Thinness

“ Thinness and Discontent.—In general, it is well understood that thin people are likely to be more gloomy and discontented than those of stouter build. The pessimists of the world have usually been lank and lean. ”

“ But beware of the man especially if there is what hair-cutters call a " thinness " upon the upper part of his head, or if the corners of his beard show a slight powdering of pepper and salt who tries to shorten distance between himself and you by stealthily gaining ground under the mask of some well-devised feint. ”

“ Physical Disadvantages of Thinness.—There are many dangers that go with thinness besides the tendency to that irritability of the nervous system which we have come to associate with neurotic symptoms. It has long been known that a person who is under weight is much more likely to contract tuberculosis than a normal individual. ”

“ NATURAL PREDESTINATION. Nature varies its works, and has remedies for thinness, as it has for obesity.
Persons intended to be thin are long drawn out. They have long hands and feet, legs thin, and the os coxigis retroceding. ”

“ The Length, and Breadth, I never saw,
And Heighth of Love Divine.
Where am I now, or what my Hope?
What can my Weakness do?
Jesu! to Thee my Soul looks up,
'Tis Thou must make it new.
Thine is the Work, and Thine alone. ”

“ Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe
The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,
Whose impotence an easy pardon gains.
Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease: 580
Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy
Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,
When fenced by power and master of the world.
Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,
Free from heart-withering custom's cold control, 585
Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued. ”

“ Thine, a like heart? Thy very soul, the same?
Thou pleadest an eternal sorrow: we
Praise the still changing beauty of this earth.
Passionate good and evil, thou dost see:
Our eyes behold the dreams of death and birth.
We love the joys of men: we love the dawn,
Red with the sun, and with the pure dew pearled
Thy stern soul feels, after the sun withdrawn,
How much pain goes to perfecting the world.
Canst thou be right? Is thine the very truth? ”

“ And Thy face and Thy voice always seem to me most like hers; and the faces and voices around me here are harsh and rough, so that I cannot help longing and longing to see and hear Thine. Thine and my mother's; but even most Thy own, because of that wonderful love of Thy dying for us. If it were not for my father! Every one seems in such terror of him; and there was the piercing wail that day in the dungeon which he could not explain! To me he is always tender, and yet I find it so hard to return his fondness as I would. Something in his eyes seems by turns to scorch and to freeze me. ”

“ Thine, O Lord, is the kingdom, and Thou art the One exalted as head above all; and Thine are riches and glory. Unto Thee do the creatures from above and beneath testify that they shall perish, but Thou shalt endure. Thine is that power whose mystery our minds fail to fathom, for Thou art too mighty for us. Thine is the hiding-place of might, the mystery and the foundation. Thine is the name which is concealed from the men of wisdom, and the power which sustains the universe on nothing, and the ability to bring every hidden thing to light. ”

“ And you, poor deluded victim, are more than half willing to believe that your increasing size is an equivalent to increasing health and strength, especially as your wife emphatically takes that view, and regards your augmenting portliness with approval. Ten years have now passed away since you were forty, and by weight twelve stone and a half a fair proportion for your height and build. Now you turn the scale to one stone more, every ounce of which is fat; extra weight to be carried through all the labors of life. ”

“ The azure heaven, or purple lights of morn; 20
Is aught so fair in evening's lingering gleam,
As from thine eye the meek and pensive beam
That falls like saddest moonlight on the hill
And distant grove, when the wide world is still!
Thine are the ample views, that unconfined
Stretch to the utmost walks of human kind:
Thine is the spirit that with widest plan
Brother to brother binds, and man to man. ”

“ Oh! that the God of heaven might please to tell them how abominable in his eyes are a weight and a weight, a stone and a stone, in the bag of weights!—one weight for themselves when they are under hatches, and another for others when they come to helm. ”

“ I wish I had more flesh upon my poor bones. I think," going deliberately up to a glass and surveying herself with a distasteful shrug,—"I think thin people have a meagre, gawky, hard look about them, eminently unbecoming. ”

