Stopper

“ You fell asleep, to awake in the morning to a new combat and a new - prayer. Now the habit of renunciation cools the heat of your desire, and the roses of your youth are growing pale in the - chlorosis of your heavenliness. The soul is saved, the body may perish! ”

“ And all this long story was about—what do you think?
"We cannot hope to succeed, unless——" "But we must succeed."
Note that it is the long dash that is used at the end of a sentence.
The full stop is not added where the dash marks an unfinished sentence. But it is common to add the point of interrogation or the mark of exclamation. ”

“ It seemed that he had been counting for hours, his will against her will, the man in him against the woman in her, and during the pauses between the sound of his voice the very air grew charged with waiting. ”

“ If life had not to finish, in fulfilment of a solemn, universal, and inevitable decree, the constraint that I have put upon myself might at length become oppressive, and my yoke prove somewhat heavy. But all that will finish soon, for all undertakings come to an end. ”

“ Young man, are you hesitating in the choice of a vocation? A reference to the admonitions under this head in “Stop” may be the means of your becoming a Millionaire, a Police Magistrate 5 or an ornament to society. Are you in love, or willing to be? A consultation of the advice at your command may place you in such hobnobbing, soul-wedded relations with the rosy god as shall cause you to charm, to captivate, and finally to wrest the rapt, responsive throb from Beauty’s battlemented heart. Are you a driveling idiot in money matters? ”

“ The things thou desirest can last but an hour. As to me, however, I quaff continually in the path of God the cup of His decree, and wish not that the ruling of His will should cease to operate, or that the woes I suffer for the sake of my Lord, the Most Exalted, the All-Glorious, should be ended. Seek thou my wish and forsake thine own. Thy bondage is not for my protection, but to enable me to sustain successive tribulations, and to prepare me for the trials that must needs repeatedly assail me. ”

“ And whereas slight stopping may venture on small irregularities, full stopping that is incorrect is also unpardonable. The objection to full stopping that is correct is the discomfort inflicted upon readers, who are perpetually being checked like a horse with a fidgety driver. ”

“ Now shutting out things is all very well, but it has one simple corollary--that from everything that we shut out we are ourselves shut out. When we shut our door on the wind, it would be equally true to say that the wind shuts its door on us. ”

“ There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage, If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail the long run, We should surely bring up again where we now stand, And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther. ”

“ Ma montre s’arrête; my watch stops. Il s’arrête, la mémoire lui manque; he hesitates, his memory fails him. Il ne faut pas s’arrêter à ce qu’il dit; one must not mind what he says. Vous vous arrêtez à des riens; you stop at trifles. ”

“ I wholly commit and resign to thy most holy will myself, and all that I am, or have, or can do, deliberately choosing and imploring of thee that that will may be most fully and entirely done in me, by me, and in all that concerns me. I do not desire to live one hour longer than it pleases thee. ”

“ But one does not want to stop—because when one stops one begins to think. And my thoughts, except for that shining centre where you are, are so dark and full of sorrow. I miss Desmond every hour, and some great monstrous demon seems to be clutching at me—at you—at England—everything one loves and would die for—all day long. ”

“ Before his imprisonment his dreams had been winged and shod with fire, wild things compounded of desire and endeavour, tender only in their background of the seasons' moods, rain and sunshine and wind and shadows and stars. But to-day longing took in them the place of endeavour, and all their desire was for forgetfulness. ”

“ Nothing will hold him longer—let him go;
Let him go down where others have gone down;
Little he cares whether we smile or frown,
Or if we know, or if we think we know.
The call is on him for his overthrow,
Say we; so let him rise, or let him drown. ”

“ Bird well, entertain no doubt that he will continue to do his best to stop the work, whether with or without the Divine assistance, and that he will literally fulfill his promise, since the work will, undoubtedly, be "stopped" when it is finished. ”

“ My forebodings might possibly be groundless. All within might be safety and serenity. A respite might be gained from the execution of an irrevocable sentence. What could I do? Was not any thing easy to endure in comparison with the agonies of suspense? If I could not obviate the evil I must bear it, but the torments of suspense were susceptible of remedy.
I drew back the bolt, and entered with the reluctance of fear, rather than the cautiousness of guilt. ”

“ Has it not occurred to you that you have no right to go, unless you are equally willing to be prevented from going? O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear! ”

“ Where do you come from, O man, and where do you keep yourself, that we know not your features nor hear your voice? Have you wife or mother who awaits your return? Or children who set your torch in the corner and climb to your lap and embrace your neck? ”

“ It now only remains, before leaving actual stops for the dash, hyphen, quotation mark, and bracket, to comment on a few stray cases of ambiguity, false scent, and ill-judged stopping. We have not hunted up, and shall not manufacture, any of the patent absurdities that are amusing but unprofitable. The sort of ambiguity that most needs guarding against is that which allows a sleepy reader to take the words wrong when the omission or insertion of a stop would have saved him. ”

“ I have done with my life not that I willed, but only that which others gave leave for me to do. Six and twenty years have I been tethered, and fretted, and limited, granted only the semblance of power, the picture of life, and thrust and pulled back whensoever I strained in the least at the leash wherein I was held. ”

