Vindictiveness

“ I think I was a little disappointed in her. I expected then people to be more of a piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find so much vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not realise how motley are the qualities that go to make up a human being. Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by side in the same human heart. ”

“ All these attacks follow one principle; the author finds an outlet of his repressed hatred, and the desire for vengeance not being always possible in a physical sense, in modern times gives rise to phantasies of vindictiveness. ”

“ You may call it pride, vanity, spirit of revenge, or what you will, but it was rather a burning sense of wrong, whenever he found that wrong was being done, and a determination to set it right; a determination to be stopped by nothing till he should have conquered the injustice, at whatever cost; a stubborn resolve to set himself right in the eyes of men—this is what has been mistaken in him for vindictiveness, and by those 239who have not read his character below the surface, for selfishness and vanity. ”

“ He requires to know, page 13, “if future punishment be only corrective, what reason for the threatening in the Bible against impenitants can be given?” The answer is, God is not, cannot be, a vindictive God; he cannot punish with eternal vindictiveness: and never a threatening in all the Bible contains either a threatening of vindictive or eternal punishment; they are all to warn men p. ”

“ With a vindictive person we justify his resentment and anger; we justify his guilt in his mind, by countenancing the justice of his accusations; we spare his passion in exaggerating the injury and fault of his enemy. ”

“ A man must love still, to punish, must he not? From me you must expect no feeling, nothing resembling it. If I chose, I might be accuser and judge in my cause, and pronounce and carry out the sentence. But I am about to fulfil a duty, not a desire of vengeance of any kind. The cruelest revenge of all, I think, is scorn of revenge when it is in our power to take it. ”

“ You, like all other men, will forget this; but what a warning ought it to be to you, that, sooner or later, guilt will be productive of misery! This you have fully proved: your licentious conduct with this woman has ruined her peace for ever, and Divine vengeance has dashed from your lips the cup which contained as much happiness as this world could afford: nor has the penalty fallen on you alone—the innocent, who had no share in the crime, are partakers in the punishment; we are all as miserable as yourself. ”

“ He traced with ghastly interest the different paths by which vengeance converged upon the guilty woman, and saw with what careful method her crime had prepared its own punishment. “God grant,” said he, “that she may live to know what love and pity did to save her from the horror of her penalty!” ”

“ And in a while, having read these papers, I laid them by and rising, stumbled towards the open casement.
"Well, my lord?" says she in strange, breathless fashion, "And what now?"
"Why now," says I, wearily, "it seems my vengeance is yet to seek."
"Vengeance?" she cried, "Ah, God pity thee! Doth life hold for thee nought better?"
"Nought!"
"Vengeance is a consuming fire!"
"So seek I vengeance!"
"O Martin Conisby, bethink you! Vengeance is but a sickness of the mind—a wasting disease—"
"So seek I vengeance!" ”

“ The woes that are reserved for me are incapable alike of alleviation or intermission.
But I came not hither to recriminate. I came not hither to accuse others, but myself. I know the retribution that is appointed for guilt like mine. It is just. I may shudder at the foresight of my punishment and shrink in the endurance of it; but I shall be indebted for part of my torment to the vigour of my understanding, which teaches me that my punishment is just. Why should I procrastinate my doom and strive to render my burden more light? ”

“ For I suffer always. That is natural. Revenge is sweet!—but who shall paint the horrors of memory? My vengeance now recoils upon my own head. I do not complain of this—it is the law of compensation—it is just. I blame no one—save Her, the woman who wrought my wrong. Dead as she is I do not forgive her; I have tried to, but I cannot! Do men ever truly forgive the women who ruin their lives? ”

“ He was quick to take an advantage, long-suffering, sly, nursing his revenge in silence like a vindictive slave, until at last the moment of retribution should be his; sufficiently truthful and brave to have grown noble in another atmosphere, but with a ready bent to underhand and brooding vengeance. ”

