Underhandedness

“ Like all the organs of our senses, the hands are the instrument of wickedness to sinful man; his sense of touch is the inlet of evil. How refined that sense in the adroit pickpocket, but to what an ill purpose is it devoted! How dexterous are the hands of the shoplifter, but to what a wretched course have they been trained! The hand grasps the pen; every stroke is guided by its delicate sense of touch; it obeys the mind ”

“ By what half-development of human power has the left hand been neglected? When we arrive at the acme of civilization shall we not all be ambidextrous, and in our hand-to-hand contests against difficulties shall we not be doubly triumphant? It occurs to me, by the way, that when my teacher was training my unreclaimed spirit, her struggle against the powers of darkness, with the stout arm of discipline and the light of the manual alphabet, was in two senses a hand-to-hand conflict. ”

“ Undertaken later, the result is often to spoil the skill of the left hand, without training the right to do its work as well. In conclusion, from what we have seen above, in answer to the question, Why are we right-handed? ”

“ Looking then on right-handedness as a very noticeable human attribute, and one that enters largely into the daily acts, the exceptional manifestations of skill, and many habits and usages of life: the fact is indisputable that, whether we ascribe its prevalence solely to education, or assign its origin to some organic difference, the delicacy of the sense of touch, and the manipulative skill and mobility of the right hand, in the majority of cases, so far exceeds that of the left that a term borrowed from the former expresses the general idea of dexterity. ”

“ Two causes have thus to be recognised as operating in the development of right-handedness, and begetting certain differences in its manifestation under varying social influences. There is a progressive scale, from the imperfect to the more perfectly developed, and then to the perfectly educated hand: [Pg 16] all steps in its adaptation to the higher purposes of the manipulator. The hand of the rude savage, of the sailor, the miner, or blacksmith, while well fitted for the work to which it is applied, is a very different instrument from that of the chaser, engraver, or cameo-cutter ”

“ The human hand is not only the symbol of the intelligent artificer, “the hand of the master,” the sign and epitome of the lord and ruler; it is the instrument of the will alike for good and evil deeds. The idea of it as the active participator in every act embodies itself in all vocabularies. The imperial mandate, the lordly manumission, the skilled manufacturer, the handy tool, the unhandy workman, the left-handed stroke, the handless drudge, with other equally familiar terms, all refer to the same ever-ready exponent of the will ”

“ On the other hand, how often are we filled with distrust at the sight of a carefully tended, pink and white hand of an elegant gentleman—whether because we dislike its condition or its shape, or because the form of the nails recalls an unpleasant memory, or because there is something wrong about the arrangement of the fingers, or because of some unknown reason. ”

“ A hand that has lost its head may affect the fastidious as a mixed metaphor; but, God pardon us all, what an unmixed truth! We could almost prove the whole ease from the habit of calling human beings merely "hands" while they are working ”

“ None of you will be the worse of thinking of that hand as His who makes, supports, moves, and governs all things,—that hand which, while it wheels the rolling worlds, gathers the lambs with his arm, carries them in his bosom, and gently leads those that are with young, and which was once nailed for "our advantage on the bitter cross." ”

“ If, under pretext of training the hand and decomposing the movements, you allow this habit a chance of existence, you will sow the germs of a defect which may presently become ineradicable. It is your work to oppose it. ”

“ I know nothing more of the hand-bill, which is said to have enraged you so much, than any of yourselves, and I disapprove of it as much, though it has been made the ostensible handle of doing infinitely more mischief than anything of that nature could possibly have done. ”

“ Those who are so tender and delicate, that they would feel as a hard blow, what to others would only seem a playful pat with the hand, should never be so much as lightly touched with the finger, for if the lightest touch goes to their hearts, whoever touches them can’t fail to wound them. ”

“ He said this over several times, nervously clasping and unclasping his hands,--hands which, long, narrow, and white, suggested a certain graceful helplessness which is apt to distinguish the particularly beautiful hands of a woman. "Yes, one must learn to control circumstances, to conquer one's self." ”