“ Then turn and listen to this sweet voice: "If any man thirst" (and what man does not?) "let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." Thirst not only quenched, but water to spare for other thirsting ones,—the void not only filled, but running over with a constant flow of blessing. Who can express the glories of that contrast?
Pause, beloved reader: turn your eyes from the page, and dwell on it in thy spirit a little. ”

“ It’s what I said to a man only yesterday, that thin ones are bad ones, and there isn’t any one could be thinner than you are yourself.”
“The reason you say that,” said the Thin Woman calmly, “is because you are fat and you have to tell lies to yourself to hide your misfortune, and let on that you like it. There is no one in the world could like to be fat, and there I leave you, ma’am. ”

“ No physical thirst, no physical hunger, has ever been stronger than this thirst and hunger, which yearned to make all that is unfamiliar, familiar; or in other words, all that is outside the spirit, inside the spirit. ”

“ Thin people sometimetimes eat a great deal. All I ever even talked with, confess that they digest badly. That is the reason they remain thin.
They are of every class and temperament. Some have nothing salient either in feature or in form. Their eyes are inexpressive, their lips pale, and every feature denotes a want of energy, weakness, and something like suffering. ”

“ For if Thine ears be not with us in the depths also, whither shall we go? whither cry? The day is Thine, and the night is Thine; at Thy beck the moments flee by. Grant thereof a space for our meditations in the hidden things of Thy law, and close it not against us who knock. ”

“ If sins of men Thou scann'st, who may stand
That searching eye of Thine, and chast'ning hand?
2.
Oh, bear our pray'rs and sighs, Redeemer blest,
And grant Thy holy souls eternal rest
And let perpetual light upon them shine;
For tho' not spotless, still these souls are Thine.
3.
To be appeased in wrath, dear Lord, is Thine ”

“ But his face was inexplicable and tormenting. It may once have been a strong face, but its strength was almost effaced by life. And yet there was no weakness about it—only an indifference that saps at strength. ”

“ And while meridian fervors beat,
Thine is the woodland dumb retreat;⁠10
But chief when evening scenes decay
And the faint landscape swims away,
Thine is the doubtful soft decline,
And that best hour of musing thine. ”

“ I could hardly support my own weight; my legs were trembling with the burden; sweat broke out over my whole body; the rays of light beat down upon me fiercely, overpoweringly....
Desperately, I quickly turned the dial until the two red marks coincided. A great weight, soft and enveloping, seemed to drop upon me. The senses of sight and hearing and feeling all left me. ”

“ I am thinking of the women who describe themselves as painfully thin. Some people are naturally thin and have to face their clothes problem just the same as the stout woman has to face hers. You can’t always cover yourself up to your chin, down to wrist and down to heels. ”

“ Now that you may see how solid is my proof; if one marks carefully his savage face, the whole habit of his body, does not one seem to see as it were the very image of all vices? And herein is the wisdom of Nature to be praised, that she has pent this soul of deformity in a fitting body. ”

“ When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,
The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length. ”

“ We can almost see this man, so tall and thin that he seems to be walking on stilts, with pallid, hollow cheeks and narrow chest, suffering from lack of appetite and from melancholia; nervous, incapable of steady productive work and prone to dream over empty visions of poetry and art. ”

“ O my friends with thin skins,—and here I protest that a thick skin is a fault not to be forgiven in a man or a nation, whereas a thin skin is in itself a merit, if only the wearer of it will be the master and not the slave of his skin,—O, my friends with thin skins, ye whom I call my cousins and love as brethren, will ye not forgive me these harsh words that I have spoken? ”

“ Every person who does not like what I have to say is cheerfully advised to lump it. Any person who is as fat as I was and who wants to get thinner is at liberty to follow my method. If circumstances are similar results will be similar. ”

