Tenacity

“ In this great house so royal-rich, and wide,
⁠Be flatter'd to the height.
"From shape to shape at first within the womb
⁠The brain is modell'd," she began,
"And thro' all phases of all thought I come
⁠Into the perfect man.
"All Nature widens upward. Evermore
⁠The simpler essence lower lies:
More complex is more perfect, owning more
⁠Discourse, more widely wise."
Then of the moral instinct would she prate,
⁠And of the rising from the dead,
As hers by right of full-accomplish'd Fate;
⁠And at the last she said:
"I take possession of man's mind and deed. ”

“ He appears to gauge his task by his eye, and to form a judgment whether the weight be proportionate to his strength. If doubtful of his own power, he hesitates and halts, and if urged against his will, he roars and shows temper. ”

“ Then said the fat-faced curate Edward Bull,
"I take it, God made the woman for the man,
And for the good and increase of the world,
A pretty face is well, and this is well,
To have a dame indoors, that trims us up,
And keeps us tight; but these unreal ways
Seem but the theme of writers, and indeed
Worn threadbare. Man is made of solid stuff. ”

“ Because of this indwelling of divinity, every part of the world, however small, is a microcosm, comprehending within itself, like Tennyson’s flower in the crannied wall, all the laws and meaning of the whole. ”

“ High wisdom holds my wisdom less,
That I, who gaze with temperate eyes
On glorious insufficiencies,
Set light by narrower perfectness.
But thou, that fillest all the room
Of all my love, art reason why
I seem to cast a careless eye
On souls, the lesser lords of doom. ”

“ He fought his doubts and gather'd strength,
⁠He would not make his judgment blind,
⁠He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them: thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own;
⁠And Power was with him in the night,
⁠Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone ”

“ XVIII Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life: So careful of the type? but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, "A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go." Tennyson. ”

“ For in the world, which is not ours, they said
"Let us make man," and that which should be man,
From that one light no man can look upon,
Drew to this shore lit by the suns and moons
And all the shadows. ”

“ To throng with stately blooms the breathing spring
⁠Of Hope and Youth.
So many minds did gird their orbs with beams,
⁠Though one did fling the fire.
Heaven flow'd upon the soul in many dreams
⁠Of high desire.
Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world
⁠Like one great garden show'd,
And thro' the wreaths of floating dark upcurl'd. ”

“ The weakness of a people or a house,
Like flies that haunt a wound, or deer, or men,
Or almost all that is, hurting the hurt—
Save Christ as we believe him—found the girl
And flung her down upon a couch of fire,
Where careless of the household faces near,
And crying upon the name of Leolin,
She, and with her the race of Aylmer, past.
Star to star vibrates light: may soul to soul
Strike thro' a finer element of her own? ”

“ This store which men and women set on pleasure and pain, Prendick, is the mark of the beast upon them,—the mark of the beast from which they came! Pain, pain and pleasure, they are for us only so long as we wriggle in the dust. ”

“ 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! ”

“ The child is no longer the minute outcome of natural forces so much greater than itself. It is the “spirit,” the moral being, a reality which impinges on the world of appearances. Never can I forget the change of voice, the change of manner, as Lord Tennyson passed from the first greeting, with its purely human thoughts, to the second, so full of awe at the conception of the world behind the veil and the moral nature of man ”

“ Whatever falls out beyond his hopes, all that he must look upon as so much gain.
317
Geta (apart.) O Phædria, it is incredible how much I surpass my master in wisdom. All my misfortunes have been already calculated upon by me, upon my master coming home. I must grind at the mill, be beaten, wear fetters, be set to work in the fields; not one individual thing of these will happen unexpected by my mind. Whatever falls out beyond my expectations, all that I shall look upon as so much gain. But why do you hesitate to accost him, and soften him at the outset with fair words? ”

“ With Life, that, working strongly, binds—
Set in all lights by many minds,
To close the interests of all.
For Nature also, cold and warm,
And moist and dry, devising long,
Thro' many agents making strong,
Matures the individual form. ”

“ What is there in the great sphere of the earth,
And range of evil between death and birth,
That I should fear,—if I were loved by thee?
All the inner, all the outer world of pain
Clear Love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine,
As I have heard that, somewhere in the main,
Fresh-water-springs come up through bitter brine. ”

“ But while he gazed The beauty of her flesh abashed the boy, As though it were the beauty of her soul: For as the base man, judging of the good, Puts his own baseness in him by default Of will and nature, so did Pelleas lend All the young beauty of his own soul to hers, Believing her ”

“ But am I not the nobler thro' thy love?
O three times less unworthy! likewise thou
Art more thro' Love, and greater than thy years.
The Sun will run his orbit, and the Moon
Her circle. Wait, and Love himself will bring
The drooping flower of knowledge changed to fruit
Of wisdom. Wait: my faith is large in Time,
And that which shapes it to some perfect end.
⁠Will some one say, then why not ill for good?
Why took ye not your pastime? To that man
My work shall answer, since I knew the right
And did it; for a man is not as God,
But then most Godlike being most a man. ”

“ Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty, Nor willing men should come among us, learnt, For many weary moons before we came, This craft of healing. Were you sick, ourself Would tend upon you. To your question now, Which touches on the workman and his work. ”

“ The pleasure of Tender feeling must therefore be pronounced to have an independent standing in the sentient framework, although susceptible of being analysed into the primary pleasures of the senses, together with the influence of association. All the affections derive the chief part of their strength from this complex source. ”

