and vulgarity of the other. ”

“ We hear them not, even as a something behind, an undersong of hope. No, for there are no faces about us now, no comfortable looks and smiles, no good dinner or snug little circle round the fireside; no volumes of the poets either, and not a line of them, not one "smooth comfort false," comes to assist us. ”

“ At his touch the drossy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and mingle with the dust—the finer and more ethereal part mounts with the winged spirit to watch over our latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness. ”

“ All elegance of mind and manners is banished. A theatrical, bombastic, windy phraseology of heroic virtue, blended and mingled up with a worse dissoluteness, and joined to a murderous and savage ferocity, forms the tone and idiom of their language and their manners. ”

“ Certainly we all must have presented a perfect picture of woe and misery—half-frozen and famished—pale, haggard, shivering, with our beards unshaven, and our hair hanging lank and wet over our faces, our lips blue, our eyes bloodshot, our clothes dripping with moisture. ”