Sourness

“ My soul within me seemed to melt
In sweet delirious pain.
"Sweet is the stolen draught," she said;
"Hath sweetness stint or measure?
Pleasant the secret hoard of bread;
What bars us from our pleasure?" ”

“ A sweet recoil of love and pity.
And what, if in a world of sin
(O sorrow and shame should this be true!)
Such giddiness of heart and brain
Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
So talks as it's most used to do. ”

“ They bring comfort, but also they bring tears into the eyes and pain into the heart. The message of a tender soul—what does it bring but ineffable comfort to the heart? You do not feel that it is a message, you do not feel it to be a divinely beautiful thing. ”

“ Sore in body, sore in mind, sore in heart, sore in spirit, he is the instance-type of humanity in the depths of its misery—all the waves and billows of a world of adverse circumstance rolling free over its head. ”

“ In the great hours of our life, and I think all human experiences justify this statement, both pain and pleasure are transcended and flung into a subordinate and irrelevant place. Something which it is very difficult to describe, a kind of emotion which resembles happiness, flows through us; so that pain and pleasure seem to come and go almost unremarked, like dark and light shadows flung upon some tremendous water-fall. ”

“ Is giving not a necessity? Is receiving not- pitying?"
O my soul, I understand the smiling of your melancholy: your over-abundance itself now stretches out longing hands!
Your fulness looks forth over raging seas, and seeks and waits: the longing of over-fulness looks forth from the smiling heaven of your eyes!
And verily, O my soul! Who could see your smiling and not melt into tears? The angels themselves melt into tears through the over-graciousness of your smiling. ”

“ Such a state of health would enhance, and tend to produce, by the sensations proper to such a condition, that habitual seriousness of thought, that sober judgment, and that tendency to look at the true life of things—that deep but gentle and calm sadness, and that occasional sinking of the heart, which make his noble and strong inner nature, his resolved mind, so much more impressive and endearing. ”

“ Those puerile fears, followed by hopes, without rule or aim, that vain confidence giving place to sad discouragement. Those despondent feelings after moments of zealous fever, during which we seem to be able to do and attempt everything. Here we find the solution of those sudden and varied shades of temperament which will instantaneously cheer or prostrate the energies of the soul. ”

“ Now, that something may be hinted to put sinners in a way to this unfeigned sorrow, let me beg of you, in the bowels of love, earnestly desiring your souls welfare, to meditate seriously on these three things, which will if set home by the spirit of God, help you to the after work, even hearty sorrow and true contrition. ”

“ Shut your ears to praise, when it grows loud: set your face like a flint, when the world ridicules, and smile at its threats. Learn to master your heart, when it would burst forth into vehemence, or prolong a barren sorrow, or dissolve into unseasonable tenderness. ”

“ A whole atmosphere of consecrated suffering seems to float round these spots sacred to sorrow, the sorrow that humbly appeals, as it best knows how, to the love, wide enough to embrace and comfort all desolate, and yearning, and heavy-laden souls. ”

“ too often conscience sleeps,
When pleasure's syren numbers lull its rest.—
Oh, Love! ”

“ Grant me the shade of thy wings, O Death, for I would rest within.
Weary of smiling faces when the heart is like to break.
Of lips that are too silent when they long the while to speak,
Of tears that fall from eyes too young, of quivering lips that laugh. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When we are assailed by regrets in the evening, and filled with anxieties for the morrow, how can our heart rebound with joy, or our lips wear the smile of confidence and tranquility? Behold some of the many sources from which the fatal fiend of melancholy is fed and strengthened. ”

“ In the day or at night, sometime I will find
A soul that is trampled and weary;
And I shall find ways, to be helpful and kind
To the heart that is bowed and dreary.
So the heart of me, friend, has found surcease ”

“ The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself. And hence the saying, 'It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the house of mirth.' Not that this highest species of pleasure is necessarily linked with pain. ”

“ I shall not attempt to give vent to the different emotions which agitate my heart—You may term a feeling, which appears to me to be a degree of delicacy that naturally arises from sensibility, pride—Still I cannot indulge the very affectionate tenderness which glows in my bosom, without trembling, till I see, by your eyes, that it is mutual. ”

“ Are there any here who, in the midst of outward abundance, are sorrowful of heart,—who go mourning on their way from some inward discomfort,—-Who long for serenity of spirit, and cheerful happiness, as the servant earnestly desireth the shadow? ”

“ And it is from this cause that in human beings bodily suffering expresses itself not only in contortions, but in shrieks and groans—that in anger, and fear, and grief, the gesticulations are accompanied by shouts and screams—that delightful sensations are followed by exclamations—and that we hear screams of joy and shouts of exultation. ”

“ Further, the widening of the sympathetic feelings and their consequent activities, and the refinement of the whole sensitive nature by which it responds more quickly and accurately to emotional stimuli, have made the present generation more susceptible to both pain and pleasure than its predecessors. ”

“ Suppose him to be still living at Bath with your sister and children: would not your going to the house be too fearful a trial for you, and too frightful a shock for them?—why, it is by suddenness of joy, by shocks of emotion of this sort that hearts are broken. ”

“ But although pleasure of mind brings us joy, and pain causes us grief, it is still true that each of these feelings originates in the body, and is referred to the body; and it does not follow on that account that both the pleasures and pains of the mind are not much more important than those of the body. ”

“ The reward of persistency will infallibly come, in the fading out of the sullenness or depression, and the advent of real cheerfulness and kindliness in their stead. Smooth the brow, brighten the eye, contract the dorsal rather than the ventral aspect of the frame, and speak in a major key, pass the genial compliment, and your heart must be frigid indeed if it do not gradually thaw! ”

