Sordidness

“ For we lived on the heights, where the air was keen and sparkling, where the toil was for humanity, and where sordidness and selfishness never entered. We loved love, and our love was never smirched by anything less than the best. ”

“ If the world were not each year renewed, refreshed, glorified by the magnificent honor and fine expectancies of its young men, it would soon become simply fiendish in its sordidness, selfishness, and baseness. ”

“ And yet each whispering wind has blown
Abroad the story of my shame.
I dread to see men shrink away
With startled looks of scorn or fear,
When in life’s crowded marts some day,
That name falls on their ear. ”

“ But I did feel that if at that moment any of those faults had been brought before me which sometimes occur among us; had I heard that any of you had been guilty of falsehood, or of drunkenness, or of any other such sin; had I heard from any quarter the language of profaneness, or of unkindness, or of indecency; had I heard or seen any signs of that wretched folly which courts the laugh of fools by affecting not to dread evil and not to care for good, then the unsuitableness of any of these things with the scene I had just quitted would indeed have been most intensely painful. And why? ”

“ I suffer it to range beyond myself. All men and women have their sorrows,—most of them their wrongs; ingratitude, and sordid jealousy, and interest, besetting all degrees of life. Who would not forget their sorrows and their wrongs?”
“Who would not, truly, and be happier and better for it?” said the Phantom.
“These revolutions of years, which we commemorate,” proceeded Redlaw, “what do they recall! Are there any minds in which they do not re-awaken some sorrow, or some trouble? ”

“ Lying as I do now at the point of death, I find myself at last freed from the follies and prejudices which have been my ruin. The clouds roll away from my mind, and I perceive what a mad fool I have been for years. Most of all I see the madness that instigated me to turn against you, and to put against the loyal love of the best of sons my own miserable pride and the accusation of a lying scoundrel. ”

“ Let the fool in his folly anticipate sorrow,
I, for one, will refuse to take thought for the morrow.
There is joy in our life if we will but enjoy it;
But the most of us do what we can to destroy it. ”

“ In the six years of my wandering I have seen many people made bad by sorrow. An unquenchable hatred for every one burned within them, and they were blind to everything but evil. They saw evil and bathed in it as in a hot bath, and they drank gall like a drunkard wine, and laughed and triumphed. ”

“ He spoke as men do in fevers. I could see that there were some about us who set him down as mad. There were those who jeered, as fools will at the sight of a man's anguish, when, in the abandonment of his shame, he trails his soul in the dust. ”

“ Words are impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with which she wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle. I would have soothed—I would have reasoned; but in the intensity of her wild desire for life—for life—but for life—solace and reason were alike the uttermost of folly. Yet not until the last instance, amid the most convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was shaken the external placidity of her demeanor. ”

“ Would I could foresee a term to our misery!—Who but yourself shall find a remedy for our misfortunes? Shall we delay, until time brings to light that which is now a secret, and the affront we have received entail on us a shame more intolerable than death itself? ”

“ But let some chosen and determined men be within call, for should I find him hardened and obdurate, he must forthwith be led out to suffer for his foul sorcery. Meanwhile let all be quiet, let no sound be uttered, until I shall be heard to pronounce, in a loud voice, this terrible malison, ‘Body and soul, to the flames I doom thee!’ Then let them up without delay on him, and he shall be straightway overcome. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And garner store of strife and scorn
To gain a scarce-remembered name,
Cumbered with lies and soiled with shame?
And if the gods care not for you,
What is this folly ye must do
To win some mortal's feeble heart?
O fools! when each man plays his part,
And heeds his fellow little more
Than these blue waves that kiss the shore
Take heed of how the daisies grow.
O fools! and if ye could but know
How fair a world to you is given.
O brooder on the hills of heaven,
When for my sin thou drav'st me forth,
Hadst thou forgot what this was worth,
Thine own hand had made? ”

“ For there is no folly so great as keeping one's sorrows hidden. ”

“ I am lost, spelled; the victim of sorcery I cannot fight against. What am I to do, what am I to do? Surely I can keep my steps from going near her. If I were to swear now that I will never set eyes on her more? ”

“ Those whom sorrow incapacitates to enjoy the pleasures of contemplation, may properly apply to such diversions, provided they are innocent, as lay strong hold on the attention; and those, whom fear of any future affliction chains down to misery, must endeavour to obviate the danger. ”

“ You that wonder at my folly may perchance go further and with less cause, when the touch of the blind god comes to you as to me. As for you who smile on, knowing no better, from your lonely height, you have missed wholly the inwardness of life and its savor, and so my pity may well match your own and with the greater reason. ”

“ We do the same with any great despair, we shroud it in a glittering atmosphere of smiles and jests; but the smiles are sneers, and the jests are sarcasms. There is always a vein of bitterness runs through these feverish spirits, they are the very delirium of sorrow seeking to escape from itself, and which cannot. ”

“ The foolish nurse their hearts within the screen Of this familiar world, where all we do Or have is old, for there is nothing new: Yet elder far that world we have not seen; God's Presence antedates what else hath been: Many the foolish seem, the wise seem few. Oh foolishest fond folly of a heart Divided, neither here nor there at rest! That hankers after Heaven, but clings to earth; That neither here nor there knows thorough mirth, Half-choosing, wholly missing, the good part:-- Oh fool among the foolish, in thy quest. ”

“ Standing between thy poor tempted creatures and the worst sorrow that can befall them—a sorrow that softens, not like others, as death approaches, but is transformed, and stands like a giant at the bedside. ”

