Strife

“ I said, as I bent my ear earthwards to listen—"hush!—this either is the very anarchy of strife, or else"—and then I listened more profoundly, and said as I raised my head—"or else, oh heavens! it is victory that swallows up all strife." ”

“ But the strife went on with passing years,
Fed by resentment and pride and fears;
Nor priest nor people could yet define
The rightful range of the Boundary Line.
The strife went on with its loss and shame,
As generations went and came,
And each in its turn the task essayed
To solve the problem so long delayed.
* * * * *
Then kinder, kinglier thought prevailed,
Where threat of sword and gun had failed;
And love-illumined reason wrought
The adjustment long so vainly sought.
"For how can a trifle of earth and air
With the worth of human lives compare? ”

“ But only the priest in the fields of youth hears the requiem guns of strife.
And he knows that strife goes on and on, for ever on and on,
While the harps of the world shall play no more, nor any more shall bring
The maids and youths to laughter until that the end be won,
And the eyes of men grow young again, and the heart of the world can sing. ”

“ The feelings are wound up to a pitch of agony with the vain strife. The temper is tried to the utmost it will bear. The more contemptible the object or the obstructions in the way to it, the more are we provoked at being hindered by them. ”

“ But this strife is not a brute-like, selfish struggle,—nor with men alone. It is a strife with men, and at the same time with one’s own passions. It is a struggle with the proprieties, with errors, with prejudices. ”

“ This rest is won through the man's prior discipline in the toils of strife, in order that when the tumult of disturbance ceases, his mind, through the grace of contemplation, may be translated to gaze upon the face of truth. But since one attains to this rest only through labour and conflict, how can one reach it who has not gone down into the strife? ”

“ The same temperaments! And yet through the ages
Fierce, pitiless, remorseless, between you is strife!
Carnage, death, havoc, seem the work and the wages!
Eternal gladiators!—Brothers grappling for life! ”

“ Strife, it is true, prevails every where in human life. It has its parties and divisions in the present no less than in the past, in the free intercourse of private as well as in political life, in the family as well as in the faith, in knowledge as in thought and opinion. ”

“ There is no going on to represent this scene of rage and madness: it is manifest there would be no bounds nor any end. "If the beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water," what would it come to when allowed this free and unrestrained course? "As coals are to burning coals, or wood to fire," so would these "contentious men be to kindled strife." ”

“ The strife is renewed; passions are rekindled; yet, while men welter in their hearts’ blood, widows mourn and orphans cry, the traitor, the tale-teller, the scandal peddler, maintains his saintly countenance and bewails the fate of the unfortunates. ”

“ Why should we be enemies? Our tastes are different; our pursuits need not interfere. We both of us amply possess the means of happiness; We may be respected by all, and spend a long life of tranquillity and enjoyment. Will it be wise in us to exchange this prospect for the fruits of strife? A strife between persons with our peculiarities and our weaknesses, includes consequences that I shudder to think of. I fear, sir, that it is pregnant with death at least to one of us, and with misfortune and remorse to the survivor. ”

“ According to your habits of thought, you find quarrel in a straw, or peace and serenity in turmoil. According to your habits of thought you may become a strife-breeder or a peacemaker. "A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to anger appeaseth anger." ”

“ So the strife redoubled and the weapons together clashed and ceased not bate and debate and naught was to be seen but blood flowing and necks bowing; nor did the swords cease on the napes of men to make play nor the strife to rage with more and more affray, till the most part of the night was past away and the two hosts were aweary of the mellay. ”

“ If the conscience of any of my readers should tell him that, by his unruly temper, he is marring the peace of his family, oh! let him not neglect the evil as a small one, but, like the poor old sailor in my story, resolutely struggle against it. For an angry man stirreth up strife, and a furious man aboundeth in transgression.
There is sin in commencing strife ”

“ When these locks are gray, and you have toiled and labored for fame and honors never gained, or that burned and furrowed the brow that wore them; when you have engaged in the world's weary strife and sunk by the wayside worn and disheartened by the contest ”