“ Why should a stern, condemning voice declare in recesses of my soul, 'You could and should resist'? For years I have been daily yielding to temptation, and conscience as often pronounces sentence against me. ”

“ Why, the only people who do any good in the world—apart from making Pullman cars and telephones, that is to say—are exactly those who do stop—who sit down and think. All the same, it is possible to stop too much. You are always stopping. ”

“ So, in spite of strong wills and common-sense warning, we still, as ever, let our footsteps follow the alluring paths, and go boldly forth to meet a joy, ever careless of the following sorrow that may accompany it, until the hour of shunning is past. ”

“ Suddenly a rift shows itself in the otherwise forever closed door between this life and the other, to close again quickly—the door, which will wholly open in death, and only then will open never more to be closed. ”

“ To warn, to comfort, and command?’”
His words I quench. Excuse my French—
Je dis que tu m’embêtes!
The moral: Common clocks, we find,
In silence take a sudden wind,
But only heroes, as we know,
In silence take a sudden blow. ”

“ And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. ”

“ Well, it is little to throw away the end of my life, and there may be some tidings or tracks of tidings to be found. I will go with thee, dame. Only this time, he muttered, let there be no coming to life again. ”

“ Escape was the imperative thing—to escape into the open air, to shake off bricks and mortar, and to wander in the unfrequented places of the earth, the more properly to take in the passion and the promise of the giddy situation. ”

“ I must retire from the world, live an obscure life the whole remainder of my days, and the whole shameful adventure being divulged, will render me the common topic of table conversation, and entail dishonour and contempt upon my son. ”

“ And then, again; "They are brought down and fallen; but we are risen and stand upright." Ask yourself whether you have stood upright or have fallen, since you left your father's house; whether you have trusted in the Lord your God, or in horses and chariots,—that is, in the vain comforts of an easy life? ”

“ From all of which, though thus obscurely set forth, it will be divined that the lad had now reached, indeed for some days had stood halting, at one of the great partings of the ways: when the whole of Life's road can be walked in by us no longer; when we must elect the half we shall henceforth follow, and having taken it, ever afterward perhaps look yearningly back upon the other as a lost trail of the mind. ”

“ And observe what we may lose through that habit of ours of uncritical obedience to duty; see what may leave us for ever in that fatal pause, caused by the surprise of the challenge to our narrow experience and knowledge, the pause in which we allow habit to overcome adventurous instinct! ”

“ You can imagine the packing, the running up and down stairs, the difficulty of choosing what to leave behind—for that is, after all, what it comes to when you are going away, much more than the difficulty of choosing what you will take with you. ”

“ Your wills have the command of your lives. We may certainly conclude that you are unwilling to turn, when you do not turn. And, why will you not? Can you give any reason for it that is worthy to be called a reason? ”

“ When we tell our guide to stop for a moment he looks at us condescendingly and stands with his burden poised on his head, not even caring to put it down as he waits until these poor creatures, who are not carrying anything at all, regain their breath, and that makes us feel so inferior we don't like to stop often! ”

“ A word—a last kiss—a "God bless you"—your own are gone presently—you are left merely standing there, abandoned, marooned, deserted—feeling somehow that it's all wrong, and that something ought to be done about it. Why don't those people hurry? ”

“ But The Voice of the Silence warns us that beneath each flower in this region, however beautiful it may be, lies coiled the serpent of desire — that lower desire, which the aspirant must stifle in order that he may develop in its place the higher desire which we call aspiration. ”

“ Suppose, as two persons were walking together, one should suddenly stop, and with the strongest signs of fear and amazement, cry out, “On what a precipice do we stand! See, we are on the point of being dashed in pieces! ”

“ Are you not afraid of being stopped in the road and robbed? Why, I've seen the time when, if I had known you carried such things as these, such cures for sick hearts, I think I should have stopped you myself! ”

“ He took the hand she offered him and one of those silences followed which once having passed between a man and woman, is remembered above all spoken words, a silence in which all barriers fall away, and soul speaks to soul. ”

“ When we slowly recover from the tumult and passion of some violent distress, a peculiar stillness falls upon the Mind, and the atmosphere around it becomes in that stillness appallingly clear. We knew not, while wrestling with our woe, the extent of its ravages. ”

“ Go to your places, and sleep and wait, and leave me in peace with myself.' But they continue to wake up betimes, and quiver into momentary visibility to make you divine in spite of yourself,—and as suddenly flit away again. ”

“ The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless, till it is driven by external causes into a new channel. But the time of suspense is dreadful. ”

“ If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say : In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you, con- sider what you are and what you ought to be, think of the ideal. ”

“ For it is only when we have suspended our judgment; it is only when we have suspended our convictions, our principles, our ideals, our moralities, that "the still small voice" of the music of the universe, sad and sweet and terrible and tender, drifts in upon us, over the face of the waters of the soul. ”

“ This silence seemed to him, fancifully, more than mere lack of words—it conveyed a sense of reserve force, of quiet appraisal of himself and his words, of the experiences of men who have been close to realities, who have done things in the world. ”