"The philosophy of life, then, as far as this matter is concerned, must consist of two things: first, to keep ourselves out of irritable bodily states; and, second, to understand and control these states, when we cannot ward them off. Of course, the first of these is the most important; and yet, of all things, it seems to be least looked into and understood. We find abundant rules for the government of the tongue and temper; it is a slough into which, John Bunyan hath it, cartloads of wholesome instructions have been thrown; but how to get and keep that healthy state of brain, stomach, and nerves which takes away the temptation to ill-temper and anger is a subject which moral and religious teachers seem scarcely to touch upon.... We have a common saying, that this or that person is soon used up. Now most nervous, irritable states of temper are the mere physical result of a used-up condition. The person has overspent his nervous energy,--like a man who should eat up on Monday the whole food which was to keep him for a week, and go growling and faint through the other days; or the quantity of nervous force which was wanted to carry on the whole system in all its parts is seized on by some one monopolising portion, and used up to the loss and detriment of the rest."
"... 'Accidie,' the spiritual sloth, which we rechristen 'depression' and 'low spirits,' and meet with sympathy! Dante met it by fixing its victims in the mire beneath the water, where they keep gurgling in their throats the confession--
'We sullen were In the sweet air, which by the sun is gladdened, Bearing within ourselves the sluggish reek; Now we are sullen in this sable mire.'"
_Stray Thoughts on Reading_, LUCY SOULSBY.
"A dull day need not be a depressing day; depression always implies physical or moral weakness, and is therefore never to be tolerated so long as one can struggle against it."
"... The sin of accidie, which is 'a sorrowfulness so weighing down the mind that there is no good it likes to do. It has attached to it as its inseparable comrade a distress and weariness of soul, and a sluggishness in all good works, which plunges the whole man into lazy languor, and works in him a constant bitterness. And out of this vehement woe springs silence and a flagging of the voice, because the soul is so absorbed and taken up with its own indolent dejection, that it has no energy for utterance, but is cramped, and hampered, and imprisoned in its own confused bewilderment, and has not a word to say.'"