“ the instinct of self-preservation, setting itself against everything that interferes with our pleasures and comfort. What is called temper, with its fruits of anger and strife, has its roots in the physical constitution, and is one among the sins of the flesh. ”

“ Meekness seems to be the antithesis, the exact opposite of strife, and [Pg 80] so much of strife is so causeless and harmful, yet so attractive to the ordinary mind, that those who indulge in it are by this passage warned by implication. ”

“ He who incites to strife is worse than he who takes part in it. ”

“ Strife is not just the same as contention: and there are three things in the passage quoted from Isidore, which express the inordinate nature of strife. First, the quarrelsome man is always ready to fight, and this is conveyed by the words, "ever ready to contradict," that is to say, whether the other man says or does well or ill. ”

“ It seems well enough suited to our capacities, and we to it, since essentially we are of it—it, in fact. At least it leaves or provides us much to strive for, and strife is the only key to knowledge or sensation and life that we have. ”

“ The danger that there is in the beginning of strife. One hot word, one peevish reflection, one angry demand, one spiteful contradiction, begets another, and that a third, and so on, till it proves like the cutting of a dam; when the water has got a little passage it does itself widen the breach, bears down all before it, and there is then no stopping it, no reducing it. 2. A good caution inferred thence, to take heed of the first spark of contention and to put it out as soon as ever it appears. ”

“ But, convinced of the earnestness of the men so suffering through their conscience; who so callous as to persist in subjecting them to a life of ceaseless agony? I believe, too, that however unswerving in their truth to us, the arms of these men would necessarily be feebler in the day of strife. ”

“ "Couldst thou boast, O child of weakness!
O'er the sons of wrong and strife,
Were their strong temptations planted
In thy path of life? ”

“ Boasting and puffing up of self which are the result of anger or vainglory, are not the direct but the occasional cause of quarrels or strife, because, when a man resents another being preferred to him, his anger is aroused, and then his anger results in quarrel and strife. ”

“ More people get into trouble through the wrong use of their tongues than through any other means, I suppose. The Wise Man says, “He that keepeth his tongue keepeth his soul from trouble.” He also says, “The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water.” You know how it runs in every direction, so that you can not gather it up again nor confine it. ”

“ The Years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? ”

“ For what is wedlock forced but a hell,
An age of discord and continual strife?
Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss,
And is a pattern of celestial peace. ”

“ The struggle, which, when some great principle of politics or morals is the subject of the strife, ennobles in our eyes the unflinching combatants, only degrades when the violence and the rancour result from the soreness of wounded vanity, or the malice of blighted anticipation. ”

“ Where good and ill, together blent,
Wage an undying strife. ”

“ That he should live in strife, and in a state of war; his hand against every man, that is his sin; and every man's hand against him, that is his punishment. Note, Those that have turbulent spirits, have commonly troublesome lives; they that are provoking, vexatious, and injurious to others, must expect to be repaid in their own coin. ”

“ A small thing, a word, a look, may often put out the spark which is about to light the destructive train. How few [Pg 394] there are in this world of jealousy and contention, who are ready to utter that word, or bestow that look, and how many who will fan the spark of strife into a blaze, or will at least let it alone, and take no pains to put it out. ”

“ This may be the reason why, when men are at strife and some ambiguous Omen occurs, he who first claims its favour or denounces its menace upon his enemy, gains an advantage; [345] for the other may be daunted and unable to rally his forces. ”

“ Of the grinding chains of strife.
*⁠*⁠*⁠*
We’re only slaves . . . Toys of a strange desire,
Unpunished are the fists that strike our breast,
What we possess, stills other men’s desire,
At others mercy must our honor rest. ”

