Valance

“ Such angelic confidence demanded the fidelity of honour; but could he, feeling her in every pulsation, could he ever change, could he be a villain? The emotion with which she, for a moment, allowed herself to be pressed to his bosom, the tear of rapturous sympathy, mingled with a soft melancholy sentiment of recollected disappointment, said—more of truth and faithfulness, than the tongue could have given utterance to in hours! ”

“ I have witnessed it, I have felt it — suffered the rod with them and for them, but waited for the fruits in hope; and glory to thee, dear Husband and Father, I have not waited in vain. Thou hast written vanity, and opened our eyes to read vanity written on every earthly enjoyment, except so far as thou art enjoyed in them. Thou hast enabled not only thine aged servant, but her children, to put a blank into thy hand, and to say, 'Choose thou for us.' We take hold of thy covenant, and choose it for our portion. ”

“ But, against foolish men, we are constrained to propound foolish things. Return to the heart which you have left, ye wretched prevaricators: ye, who love vanity and are become vain; ye, who crucify afresh the Son of God and put him to open shame; ye, who in this manner, even by whole troops, have made the souls of miserable men the companions of demons, alienating them from their Creator through the nefarious sacrilege of images, and thus casting them down into perpetual damnation. ”

“ The ends to be accomplished by volition are as numerous as the infinite variety of human purposes and actions, and, of course, admit of no complete enumeration or classification. We confine our further attention, then, to these elements—the motive, the choice, the executive volition—and proceed to their more careful investigation as phenomena of the will. ”

“ O men, fools, how long will you fix the affections of your hearts on this earth? why do you love the goods of this world, which are all vanity and lies? Do you imagine that you shall find peace by the acquisition of these goods? But how can you expect to find peace, while you walk in the ways of affliction, and misery? ”

“ Therefore the accuser, when he says that anything has been done in compliance with some impulse, ought to exaggerate that impulse, and any other agitation or affection of the mind, with all the power of language and variety of sentiments of which he is master, and to show how great the power of love is, how great the agitation of mind which arises from anger, or from any one of those causes which he says was that which impelled any one to do anything. ”

“ His youth, his beauty, his valour—the act, which Valency well remembered, of his springing forward so as to shield him with his own person—his last words and thoughts devoted to the soft recollection of a beloved sister,—awakened an interest beyond even the present hour, fraught as it was with the chances of life and death. ”

“ It is not my aim to inveigh against any one and write so-called Philippics against him—be that villainy far from me—but to root out error from men’s minds, to free them from vices and crimes by either admonition or reproof. ”

“ You thus impose on the impetuous sallies of cupidity a salutary rein! you calm the feverish ardor of enjoyments which disturb the senses; you free the soul from the fatiguing conflict of the passions; elevate it above the paltry interests which torment the crowd; and surveying, from your commanding position, the expanse of ages and nations, the mind is only accessible to the great affections—to the solid ideas of virtue and of glory. ”

“ The rational part of his nature, or that dignity of thought which prompts to virtue, had entirely established its empire over him,—had taught him to curb and restrain those strong propensities of his nature, which, for want of being directed to their due order, had so frequently led him, during the earlier part of his life, into the commission of error, and the perversion of his fine understanding. ”

“ Duty, and the associations of her early youth, had breathed in her ear the terrible command to love no more; but her soul rebelled, and often she thought that, in so mad a world, duty was but a watch-word for fools, and that she might unblamed taste of the only happiness she should ever enjoy. ”

“ Your bitter experience made you ask materialism, What comfort is there in being told that death is the very nursery of new life, and that our heirs are our very selves, if when you take leave of her who was and is your world it is ‘Vale, vale, in æternum vale’? ”

“ For howsoever I have fought against this monster, and broken its wicked teeth with the hammer of austerity, and at times repelled it, I have never won the full victory. When, in the ways of spiritual gladness, I wish to show myself cheerful to the brethren, I drop into words of vanity ”

“ VALENTINE My friends,--
First Outlaw That's not so, sir: we are your enemies.
Second Outlaw Peace! we'll hear him.
Third Outlaw Ay, by my beard, will we, for he's a proper man.
VALENTINE Then know that I have little wealth to lose:
A man I am cross'd with adversity ”

“ Your wills have the command of your lives. We may certainly conclude that you are unwilling to turn, when you do not turn. And, why will you not? Can you give any reason for it that is worthy to be called a reason? ”

“ When I look back on duties neglected, on self-complacencies, on purposes fulfilled on the surface but not in the spirit, on cold-hearted devotions, on a thousand treasons against the Banner of Love, I can only cry out, "Where Lord?" ”

“ Shame and confusion took possession of his soul, when he thought of skulking about in his native town as a beggar, branded with the mark of contempt, and claiming the charitable help of his townsmen, whom of old he had eclipsed by his wealth and magnificence. And how in this form could he present himself before his fair Meta, without disgracing the choice of her heart? ”

“ They seem in reality to have been mostly the effect of passion, of ambition, or a vain desire of vengeance; for those who were led only by enthusiasm, and the vanity of the moment, esteemed their conduct as highly extravagant, when they had time to cool. ”

“ What smallest evidence have we of any connection between the volitions and the other acts? A volition is an operation of the mind, is it not? and body is matter, is it not? And do you pretend to know—can you form the smallest approach to a guess—how mind is united with body, and how it is possible therefore for the refined spiritual essence to actuate the gross material substance. ”

“ In gazing on the gallant chief:
So, thought he, should a warrior fall,
A victor dying last of all.
But sadness moved him when he gave
De Valence to his lowly grave,—
The grave where the wild flowers were sleeping,
And one pale olive-tree was weeping,—
And placed the rude stone cross to show
A Christian hero lay below. ”

