Self-torment (n.) grips a whole generation with the fixed idea that it is called to some great task, as if gods might send delegates any minute — and it blames its feeble public life on government oppression, as the idler blames his many affairs.
Self-torment (n.) is, aesthetically, always comic — so one may use the comic probe first; nothing is more ludicrous than religious categories applied with stupid seriousness where humor was called for.
Self-torment (n.) is comic viewed aesthetically and culpable viewed religiously: healed not by laughter but by repentance, recognizing self-torture as a sin like other sins.
Self-torment (n.) consists religiously not in discovering every possibility of danger by oneself, but in halting halfway — being unable to press through to joy; and for that there is only one betrayer: the man himself.
Self-torment (n.) that thinks it does God a service is a sin of not willing to love oneself rightly.
Self-torment (n.) is the worry today does not have, having enough of its own: the worry of the next day, which one causes oneself.
Self-torment (n.) has a cure that fits in a short book, like the Spanish volume "The Best Cure for Heretics," which opened to reveal a scourge: let every day have enough in its own worries.
Self-torment (n.) is the sin that punishes itself more than any other.
Self-torment (n.) usually has a cruel man on one side and a tortured one on the other; the sinful woman was both, herself the inventor of the cruelty of confessing at a banquet.