“ For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill And break the shore, and evermore Make and break, and work their will; Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll Round us, each with different powers, And other forms of life than ours, What know we greater than the soul? On God and Godlike men we build our trust. ”

“ And how awe of the first of these supernatural persons, gratitude and love towards the second, and earnest co-operation with the third, may fill and rule men's hearts so as to transform their conduct, we need not go about to show, for we have all seen it with our eyes. Therefore in the practical working of this tenet there is nothing degrading; any more than there is anything degrading in the tenet as an imaginative conception. ”

“ We are a part of all that we have read, to parody the saying of Mr. Tennyson’s Ulysses, and we owe some respect, and house-room at least, to the early acquaintances who have begun to bore us, and remind us of the vanity of ambition and the weakness of human purpose. ”

“ The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often ”

“ In your life ‘if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,’ there will he cross you, like a basilisk, in your path. Even though you possess no splendid gifts, no social charm, nor riches, nor honours, nor domestic joys,—still, if content be yours, there you sin against his creed, and incur his anathema. ”

“ And, finding thus his own ideal
In things dissevered from the real,
Be happier than he seems?
"Ah! who could praise or who could blame,
Tho' glimmers all my way the same,
Like a dyke-road thro' a fen. ”

“ Even your beautiful body, Nettie, carries this taint. No! Hear me out.” I leant forward earnestly. “Our emotions, our passions, our desires, the substance of them, like the substance of our bodies, is an animal, a competing thing, as well as a desiring thing. You speak to us now a mind to minds—one can do that when one has had exercise and when one has eaten, when one is not doing anything—but when one turns to live, one turns again to matter.” ”

“ I employ this word “tendency” as synonymous with needs, appetites, instincts, inclinations, desires; it is the generic term of which the others are varieties; it has the advantage over them of embracing at the same time both the psychological and physiological aspects of the phenomenon. All the tendencies suppose a motor innervation; they translate the needs of the individual, whatever they may be, physical or mental; the basis, the root of 3the affective life is in them, not in the consciousness of pleasure and pain which accompanies them according as they are satisfied or opposed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
—Alfred Tennyson. ———
THE CLEAR VISION
Break forth, my lips, in praise, and own
The wiser love severely kind;
Since, richer for its chastening grown,
I see, whereas I once was blind.
The world, O Father, hath not wronged
With loss the life by thee prolonged;
But still, with every added year,
More beautiful thy works appear.
As thou hast made thy world without,
Make thou more fair my world within;
Shine through its lingering clouds of doubt;
Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin ”

“ She said, "Not so: but I will know
If there be any faith in man."
"Nay now, what faith?" said Alice the nurse,
"The man will cleave unto his right."
"And he shall have it," the lady replied,
"Though I should die to-night." ”

“ Beautiful as is the body of its doctrines, it wants the vivifying energy and soul which are essential to ensure its ascendancy and power. Its cold philosophy and thin abstractions, however calculated to exercise the faculties of anchorets and ascetics, have proved insufficient of themselves to arrest man in his career of passion and pursuit ”

“ That each, who seems a separate whole,
⁠Should move his rounds, and fusing all
⁠The skirts of self again, should fall
Remerging in the general Soul,
Is faith as vague as all unsweet:
⁠Eternal form shall still divide
⁠The eternal soul from all beside ”

“ How joy produces calm? How sternness begets stiffness? How gentleness produces relaxation? These qualities are therefore bodily; for they change the tones and the shapes of substances, exercising their own power in their own kingdoms. ”

“ Each picture of the various aspects of human life rouses an instinctive sympathy, and a feeling in the background, “it can’t be worthless and meaningless,” and yet the poet relentlessly forces us to confess that it is only some far wider view of human nature and [Pg 242] destiny than this world alone can justify, which can make the scenes he depicts of any value. ”

“ These, surely, stand for those immortal virtues which only will abide “when all that seems shall suffer shock,” and leaning upon which alone, the soul, when all else falls from it, shall go towards the golden gates of the new and brighter morning. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the upper end of the scale, we find gross general tendencies: the tendency to take the world of perception as a world of real things in outside space (p. 115) ; the empathic tendency to humanise and personalise our surroundings (p. 198) ; the social tendency that makes us imitative and credulous; the tendency to classify everything in pairs; the tendency to try things out, which is always at war with the tendency to let things be. ”

“ You just treat the Spirit as you would any other kind-hearted sensible person, remembering that it is always there—"closer than hands and feet," as Tennyson says—and you will gradually begin to appreciate its reciprocity as a very practical fact indeed. ”

“ Scene IV. Demea alone.
Dem. Never was there any person of ever such well-trained habits of life, but that experience, age, and custom are always bringing him something new, or suggesting something; so much so, that what you believe you know you don’t know, and what you have fancied of first importance to you, on making trial you reject; and this is my case at present: for the rigid life I have hitherto led, my race nearly run, I now renounce. Why so?—I have found, by experience, that there is nothing better for a man than an easy temper and complacency. ”

“ It is a companion poem to the Vision of Sin; in that poem is traced the effect of indulgence in the grosser pleasures of sense, in this the effect of the indulgence in the more refined pleasures of sense.
I send you here a sort of allegory,
(For you will understand it) of a soul, [1]
A sinful soul possess’d of many gifts,
A spacious garden full of flowering weeds,
A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain,
That did love Beauty only, (Beauty seen
In all varieties of mould and mind)
And Knowledge for its beauty ”