“ If you can imagine a very heavy weight let somewhat gradually, but irresistibly, down upon young and tender shoulders, then gently lifted again, little by little, by a sympathizing and unlooked-for helper, and lastly tossed by him unexpectedly into the air, only to fall back with redoubled weight, and crush the frame that was but bowed before, you can form some idea of what had just happened to me. ”

“ From root to crowning petal thine alone.
Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown
⁠Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.
⁠But ah, the birds, the birds! Who shall build bowers
To keep these thine? ”

“ Imagine, if you can, a man weighing all of three hundred pounds, not more than five feet ten-and-one-half inches in height and yet of so lithesome a build that he gave not the least sense of either undue weight or lethargy. His temperament, always ebullient and radiant, presented him as a clever, eager, cheerful, emotional and always highly illusioned person with so collie-like a warmth that one found him compelling interest and even admiration. ”

“ He takes the thick and thin as it comes, as to pie, for instance. Some people do make them very thin. I knew a place where they were not thicker than the poor man's plaster; they were spread so thin upon the crust that they were better fitted to draw out hunger than to satisfy it. ”

“ Over even the freshest and purest earthly fountains the Hand that never makes a mistake has written, ‘He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again.’ Look into your own heart and you will find a copy of that inscription already traced, ‘Shall thirst again.’ And the characters are being deepened with every attempt to quench the inevitable thirst and weariness in life, which can only be satisfied and rested in full consecration to God. ”

“ In thine age a staff for thee;
But when years have mark'd thy brow,
When thy step is weak and slow,
When thy hair is thin and white,
And thine eye hath lost its light,
I shall never seek thy side,
And thy faltering footsteps guide. ”

“ Thine is the existence from the shadow of whose light every being was created, of which we say: ‘Under its shadow we live.’ Thine are the two worlds between which Thou didst set a boundary: the first for deeds and the second for recompense. Thine is the recompense which Thou didst store up and hide for the righteous, for when Thou didst see that it was good, Thou didst conceal it.
Thou art one, the first of every number, and the foundation of every structure. Thou art one, and at the mystery of Thy oneness the wise are perplexed, for they know not what it is. ”

“ Thine eye is My trust, suffer not the dust... Thine eye is My trust, suffer not the dust of vain desires to becloud its luster. Thine ear is a sign of My bounty, let not the tumult of unseemly motives turn it away from My Word that encompasseth all creation. Thine heart is My treasury, allow not the treacherous hand of self to rob thee of the pearls which I have treasured therein. Thine hand is a symbol of My loving-kindness, hinder it not from holding fast unto My guarded and hidden Tablets.... ”

“ I suppose, in every time is composed, who live altogether on the low plane of the world, and for the world alone, whether their worldliness take the form of sensuous appetite, or of desire to acquire wealth and outward possessions. The thirst of the body is the type of the experience of all such people. ”

“ Now 'tis certain, that the tendency of bodies, continually operating upon our senses, must produce, from custom, a like tendency in the fancy; and that when we consider any object situated in an ascent, the idea of its weight gives us a propensity to transport it from the place in which it is situated to the place immediately below it, and so on till we come to the ground, which equally stops the body and our imagination. ”

“ See ye any fat souls, but diligent souls? Our barrenness and leanness hath negligence written upon it. Do ye not wonder that we are not fat and flourishing, as palms and cedars in the courts of our God? ”

“ A desire for food proclaims a need of my wasting body. The needed material can then be taken into it to build it up and fit it for its holy mission of being an instrument in elaborating an immortal spirit. So, likewise, thirst is the voice of God proclaiming a need of my body, and my spirit is induced to seek for that which shall supply the demand of a divine impulse originating in that plane. So it is in regard to all other needs of the body calling upon the spirit for gratification. ”

“ If it were possible to bring the soul into view, and to behold it with our bodily eyes, that of the luxurious would seem depressed, mournful, miserable, and wasted with leanness, for the more the body grows sleek and gross, the more lean and weakly is the soul. ”