Admiration

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  In order to calm my fears I used to say to myself that the empire could find worse masters; Servianus after all was not without qualities; even the dull Fuscus would one day perhaps be worthy to reign. But all the energy which I had left was summoned to refuse this lie, and I wished to live if only to crush that viper. On coming back to Rome I saw much of Lucius again. In former days I had made commitments to him which ordinarily one hardly troubles to fulfill, but which I had kept. It is not true, however, that I had promised him the imperial purple; such things are not done. But for nearly fifteen years I had paid his debts, hushed up his scandals, and answered his letters without delay; delightful letters they were, but they always ended with requests for money for himself, or for advancement for his friends. He was too much mingled with my life for me to exclude him from it had I wished to do so, but I wished nothing of the sort. His conversation was brilliant: this young man whom people judged superficial had read more, and more intelligently, than the writers who make such works their profession. In everything his taste was exquisite, whether for people, objects, manners, or the most exact fashion of scanning a line of Greek verse. In the Senate, where he was considered able, he had made a reputation as an orator: his speeches were at the same time terse and ornate, and served immediately upon utterance as models for the professors of eloquence. I had had him named praetor, and then consul: he had fulfilled these functions well. Some years earlier I had arranged a marriage for him with the daughter of Nigrinus, one of the consular conspirators executed at the beginning of my reign; that union became the emblem of my policy of conciliation. It was but moderately successful: the young woman complained of being neglected, but she had three children by him, one of whom was a son. To her almost continual repining he would reply with frigid politeness that one marries for one's family's sake and not for oneself, and that so weighty a contract ill affords with the carefree play of love. His complicated system demanded mistresses for display and willing slaves for sensuous delights. He was killing himself in pursuit of pleasure, but was doing so like an artist who destroys himself in completing a masterpiece: it is not for me to reproach him in that.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I had the privilege of meeting Rosa Parks when I first moved to Montgomery. She would occasionally come back to Montgomery from Detroit, where she lived, to visit dear friends. Johnnie Carr was one of those friends. Ms. Carr had befriended me, and I quickly learned that she was a force of nature—charismatic, powerful, and inspiring. She had been, in many ways, the true architect of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. She had organized people and transportation during the boycott and done a lot of the heavy lifting to make it the first successful major action of the modern Civil Rights Movement, and she succeeded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. She was in her late seventies when I first met her. “Now Bryan, I’m going to call you from time to time and I’m going ask you to do this or that and when I ask you to do something you’re going to say ‘Yes, ma’am,’ okay?” I chuckled—and I said, “Yes, ma’am.” She would sometimes call just to check in on me, and on occasion she would invite me over when Ms. Parks came to town. “Bryan, Rosa Parks is coming to town, and we’re going to meet over at Virginia Durr’s house to talk. Do you want to come over and listen?” When Ms. Carr called me, she either wanted me to go some place to “speak” or to go some place to “listen.” Whenever Ms. Parks came to town, I’d be invited to listen. “Oh, yes, ma’am. I’d love to come over and listen,” I’d always say, affirming that I understood what to do when I arrived. Ms. Parks and Ms. Carr would meet at Virginia Durr’s home. Ms. Durr was also a larger-than-life personality. Her husband, Clifford Durr, was an attorney who had represented Dr. King throughout his time in Montgomery. Ms. Durr was determined to confront injustice well into her nineties. She frequently asked me to accompany her to various places or invited me over to dinner. EJI started renting her home for our law students and staff during the summers when she was away. When I would go over to Ms. Durr’s home to listen to these three formidable women, Rosa Parks was always very kind and generous with me. Years later, I would occasionally meet her at events in other states, and I ended up spending a little time with her. But mostly, I just loved hearing her and Ms. Carr and Ms. Durr talk. They would talk and talk and talk. Laughing, telling stories, and bearing witness about what could be done when people stood up (or sat down, in Ms. Parks’s case). They were always so spirited together. Even after all they’d done, their focus was always on what they still planned to do for civil rights.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Now he said: ‘You know how he gets them, don’t you. Bloody motors out to Wormwood Scrubs or wherever and when he sees someone likely coming out, he picks them up and offers them a job. Ridiculous way of engaging a person.’ ‘It’s not quite as simple as that,’ Staines said. ‘Charles has a lot of feeling for the underdog, the underchap as it were. He’s made great friends that way, and changed the whole course of people’s lives. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out. One doesn’t know quite what goes on , of course, but they tend to become very possessive and jealous, and then there’s usually trouble. Oh dear! Look, come inside, William, and let me show you some things.’ We were going in, and I dithered on the sill as to whether I could leave my darling Phil with Bobby. Phil looked resigned—or perhaps actually didn’t mind: I had been surprised and shamed by his tolerance of people to whom I took an unhesitating dislike. But Staines seemed to sense the problem, and turned back. ‘Come along too,’ he called, extending his arm and dropping his wrist in a perfect Shuckburgh. ‘I’ll stick by the booze,’ said Bobby, gruffly. If the drawing-room had the unnatural, aspiring look of a room about to be photographed, the room where the photography actually went on had a cultivated air of clutter, as if the clean and discrete camera should lay claim to the turmoil, the evident symptoms of art, of a painter’s studio. Empty drums of developing fluid accumulated around an ostentatiously full waste bin, a dramatic spot picked out the workbench where the only painterly act, the touching up of prints with a fine brush, took place. Otherwise it was a deserted theatre—of the acting or of the operating kind. The powerful lights, with their silvery reflecting umbrellas, were switched off, and as the curtains were closed I had a quick recall of school play rehearsals in vacated classrooms, gestures made with imaginary props, embarrassed boys swallowing syllables, the sense of a final achievement lugubriously remote. Nonetheless I looked around admiringly and just as I still naughtily mount the pulpit when I visit a church, clutched Phil to me histrionically in front of one of the heavy unrolled backdrops of eggshell cartridge-paper.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  But little by little a newcomer was taking hold, a stage director and manager. I was beginning to know the names of my actors, and could arrange plausible entrances for them, or exits; I cut short superfluous lines, and came gradually to avoid the most obvious effects. Last, I learned not to indulge too much in monologue. And gradually, in turn, my actions were forming me. My military successes might have earned me enmity from a lesser man than Trajan. But courage was the only language which he grasped at once; its words went straight to his heart. He came to see in me a kind of second-in-command, almost a son, and nothing of what happened later could wholly separate us. On my side, certain of my newly conceived objections to his views were, at least momentarily, put aside or forgotten in presence of the admirable genius which he displayed with the armies. I have always liked to see a great specialist at work; the emperor, in his own field, had a skill and sureness of hand second to none. Placed at the head of the First Legion Minervia, most glorious of them all, I was assigned to wipe out the last enemy entrenchments in the region of the Iron Gates. After we had surrounded and taken the citadel of Sarmizegethusa I followed the emperor into that subterranean hall where the counselors of King Decebalus had just ended their last banquet by swallowing poison; Trajan gave me the order to set fire to that weird heap of dead men. The same evening, on the steep heights of the battlefield, he transferred to my finger the diamond ring which Nerva had given him, and which had come to be almost a token of imperial succession. That night I fell asleep content. My newly won popularity diffused over my second stay in Rome something of the feeling of euphoria which I was to know again, but to a much stronger degree, during my years of felicity. Trajan had given me two million sesterces to distribute in public bounty; naturally it was not enough, but by that time I was administering my own estate, which was considerable, and money difficulties no longer troubled me. I had lost most of my ignoble fear of displeasing. A scar on my chin provided a pretext for wearing the short beard of the Greek philosophers. In my attire I adopted a simplicity which I carried to greater extremes after becoming emperor; my time of bracelets and perfumes had passed. That this simplicity was itself still an attitude is of little importance. Slowly I accustomed myself to plainness for its own sake, and to that contrast, which I was later to value, between a collection of gems and the unadorned hands of the collector.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  He spoke of Roy Hamilton as a bad influence, which again was deeply true since this unexpected meeting with his half brother served more than anything else to alienate us. Hamilton opened my eyes and gave me new values, and though later I was to lose the vision which he had bequeathed me, nevertheless I could never again see the world, or my friends, as I had seen them prior to his coming. Hamilton altered me profoundly, as only a rare book, a rare personality, a rare experience, can alter one. For the first time in my life I understood what it was to experience a vital friendship and yet not to feel enslaved or attached because of the experience. Never, after we parted, did I feel the need of his actual presence; he had given himself completely and I possessed him without being possessed. It was the first clean, whole experience of friendship, and it was never duplicated by any other friend. Hamilton was friendship itself, rather than a friend. He was the symbol personified and consequently entirely satisfactory, hence no longer necessary to me. He himself understood this thoroughly. Perhaps it was the fact of having no father that pushed him along the road toward the discovery of the self, which is the final process of identification with the world and the realization consequently of the uselessness of ties. Certainly, as he stood then, in the full plenitude of self-realization, no one was necessary to him, least of all the father of flesh and blood whom he vainly sought in Mr. MacGregor. It must have been in the nature of a last test for him, his coming East and seeking out his real father, for when he said good-by, when he renounced Mr. MacGregor and Mr. Hamilton also, he was like a man who had purified himself of all dross. Never have I seen a man look so single, so utterly alone and alive and confident of the future as Roy Hamilton looked when he said good-by. And never have I seen such confusion and misunderstanding as he left behind with the MacGregor family. It was as though he had died in their midst, had been resurrected, and was taking leave of them as an utterly new, unknown individual. I can see them now standing in the areaway, their hands sort of foolishly, helplessly empty, weeping they knew not why, unless it was because they were bereft of something they had never possessed. I like to think of it in just this way. They were bewildered and bereft, and vaguely, so very vaguely aware that somehow a great opportunity had been offered them which they had not the strength or the imagination to seize. It was this which the foolish, empty fluttering of the hands indicated to me; it was a gesture more painful to witness than anything I can imagine.