Softness

“ The book entirely reconciled me to the soft twilight of the station. Then I suddenly saw that there was a symbolic division which might be paralleled from biology. Brave men are vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle. But these modern cowards are all crustaceans; their hardness is all on the cover and their softness is inside. But the softness is there; everything in this twilight temple is soft. ”

“ You do not compel him, you do not strike him, you give him no orders, because you know that softness is stronger than hardness, water stronger than stone, love stronger than violence. That is very good, and I praise you for it. ”

“ Take but half the pains to recover the countenance that nature gave you, that you must have taken to disguise and deform it as you have, and the business will be done. Accustom your eyes to a certain softness, of which they are very capable, and your face to smiles, which become it more than most faces I know. ”

“ Those who deny that there is a natural and pleasing softness arising from harmony or gradation, might as well affirm that sudden and abrupt transitions do not make our impressions more distinct as that they do not make them more harsh and violent. ”

“ His vital powers, his mental faculties, seemed to dilate to the influence of the pure and subtil air, which circulated with a genial softness through his frame, and gave to his whole being a sense of vague but pure felicity, which made even life itself enjoyment. ”

“ Softness of heart is an admirable quality, but when it extends its area until it also becomes softness of head, its results are anything but admirable. It is a good thing to combine a warm heart with a cool head. ”

“ These characteristics of the phlegmatic temperament, present to us forms more rounded and less expressive, a general softness, a feeble color of the skin, a sort of etiolation, a pale countenance, a light and abundant hair, and, generally, an insurmountable inclination to sloth, averse alike to labors of the mind and body. ”

“ The natural hardness of our hearts, and strength of our passions, inflamed by the uncontrolled licence we are too often indulged with in our youth, are apt to render our manners more dissolute, and make us less susceptible of the finer feelings of the heart. Your12 superior delicacy, your modesty, and the usual severity of your education, preserve you, in a great measure, from any temptation to those vices to which we are most subjected. The natural softness and sensibility of your dispositions particularly fit you for the practice of those duties where the heart is chiefly concerned. ”

“ To the Tongue and Palat, in a Savour; and to the rest of the body, in Heat, Cold, Hardnesse, Softnesse, and such other qualities, as we discern by Feeling. All which qualities called Sensible, are in the object that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no doubt a sensation by which we perceive a body to be hard or soft. This sensation of hardness may easily be had, by pressing one's hand against the table, and attending to the feeling that ensues, setting aside, as much as possible, all thought of the table and its qualities, or of any external thing. But it is one thing to have the sensation, and another to attend to it, and make it a distinct object of reflection. ”

“ The elegant form, the flexibility of motion, the gentle warmth, the cheeks crimsoned with the roses of delight, the brilliant eyes darting rays of love, or sparkling with the fire of genius, enlivened by the sallies of wit, or animated by the glow of passion, are the inheritance of those only who are in good health, and a moment is sufficient to destroy them. ”

“ Our whole cubic capacity is sensibly alive; and each morsel of it contributes its pulsations of feeling, dim or sharp, pleasant, painful, or dubious, to that sense of personality that every one of us unfailingly carries with him. It is surprising what little items give accent to these complexes of sensibility. When worried by any slight trouble, one may find that the focus of one’s bodily consciousness is the contraction, often quite inconsiderable, of the eyes and brows. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we look into our emotional life, we find, besides the true emotions, with which we have become familiar in Chapter III, a great number of feelings or feeling-tones which color either pleasurably or painfully our emotions and our ideas. On the one hand there are pleasure, joy, exaltation, courage, cheer, confidence, satisfaction; and on the other, pain, sorrow, depression, apprehension, gloom, distrust, and dissatisfaction. Every complex which is laid away in our subconscious is tinted, either slightly or intensely, with its specific feeling-tone. ”

“ So subtile is the line which separates the true and almost angelic sensibility of a healthy, but exalted nature, from the soreness of a soul which is sympathizing with a morbid state of the body that it is no wonder they are often confounded. ”

“ He laughed, and began to consider what she meant before he replied.
“As you do,” she added.
“What?” he asked.
“Keep half your senses asleep—half alive.”
“Do I?” he asked.
“Of course you do;—‘bos-bovis; an ox.’ You are like a stalled ox, food and comfort, no more. Don’t you love comfort?” she smiled. ”

“ Hence it proceeds, that every action of the mind, which operates with the same calmness and tranquillity, is confounded with reason by all those, who judge of things from the first view and appearance. Now 'tis certain, there are certain calm desires and tendencies, which, tho' they be real passions, produce little emotion in the mind, and are more known by their effects than by the immediate feeling or sensation. ”

“ This sweetness, then, and this interior pleasure which we are describing, and which these progressives find and experience in their spirits so easily and so abundantly, is communicated to them in much greater abundance than aforetime, overflowing into their senses more than was usual previously to this purgation of sense; for, inasmuch as the sense is now purer, it can more easily feel the pleasures of the spirit after its manner. ”

“ A certain imperceptiveness, lack of intuition, of insight, of the sympathetic imagination—call it what you will—is, perhaps, theirs in a measure; but, on the other hand, the individual responds quickly, even emotionally, to an appeal to his softer side. Only he has not acquired the habit of exposing his soft side to view and asking the needy to lean upon it! ”

“ How joy produces calm? How sternness begets stiffness? How gentleness produces relaxation? These qualities are therefore bodily; for they change the tones and the shapes of substances, exercising their own power in their own kingdoms. ”

