Thinning

“ 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, 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Thy stern soul feels, after the sun withdrawn,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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Once after midnight, the dying lady pointed with her finger to her own lips. Thiennette understood her not; but rose and bent over her face. The Enfeebled tried to lift her head, but could not,—and only rounded her lips. At last, a thought glanced through Thiennette, that the Departing, whose dead arms could now press no beloved heart to her own, wished that she herself should embrace her. O then, that instant, keen and tearful, she pressed her warm lips on the colder,—and she was silent like her that was to speak no more,—and she embraced alone and was not embraced. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Trishna, that thirst which makes the living drink
Deeper and deeper of the false salt waves
Whereon they float--pleasures, ambitions, wealth,
Praise, fame, or domination, conquest, love;
Rich meats and robes, and fair abodes, and pride
Of ancient lines, and lust of days, and strife
To live, and sins that flow from strife, some sweet,
Some bitter. Thus Life's thirst quenches itself
With draughts which double thirst ”

“ He thought the waters of the running stream the sweetest music he had ever beard, and bending over, with his hand he raised to his parched lips a draught of holy water—for ’twas the Mother of Mercy’s gift—the gift of life.
Extreme thirst is the most intolerable of all sufferings—greater far than hunger. None but those who have endured its pangs, can have the least idea of the excruciating pain it brings. ”

“ Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?"
"Thine earth was solitary, yet I found thee!"
"Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee,
⁠⁠Thou visitant divine."
"O thou my Voice, the word was thine." "Was thine." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Then I awoke and saw once more the great red sun rise from the sand-edge of my desolate world, and I became aware of a new pain, for now I perceived the fact that I experienced the sense of thirst. The conception of the impression drew my mind to the subject, and instantly intense thirst, the most acute of bodily sufferings, possessed me. When vitalized tissue craves water, other physical wants are unfelt; when man parches to death all other methods of torture are disregarded. ”

“ But Thiennette's heart-sickness over all her vanished prospects, over her entombed benefactress, over a whole life enwrapped in the pall, had hitherto, in a grief which the stony Rittmeister rather made to bleed than alleviated, swept all away from her, occupations excepted; had fettered all her steps which led not to some task, and granted to her eyes nothing to dry them or gladden them, save down-falling eyelids full of dreams and sleep.
All sorrow raises us above the civic Ceremonial-law, and makes the Prosaist a Psalmist; in sorrow alone have women courage to front opinion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The lips may have trembled in the reawakened force of passion, the gaze have grown dim with longing, the pulses throbbed to ache and ebbed away upon the sickening wave of despair, but the letter only breathed of weakness conquered, the pressure of a restraint imposed by life-long habit, and could not be called artificial. ”

“ All within his soul grew bloody; the blood of his drowned brother united itself with the blood which had once flowed from Thiennette's arm, into a bloody rain;—he still thought he was in the garden in the night of betrothment, he still kept calling for bandages to stanch blood, and was for hiding his head in the ball of the steeple. Nothing afflicts one more than to see a reasonable, moderate man, who has been so even in his passions, raving in the poetic madness of fever. ”

“ CURT. I have none left. Don't overestimate me.
CAPTAIN. As you may have noticed, my understanding of the art of living has been—elimination! That means: wipe out and pass on! Very early in life I made myself a bag into which I chucked my humiliations, and when it was full I dropped it into the sea. I don't think any man ever suffered so many humiliations as I have. ”

“ The king being left thus with the children, applied himself to thought. He directed his rays to one of the children and caused it to stand up, and, following the counsel of the old man, he thought of an action. The action he thought of was that of walking, and he separated it into two acts; the one act moving the right foot, the other act moving the left foot. And he separated the apathy in which the child was into pleasure and pain; pleasure connected with the act of moving the right foot, pain connected with the act of moving the left foot. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What is the quest of thine? This struggle and this reaching after that which I cannot see or feel? Weak is my flesh, though thou, dear Soul, art strong. It is ever easier for me to fall than to rise. I struggle to keep on with thee, but ever and anon thou mountest to planes where my tired and clumsy feet cannot follow thee. Ofttimes have I called unto thee and implored thee to cease the quest, to rest awhile, to sleep. Thou hast heard my moan now and again and I ran laughing into die garden that awaited me. ”

“ One exclaiming, “I declare
That he poisons quite the air:” 105
But the next, “He is not worth
Pains of putting under earth;”
And against the poor dead thing
Each in turn his stone must fling:
Till one wiser passing by,
Just exclaimed, while eagerly
They were venting each his spite,—
“See his teeth, how pearly white!”
Straight the others, with self-blame,
Shrunk away in silent shame. ”

“ My lad, do you know what it is to die of thirst—the throat becoming drier and drier, the tongue swelling, and getting as hard as shoe-leather, and blacker and blacker, the sight growing dim, the voice failing? ”

“ 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.... ”

“ One feels that it is done by an effort, and that if the strain were relaxed for a moment the wild creature would burst loose in rage or despair—and that the voice would break into the scream of passion or quiver down into the falter of pathos. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For pity's melting tenderness is thine.
Thine is the harp of wild expressive tone,
‘Tis thine to touch it with entrancing art;
Till all thy numbers vibrate on the heart,
And sympathy delights thy powers to own. ”

“ Heat, dreadful heat!
Heat, humidity, and air that pressed upon the chest - how shall
I escape?
Here, prisoner of love though she were, she knew only suffering. She glanced at the creature by her side. ”

“ But by stretching an object it is diminished in breadth and depth, while it increases in length; hence it becomes thinner; so that the Mind readily makes the transition from the primitive conception of stretch to that of thinness, indicated by the English word, and by the Sanskrit tanu, and the Latin tener, tenuis. Thinness, again, is allied to slimness, slenderness, fineness, etc.; ideas which are involved in the conception of delicate, and furnish an easy transition to it. ”

“ Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing:—the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth. ”

“ There was but little shade for the travellers, and, after a time, they became hot and weary and thirsty—that is, the children did, but the Thin Woman, by reason of her thinness, was proof against every elemental rigour, except hunger, from which no creature is free. ”

“ Wherefore those faint smiles of thine,
⁠Spiritual Adeline?
What hope or fear or joy is thine?
Who talketh with thee, Adeline?
⁠For sure thou art not all alone:
⁠Do beating hearts of salient springs
⁠Keep measure with thine own? ”

“ Thou would'st have brought us welcome, and with mirth
Led all our thoughts away from winter's dearth,
Had fate but left thy beauty unimperilled.
In this sad world, thine is a common fate,
A world in which the gentlest heart fares worst,
Borne down. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Certainly we all must have presented a perfect picture of woe and misery—half-frozen and famished—pale, haggard, shivering, with our beards unshaven, and our hair hanging lank and wet over our faces, our lips blue, our eyes bloodshot, our clothes dripping with moisture. ”

“ Unquenchable thirst, a dreadfully progressive suffocation, confusion of the senses and of thought—these are inflictions that nature shudderingly recoils from, and these, or their manifestations, are scarcely ever wanting on the death-bed. ”

“ He does not know that sickening thirst That sands one's throat, before The hangman with his gardener's gloves Slips through the padded door, And binds one with three leathern thongs, That the throat may thirst no more. ”