Carlyle.
APRIL 8
"'It is a mood which severs a man from thoughts of God, and suffers him not to be calm and kindly to his brethren. Sometimes, without any provoking cause, we are suddenly depressed by so great sorrowfulness, that we cannot greet with wonted courtesy the coming even of those who are dear and near to us, and all they say in conversation, however appropriate it may be, we think annoying and unnecessary, and have no pleasant answer for it, because the gall of bitterness fills all the recesses of our soul.' Those who are sad after this fashion have, as St. Gregory says, anger already close to them; for from sadness such as this come forth (as he says in another place) malice, grudging, faint-heartedness, despair, torpor as to that which is commanded, and the straying of the mind after that which is forbidden."
The Spirit of Discipline, Bishop Paget.
"Activity is the antidote to the depressions that lower our vitality, whether they come from physical or psychical causes."
APRIL 9
"We may be somewhat surprised when we discover how precisely Pascal, or Shakspeare, or Montaigne, can put his finger on our weak point, or tell us the truth about some moral lameness or disorder of which we, perhaps, were beginning to accept a more lenient and comfortable diagnosis. But when a poet, controversialist and preacher of the Eastern Church, under the dominion of the Saracens, or an anchoret of Egypt, an Abbot of Gaul, in the sixth century, tells us, in the midst of our letters, and railway journeys, and magazines, and movements, exactly what it is that on some days makes us so singularly unpleasant to ourselves and to others—tells us in effect that it is not simply the east wind, or dyspepsia, or overwork, or the contrariness of things in general, but that it is a certain subtle and complex trouble of our own hearts, which we perhaps have never had the patience or the frankness to see as it really is; that he knew it quite well, only too well for his own happiness and peace, and that he can put us in a good way of dealing with it—the very strangeness of the intrusion from such a quarter into our most private affairs may secure for him a certain degree of our interest and attention."
The Spirit of Discipline, Bishop Paget.