“ Sensation, and the capacity of receiving it, being, according to this psychology, the only original quality or endowment of our nature; and sensation being always an expression either of pleasure or of pain, and the sensational capacity being a susceptibility of these feelings, it follows that pleasure and pain, and a susceptibility thereof, form originally the whole staple and essence of our constitution. ”

“ But she possessed the consciousness that, whenever she went down into the depths of her heart, she would find the spirit of peace, love, and truth, and this consciousness was so vivid that a divine calmness and confidence, visible to the dullest senses, illumined her brow. But a new trait in her was a peculiar sense of humor, a mirthfulness which had rarely flashed out in her youth, yet now appeared to be the predominant mood of her nature. ”

“ What more can you ask of the works of a man's mouth than that they should "absorb into you as food and air, to appear again in your strength, gait, face,"—that they should be "fibre and filter to your blood," joy and gladness to your whole nature? ”

“ I tried afterwards to find comfort in that reflection. But the comfort of reflections is thin: the only comfort that counts in life is not to have been a fool. That’s a beatitude I shall doubtless never enjoy. ”

“ The serenity of her habitual attitude, which veils a stubborn fierceness of soul, her indolent enjoyment of cushioned ease and warmth, have endeared her naturally to men of thought rather than to men of action. ”

“ I am not ashamed of my body. Look well upon my beauty, which was given to me for a purpose which you are too tragically crippled in body and mind to understand. Look well—and for the first time—on a beauty which was made for light and love and laughter. ”

“ It was advanced that soft beauty is for an unstrung mind, and the energetic beauty for the tightly strung mind. But I apply the term unstrung to a man when he is rather under the pressure of feelings than under the pressure of conceptions. ”

“ Soft and sweet it will steal insidiously into your ear, your brain, and the whirlpool of your senses until you stand rooted in ecstasy in a flooded field of sweet desire. Rising swiftly and shrilly it will tear like racing waters at the ramparts we and our forefathers, have assiduously and mistakenly built around our inner selves ”

“ Your hands rubbing at your knees, your body relaxing in a gentle glow, your eyes set with some gratitude upon the occasion of your comfort, you will drift and pass into another world: a world of the rarest illusions, a world of exquisite and intangible thoughts and fancies. ”

“ What a beautiful life within life thought makes for us in this way! “‘Sometimes I dream of inventing new ways of tenderness all my own, a secret which no other woman shall guess. A cold sweat breaks out over me at the thought that something may happen to prevent this morning. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not only is mood dependent on our sensations and thoughts for its quality, but it in turn colors our entire mental life. It serves as a background or setting whose hue is reflected over all our thinking. Let the mood be somber and dark, and all the world looks gloomy; on the other hand, let the mood be bright and cheerful, and the world puts on a smile. ”

“ But even if we are going too far in referring particular calls to particular emotions, we can, without a doubt, divide them into two broad categories—those which are pleasurable and those which are the reverse. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among the sensations of the senses we find some that have the power of awakening tender emotion. The sensations that incline to tenderness are, in the first place, the effects of very gentle or soft stimulants, such as soft touches, gentle sounds, slow movements, temperate warmth, mild sunshine. ”

“ So delicate is our sympathy!
Easy and unconstrained postures and motions are always beautiful: An air of health and vigour is agreeable: Clothes which warm, without burthening the body; which cover, without imprisoning the limbs, are well-fashioned. In every judgement of beauty, the feelings of the person affected enter into consideration, and communicate to the spectator similar touches of pain or pleasure. ”

“ The gentleness of her manner, the easy tone, the quiet eyes, eyes in whose dark depths great passions were visible, but passions that were under the control of an equally forcible will, made her a puzzle to all men’s minds ”

“ He felt their soft caress move over his legs ... linger on life-giving parts ... growing moist and warm. He was helpless in their domain, and was half blinded by their brilliant reflection that leapt from the shimmering sky. ”

“ That cause, which excites the passion, is related to the object, which nature has attributed to the passion; the sensation, which the cause separately produces, is related to the sensation of the passion: From this double relation of ideas and impressions, the passion is deriv'd. ”

“ Judging by my own sensations, however, the difference is not merely of degree, but of kind, for such accounts, with the reflections made upon them, have in them a certain tone and tinting of the mind through which they pass, so that we get, not nature, but man softening her. ”

“ Ideas of pleasure and pain. There be other simple ideas which convey themselves into the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection, viz. pleasure or delight, and its opposite, pain, or uneasiness ; power ; existence ”

“ Our remoter spiritual, material, and social selves, so far as they are realized, come also with a glow and a warmth; for the thought of them infallibly brings some degree of organic emotion in the shape of quickened heart-beats, oppressed breathing, or some other alteration, even though it be a slight one, in the general bodily tone. ”

“ Meanwhile no sooner had he recovered from his surprise and emotion at the first view of so much naked beauty, than he found certain evidences of its effects upon those sensuous organs which so readily respond in men of his temperament to emotions calculated to produce them. ”

“ If you find that you have a hastiness in your temper, which unguardedly breaks out into indiscreet sallies, or rough expressions, to either your superiors, your equals, or your inferiors, watch it narrowly, check it carefully, and call the ‘suaviter in modo’ to your assistance: at the first impulse of passion, be silent till you can be soft. ”