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  Under apartheid, if you were a black man you worked on a farm or in a factory or in a mine. If you were a black woman, you worked in a factory or as a maid. Those were pretty much your only options. My mother didn’t want to work in a factory. She was a horrible cook and never would have stood for some white lady telling her what to do all day. So, true to her nature, she found an option that was not among the ones presented to her: She took a secretarial course, a typing class. At the time, a black woman learning how to type was like a blind person learning how to drive. It’s an admirable effort, but you’re unlikely to ever be called upon to execute the task. By law, white-collar jobs and skilled-labor jobs were reserved for whites. Black people didn’t work in offices. My mom, however, was a rebel, and, fortunately for her, her rebellion came along at the right moment. In the early 1980s, the South African government began making minor reforms in an attempt to quell international protest over the atrocities and human rights abuses of apartheid. Among those reforms was the token hiring of black workers in low-level white-collar jobs. Like typists. Through an employment agency she got a job as a secretary at ICI, a multinational pharmaceutical company in Braamfontein, a suburb of Johannesburg. When my mom started working, she still lived with my grandmother in Soweto, the township where the government had relocated my family decades before. But my mother was unhappy at home, and when she was twenty-two she ran away to live in downtown Johannesburg. There was only one problem: It was illegal for black people to live there. The ultimate goal of apartheid was to make South Africa a white country, with every black person stripped of his or her citizenship and relocated to live in the homelands, the Bantustans, semi-sovereign black territories that were in reality puppet states of the government in Pretoria. But this so-called white country could not function without black labor to produce its wealth, which meant black people had to be allowed to live near white areas in the townships, government-planned ghettos built to house black workers, like Soweto. The township was where you lived, but your status as a laborer was the only thing that permitted you to stay there. If your papers were revoked for any reason, you could be deported back to the homelands.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  In like manner it was not expedient that God incarnate should, in this world, lead a life replete with wealth and the highest honour or dignity, as the twelfth objection argued.—In the first place, seeing that man’s mind was given to earthly things, He came to withdraw it from them, and to raise it to heavenly things. Hence it behoved Him, by His example, to draw men to the contempt of riches and of other things on which worldly men set their heart, and that He should lead a poor and hidden life in this world.—Secondly, if He had abounded in riches, and occupied a high position, the works He did as God would have been put down to His worldly power rather than to His Godly might. Hence it was a very strong proof of His divinity that, without the help of the secular arm, He converted the whole world to better things. Hence, it is plain how the thirteenth objection is to be answered. It is, indeed, far from being untrue that, according to the Apostle’s teaching, the incarnate Son of God suffered death in obedience to His Father’s command. God’s commands to men concern acts of virtue; and according as a man’s virtuous acts are more perfect, the more is he obedient to God. Now the greatest of the virtues is charity, to which all the others are referred. Hence Christ, whose act of charity was most perfect, was most obedient to God: for no act of charity is more perfect than that a man die for love of another, as our Lord Himself declared (Jo. 15:13), Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Therefore Christ, by dying for the salvation of man, and for the glory of God the Father, performed an act of perfect charity, and was most obedient to God. Nor was this incompatible with His Godhead, as the fourteenth objection averred. For the union was so made in the Person that both natures retained their respective properties, divine, namely, and human, as we have stated above: hence, though Christ suffered even death, besides those things which belonged to His human nature, His Godhead remained impassible, although on account of the unity of person, we say that God suffered and died. This is exemplified in ourselves, since although the body dies, the soul remains immortal. It must also be observed that although God wills not the death of man, as the fifteenth objection stated, nevertheless He wills the virtue whereby man suffers death with fortitude and braves the danger of death through charity. Thus did God will Christ’s death, in as much as Christ accepted death through charity, and bore it with fortitude.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 29. in ep. ad Heb.) But a soft garment relaxes the austerity of the soul; and if worn by a hard and rigorous body, soon, by such effeminacy, makes it frail and delicate. But when the body becomes softer, the soul must also share the injury; for generally its workings correspond with the conditions of the body. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. (ubi sup.) How then could a religious strictness, so great that it subdued to itself all fleshly lusts, sink down to such ignorance, except from a frivolity of mind, which is not fostered by austerities, but by worldly delights. If then ye imitate John, as one who cared not for pleasure, award him also the strength of mind, which befits his continence. But if strictness no more tends to this than a life of luxury, why do you, not respecting those who live delicately, admire the inhabitant of the desert, and his wretched garment of camel’s hair. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 37. in Matt.) By each of these sayings He shews John to be neither naturally nor easily shaken or diverted from any purpose. AMBROSE. And although very many become effeminate by the use of softer garments, yet here other garments seem to be meant, namely, our mortal bodies, by which our souls are clothed. Again, luxurious acts and habits are soft garments, but those whose languid limbs are wasted away in luxuries are shut out of the kingdom of heaven, whom the rulers of this world and of darkness have taken captive. For these are the kings who exercise tyranny over those who are their fellows in their own works. