Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the deep helplessness one feels when trying to comfort someone grieving a significant loss.
Jane Welsh Carlyle's quote highlights the profound challenge of providing solace to a person experiencing great bereavement. It speaks to the limitations of language and the inadequacy of words when faced with the intensity of grief. In such moments, the speaker feels a sense of helplessness, realizing that words may not suffice to alleviate the pain of loss; rather, it emphasizes the importance of presence and understanding in the face of sorrow.
In practice
In a speech at a memorial service to express the complexity of grief.
Does not a man physically tremble under the mere look of a wild beast or fellow-man that is stronger than himself? Does not a woman redden all over when she feels her lover's eyes on her? How then should one doubt the mysterious power of one individual over another?
How many precious things do we not already possess which others have not - have hardly an idea of! Let us enjoy these, then, and bless God that we are permitted to enjoy them, rather than importune His goodness with vain longings for more.
The surest way to get a thing in this life is to be prepared for doing without it, to the exclusion even of hope.
I declare I would rather be a kitten and cry, 'Mew!' than live as I see many of my female acquaintances do, tearing each other's characters to pieces, and wearing out their lives in vanity and vexation of spirit.
One feels as if it could never, never be less. And yet all griefs, when there is no bitterness in them, are soothed down by time.
But what are friends? What is a husband, even, compared with one's Mother? Of her love, one is always so sure! It is the only love that nothing - not even misconduct on our part - can take away from us.
Not long ago I learned from a certain person in considerable detail about the worthlessness of your character. All the same, it is you who have given me strength, you who have put the rainbow of revolution in my breast. It is you who have given an object to my life.
My father so appropriately put it that we are certainly the only animal that makes conscious choices that are bad for our survival as a species.
It's a wonderful story for the gun lobby to tell that if you just load up schools with weapons, you'll be safer. All of the evidence suggests that homes and communities that have more weapons have more gun crimes, not less.
There is no evil and there are no evil forces in the world. There are only people of awareness, and there are people who are fast asleep - and sleep has no force. The whole energy is in the hands of the awakened people. And one awakened person can awaken the whole world. One lighted candle can make millions of candles lighted without losing it's light.
One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies.
Memoirs are the backstairs of history.
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