“ You pass from folly to folly, from infatuation to infatuation, until at last you can with a grave face accept the monstrous self-contradiction of materialism, or wallow unresisting in the slime of a tormenting sensuality. "As the dog returns to his vomit"!
It must be owned that the condition of the fool seems sufficiently sad, and the gloom is deepened by the fact that our book knows nothing of a way by which the fool may become wise. The Proverbs uniformly regard the foolish and the wise as generically distinct ”

“ She did not wish to hear any further as to the sort of omen it was, and what it foreboded. But, somehow, a sense of fear and of sadness crept into her mood, and it was humiliating to feel that an absurd tale should disturb her beloved fancies, and should agitate her so deeply. ”

“ All the petty annoyances of life—a sudden fall, an unlucky [pg 103] word, a headache, a paltry quarrel—were set down to the agency of fiends; and all the fierce emotions that rend the mind—love, hate, jealousy, and madness—were equally the work of these invisible tormentors. Men and women stood in constant danger of them. ”

“ When I look strictly into my deceitful and wicked heart, I find it so full of this abominable vice, that I regard myself with horror and amazement; and yet perhaps the next moment, indulge in airy schemes and self-complacency. Sure there is not in the whole universe, so vain and sinful a wretch as I am! ”

“ Why am I called upon to do this, oh cruel, most cruel destiny? Cannot I fly from the horrid scene? Cannot I rather run a dagger into my heart? But no, 'tis plain my fate is ordained, sealed, fixed! and in vain I struggle,—I must fulfil the task appointed for me! ”

“ And then came the question, when he reached the brink of the clear and limpid waters, of what was to be his bait? The sorrow which approaches despair is often bitterly imaginative; and as he sat with his head resting on his hand, and pondered, he thought of all the baits with which man is angled for and caught by his great enemy in the world; and oftentimes a rueful smile came upon his fine but worn countenance, in which he himself, and passages in his past existence, shared the sarcasm with his fellow men. ”

“ At sight of the noble young man, bare-headed and disrobed for the sad and ignominious death, there were many who could no longer restrain their tears; and hard-hearted grey-headed men who, hating his crime, believed they could find pleasure in his sorrow, and went thither to feast upon his suffering, now wept loudly for him whom, in their first feeling of horror, they had cursed. ”

“ It is one of those instances of the irony inherent in human fate which move at once to tears and bitter laughter; the waste of emotion, the involuntary folly, the cruel deception caused by limit of faculties—how they concentrate into an hour or a day the essence of life itself! ”

“ Such was the scorn that fill'd the sage's mind,
Renew'd at every glance on human kind. 70
How just that scorn, e'er yet thy voice declare,
Search every state, and canvass every prayer.
Unnumber'd suppliants crowd Preferment's gate,
Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great;
Delusive Fortune hears the incessant call,
They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall.
On every stage the foes of peace attend,
Hate dogs their flight, and insult mocks their end. ”

“ These two experiences prove how unwise it would be to form one’s estimate of all, in any circumstances, by the freaks and folly of a few. How easy to excuse much heedlessness and frivolity, hoping for better things with coming years, if out from among many youthful follies such good traits are made apparent! ”

“ But, poor soul! even as he insists, the agony within rises, breaks up, overwhelms the picture. He lives again through the jars and frets of those few burning days, the growing mistrust of them, the sense of jealous terror and insecurity—and then through the anguish of desertion and loss. ”

“ But, full as my cup of joy may be, it will never be without a bitter after-taste, for I cannot forget that my folly—my wicked folly—has blighted the life of a man who, an hour ago, was dearer to me than the whole world! ”

“ If the signs of sorrow soon reappear, they are no longer to be traced to jealousy. Those sweet ravings are well remembered, and can now be trusted as truth. They are confirmed by the confession of restored reason—by the avowal of a man who may be standing on the stoup of death, and can have no earthly motive for a deception such as that! ”

“ She pushed his arm aside almost roughly.
"You are mad, milor!" she said, in a choked murmur. "Such foolhardiness, when your life is in deadly jeopardy, becomes criminal folly——"
"The best of life," he said airily, "is folly. ”

“ If, then, you are constrained—now accustomed as you are to self-vindication—to acknowledge your unreasonableness, how much more will you be speechless in the last day when madness will admit of no palliation, and folly will appear without disguise! ”

“ How often, when the abominations of Lupton, its sham energies, its sham morals, its sham enthusiasms, all its battalia of cant surged and beat upon me, have I been sorely tempted to yield, to suffer no more the press of folly, but to steal away by a secret path I knew, to dwell in a secure valley where the foolish could never trouble me. ”

“ It is not at all surprising that in later times we should find an opaqueness to have obscured the clear crystal of these subtle perceptions, for fear and pity have no longer the same ascendancy in a busy world. ”

“ But I would have them to whom these things seem ridiculous to consider with themselves whether it be not better to live so pleasant a life in such kind of follies, than, as the proverb goes, "to take a halter and hang themselves." ”

“ So he put away his melancholy and despondency, regret and repine, and allayed his sorrow by constantly repeating those words, adding, " 'Tis my conviction that no man in this world is safe from their malice!" ”

“ To sit by him hour after hour, and hear him reproach himself as being the cause of her death, and to know that I am the sinner, if any human being is at all, drives me into cold despair. I don’t know what to do. ”

“ For we know that we shall live it down, or if we do not know it then, we do live it down. Very likely, indeed, there comes a time when we look back upon our sorrow and he or she who caused it with wonder, yes even with scorn and bitter laughter. ”

“ And their sorrows have compelled me naturally to meditate on the sorrows of others,—to consider what it is in the world which thus corrodes the pure gold of innocence and robs life of its greatest charm. ”