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. (ubi sup.) But perhaps it does not concern us to excuse John upon this ground, for you confess that he is worthy of imitation, hence He adds, But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? Verily I say unto you, more than a prophet. For the prophets foretold that Christ would come, but John not only foretold that He would come, but also declared Him to be present, saying, Behold the Lamb of God. AMBROSE. Indeed, greater than a prophet (or more than a prophet) was he in whom the prophets terminate; for many desired to see Him whom he saw, whom he baptized. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. (ubi sup.) Having then described his character by the place where he dwelt, by his clothing, and from the crowds who went to see him, He introduces the testimony of the prophet, saying, This is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my angel. (Mal. 3:1.) TITUS BOSTRENSIS. He calls a man an angel, not because he was by nature an angel, for he was by nature a man, but because he exercised the office of an angel, in heralding the advent of Christ.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Title : Just Mercy (One World Essentials) Author: Stevenson, Bryan Praise for Just Mercy“[A] searing, moving and infuriating memoir…Bryan Stevenson may, indeed, be America’s Mandela. For decades he has fought judges, prosecutors and police on behalf of those who are impoverished, black or both….Injustice is easy not to notice when it affects people different from ourselves; that helps explain the obliviousness of our own generation to inequity today. We need to wake up. And that is why we need a Mandela in this country.” —NICHOLAS KRISTOF, The New York Times “Unfairness in the justice system is a major theme of our age….This book brings new life to the story by placing it in two affecting contexts: Stevenson’s life’s work and the deep strain of racial injustice in American life. You don’t have to read too long to start cheering for this man. Against tremendous odds, Stevenson has worked to free scores of people from wrongful or excessive punishment, arguing five times before the Supreme Court….The book extols not his nobility, but that of the cause, and reads like a call to action for all that remains to be done. The message of this book, hammered home by dramatic examples of one man’s refusal to sit quietly and countenance horror, is that evil can be overcome, a difference can be made. Just Mercy will make you upset and it will make you hopeful….Bryan Stevenson has been angry about [the criminal justice system] for years, and we are all the better for it.” —TED CONOVER, The New York Times Book Review “A riveting, even shocking narrative…Throughout, though, Stevenson lingers on small moments of grace, forgiveness, encouragement, and kindness.” —The Boston Globe “Brilliant…The experiences [Stevenson] shares are universal.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “Valuable and compelling…ought to be required reading in law school.” —The Seattle Times “There is nobody in America who is doing more of God’s work with less acclaim than Bryan Stevenson….He is taking on the incompetence, inequities, and the simple, confounded clumsiness of an overworked system that grinds up too many people and delivers far too little of what it’s supposed to deliver, both to the people caught up in it, and to the country that takes such unwarranted pride in it. Stevenson, for a while, anyway, justifies that pride. If the system can produce people like him, it can be both just and merciful.” —Esquire (The 5 Most Important Books of 2014)

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I had a notion that if we acknowledged our brokenness, we could no longer take pride in mass incarceration, in executing people, in our deliberate indifference to the most vulnerable. When I was a college student, I had a job working as a musician in a black church in a poor section of West Philadelphia. At a certain point in the service I would play the organ before the choir began to sing. The minister would stand, spread his arms wide, and say, “Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.” I never fully appreciated what he was saying until the night Jimmy Dill was executed. — I had the privilege of meeting Rosa Parks when I first moved to Montgomery. She would occasionally come back to Montgomery from Detroit, where she lived, to visit dear friends. Johnnie Carr was one of those friends. Ms. Carr had befriended me, and I quickly learned that she was a force of nature—charismatic, powerful, and inspiring. She had been, in many ways, the true architect of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. She had organized people and transportation during the boycott and done a lot of the heavy lifting to make it the first successful major action of the modern Civil Rights Movement, and she succeeded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. She was in her late seventies when I first met her. “Now Bryan, I’m going to call you from time to time and I’m going ask you to do this or that and when I ask you to do something you’re going to say ‘Yes, ma’am,’ okay?” I chuckled—and I said, “Yes, ma’am.” She would sometimes call just to check in on me, and on occasion she would invite me over when Ms. Parks came to town. “Bryan, Rosa Parks is coming to town, and we’re going to meet over at Virginia Durr’s house to talk. Do you want to come over and listen?” When Ms. Carr called me, she either wanted me to go some place to “speak” or to go some place to “listen.” Whenever Ms. Parks came to town, I’d be invited to listen. “Oh, yes, ma’am. I’d love to come over and listen,” I’d always say, affirming that I understood what to do when I arrived. Ms. Parks and Ms. Carr would meet at Virginia Durr’s home. Ms. Durr was also a larger-than-life personality. Her husband, Clifford Durr, was an attorney who had represented Dr. King throughout his time in Montgomery. Ms. Durr was determined to confront injustice well into her nineties. She frequently asked me to accompany her to various places or invited me over to dinner.