“ The mad smouldering lust which gives a sort of under-song of surging passion to the sophisticated sensuality of "Salome" is as much an evocation of Nature as the sad sweet wisdom of that sentence in "De Profundis"—"Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow." ”

“ The second is called a sore which enters deeper than a wound into the soul, and is, therefore, of longer continuance, because it is as a wound festering, on account of which the soul feels that it is really dying of love. This sore is the effect of the knowledge of the works of God, the incarnation of the Word, and the mysteries of the faith. These being the greatest works of God, and involving a greater love than those of creation, produce a greater effect of love in the soul. ”

“ There would seem to be no end of the causes which produce sore and tender and sensitive spots upon the human soul. I have said nothing of grief and love and pity and anger, and a whole brood of powerful passions, but they are all operative toward the results which we are discussing. The cure for these sensitive sores is obvious enough. I would prescribe for a man as I would for a horse—go out to pasture, or adopt another kind of collar, and never wear the old one again. ”

“ Should some shadow have settled upon any one of these homes—some shadow of drunkenness, or love of play, or shattered brain, or worse—the woman bore the sorrow in gentleness and patience and still loved on and suffered and loved and suffered again, hoping against hope. ”

“ Of a social, tender, and affectionate heart, amid all the corporeal agonies he had suffered, and was doomed during life to suffer, in consequence of his various wounds, added to the still severer and more numerous inflictions on his mental tranquillity, he preserved a chearfulness of disposition which commonly diffused joy and gladness to all around him. ”

“ Make it a conscious reality, for a single moment, that Life and intelligence are not in the body, and you are without sensation in the body, and if sick, will find yourself well. Sorrow is turned into joy when we become able to govern the body with Life, Truth, and Love ”

“ Comfort I call quiet, and being let alone. Another fortnight at this place would give me brain fever—your life continually in danger either on the sea or by the cliffs—your feelings supposed to be always up at passion pitch—it is all a whirl of secret or declared emotions that don't give you a moment's rest. ”

“ On emerging from this house of pain, you will infallibly experience a sensation of pleasure, you will inhale the fresh air more fully, you will feel satisfaction in the consciousness of your health, but, at the same time, you will draw from the sight of these sufferings a consciousness of your nothingness, and you will go calmly and without any indecision to the bastion. ”

“ When the soul rests in undisturbed tranquillity, the features of the face are calm and composed; but when agitated by emotions, and tossed by contending passions, the countenance becomes a living picture, in which every sensation is depicted with equal force and delicacy. ”

“ It is the nurse of Poetry, and Sorrow is the pang which stimulates the divine germ into active vitality. Had he been entirely happy, and the course of his love run smooth, he would have been content to enjoy life in ease and idleness. ”

“ As spirals of smoke from village chimneys, the profound senses of each organ had mounted toward him; joy, sorrow, all the emotions are deeds more fully of consciousness than are the thoughts of man's reason. ”

“ Who could expect the kindly affections to expand in such an atmosphere! Where there is no hope, the heart becomes paralyzed: it is a merciful arrangement of Divine Providence, by which the acuteness of sensibility is lessened when it becomes merely a source of suffering. ”

“ Sweet, tender, affectionate by nature, enamoured of sunlight, he might, under happier conditions, have given a smile, a cheer, a pæan even, to the world. In giving a sob, he gave what life gave him,—his all. ”

“ Though soaring, they hold on with a stress which almost breaks the chains of matter to the hearer. O, how refreshing, after polemics and philosophy, to soar thus on strong wings! Yes, Father, I will wander in dark ways with the crowd, since thou seest best for me to be tied down. ”

“ Its thoughts cluster round this spring of life, which it leaves only to sleep, and whither it returns on waking. Its lips have a sweetness beyond words, and their pressure is at once a pain and a delight, a delight which by every excess becomes pain, or a pain which culminates in delight. ”

“ In analysing the associations and sympathies which regulate the play of our passions, the simplest and homeliest are the last that we detect. It is only when the shock comes, and the mind recoils before it—when joy is changed into sorrow, or sorrow into joy—that we really discern what trifles in the outer world our noblest mental pleasures, or our severest mental pains, have made part of themselves ”

“ From both an a priori point of view of the law of self-conservation, and also from a brief survey of certain forms in comparative and human psychology, we incline toward accepting pure pain as the original consciousness. This is soon differentiated into pain of excess and pain of lack with the evolution of pure pleasure. Will exists throughout as sequent of feeling. ”

“ Even when painful and terrible in their subjects, "they are of power, by raising pity and fear or terror, to purge the mind of suchlike passions,—that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight or, in the words of Charles Lamb, "they dispose the mind to a meditative tenderness." ”

“ Thus the appearance of a cheerful countenance gives us pleasure, and of a melancholy one makes us sorrowful. Yawning, and sometimes vomiting, are thus propagated by sympathy; and some people of delicate fibres, at the presence of a spectacle of misery, have felt pain in the same parts of their bodies, that were diseased or mangled in the object they saw. ”

“ Anger, hope, and sorrow in especial show great fluctuations in intensity. With hope, fear, and sorrow we very often find fluctuations in quality. Hope and sorrow often change between themselves, and in most cases increase in intensity because of this contrast. Especially with the emotions we can perceive this affective process objectively in the movements of the mimic muscles of the face, and when the emotions are very strong in the other muscles of the body. ”