Sentimentality Theme Analysis

When man is at peace with man, how much lighter than a feather is the heaviest of metals in his hand! he pulls out his purse, and holding it airily and uncompress’d, looks round him, as if he sought for an object to share it with[.]

I have behaved very ill; said I within myself; but I have only just set out upon my travels, and shall learn better manners as I get along.

Now where would be the harm, said I to myself, if I was to beg of this distressed lady to accept of half of my chaise?—and what mighty mischief could ensue?

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, ‘Tis all barren—and so it is, and so is all the world to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers. I declare, said I, clapping my hands chearily together, that was I in a desart, I would find out wherewith in it to call forth my affections[.]

The pauvre honteux could say nothing—he pull’d out a little handkerchief, and wiped his face as he turned away—and I thought he thank’d me more than them all.

The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself, and blackened: reduce them to their proper size and hue she overlooks them[.]

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still slavery! said I—still thou art a bitter draught; and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.

I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow creatures born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me.—

—I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then look’d through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture.

But there is nothing unmixt in this world; and some of the gravest of our divines have carried it so far as to affirm, that enjoyment itself was attended even with a sigh—and that the greatest they knew of, terminated in a general way, in little better than a convulsion.

I told Madame de V*** it might be her principle; but I was sure it could not be her interest to level the outworks, without which I could not conceive how such a citadel as hers could be defended—that there was not a more dangerous thing in the world, than for a beauty to be a deist—that it was a debt I owed my creed, not to conceal it from her—that I had not been five minutes sat upon the sopha besides her, but I had begun to form designs—and what is it, but the sentiments of religion, and the persuasion they had existed in her breast, which could have check’d them as they rose up.

I sat down close by her; and Maria let me wipe them away as they fell with my handkerchief.—I then steep’d it with my own—and then in hers—and then in mine—and then I wip’d hers again—and as I did it, I felt such indescribable emotions within me, as I am sure could not be accounted for from any combinations of matter and motion.

I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pester’d the world ever convince me of the contrary.

Dear sensibility! source inexhausted of all that’s precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! thou chainest thy martyr down upon his bed of straw—and ‘tis thou who lifts him up to HEAVEN—eternal fountain of our feelings!—‘tis here I trace thee—and this is thy divinity which stirs within me […] that I feel some generous joys and generous cares beyond myself—all comes from thee, great—great SENSORIUM of the world!