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  On the contrary, The Apostle says (Col. 2:10), “Who is the head of all Principality and Power,” and the same reason holds good with the other orders of angels. Therefore Christ is the Head of the angels. I answer that, As was said above (A[1], ad 2), where there is one body we must allow that there is one head. Now a multitude ordained to one end, with distinct acts and duties, may be metaphorically called one body. But it is manifest that both men and angels are ordained to one end, which is the glory of the Divine fruition. Hence the mystical body of the Church consists not only of men but of angels. Now of all this multitude Christ is the Head, since He is nearer God, and shares His gifts more fully, not only than man, but even than angels; and of His influence not only men but even angels partake, since it is written (Eph. 1:20–22): that God the Father set “Him,” namely Christ, “on His right hand in the heavenly places, above all Principality and Power and Virtue and Dominion and every name that is named not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And He hath subjected all things under His feet.” Therefore Christ is not only the Head of men, but of angels. Hence we read (Mat. 4:11) that “angels came and ministered to Him.” Reply to Objection 1: Christ’s influence over men is chiefly with regard to their souls; wherein men agree with angels in generic nature, though not in specific nature. By reason of this agreement Christ can be said to be the Head of the angels, although the agreement falls short as regards the body. Reply to Objection 2: The Church, on earth, is the congregation of the faithful; but, in heaven, it is the congregation of comprehensors. Now Christ was not merely a wayfarer, but a comprehensor. And therefore He is the Head not merely of the faithful, but of comprehensors, as having grace and glory most fully. Reply to Objection 3: Augustine here uses the similitude of cause and effect, i.e. inasmuch as corporeal things act on bodies, and spiritual things on spiritual things. Nevertheless, the humanity of Christ, by virtue of the spiritual nature, i.e. the Divine, can cause something not only in the spirits of men, but also in the spirits of angels, on account of its most close conjunction with God, i.e. by personal union.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  Almost at the bottom of the box was the photograph that Orst had based the famous triptych wing on, where Jane was seen at the mirror, seen in the mirror, hidden from us by the shimmering high-necked cope figured with lilies. The photo was brighter than the painting, but it seemed to me just as accomplished, with the sheen of the fabric disappearing into folds of shadow, and the sources of light subtly diffused. In a way I liked it more than the finished work, I liked it before it had been coloured in, while you could still see details in the background—a littered desk, a doorway with a tacked-up curtain—that Orst would blur and dissimulate into shadowy panels and dim thresholds. Sometimes Jane smiled, was required to smile, either distantly, at some soft recollection, or close up, with a kind of lustful fixity that I registered with a shock through the momentary delay, the fluted dusk, of a veil. Paul helped me with reproductions of paintings, and I looked at them with a dwindling sense of amazement, side by side with their originals. They had the unintended effect of making the paintings seem predictable and the photographs more and more mysterious. Or perhaps they were just two different kinds of mystery, one deliberate, the artist making things vague and portentous, and the other to do with two lovers in a Brussels studio and the things they did for each other on certain mornings, the posing and play-acting given solemnity by the long exposures, the need for unblinking stillness. There was even a touch of irritation in one or two of the expressions, the mood of some protracted rehearsal, a sense that they had been at this long enough. I found myself imagining the face cracking, the hand dropping the golden bowl, a casting-off of wraps, a move to coffee and cigarettes in the next room, the intimate accommodations of an affair in a bachelor apartment. And there was a further minor mystery, to do with famous beauties, beauty as it seemed to have been judged in the days before cinema and running water: sallow skin, broody jaws, great hanks of greasy dark hair, a greasy sheen too to collars and lapels and sweated-in satin, but no faltering of confidence in front of the camera, no suspicion that they might not appeal to the fastidious viewer a century ahead. Jane wasn't as grim as some I had looked at bemusedly, but she was big and middle-aged close to as she might not have been in the magic of stage-lights, and was never to be in the necromancy of Orst's art. Perhaps her skin was spoilt by corrosive paints, it was only natural that he should give her this radical, classicising face-lift; I wasn't sure I could say so to Paul, but I liked her best as she came solid and unembarrassed before the camera, when she was only acting.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  5. But the advantage to be derived from such a school of philosophy is not to be confined within these limits. The foolishness of those men who “by these good things that are seen could not understand Him, that is, neither by attending to the works could have acknowledged who was the workman,” is gravely reproved in the words of Divine Wisdom. In the first place, then, this great and noble fruit is gathered from human reason, that it demonstrates that God is; for the greatness of the beauty and of the creature the Creator of them may be seen so as to be known thereby. Again, it shows God to excel in the height of all perfections, especially in infinite wisdom before which nothing lies hidden, and in absolute justice which no depraved affection could possibly shake; and that God, therefore, is not only true but truth itself, which can neither deceive nor be deceived. Whence it clearly follows that human reason finds the fullest faith and authority united in the word of God. In like manner, reason declares that the doctrine of the Gospel has even from its very beginning been made manifest by certain wonderful signs, the established proofs, as it were, of unshaken truth; and that all, therefore, who set faith in the Gospel do not believe rashly as though following cunningly devised fables, but, by a most reasonable consent, subject their intelligence and judgment to an authority which is divine. And of no less importance is it that reason most clearly sets forth that the Church instituted by Christ (as laid down in the Vatican Council), on account of its wonderful spread, its marvellous sanctity, and its inexhaustible fecundity in all places, as well as of its Catholic unity and unshaken stability, is in itself a great and perpetual motive of belief and an irrefragable testimony of its own divine mission.