Whimsy

“ They give the feeling of vastness, the feeling not of a scene or particular place, but of a world; or, to speak more accurately, of a particular place which is also a world. This world is dim to us, partly from its immensity, and partly because it is filled with gloom; and in the gloom shapes approach and recede, whose half-seen faces and motions touch us with dread, horror, or the most painful pity,—sympathies and antipathies which we seem to be feeling not only for them but for the whole race. ”

“ But she possessed the consciousness that, whenever she went down into the depths of her heart, she would find the spirit of peace, love, and truth, and this consciousness was so vivid that a divine calmness and confidence, visible to the dullest senses, illumined her brow. But a new trait in her was a peculiar sense of humor, a mirthfulness which had rarely flashed out in her youth, yet now appeared to be the predominant mood of her nature. ”

“ For a moment a sudden weakness and timidity overcame her. In a world so transcendently unreal—had not she just seen her happiness become the very dream of a shadow?—was it not the merest futility to take a step so definite, to be passionate or intense? ”

“ We are implicated in the scene only by our instinct of observation and sympathy; that needs relief, but, if the blow struck us and became a "fee-grief due to each single breast," we could endure it as we do in real life, as we prefer to do, with a temper that keeps all other strings muted but sorrow. So the Humor which we would not tolerate when the tempest breaks upon our roof-tree, and is sullen within every chamber, is no unwelcome surprise when the heart is so keenly summoned by the mimic scene. ”

“ How often, when the rage and tumult of my senses had subsided, after the melting flow, have I, in a tender meditation, asked myself cooly the question, if it was in nature for any of its creatures to be so happy as I was? Or, what were all fears of the consequence, put in the scale of one night’s enjoyment, of any thing so transcendently the taste of my eyes and heart, as that delicious, fond, matchless youth. ”

“ Unsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of life ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding when the damper falls upon it. ”

“ Many people have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and in many it is even attractive. But in all Syme’s circumstances, with the dark dawn and the deadly errand and the loneliness on the great dripping stones, there was something unnerving in it. ”

“ Yet a feeling of awe, a breathless sentiment of wonder, a painful sense of the degradation of humanity, was introduced into every heart. Nature, our mother, and our friend, had turned on us a brow of menace. ”

“ Shandy is whimsicality touched with sentiment. The Sentimental Journey is the record of a sentimental experience, guided by the caprice of a whimsical will. Whimsicality is a flower that defies transplanting; when once rooted in other soil it shoots up into obscurity, masquerading as profundity, or pure silliness without reason or a smile. ”

“ What is this world but a succession of fleeting images chasing each other across a background of joy or pain! Now we quaff the sour cup of misery, by and by we drink the intoxicating vintage of hope. Heaven alone stands firm, gemmed with the pitiless stars. ”

“ It was pure darkness, also. All the shameful things of the body revealed themselves to him now with a sort of sinister, tropical beauty. All the shameful, natural and unnatural acts of sensual voluptuousness which he and the woman partook of together, created together, they had their heavy beauty and their delight. Shame, what was it? It was part of extreme delight. It was that part of delight of which man is usually afraid. Why afraid? The secret, shameful things are most terribly beautiful. ”

“ There was laughter without joy—there was frivolity without merriment—there was the surface of enjoyment and the substance of woe, for beneath those painted cheeks was the pallor of despair and broken health, and beneath those whitened bosoms, half veiled with gaudy silks, were hearts that were aching with remorse, or, yet more unhappy, benumbed and callous with habitual sin. ”

“ I, however, would say, when we see such objects as these for the first time, the unaccustomed soul has to expand itself; and this gives rise to a sort of painful joy,—an overflowing of emotion, which agitates the mind, and draws from us the most delicious tears. ”

“ And yet each whispering wind has blown
Abroad the story of my shame.
I dread to see men shrink away
With startled looks of scorn or fear,
When in life’s crowded marts some day,
That name falls on their ear. ”

“ The melancholy that we feel when gazing on natural scenes in the vigor of young existence, is but pleasure in a softened form. It has none of the bitterness, none of that soul-sickening sense of desolation, which visits us in our riper years, when we have had sad experience of the jarring interests, the selfish coldness, and the heartless caprice of the world. ”

“ It had then filled me with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the soul and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy. The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnising my mind and causing me to forget the passing cares of life. ”

“ How transporting and ineffable are the joys of convalescence!—the calm of mind—the voluptuous langour—the unrebuked abandonment to mere pleasurable sensation—the delight that every natural object imparts, fill those hours with a dream-like, faint ecstasy, more dear to memory than tumultuous joy. ”

“ What a grotesque being I am, to be sure, lying in this room, with the resistance of a thistle-down, having illusory moments of throbbing with the pulse of the race, the mystery to be solved at the next breath, and the fountain of all happiness within me—the sense of vitality, in short, simply proportionate to the excess of weakness. ”

“ But by what a number of painful sensations must the chance of receiving these pleasures be purchased! Those whom reason or disgust restrain from mixing in the idle dissipations of life, cannot see without a sigh, the gay conceit, the airy confidence, the blind arrogance, and the bold loquacity, with which these votaries of worldly pleasure proclaim a felicity which is almost invariably deceitful; nor observe without a sigh, the extravagant joy of so many great men, and the absurd airs of so many gray-headed children. ”

“ It has the right to grin. It may be but a grim smile over the consciousness that it has sounded the last sorrow and that henceforth no greater evils are in store; it may be a mocking, sardonic grin at the thought of our discomfiture over its unwelcome presence and the knowledge that we cannot drive it out. ”

