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“Alas, put no faith in such a bond of union. Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation. To have dinners, visits, carriages, rank and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honor and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing among those who are not rich, while the poor drown their unsatisfied need and their envy in drunkenness. But soon they will drink blood instead of wine, they are being led on to it. I ask you is such a man free? I knew one "champion of freedom" who told me himself that, when he was deprived of tobacco in prison, he was so wretched at the privation that he almost went and betrayed his cause for the sake of getting tobacco again! And such a man says, "I am fighting for the cause of humanity." How can such a one fight? what is he fit for? He is capable perhaps of some action quickly over, but he cannot hold out long. And it's no wonder that instead of gaining freedom they have sunk into slavery, and instead of serving the cause of brotherly love and the union of humanity have fallen, on the contrary, into dissension and isolation, as my mysterious visitor and teacher said to me in my youth. And therefore the idea of the service of humanity, of brotherly love and the solidarity of mankind, is more and more dying out in the world, and indeed this idea is sometimes treated with derision. For how can a man shake off his habits? what can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what concern has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.”

“Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still, Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will! Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here? Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love. Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O any thing, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this. Dost thou not laugh?”

“Alas the Church of England! What with Popery on one hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between two thieves!”

“Alas," the Spider Queen said softly, "life needs dark leaves in the wreath. There cannot be true joy without sorrow, or real happiness without loss. They come as a pair. It is simply how it must be, if one is to live a full life. Take my own wreath, for example." She pointed at a particularly striking one made up of foliage so dark it was almost purple and black in places, but brightened with spectacular bursts of scarlet poinsettia. "I first saw the poinsettia in Mexico," she said. "The Euphorbia pulcherrima, to give it its botanical name, but it's also known as a 'Christmas star' because of its red pigment, so vibrant and bold. I would not give up my dark leaves if it meant losing the poinsettia," she said.”

“Alas! the very attempt could not fail to encounter the ridicule of the mob, the obloquy of the sensual, and the sneers of the unfeeling. The advocate of mercy would incur the reproach of misanthropy, and be traduced as a wild unsocial animal, who had formed a nefarious design to curtail the comforts of human life (7).—Good God! and is compassion then so great a crime? Is it so heinous an offence against society, to respect in other animals that principle of life which they have received, no less than man himself, at the hand of Nature? O, mother of every living thing! O, thou eternal fountain of beneficence; shall I then be persecuted as a monster, for having listened to thy sacred voice? to that voice of mercy which speaks from the bottom of my heart; while other men, with impunity, torment and massacre the unoffending animals, while they fill the air with the cries of innocence, and deluge thy maternal bosom with the blood of the most amiable of thy creatures.”

“Alas! this is not what I thought life was. I knew that there were crimes and evil men, Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen. In mine own heart I saw as in a glass The hearts of others ... And when I went among my kind, with triple brass Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed, To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woeful mass!”

“Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! Not long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, so full of thorns and secret spices, that you made me sneeze and laugh — and now? You have already doffed your novelty, and some of you, I fear, are ready to become truths, so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, so tedious! And was it ever otherwise? What then do we write and paint, we mandarins with Chinese brush, we immortalizers of things which lend themselves to writing, what are we alone capable of painting? Alas, only that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odour! Alas, only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments! Alas, only birds strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves be captured with the hand — with our hand! We immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer, things only which are exhausted and mellow! And it is only for your afternoon, you, my written and painted thoughts, for which alone I have colours, many colours, perhaps, many variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds; — but nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude, you, my old, beloved — evil thoughts!”

“Alas, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate? Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity! Thus spoke the Devil to me once: Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man. And I lately heard him say these words: God is dead; God has died of his pity for man.”

“Alas! fond child, How are thy thoughts beguil'd To hope for honey from a nest of wasps? Thou may'st as well Go seek for ease in hell, Or sprightly nectar from the mouths of asps. The world's a hive, From whence thou canst derive No good, but what thy soul's vexation brings: But case thou meet Some petty-petty sweet, Each drop is guarded with a thousand stings.”

“Alas! if my best Friend, who laid down His life for me, were to remember all the instances in which I have neglected Him, and to plead them against me in judgment, where should I hide my guilty head in the day of recompense? I will pray, therefore, for blessings on my friends, even though they cease to be so, and upon my enemies, though they continue such.”