How easily such a thing can become a mania, how the most normal and sensible of women once this passion to be thin is upon them, can lose completely their sense of balance and proportion and spend years dealing with this madness.
Where my soul went during that swoon I cannot tell. Whatever she saw, or wherever she travelled in her trance on that strange night she kept her own secret; never whispering a word to Memory, and baffling imagination by an indissoluble silence. She may have gone upward, and come in sight of her eternal home, hoping for leave to rest now, and deeming that her painful union with matter was at last dissolved. While she so deemed, an angel may have warned her away from heaven's threshold, and, guiding her weeping down, have bound her, once more, all shuddering and unwilling, to that poor frame, cold and wasted, of whose companionship she was grown more than weary.I know she re-entered her prison with pain, with reluctance, with a moan and a long shiver. The divorced mates, Spirit and Substance, were hard to re-unite: they greeted each other, not in an embrace, but a racking sort of struggle.
I call that creativity," Orville said. "The purpose of literature is to teach you how to THINK, not how to be practical. Learning to discover the connective tissue between seemingly unrelated events is the only way we are equipped to understand patterns in the real world.
An extraordinary dream by lord charles wellesley. (Charlotte Bronte)'In this slumber i thought i was walking on the banks of a river... Which murmered over small pebbles at the bottom, gleaming like crystals through the silver stream' 'and the green buds of the wild rose trees around were unopened' 'and a mild warmth were shed from the sun... Then at its height in the blue sky
The rage inside Charlotte crested to a peak. "I'm angry because Papa and Aunt Branwell never would have sent you here," she shouted. "Not to a charity school. Not the precious boy." "I know that," Branwell said, his voice ragged. "I've always known that. Don't you think that might be hard to live with?
Wait," Charlotte said. "I'd like to say something, if I may, Papa." He nodded, and Charlotte stood. Her siblings were still looking very grave. She hoped they were in the proper frame of mind to hear what she had to say, especially Branwell. "I have been thinking a great deal about ... My stories." She nodded significantly to them, willing them to understand that she was not talking about writing so much as about crossing over. "Papa was very wise when he called my writing a childish habit, and I think he understands that, for me, its a dangerous one as well." The small square of paper that had caused such consternation lay in front of her on the table. Now she took it up and held it out, looking at each if her siblings in turn. "Emily. Anne. Branwell." She ripped the paper in half. Emily gasped. " I am renouncing my invented worlds and all who live there. If any of you are in the grip if a similar childish habit"- she raised an eyebrow at her brother - "I challenge you to do the same.
I believe - I daily find it proved - that we can get nothing in this world worth keeping, not so much as a principle or a conviction, except out of purifying flame, or through strengthening peril. We err; we fall; we are humbled - then we walk more carefully. We greedily eat and drink poison out of the gilded cup of vice, or from the beggar's wallet of avarice; we are sickened, degraded; everything good in us rebels against us; our souls rise bitterly indignant against our bodies; there is a period of civil war; if the soul has strength, it conquers and rules thereafter.
I wonder. If I had you wear that mask today, Anne, would you find the courage to tell me what is troubling you?" Anne would very much have liked to confide in her father, but where in the world would she begin? He leaned over and whispered in her ear. "I will tell you a secret, my dear. All of my children are shy. They have simply learned the art of wearing masks.