“ Look where we will, we find the hand in time and history, working, building, inventing, bringing civilization out of barbarism. The hand symbolizes power and the excellence of work. The mechanic’s hand, that minister of elemental forces, the hand that hews, saws, cuts, builds, is useful in the world equally with the delicate hand that paints a wild flower or molds a Grecian urn, or the hand of a statesman that writes a law. ”

“ And under their influence, you retain the little hand, that you had not dared retain so long before; and her struggle to recover it—if indeed it be a struggle—is infinitely less than it was—nay, it is a kind of struggle, not so much against you, as between gladness and modesty. It makes you as bold as a lion; and the feeble hand, like a poor lamb in the lion’s clutch, is powerless, and very meek—and failing of escape, it will sue for gentle treatment ”

“ Your fingers are like capering horses, spirited and willing, but ignorant of where to go without a guide. Put on your bridle and curb them in till they learn to obey you, or they will not serve you well. ”

“ How constantly the hand aids us in explaining or enforcing a thought! We affirm a fact by placing the hand as if we would rest it firmly on a body; we deny by a gesture putting the false or erroneous proposition away from us ”

“ And oh, my masters, look upon her hands and fingers: they be so slender, so long, so slim, so supple, and so cunning as for all the world like a gipsy's fingers, ready to thrust into any man's pockets and there go a-fishing. ”

“ Then, again, to be pursued by others, he might be seen suddenly changing to the back and heel-forward movement, offering them his hand, and, at the same time, eluding their grasp by his dexterous and instantaneous deviations to the right and left, leaving them to their hard work of striking out after him with all their might and main. ”

“ If you see beautiful hands in your dream, you will enjoy great distinction, and rise rapidly in your calling; but ugly and malformed hands point to disappointments and poverty. To see blood on them, denotes estrangement and unjust censure from members of your family.
If you have an injured hand, some person will succeed to what you are striving most to obtain.
To see a detached hand, indicates a solitary life, that is, people will fail to understand your views and feelings. To burn your hands, you will overreach the bounds of reason in your struggles for wealth and fame, and lose thereby. ”

“ If you’d a dropt that handkerchief on the ground and he’d a picked it up, instead of putting it in his pocket, he’d a run after you crying, ‘Mister you’ve lost your handkerchief.’ Now there’s no work to be had by those who are fools enough to work, so he’s just starving by inches. ”

“ How that little useless hand would shrink from the touch of the gaunt, horny, clay-coloured, begrimed workman's hand, which hard, unremitting labour has changed into a kind of hoof. Some hands are coy, others paddle you indecently; the grip of some is hypocritical, and not what it pretends to be; there is the velvety, the unctuous, the priestly, the humbug's hand ”

“ A pure hand needs no glove to cover it!" ”

“ And I have already written in the book 'Tola'at Yaakov' that there are ten fingers in the hand of a person corresponding to the higher wisdoms, as the hands with their fingers are the instruments of action to serve the soul with them. ”

“ It is equally annoying to have one's hand clutched aloft in grotesque affectation and shaken violently sideways, as though it were being used to clean a spot out of the atmosphere. What woman does not wince at the viselike grasp that cuts her rings into her flesh and temporarily paralyzes every finger? ”

“ I do not therefore find fault with the artifices above mentioned, when they are introduced with skill and accompanied by proportionable sentiments and expressions in the writings.
For the moving of pity our principal machine is the handkerchief; and indeed in our common tragedies we should not know very often that the persons are in distress by anything they say, if they did not from time to time apply their handkerchiefs to their eyes. ”

“ It would be difficult to class the hand with "the lady's finger" in any of the foregoing divisions, and it would puzzle one skilled in palmistry, and who regards the human hand as a mirror of the mind, to use it even in the way phrenologists use the casts of bull-necked, animal-headed felons. ”