“ Some, the weeds of the world, dashed from shore to shore,—all vicissitude, enterprise, strife, disquiet; others, the world's lichen, rooted to some peaceful rock, growing, flourishing, withering on the same spot,—scarce a feeling expressed, scarce a sentiment called forth, scarce a tithe of the properties of their very nature expanded into action.
There was an air of quiet and stillness in the red quadrangular building, as my carriage stopped at its porch, which struck upon me, like a breathing reproach to those who sought the abode of peace with feelings opposed to the spirit of the place. ”

“ Great is the glory, for the strife is hard! ”

“ O tangle of world's wrong and right,
What art thou 'gainst my armour's gleam
But dusky cobwebs of a dream?
Beat down, deep sunk from every gleam
Of hope, they lie and dully dream;
Men once, but men no more, that Love
Their waste defeated hearts should move.
Here sleeps the world that would not love!
Let it sleep on, but if He move
Their hearts in humble wise to wait
On his new-wakened fair estate.
O won at last is never late!
Thy silence was the voice of fate;
Thy still hands conquered in the strife;
Thine eyes were light; thy lips were life. ”

“ A foolish trick to make the rose more strangely gay
Is now a close-locked, mortal conflict of brain and blood—
A feud too old to settle or renounce.
I shall grow too tired to struggle, and the fight will end,
And they will enter in at last—
Nature and Time, long thwarted of their prey,
Those old grey two, more cruel for the lips that said them "Nay,"
For the bitterest foe is he who in the past
Has been repulsed when he would fain be friend. ”

“ To find yourself facing a square of irate strikers is to feel yourself very thin, very colourless, and amazingly inexperienced. It is to wonder at the rudeness of their speech, the largeness of their mouths, and to speculate in a Christianly way as to just what screw is loose in their mental make-up. I know this to be the way of it, for once we had a strike in a mine which I, with a strutting but misguided assurance, imagined to be the property of our family. ”

“ If you have, unfortunately, had a quarrel with a friend, talk of it to others as little as possible; lest in the heat of anger, you may give an exaggerated account, and represent your adversary in darker colours than she deserves. You may be very sure these misrepresentations will reach her ear, and be greatly magnified by every successive relater. In this way a trifle may be swelled into importance; a mole-hill may become a mountain; and a slight affront may embitter the feelings of future years. ”

“ Recently, when you have laid violent hands upon my person, and endangered my life, I said it was violence of temper, not malignity of heart, and I resolved, for your sake and mine, to keep our secret, and to bear with it. ”

“ A RULE OF LIFE
‘If you want to annoy an opponent thoroughly, and even to harm him,’ said a crafty old knave to me, ‘you reproach him with the very defect or vice you are conscious of in yourself. Be indignant ... and reproach him!
‘To begin with, it will set others thinking you have not that vice.
‘In the second place, your indignation may well be sincere.... You can turn to account the pricks of your own conscience. ”

“ Strike against Jah! You are workers! Why do you work? To feed your children. Your children die. Strike, I say, strike while the iron is hot, the iron that has entered into your souls from the cruel tyranny of Jah! There is no other enemy. You have no other foe.... ”

“ Thus in a word, to avoid a long detail, those suspicious attachments, loose conversations, ridiculous compliances, and desires of pleasing, too much attended, have filled you with dispositions so nearly allied to guilt and debauchery, that you are no longer capable of resistance against any of their attacks; the corruption prepared by the whole train of your past actions, will be lighted up in an instant; your weakness will overcome your reflection; your heart will go against glory, duty, and yourself. ”

“ There is no longer an adversary, but a superior who says quietly, “Is that not enough? Here is the other cheek; strike as long as you wish. It is better that my face should suffer than my soul. You can hurt me as much as you wish, but you cannot force me to follow you into a mad, brutal rage. ”

“ Beneath a gentlemanly exterior, that other, whom we have seen depart from her side under such peculiar circumstances, hid a spirit of petty meanness and violence of temper, a soul that hardly merited the name, and which made him enemies everywhere, friends nowhere. ”

“ Everybody had struck who could possibly want to strike or who could possibly be cajoled or bullied into striking, whether they wanted to or not. The lighter and brighter side of life might now claim some attention. ”