“ If, on consideration, you find that you were in the wrong, let no false pride, no stubborn perverseness prevent you from making that acknowledgement. If your friend, on her part, first shows a desire for reconciliation, meet her half-way. A vindictive disposition is a bad one, and revenge is a most unchristian feeling. ”

“ But if man has fallen at his conscious peril—has thoughtlessly spurned salvation—has offended God—will God therefore take vengeance? Is God without dignity or magnanimity? If I do wrong to him, who does wrong to me, I come down (has not the ancient sage warned me) to the level of my enemy? Will God thus descend to the level of vindictive man! ”

“ Somewhere, perhaps on God's earth he wanders outcast, forsaken, loveless. I have my vengeance, but it is like Dead Sea fruit, all bitter ashes to the taste. I am a miserable, heart-weary wreck,—a woman with fame, without love.
"Vengeance is an arrow that often falleth and smiteth the hand of him that sent it." ”

“ Since it is the deferring of deserved wrath, it follows from hence, that an innocent creature cannot be the object of it, inasmuch as vindictive justice makes no demand upon him; nor has it any reserves of punishment laid up in store for him; such an one is, indeed the object of goodness, but not of forbearance; for punishment cannot be said to be deferred where it is not due: and, on the other hand, they cannot be said to be the objects thereof, in whom the vindictive justice of God is displayed to the utmost, when all the vials of his wrath are poured forth. ”

“ Thus did the Will, the emancipator, become a torturer; and on all that is capable of suffering it takes revenge, because it cannot go backward.
This, yes, this alone is revenge itself: the Will's antipathy to time, and its "It was."
A great folly dwells in our Will; and it became a curse to all humanity, that this folly acquired spirit!
The spirit of revenge: my friends, that has hitherto been man's best contemplation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was always penalty.
"Penalty," so calls itself revenge. With a lying word it feigns a good conscience. ”

“ Her example and pathetic admonitions induced her husband to adopt her prudent plan. They found their mutual endeavors productive of real satisfaction, and happiness the reward of their exertions to secure it.
“To be vindictive is equally, perhaps more fatal to our own, and the peace of others, than to be passionate. Violent passions of all kinds are generally transient; but revenge is the offspring of malice, the parent of discord, and the bane of social love. ”

“ The punishment of a child by a parent, or of a pupil by a teacher, ought certainly, one would think, to exclude the element of vindictive retribution altogether, and to be employed solely with reference to the salutary influences that may be expected from it in time to come. If the injunction "Vengeance is mine, I will repay it, saith the Lord" is to be recognized at all, it certainly ought to be acknowledged here. ”

“ For the sake of perspicuity, let us call one vengeance, or vindictive judgment, and the other [pg 592] chastisement, or disciplinary judgment. In vindictive judgment, God is to be contemplated as taking vengeance on his enemies, so as to exert his wrath against them, to confound, dissipate, and reduce them to nothing. We consider it, therefore, strictly speaking, to be the vengeance of God, when the punishment he inflicts is attended with his indignation. ”

“ I can not support the life I lead with you; an angel could not bear it. Once more, let me be judged if I am guilty, or allow me to return to Touraine. It is you who have ruined me in attaching me to your person. ”

“ When we go about to avenge ourselves. Anger is kindled and the man burns to be avenged. Oh, frightful temptation! Thou art losing that whereby thou hadst to attain pardon for other faults. If thou hadst committed any sin as to other senses and other lusts, hence mightst thou have had thy cure in that thou mightst say, "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." But whoso instigateth thee to take vengeance will lose for thee the power thou hadst to say, "As we also forgive our debtors." When that power is lost all sins will be retained; nothing at all is remitted. ”

“ Can't you avoid them? Let their Vengeance light
On others' Heads, no matter whose, if you
Are but secure, and have the Cain in Hand:
For they're indiff'rent where they take Revenge,
Whether on him that cheated, or his Friend,
Or on a Stranger whom they never saw,
Perhaps an honest Peasant, who ne'er dreamt [Pg 122]
Of Fraud or Villainy in all his life;
Such let them murder, if they will a Score,
The Guilt is theirs, while we secure the Gain,
Nor shall we feel the bleeding Victims Pain. ”