“ I must be pardoned for giving these distressing details; but how otherwise can I depict the misery, moral and physical, which we are enduring? And with it all, I dare not venture to hope that we have reached the climax of our sufferings. ”

“ The royal preacher's application of his sermon concerning the vanity of the world and every thing in it. "You that are young flatter yourselves with expectations of great things from it, but believe those that have tried it; it yields no solid satisfaction to a soul; therefore, that you may not be deceived by this vanity, nor too much disturbed by it, remember your Creator, and so guard yourselves against the mischiefs that arise from the vanity of the creature." ”

“ No owner—no master! I with my strange momentary liberty, bereft of that irreplaceable love, never quite prized until it is lost. Most people have experienced the dismay that underlies sorrow under such circumstances. ”

“ But when we hear you declare to one set of people "that the law of the spirit of life in one, is not the law of the spirit of life in his brother; and that each individual requires a peculiar law to himself;" [67] and to another, "that this divine law which is written by the finger of God upon the tablet of our hearts, is the same to every individual;" [68] we know that these contradictory assertions cannot both be true; and must withhold our belief when you declare "that you dare not speak at random, otherwise you should show that you departed from God's illuminating spirit;" ”

“ You are in error, says the necessitarian to his opponents, in denying that motive, and in affirming that mind, is the efficient cause of volition. For if an act of the mind, or a volition, is caused by the mind, it must be produced by a preceding act of the mind, and this act must be produced by another preceding act of the mind, and so on ad infinitum; which reduces the matter to a plain impossibility. ”

“ Something — God, or chance, or destiny, or whatever you choose to call it — led me around that last turn of the road at a moment when, if I’m not mistaken, a fellow being came to the snapping-point of self-control. ”

“ But how do you feel when they are played upon yourself? The gall is not so black, the condemnation less loud; your own merit seems to excuse the preference which is shown you; your heart first forgives and then applauds. ”

“ Such unions of natures of especial grace have been born under like conditions of fated intercourse, and they have been unions of a strange beauty, the more blest by the sense of a conquest over love's one unworthiness, its egoism. ”

“ The same man who to-day volunteers for that which he is not called upon to do, may to-morrow flinch from his obvious duty from one and the same cause,—vanity, or regard to the appearance he is to make, for its own sake, and perhaps that vanity which shrinks is a more subtle and far-sighted, a more ethereal, a more profound vanity than that which presumes. ”

“ Let us hope that the refinement, falsely so called, which is only another name for vanity, laziness, and selfishness, may soon give way to the true refinement of heart and mind which considers nothing too menial which will benefit others; nothing too common that will add to the happiness of our fellow-creatures. ”

“ I warn you that I shall take not the faintest notice of your request, and that I shall, if possible, discover the lady. My power is a greater one than yours, because my power is from the heart. I shall beat you yet ”

“ Wait for the truth to come out, or behave like any high-spirited boy would,—high-spirited and gallant from my point of view,—set them all at defiance, wait for my opportunity, and escape—go right away and seek my fortune? ”

“ Suppose the opinion were correct, who constituted man the arbiter of human life? who appointed him to decide between the relative merits and claims of human lives? Certainly not Almighty God; and without His express sanction, he must be a bold man who dares decide the issue, at least, supposing he believes in hell. ”

“ It is, perhaps, the characteristic of vanity, to become enamoured with ideas, in proportion as they were remote from it’s conception, until brought to the mind by causes so natural, as to induce it to believe, that they are the happy and spontaneous flow of it’s own prolific brain. ”

“ God, however, the father of mercies and the author of all consolation, has comforted us in all our afflictions: that, in like manner, we might be able to comfort those, who are weighed down with sorrow and affliction. ”

“ If any doubt remains upon your royal mind of your equity in this business: should it haply seem possible to you that passion or prejudice, in yourself or another, may have warped so strong an understanding—do but supplicate the Almighty to strengthen and enlighten it, and He will hear you. ”

“ We can consider the actual volition as intrinsically good, if we also approach it from the point of view of the multiplicity of possible volitions—impulses, passions, desires—striving to realize themselves at every moment of our life. ”

“ XLIII.
“O Haydn,” begg’d I, “say not this. Here speaks
The same rebellion that was once my own.
We must not judge for self, but reverence
The words of men ordain’d to teach the world;
The words of men so learnèd in the truth;
The words of councils fill’d with just such men.—
No reverence have you for authority?” ”

“ He has wielded a lance, and an able one, but always it has been the lance of truth and valour. He has striven to mellow the world’s hard hopes with even-handed justice. Wrong is not a mender of wrong. The sorrow we all feel in this hour and revengeful passions go ill together. ”

“ But I mustn’t be biased by my feelings or my sentiments.”
“Why not?” asked Vance. “Do not all great moral truths originate in the feelings and the sentiments? The heart’s policy is often the safest. Is not cruelty wrong because the heart proclaims it? Is not despotism to be opposed because the heart detests it?” ”

“ But, alas for the fateful recoils on Vanity! She drives with a tight rein; and woe to her if the rein snap! A certain libidinous and crafty nobleman, of threescore or so years, had secured, in the days of the Fair’s prosperity, some little bills of paper bearing that beauty’s signature. ”

“ The extraordinary course of life pursued at Gidding, the strictness of their rules, their prayers, literally without ceasing, their abstinence, mortifications, nightly watchings, and various other peculiarities, gave birth to censure in some, and inflamed the malevolence of others, but excited the wonder and curiosity of all. ”