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  I have encouraged experimentation with the thought and methods of the past, a learned archaism which might recapture lost intentions and lost techniques. I tried those variations which consist of transcribing in red marble a flayed Marsyas, portrayed heretofore only in white, going back thus into the world of painted figures; or of transposing to the pallor of Parian marble the black grain of Egypt's statues, changing the idol to a ghost. Our art is perfect, that is to say, completed, but its perfection can be modulated as finely as can a pure voice: we have still the chance to play with skill the game of perpetual approach to, or withdrawal from, that solution found once for all; we may go to the limit of control, or excess, and enclose within that beauteous sphere innumerable new constructions. There is advantage in having behind us multiple points of comparison, in being free to follow Scopas intelligently, or to diverge, voluptuously, from Praxiteles. My contacts with the arts of barbarians have led me to believe that each race limits itself to certain subjects and to certain modes among those conceivable; each period, too, makes a selection among the possibilities offered to each race. In Egypt I have seen colossal gods, and kings; on the wrists of Sarmatian prisoners I have found bracelets which endlessly repeat the same galloping horse, or the same serpents devouring each other. But our art (I mean that of the Greeks) has chosen man as its center. We alone have known how to show latent strength and agility in bodies in repose; we alone have made a smooth brow the symbol of wise reflection. I am like our sculptors: the human contents me; I find everything there, even what is eternal. The image of the Centaur sums up for me all forests, so greatly loved, and storm winds never breathe better than in a sea goddess' billowing scarf. Natural objects and sacred emblems have value for me only as they are weighted with human associations: the phallic and funeral pine cone, the vase with doves which suggests siesta beside a fountain, the griffon which carries the beloved to the sky. The art of portraiture was of slight interest to me. Our Roman busts have value only as records, faces copied to the last wrinkle, with every single wart; stencils of figures with whom we brush elbows in life, and whom we forget as soon as they die. The Greeks, on the contrary, have loved human perfection to the point of caring but little for the varied visages of men. I tend merely to glance at my own likeness, that dark face so changed by the whiteness of marble, those wide-opened eyes, that thin though sensuous mouth, controlled to the point of quivering. But I have been more preoccupied by the face of another.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  ATHANASIUS. (con. Greg. Sabell. 3. con. gentes 6.) We know also that the Saviour often speaks as man. For His divine nature has human nature joined to it, yet you would not, because of His clothing Himself with a body, be ignorant that He was God. But what do they answer to this, who wish to make out a substance of evil, but form to themselves another God, other than the true Father of Christ? And they say that he is unbegotten, the creator of evil and prince of iniquity, as well as the maker of the world’s fabric. (Gen. 1:1.) Now our Lord, affirming the word of Moses, says, I give thanks unto thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. EPIPHANIUS. (adv. Hær. 42.) But a Gospel composed by Marcion has, “I give thanks to Thee, O Lord,” being silent as to the words of heaven and earth, and the word Father, lest it should be supposed that He calls the Father the Creator of the heaven and the earth. AMBROSE. Lastly, he unveils the heavenly mystery by which it pleased God to reveal His grace, rather to the little ones than the wise of the world. Hence it follows, That thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent. THEOPHYLACT. The distinction may be, that it is said, the wise, meaning, the Pharisees and Scribes who interpret the law, and the prudent, meaning those who were taught by the Scribes, for the wise man is he who teaches, but the prudent man he who is taught; but the Lord calls His disciples babes, whom He chose not from the teachers of the law, but out of the multitude, and by calling, fishermen; babes, that is, as devoid of malice. AMBROSE. Or by a babe we should here understand one who knew nothing of exalting himself, and of boasting in proud words of the excellence of his wisdom, as the Pharisees often do. BEDE. He therefore gives thanks that He had revealed to the Apostles as unto babes the sacraments of His coming, of which the Scribes and Pharisees were ignorant, who think themselves wise, and are prudent in their own sight. THEOPHYLACT. The mysteries then were hid from those who think themselves wise, and are not; for if they had been, these would have been revealed to them. BEDE. To the wise and prudent then He opposed not the dull and foolish, but babes; that is, the humble, to shew that He condemned pride, not quickness of mind. ORIGEN. For a feeling of deficiency is the preparation for coming perfection. For whoever by the presence of the apparent good perceives not that he is destitute of the true good, is deprived of the true good.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (Tract. lxxxv. 