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.
It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.
Just watching an animal closely can take you out of your mind and bring you into the present moment, which is where the animal lives all the time - surrendered to life.
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity.
Vice does not lose its character by becoming fashionable.
Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself -- will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows -- some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history -- But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, 'This fact I can do without.
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