Psychology Quotes - Page 18

It was Matthews, of course, for whom the verdict was the greatest disaster. Not only had he failed to escape from Bedlam, but the anomalies of the case made it highly unlikely that he would have the chance to appeal again. His family and friends had assembled an impeccable case, most of which had been ignored.

Matthews' shout of treason in the House was no random outburst of lunacy, but the last act in an astonishing adventure: one that might indeed have changed the history of Europe. But by this point there was no-one left to confirm the truth of the story. Most of the witnesses were dead, and those who were alive were not interested in talking.

The French revolution, he concluded, had not produced any new principles of truths, merely a mass of examples of how things could go wrong.

At Bow Street Magistrates' Court the essential facts were established. The man's name was James Tilly Matthews. He was a pauper of the south London parish of Camberwell. He had a wife and a young family. He appeared to be of unsound mind.

We are now edging across the boundary - always a porous one - between self-justification and fantasy. Matthews' story is by no means a complete fantasy: we can recognise every event. But the frame of reference is somehow shrinking, and momentous world events being rewritten around the actions of a minor player.

Haslam leaves us in no doubt what we are supposed to make of Matthews' mental world: this is gibberish and nothing more.

The Air Loom, for all its florid craziness, can be seen to have a function and a rationale: as a miraculous, if temporary, fix for a breaking mind, a coping strategy for a life that had become too brutally contradictory to sustain otherwise.

James Tilly Matthews was not a prophet. He was a gifted, perhaps fragile individual who suffered intensely, and for little if any reward.

Many had suspected that the political disasters of the past few years had a hidden cause. The bloodiness of the French mob rule was something unnatural, with a pitiless and inhuman progression that had never been seen before.

The French army had crowned a campaign of extraordinary successes by defeating the Austrians at Jemappes and pressing on to occupy a large swathe of Belgium and threaten Holland. For Britain, this changed everything: a French republic that spread across the North Sea coast meant the entire coastline facing Britain would be in Republican hands.

Psychology has a long past, yet its real history is short.

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.

If you want kids, choose your girlfriend like your future child has the deciding vote.

the pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain.

The moment we refuse to hurt others because of our own pain, is the time we evolve as souls.

There's nothing like a little physical pain to keep your mind off your emotional problems.

we are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our body, which is doomed to decay..., from the external world which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless force of destruction, and finally from our relations with other men... This last source is perhaps more painful to use than any other. (p77)

..various people had long had the feeling that gain through pain was nature's way

Change occurs when one becomes what he is, not when he tries to become what he is not.

To allow oneself to be carried away
By a multitude of conflicting concerns,
To surrender to too many demands,
...To commit oneself to too many projects,
To want to help everyone with everything
Is to succumb to violence.