Tameness

“ Not so with our recent actions,—with the business which we now have in hand. On this we are quite unable to speculate. Our affections as yet circulate through it. We no more feel or know it, than we feel the feet, or the hand, or the brain of our body. The new deed is yet a part of life,—remains for a time immersed in our unconscious life. In some contemplative hour, it detaches itself from the life like a ripe fruit, to become a thought of the mind. ”

“ To some temperaments it might seem as though this reduction of the immense unfathomable universe to a congeries of living souls were a strangling limitation. There are certain human temperaments, and my own is one of them, whose aesthetic sense demands the existence of vast interminable spaces of air, of water, of earth, of fire, or even of blank emptiness. ”

“ Then out comes the Idea, more particular, more questionable, but still ideal, spiritual,—every lovely organ of her life—then the clothing upon, the mortal putting on its immortal, spiritual body—shall come apparelled in more precious habit, more moving delicate—this is the transfiguring, the putting on strength, the poco più—the little more which makes immortal,—more full of life, and all this submitted to—the eye and prospect of the soul. ”

“ I stop to say that, during the months past, as before, her life had gone sweetly, pleasantly, without ruffle or labor or care or sickness, or division, even, into hours and days and nights,—a flowing onward, like time,—an existence so serenely perfect as not to be a subject of consciousness. ”

“ I can read into that episode a meaning truer and broader than any I had perceived in it hitherto. The transformation is not magical, but may take place in the life of the humblest. It may be suggested in the statement that love and beauty are not subject to the accidents of time, but, in measure as their temporal manifestation alters and decays, these deathless qualities retire into their own purer sphere, where they shine and bless immortally. ”

“ My subjects indeed at present will be only bears and elks, but in time I hope to see the human face divine multiplying around me; and, in thus cultivating what is in the rudest state of nature, I shall taste one of the greatest of all pleasures, that of creation, and see order and beauty gradually rise from chaos. ”

“ The body felt only the sensation of the present instant, whereas the mind felt also the past and the future, the one by remembrance, the other by anticipation, and consequently both suffered and enjoyed much more. ”

“ Because you and I and other creatures who live by their wits most of the time and have the tasks of physical existence performed for them, need to remember that one can almost see and feel the truth of eternity ... the eternal seasons, Thurley, the ever-dying, ever-reviving blossoms, the migration of the birds, the continual progress and continual decay of all forms of life—that is what makes us really seem so busy. ”

“ That strange reminiscence of what we never have really seen, in what we at present behold, appertains to a certain temperament only,—that temperament in which the ideal notion is so definite that all the realities the least approximating thereunto strike as its semblances, and all that it finds beautiful it compares so as to combine with the beautiful itself. ”

“ What might be called passional sensibility—desire, emotion, impulse—is, like physical sensation, another indispensable factor in evolution; it is the special element in the development of the animal [59] kingdom as well as of the less evolved portion of the human kingdom.
The young souls of mankind must receive the comparatively simple lessons of sensation, desire, and passion, before beginning the far more complicated study of mentality. ”

“ He stood and gazed, then, with his arms folded on his chest, while the people walking to and fro passed and repassed him, and many a one commented as they went, and assigned him a history and a character from their own imagination. How seldom is it, in the busy world with which we mingle, that any of the conjectures regarding our thoughts, our feelings, our state of existence, are correct! ”

“ With equal assurance may one appeal to the universal instinct which is gratified by the adaptation [Pg 87] of ends to means; to the innate human sense of the rightness of what is fitting; the constant pleasure in order, in appropriateness, in harmony. It is this instinct, this sense, this pleasure, which underlies the sensitiveness of the mind to what we call Elegance in composition. ”

“ This was the experience, then, of ‘distinct pre-eminence’ in whose recollection his mind was ‘nourished and invisibly repaired.’ It is in such a moment that the soul’s strength is shown; when common objects evoke what he calls the imagination, the reality, of which they are a suggestion. ”

“ As, in this life, consciousness is interrupted by sleep and by accidents, so the temporal processes, in whatever variety they have, which fulfil in their wholeness and in their relations to the eternal order the life of an individual, may be, for all that I can see, in any one of a large number of relations to us and to one another, — contemporaneous, continuously successive, or discontinuously successive, with temporal gaps of any magnitude. ”

“ It is often the case that we hear men and women talk about temporal things, and about spiritual things. What are temporal things, and what are spiritual things? Can you tell me what spiritual things are? Says one, "It is a joyful feeling, that buoys us above the cares and anxieties of this world. Spiritual things are our hope of a glorious inheritance in the Kingdom of God in the future. Temporal things are the things we eat, drink, wear, and use in divers ways, to shelter and sustain this mortal body while it remains a tabernacle for our spirits." ”

“ If a body that is united with a temperament has the probability of subsisting for a protracted time, and of retaining its compound substance, it is called ‘permanent,’ or ‘perfect;’ if not, ‘imperfect,’ or ‘wanting permanence.’”—Lower down: “And there can be no temperament so equalised that the elements in it should be exactly of the same quantity and mode. ”

“ A good portion of my life is already mingled with the past eternity; and, for the future, it is a dim scene, on which my eyes are fixed as calmly and intensely as possible,—to no purpose. The probability of my doing any service in my day and generation is certainly not very strong. ”

“ What is a passing emotion or half-formed thought to last in so many years of a man's changing, inconsequential life? But what has fixed the emotion of that evening in my recollection so that the slightest shadows remain indelible was an event of strange finality, an event not likely to be forgotten in a life-time—as you shall see. ”

“ So in these depths of the soul's life the arrangements and re-arrangements of units go on, while on the surface the results appear from moment to moment in sensations keen or dull, in perceptions clear or vague, in judgments wise or foolish, in memories gay or sad, in sordid or lofty trains of thought, in gusts of anger or thrills of love. ”