“ It is impossible for me to express the several gestures, the strange ecstasies, the variety of postures, which these poor delivered people ran into, to express the joy of their souls at so unexpected a deliverance; grief and fear are easily described; sighs, tears, groans, and a very few motions of head and hands, make up the sum of its variety: but an excess of joy, a surprise of joy, has a thousand extravagances in it ”

“ Fulness of the Spirit calms; fulness produced by excitement satiates and exhausts. They who know the world of fashion tell us that the tone adopted there is, either to be, or to affect to be, sated with enjoyment, to be proof against surprise, to have lost all keenness of enjoyment, and to have all keenness of wonder gone. That which ought to be men's shame becomes their boast—unsusceptibility of any fresh emotion. ”

“ How can such joy be not merely clouded but utterly destroyed? A moment, and from the body everything is expelled; light from the eyes, speech from the lips, movement from the limbs, joy, passion from the heart. ”

“ Nothing can give any idea of the dangerous charm of that unexpected gleam, which flashes suddenly and vaguely forth from adorable shadows, and which is composed of all the innocence of the present, and of all the passion of the future. ”

“ There was not a cloud on my mind, not a feeling of discomfort, and, so far as my thought reached, I had not a whim, not a desire unsatisfied. I lay with open eyes, in a state of utter absence of mind. ”

“ And when all the fearful particulars of her story are at length laid together, and we behold in connected order the image of her hapless existence, there is, in those dim recollections,—those feelings so simple, so impassioned and unspeakable, consuming the closely shrouded, woe-struck, yet ethereal spirit of the poor creature,—something which searches into the inmost recesses of the soul. ”

“ How is it possible to describe the emotion which adds such rich tints to her complexion!—which robs her eyes of all their assurance and gives to them an expression of mingled melancholy and delight, of shame which is yet blended with pride! ”

“ I must weave a veil of dazzling falsehood to hide my grief from vulgar eyes, smoothe my brow, and paint my lips in deceitful smiles—even in solitude I dare not think how lost I am, lest I become insane and rave. ”

“ Nor blush at Joys that only you can give.
Who with bold Eyes survey’d those matchless Charms,
Is punish’d, seeing in another’s Arms.
With greedy Looks he views each naked Part,
Joy feeds his Sight, but Envy tears his Heart. ”

“ We hear them not, even as a something behind, an undersong of hope. No, for there are no faces about us now, no comfortable looks and smiles, no good dinner or snug little circle round the fireside; no volumes of the poets either, and not a line of them, not one "smooth comfort false," comes to assist us. ”

“ Toiler, bent and weary with the load of thine own making!
Thou who art sad and lonely, though lonely all in vain!
128Who hast sought to conquer Pleasure and have her for the taking,
And found that Pleasure only was another name for Pain,—
Nature hath reclaimed thee, forgiving dispossession! ”

“ Suppose him to be still living at Bath with your sister and children: would not your going to the house be too fearful a trial for you, and too frightful a shock for them?—why, it is by suddenness of joy, by shocks of emotion of this sort that hearts are broken. ”

“ It is one of the mysteries of our nature, that the feelings which most torture and subdue, yet, if idealized—elevated by the imagination—married harmoniously to sound or colour—turn those pains to happiness ”

“ So the first impression which his plays make is this complaisance towards the most discrepant moods, just as life has it on the stage of the world; for he is not so concerned to develop a single motive by nice and consecutive gradations as he is to show the world's swift alternations of all the motives and tempers of mankind. ”

“ And it is this preponderance of rude shock over smooth, agreeable stimulation—of a sense of dissonance in things over the joyous consciousness of harmony—which seems to supply one of the most powerful incitants to the life of imagination. Hence the dark streak of melancholy which one so often detects in the early years of the great man. ”

“ Though the process of disillusion, of the overshadowing of her happiness, had been a gradual one, this fresh knowledge had the effect of reviving with intolerable poignancy the memory of the early sunshine, the early sense of being blessed above all women. ”

“ Whether the thoughts that chased one another so rapidly through that busy brain were kindly or angry, whether the glimpses of the future were gloomy or hopeful—the smooth, white brow and steady lips betrayed, neither by frown nor smile. ”

“ We have seen the whole population of this place and vicinity yielding to the sway of their credulous fancies, allowing their passions to be worked up to a tremendous pitch of excitement, and rushing into excesses of folly and violence that have left a stain on their memory, and will awaken a sense of shame, pity, and amazement in the minds of their latest posterity. ”

“ Not one of those short winter days went by without the discovery of some new trait or little vanity to astonish or delight him,—sometimes an unlooked-for tenderness toward the weak, often a sweet, untainted philosophy of life, or perhaps just a lowering of her eyelids in which her eyes would show lustrous through the lashes, or some sweeping, exuberant gesture startlingly graceful. ”

“ But if the words by which this excitement is produced are in themselves powerful, or the images and feelings have an undue proportion of pain connected with them, there is some danger that the excitement may be carried beyond its proper bounds. ”

“ It is through our habits that we strive at harmony. They are the feelers that our timidity flings out towards an illusion of permanence in an impermanent and fleeting world. There is a rhythm in the recurrence, day by day, of simple tastes indulged, of prejudices flattered. ”

“ These funereal and yet eloquent paintings, traced with the enthusiasm of melancholy, must have had the effect to increase the number of men of atrabilious temperament, weary of the world, and tired of themselves. ”

“ By turns he had made her feel motherly, protecting, curious, constrained, passionate, energetic, timid—yes, almost timid and shy. No other human being had ever, even at moments, thus got the better of her natural audacity, lack of self-consciousness, and inherent, almost boyish, boldness. ”