2) Great condescension! Though to keep his Lord’s commandments, is only what a good servant is obliged to do, yet, if they do so, He calls them His friends. The good servant is both the servant, and the friend. But how is this? He tells us: Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth. Shall we therefore cease to be servants, as soon as ever we are good servants? And is not a good and tried servant sometimes entrusted with his master’s secrets, still remaining a servant? (c. 3.). We must understand then that there are two kinds of servitude, as there are two kinds of fear. There is a fear which perfect love casteth out; which also hath in it a servitude, which will be cast out together with the fear. And there is another, a pure (castus) fear, which remaineth for ever. It is the former state of servitude, which our Lord refers to, when He says, Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth; not the state of that servant to whom it is said, Well done, thou good servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord: (Matt. 25:21) but of him of whom it was said below, The servant abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth ever. Forasmuch then as God hath given us power to become the sons of God, so that in a wonderful way, we are servants, and yet not servants, we know that it is the Lord who doth this. This that servant is ignorant of, who knoweth not what his Lord doeth, and when he doeth any good thing, is exalted in his own conceit, as if he himself did it, and not his Lord; and boasts of himself, not of his Lord. But I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of My Father, I have made known unto you. THEOPHYLACT. As if He said, The servant knoweth not the counsels of his lord; but since I esteem you friends, I have communicated my secrets to you. AUGUSTINE. (Tract. lxxxvi. 1) But how did He make known to His disciples all things that He had heard from the Father, when He forebore saying many things, because He knew they as yet could not bear them? He made all things known to His disciples, i. e. He knew that He should make them known to them in that fulness of which the Apostle saith, Then we shall know, even as we are known. (1 Cor. 13:12) For as we look for the death of the flesh, and the salvation of the soul; so should we look for that knowledge of all things, which the Only-Begotten heard from the Father.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  How do all these marvelous ornaments impress the female Argus? Observers are unanimous in describing the female’s response as completely underwhelming, or even undetectable. William Beebe wrote, “There is no question in my mind that the wonderful colouring, the elaborate ball-and-socket illusion of the ocelli, the rhythmical shivering of the feathers which makes these balls revolve—all are lost, as aesthetic phenomena, upon the nonchalant little hen.” In rejecting the possibility that the female Argus is having any aesthetic experience, Beebe exercised an odd kind of reverse anthropomorphism. If we humans find the male’s display to be awe inspiring, shouldn’t the “little hen” exhibit a stronger, visible response to it? Shouldn’t she be acting more like how we feel? Maybe because Beebe had spent months in the jungle trying to observe this display and many weeks huddled in his various hideouts, he expected the female Argus to evince at least some of the excitement that he himself experienced when he finally saw the display from his muddy foxhole. His conclusion that she did not share his excitement led him to be skeptical of the possibility that the male’s display had any aesthetic impact on her at all. However, sexual selection theory holds that every elaborate ornament is the result of an equally elaborate, coevolved capacity for aesthetic discernment. Extreme aesthetic expression is always a consequence of extreme rates of aesthetic failure—that is, rejection by potential mates. Male Argus have such extreme ornaments precisely because most males are not chosen as mates. Thus, a calm, under-impressed female Argus is actually acting as we should expect—more like an experienced, well-educated connoisseur evaluating one of the many extraordinary works available to her scrutiny than an excited naturalist having a once-in-a-lifetime encounter. And from what I’ve seen of videos of these courtship performances, that’s exactly how I would describe her—rigid with highly focused attention as she casts her discerning eye over the displaying male. The female Argus may appear dispassionate as she watches the male’s efforts, but it’s her coolheaded mating decisions over the course of millions of years that have provided the coevolutionary engine that has culminated in the male Argus’s display of hundreds of golden balls shimmering and gyrating in the air. — The magnificent feathers and elaborate displays of the Great Argus have long been a prime piece of evidence in our struggle to understand the origin of beauty in nature, but this evidence has led thinkers to diametrically opposite conclusions. In his 1867 antievolution tract, The Reign of Law, the Duke of Argyll cited the “ball and socket” designs of the Great Argus wing feathers as a sign of God’s hand in creation. Darwin countered that the Great Argus is evidence of the evolution of beauty by mate choice, concluding that “it is undoubtedly a marvelous fact that the female [Great Argus] should possess this almost human degree of taste.”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  By being honest with his son, Gary’s father presents the picture of an adult of high integrity who has struggled with an unhappy relationship and made the decision to remain in the marriage because of his remaining love for his wife and his commitment to his children. He conveys a world in which the values of honesty, patience, working at life’s problems, love, and loyalty shine like beacons. Gary is doubly blessed. He’s offered a candid picture of a marriage in crisis but overall mixed with sorrow and joy. And he’s offered the model of a father who struggles to protect his children and his wife despite his own serious disappointments. This is courage. There is no denial of the trouble, no sugarcoating of the recurrent crises. He levels with the boy in a way that is unforgettable. When one of the parents (or sometimes both) cannot maintain his or her adulthood and abdicates responsibility to protect the child, then the child is exposed to many serious risks. This can happen in both intact and divorced families. The ambience within many intact marriages is no different from many wretched postdivorce families I have seen—one adult pulling the children into alliances against the other adult. As in divorced families where this happens, the children usually wake up to the injustice of these insults and turn against the accuser. Ill-founded accusations have built-in ways of self-correcting as the child matures. The chief danger is that the children are not given a moral compass by which to steer through problems in their own marriages. They are seriously misled about the nature of the man-woman relationship and the responsibility of a parent to his or her children. We know that this happens after divorce, but it is also common in