“ And if one of our fine gentlemen puts off his straw-colored kids and stands by the other, shoulder to shoulder, or leads him on to the attack, he is as honorable in our eyes and in theirs as if he were ill-dressed and his hands were soiled with labor. ”

“ A touch will guide him, but brutality will make a mad thing of him. The gentle hand, the gentle hand! He who is privileged enough to have that in his gift, within his faculty, is surely blessed above his fellows! ”

“ There is no escaping the logical conclusion of an investigation into the relations existing between the mind and the hand. The hand is scarcely less the guide than the agent of the mind. It steadies the mind. It is the mind’s moral rudder, its balance-wheel. It is the mind’s monitor. It is constantly appealing to the mind, by its acts, to “hew to the line, let the chips fly where they may.” ”

“ A pure hand needs no glove to cover it!” ”

“ For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world. ”

“ But see what you have to avoid, what to observe, and what to fear. It happens that, in the human body, or in any other body, some member may be cut off, hand, finger, or foot. Does the soul follow it when cut off? ”

“ But childhood speedily reaches the stage when the privileged hand asserts its prerogative, and assumes its distinctive responsibility. For good or evil, not only does the right hand take precedence in the [Pg 26] established formulæ of speech, but the left hand is in many languages the symbol or equivalent of impurity, degradation, malice, and of evil doings. ”

“ The evidence derived from this source leaves no room for doubt that the preferential choice is no mere habit; but that everywhere, among barbarous and civilised races alike, one specific hand has been assigned for all actions requiring either unusual force or special delicacy. ”

“ The left hand is as a rule not on terms of confiding intimacy with the right, whether [30] it is scattering seeds of kindness or getting into mischief. In the mental realm the same trick of camouflage prevails. ”

“ Now, then, before I go on, I want to ask you if you’ve ever noticed this: that people, when they’re thinking deep, or when they’re worried, are most always doing something with their hands, and they don’t know it, and don’t notice what it is their hands are doing, some stroke their chins; some stroke their noses; some stroke up under their chin with their hand ”

“ In the first case, the feeling of insecurity gives a hesitating uncertainty to the loose; and in the second, the power of the fingers is so cramped that a sensation of distortion cripples their best efforts. ”

“ The little girl who had been frequently reproved for not using her right hand came to have a positive dislike for her other hand, which she naturally understood to be wrong hand, and she did not wish to have anything wrong about her person. ”

“ Every one knows, and shudders at, the woman who gives two, or at most, three fingers of a cold and lifeless hand for a moment into your keeping, and every one recognizes and fears the man who swallows up and crushes the entire hand within his powerful grasp. Each extreme is to be avoided.
A lady should give her whole hand, not her fingers; a gentleman should receive it cordially, holding it neither too tightly nor too loosely, shaking it very slightly and not presuming to retain it. ”

“ Why, if these fingers are delicate enough to be fondled and kissed without recompense, the men shew a bad grace in complaining that the same fingers fondled in their turn a bit of gold or paper supposed to be beyond their reach. Of course we do our duty, but always with a feeling in such cases that the victims did not do theirs, and impose upon us the trouble of rectifying the results of their folly, if not vice. ”

“ The hand is the instrument by which we execute our works, the sign of our nobility, the means by which the intellect gives form and shape to its artistic conceptions, by which it gives reality to the mandates of its will, by which it exercises the dominion that God conceded to man over all other creatures. The rough, strong, sinewy, horny hand, it may be, of a laborer, a workman, testifies nobly to this dominion, but on its rudest and least intellectual side. ”

“ The intention of your being taught needlework, knitting, and such like, is not on account of the intrinsic value of all you can do with your hands, which is trifling, but to enable you to judge more perfectly of that kind of work, and to direct the execution of it in others. ”

“ Be innocent of all offence, appeal to your own heart with conscious rectitude, yet say, if the chain has galled your ankle, and the iron bar has divided the sunlight that streamed into your cell,—say, if you can, that self-esteem came out intact and unwounded, after such indignity. ”