“ Should any ill happen to himself, or to another, through his present enlargement—should he take any fit of vindictive malice against any person whom he might view as an accomplice in the plans against his own freedom—and probably many persons in the neighbourhood, medical and non-medical, stood liable to such a suspicion—upon me, I felt, as the abettor of his evasion, would all the blame settle. ”

“ How many fall from Affluence to Want, from Splendor to a Goal, thro’ the Inveteracy of Revenge! Not all the Concessions of the opposite Party, not all the Tears of his Wife, nor the impending Ruin of his Children, can appease the Revengeful: Savage-like, he quits not his Hold till his Fury is glutted, till his Adversary is destroyed. Besides these, there are many other Species of Revenge, less obvious indeed, but perhaps not less criminal: there are Men whose Fury is less, but whose Malice is equal: Men with cooler Heads, but with inveterate Hearts. ”

“ The purpose of vindictive satisfaction has been eliminated without any substitute having been provided. Those who accept this view commonly advance retribution to the first place among the various aspects of punishment, the others being relegated to subordinate positions. ”

“ This is what sinners experience every day. What do not the vindictive endure after they have satisfied their revenge by the murder of an enemy? They fly continually from the relations of their murdered foe, and from the minister of justice. They live as fugitives, poor, afflicted, and abandoned by all. ”

“ No shred of consolation can ever again be mine—no joy, save fulfilled revenge! And this I will possess though the heavens should crack and the earth split asunder! For once a woman’s treachery shall meet with punishment—for once such strange uncommon justice shall be done! ”

“ The sense of an unknown horror of sin grew about me, and I became a coward for the moment, — a coward, smitten down by the dread that for me, forever, faith was utterly dead, and so my heart would be imbittered into a vague and fiendish vengeance for its loss. ”

“ Revenge is a ruling passion, as the many rancorous fratricidal wars that have prevailed between kindred clans, even for a generation, prove. Retaliation and vengeance are, in fact, their great agents of moral control. ”

“ The mere facts of guilt are of little value except to the gossip and the tipstaff; but how the wounded and the wounding soul bear themselves after the crime, that is one of the needful lessons of life. ”

“ Wherever Vindication comes, is not the first thing it tells of the unhappy subject of it, that his character has been tarnished, his integrity suspected—that base motives and vile actions have been imputed to him—that he has been scoffed at by some, reviled by others, and looked at askance by all? Yes; the worst thing I would wish to my worst enemy is, that his character should be the subject of vindication. And what is the well-known disposition of mankind in this particular? All love the scandal. It constitutes a tale that seizes upon the curiosity of our species ”

“ Yet who would seek vengeance on a worm?"
"Yet do I seek vengeance!" cried I, upstarting to my feet. "Vengeance for my wasted years, vengeance on him hath been the ruin of my house, on him that, forcing me to endure anguish of mind and shame of body, hath made of me the poor, outcast wretch I am. Ha—'tis vengeance I do live for!"
"Then do you live to a vain end, young sir! For vengeance is an emptiness and he that seeketh it wasteth himself."
"Now tell me, Don Federigo," I questioned, "seek you not the life of this
Belvedere that slew your son?" ”

“ From the first, and when I faced my task of vengeance, an insurmountable obstacle arose before me. It is equally easy and sublime to strike an attitude and exclaim: "I swear that I will never rest until I have punished the guilty one." In reality, one never acts except in detail, and what could I do? ”

“ Know for certain, that that God whom I have served, and for whose cause I now suffer, will avenge me; for vengeance is the Lord’s, and he will repay it one way or other, except thou speedily repentest.’ At this saying the justice began to tremble, and crying out, said, ‘I will do you no more hurt than I will do my own soul. ”