“ The present with them is impregnated with the past and big with the future; not only the whole face but the entire attitude conspires to manifest the flowing stream of their thought, feeling and complete being; we hear the inward utterance of their emotion ”

“ What one broke off with
At the drowsiest?
Was he afraid, or tranquil?
Might he know
How conscious consciousness could grow,
Till love that was, and love too blest to be,
Meet—and the junction be Eternity? ”

“ But for me, that which had been indicated by the meditative of all the ages, in vague, and for the most part impotent, expression, began to acquire a new, wonderful character of reality. I had learned to speak, to hear, to see, to taste, to smell, to touch, to create things and beings, and to enter into relations with what seemed to me independent beings, without having the body - that which is positively doomed to destruction - take part. ”

“ There was in him some antique touch of refinement and temperament which, in all his evil days and deeds and moments of shy nobility, could find its way into the souls of men with whom the world had had an awkward hour. ”

“ Thus we continued for some instants, lost, breathless, senseless of every thing, and in every part but those favourite ones of nature, in which all that we enjoyed of life and sensation was now totally concentered. ”

“ We know the temperament which from the earliest hour consumes with eager desire for knowledge, and energises spontaneously with unceasing and joyful activity in that bright and pure morning of intellectual curiosity, which neither the dull tumultuous needs of life nor the mists of spiritual misgiving have yet come up to make dim. ”

“ Connected by no link with the ever active Present, a monotonous Future stretched before them, made more dreary by its contrast with the keen excitement and ever-shifting variety of their past life of peril and pleasure. ”

“ The very consciousness of our weakness and our weariness gives us faith in a higher power, and courage to resign ourselves to the beautiful system of the All, and we feel invigorated and refreshed when, in waking or in sleeping, we have loosened, even for a short time only, the chains which bind our Eternal Self to our temporal Ego. ”

“ Of the discomfort and disorder of our mode of life I cannot easily give you a notion, for you know nothing of the sort, and, until now, neither did I. The absence of decent regularity in our habits, and the slovenliness of our whole existence, is peculiarly trying to me, who have a morbid love of order, system, and regularity, and a positive delight in the decencies and elegancies of civilized life. ”

“ And who dares to teach man, created in the image of God, that the daily duty appointed to him—duty to himself, his family, his country, and his race—serves but temporal ends? If neglected, are only temporal ends frustrated? When our Father sends us what fills our hearts with food and gladness, is He working nought but temporal ends? ”

“ Nature, who lost, cannot remake him; Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him; Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain. And whither now, my truant wise and sweet, O, whither tend thy feet? I had the right, few days ago, Thy steps to watch, thy place to know: How have I forfeited the right? Hast thou forgot me in a new delight? I hearken for thy household cheer, O eloquent child! ”

“ Forgetful that no man has ever seen or touched this "spirit," apart from a personal soul, or this "life," apart from some living thing, the temperament I am thinking of loves to make imaginative excursions into what it supposes to be vast receding abysses of pure "spirit" and of impersonal inhuman "life." ”

“ The stiff and stern monotony of the parterre, where even the productions of nature held their place as if under the constraint of duty, forced the conviction of its unnatural regularity on her eye and soul, and she turned to heaven for relief. Who does not, even in the first sweet agony of passion? ”

“ After all, may not what the impulsive girl whom I quoted at the beginning of this talk termed the "sham" of life, be the real, though hidden side? We read that "the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." ”

“ Let us likewise distinguish momentary from durable emotions, and we shall immediately perceive, that fear, horror, rage, love, or rather the desire of enjoyment, are sensations which, though durable, depend solely on the impressions of objects upon our senses, combined with the remaining impressions of our preceding sensations; and that, of consequence, those passions we enjoy in common with the brutes. ”

“ What from a psychological point of view appeared to us as the evanescence, the infinite delicacy, the natural instability, of your selfhood, is now to be viewed, in the light of your ideal, as the essential uniqueness of just your significant experience of selfhood. For just what as mere content is so fleeting, is in the light of the one and unique goal a process tending and striving thither. ”

“ It must, likewise, be poetical;—that only, I mean, must be taken which is the permanent in our nature, which is common, and therefore deeply interesting to all ages. The events themselves are immaterial, otherwise than as the clothing and manifestation of the spirit that is working within. ”

“ That will reconcile me to life, and renovate nature, to see trifles animated by a tendency, and to know what I am doing. Life will no more be a noise; now I shall see men and women, and know the signs by which they may be discerned from fools and satans. ”

“ Since life is long, repressions accumulate, the mass of existence of feeling and desire tends to become composed entirely of these repressions, layer upon layer, with every interest in the aggregate striving to attain place in the daylight of consciousness. ”

“ There has been, perhaps, no more luminous example of the faculty of sharing the experience of a past age, of entering into the thought and feeling of a vanished race, than the peculiar divination and rehabilitation of certain extinct phases of emotion and thought which one finds in the pages of Walter Pater. ”

“ There is a state of premature decay.
“In this condition of life the ties of nature seem to be unloosed. Maternal instinct and filial affection seem to participate in the general decay of soul and body. ”

“ I know not why, but infinite compunctions embitter in mature life the remembrances of budding joy and cover every beloved name. Every thing is beautiful seen from the point of the intellect, or as truth. But all is sour, if seen as experience. Details are melancholy; the plan is seemly and noble. In the actual world—the painful kingdom of time and place—dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. ”

“ The human being is in himself temporal and the Lord in Himself eternal, and only the temporal can proceed from man, and only the eternal from the Lord. 3. Temporal things separate eternal things from themselves, while eternal things join temporal things to themselves. ”