intact families. I have seen it a lot in my clinical experience. Whenever tensions arise, the urge to scapegoat is powerful. The Decision to Divorce—Telling the Children NOW LET’S ASK a critical question. Suppose you choose to end your marriage. Taking Gary’s father as a role model of a good parent who understands how to speak to his children about very painful issues, how should you conduct yourself? Here, too, there are clear do’s and don’ts that are rarely followed because parents are poorly informed, raging, or overwhelmed by the demands of life at the time of the breakup. Typically, they have reached a point of no return in a marriage that is intolerable to them. The situation is unlikely ever to improve. Individual histories vary. Divorce at a young age is different from divorce after spending half or a whole lifetime together. But most divorces reflect a dream that was shattered because of profound disappointment, suffering in the relationship, and the end of hope for a better future. Most of the time people with children take this step reluctantly.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Compared to Lisa, young people raised within the protection of good intact marriages hold very different expectations about the future. Lisa’s best friend, Bettina, grew up down the street in a home with parents who were among the happiest in our study. These were people content with their lives who didn’t hesitate to show mutual affection and love for their two children. They went out of their way to make their children’s friends feel welcome in their home. Lisa loved spending time with this family and accompanied them on several camping trips in the Sierras. The two girls were inseparable from first grade through high school graduation, and Lisa was maid-of-honor at Bettina’s wedding. In fact, Lisa gave us Bettina’s name as someone to include in our comparison group. The thing I remember most about my interview with Bettina was her statement, “I always thought of myself as a good person, and I never doubted that I would find a good man to love me and to love in return.” She referred to her home as being “rock solid.” Of course, being raised by parents who are happily married does not innoculate children against divorce or other serious troubles. Life is not so simple. In an earlier book, The Good Marriage, I interviewed several young adults who had been raised by parents who were very happy in sexually close, romantic marriages. Such parents were often so devoted to each other that their children, watching the ongoing love affair, sometimes felt excluded from the parents orbit. When these youngsters grew up, they rejected their parents as role models and opted for more reserved behavior in their own marriages. In other close-knit families, children grow so close to their parents that separation in adolescence and early adulthood is an issue. I was relieved when Bettina told me how she had decided to go to Cornell instead of her father’s alma mater, Stanford University. When the acceptance letters came, Bettina yelped, “Cornell, here I come!” Her father said to her with thinly veiled irritation, “No one turns Stanford down.” “Well then,” Bettina answered tartly, “here goes the first.” And she tootled off. As if turned out, Bettina married another Cornell graduate and settled in upstate New York, far away from her parents. She still visits them a couple of times a year and now that her dad is retired, her parents travel more widely and often stop off to see her when they’re back east. “They’re great role models for my husband and me,” Bettina said. “They’re really savvy about how to do each life stage. I hope that we can do as well.” After talking to Bettina, I remember feeling struck by the fact that both girls started from almost the same place; they had outstanding parents, solid middle-class backgrounds, and happy memories from when they were very young. But after Lisa’s parents divorced, their paths diverged in ways no one could have predicted.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Yet it might be said that Scripture does this implicitly when the Apostle says (Rom. 8:3): God, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, or when he says (Philip. 2:7): Being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. But such an interpretation is forbidden by the context. For he does not say simply: In the likeness of flesh, but of sinful flesh, because Christ had real flesh—not sinful flesh, since there was no sin in Him, but like sinful flesh, since He had passible flesh, and such as man’s flesh had become through sin. In like manner, a fictional interpretation of the words, being made in the likeness of men is excluded by the addition of the words, taking the form of a servant: because it is clear that form here means nature and not semblance, since the Apostle had said, Who, being in the form of God; for it is not suggested that Christ was a semblance of God. The fictional sense is also excluded by the subsequent words, Becoming obedient unto death. Therefore likeness here does not indicate the likeness of simulation, but true likeness of species, just as all men are said to be like in species. Still more emphatically does Holy Scripture exclude any suspicion of a ghostly apparition. For it is related (Matth. 14:26) that the disciples, seeing Jesus walking upon the sea, were troubled, saying: It is an apparition; and they cried out for fear. Our Lord took the right way to undeceive them; for thus the narrative continues: And immediately Jesus spoke to them saying: Be of good heart, it is I, fear not. Yet it hardly seems reasonable to suppose that the disciples would be unaware of it, if He had assumed only an imaginary body, seeing that He had chosen them that they might bear witness to the truth from what they saw and heard; and, if they were aware of it; then the thought that it was an apparition should not have made them afraid. And still more did our Lord, after His resurrection, remove from the minds of His disciples any doubt of the reality of His body. Thus (Lk. 24:37–39) it is related that the disciples being troubled and frighted, supposed that they saw a spirit, when they saw Jesus: and He said to them: Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See my hands and feet, that it is I myself. Handle and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have. For it would have been useless to tell them to feel, if He had but an imaginary body.