Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Jealousy

The jealous man’s disease is of so malignant a nature, that it converts all it takes into its own nourishment. A cool behaviour sets him on the rack, and is interpreted as an instance of aversion or indifference; a fond one raises his suspicions, and looks too much like dissimulation and artifice. If the person he loves be cheerful, her thoughts must be employed on another; and if sad, she is certainly thinking on himself. In short, there is no word or gesture so insignificant, but it gives him new hints, feeds his suspicions, and furnishes him with fresh matter of discovery: so that if we consider the effects of his passion, one would rather think it proceeded from an inveterate hatred, than an excessive love; for certainly none can meet with more disquietude and uneasiness than a suspected wife, if we except the jealous husband.

But the great unhappiness of this passion is, that it naturally lends to alienate the affection which it is so solicitous to engross; and that for these two reasons: because it lays too great a constraint on the words and actions of the suspected person, and at the same time shows you have no honourable opinion of her; both of which are strong motives to aversion.

And here, among the other torments which this passion produces, we may usually observe that none are greater mourners than jealous men, when the person who provokes their jealousy is taken from them. Then it is that their love breaks out furiously, and throws off all the mixtures of suspicion which choked and smothered it before. The beautiful parts of the character rise uppermost in the jealous husband’s memory, and upbraid him with the ill usage of so divine a creature as was once in his possession; whilst all the little imperfections, that were before so uneasy to him, wear off from his remembrance, and show themselves no more.

The jealous man wishes himself a kind of deity to the person he loves; he would be the only employment of her thoughts.

The jealous man is not angry if you dislike another, but if you find those faults which are in his own character, you discover not only your dislike of another, but of himself.

Of all the passions, jealousy is that which exacts the hardest service and pays the bitterest wages. Its service is, to watch the success of our enemy; its wages, to be sure of it.

Love may exist without jealousy, although this is rare; but jealousy may exist without love, and this is common; for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter, no less than on that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride as often as by affection.

Where jealousie is the jailour, many break the prison; it openeth more waves to wickednesse than it stoppeth; so that where it findeth one it maketh ten dishonest.

Jealousy is the apprehension of superiority.