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.
We have to recognize that spirituality is a legitimate dimension in the psyche. It's a legitimate dimension in the universal scheme of things. It doesn't mean that you are superstitious, that you are in to magical, primitive thinking, if you take spirituality seriously.
The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.
Llonio said life was a net for luck; to Hevydd the Smith life was a forge; and to Dwyvach the Weaver-Woman a loom. They spoke truly, for it is all of these. But you,' Taran said, his eyes meeting the potter's, 'you have shown me life is one thing more. It is clay to be shaped, as raw clay on a potter's wheel.
History is neither written nor made without love or hate.
In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.
If you haven't wept deeply, you haven't begun to meditate.
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