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 The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  What these cases show is that the mere organic retentiveness of a man need bear no definite relation to his other mental powers. Men of the highest general powers will often forget nothing, however insignificant. One of the most generally accomplished men I know has a memory of this sort. He never keeps written note of anything, yet is never at a loss for a fact which he has once heard. He remembers the old addresses of all his New York friends, living in numbered streets, addresses which they themselves have long since moved away from and forgotten. He says that he should probably recognize an individual fly, if he had seen him thirty years previous—he is, by the way, an entomologist. As an instance of his desultory memory, he was introduced to a certain colonel at a club. The conversation fell upon the signs of age in man. The colonel challenged him to estimate his age. He looked at him, and gave the exact day of his birth, to the wonder of all. But the secret of this accuracy was that, having picked up some days previously an army-register, he had idly turned over its list of names, with dates of birth, graduation, promotions, etc., attached, and when the colonel's name was mentioned to him at the club, these figures, on which he had not bestowed a moment's thought, involuntarily surged up in his mind. Such a memory is of course a priceless boon. [579] Cf. Ebbinghaus: Ueber das Gedächtniss (1885), pp. 67, 45. One may hear a person say: "I have a very poor memory, because I was never systematically made to learn poetry at school." [580] How to Strengthen the Memory; or, The Natural and Scientific Methods of Never Forgetting. By M. H. Holbrook, M.D. New York (no date). [581] Page 30. [582] Op. cit. p. 100. [583] In order to test the opinion so confidently expressed in the text, I have tried to see whether a certain amount of daily training in learning poetry by heart will shorten the time it takes to learn an entirely different kind of poetry. During eight successive days I learned 158 lines of Victor Hugo's 'Satyr.' The total number of minutes required for this was 131 5/6—it should be said that I had learned nothing by heart for many years. I then, working for twenty-odd minutes daily, learned the entire first book of Paradise Lost, occupying 38 days in the process. After this training I went back to Victor Hugo's poem, and found that 158 additional lines (divided exactly as on the former occasion) took me 151 1/2 minutes.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  He knew that in the city they spoke the thought that Tony was happily stirring within himself... Names were mentioned and discarded. Others showed up and were sighted. Henning Kurz in the bakery was too old. A fresh strength was finally needed. Consul Huneus, the lumber merchant, whose millions would not have weighed lightly, was constitutionally excluded because his brother was a member of the Senate. Consul Eduard Kistenmaker, the wine merchant, and Consul Hermann Hagenstrom held their own on the list. From the beginning, however, this name was always heard: Thomas Buddenbrook. And the nearer election day approached, the clearer it became that together with Hermann Hagenstrom he had the best chance. There is no doubt that Hermann Hagenstrom had followers and admirers. His zeal in public affairs, the striking rapidity with which the firm of Strunck & Hagenstrom had flourished and developed, the Consul's luxurious lifestyle, the house he kept, and the foie gras he ate for breakfast, did not fail to impress do. This tall man, a little too fat, with his reddish, cropped full beard and his nose, which is a little too flat on his upper lip, this man, his grandfather had never known anyone and he himself, whose father was still almost socially impossible as a result of his wealthy but dubious marriage and who nevertheless, being related by marriage to both the Huneus and the Möllendorpfs, put his name in line with that of the five or six ruling families and put it on an equal footing was undeniably an odd and respectable sight in town. What was new and therefore attractive about his personality, what distinguished him and gave him a leading position in the eyes of many, was the liberal and tolerant character of his nature. The casual and generous way in which he made and spent money was different from the tenacious, patient, and strictly principled work of his fellow merchants. This man stood on his own two feet, free from the shackles of tradition and piety, and alien to all old-fashioned things. He did not live in any of the old patrician houses, built with senseless waste of space, with white-varnished galleries running around their enormous stone floorboards. His house on Sandstrasse—the southern extension of Breite Strasse—with a plain oil façade, practically exploited space and rich, elegant, comfortable furnishings, was new and devoid of any rigid style. Incidentally, he had recently invited a singer who was engaged to play at the municipal theater to his house for one of his larger evening parties, had her after dinner in front of his guests, among whom was his art-loving and aesthetic brother, the legal scholar, let sing and honored the lady in the most brilliant way. He was not the man to support the approval of larger sums of money for the restoration and preservation of medieval monuments in the citizenship.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I was even more amazed when I realized I preferred, in fact, the company of the hippies to the company of Christians. It isn’t that I didn’t love my Christian friends or that they didn’t love me, it was just that there was something different about my hippie friends; something, I don’t know, more real, more true. I realize that is a provocative statement, but I only felt I could be myself around them, and I could not be myself with my Christian friends. My Christian communities had always had little unwritten social ethics like don’t cuss and don’t support Democrats and don’t ask tough questions about the Bible. I stayed in the woods only a month. I wanted to stay longer, but I had secured a job in Colorado at a Christian camp and needed to honor that agreement. Though I had spent only a month with the hippies, it seemed a lifetime. I had learned more about people, about community and happiness and contentment by living in the woods than I had in a lifetime of studying these ideas philosophically. I had discovered life outside the church, and I liked it. As I said, I preferred it. I said my sad good-byes and boarded a bus bound for Colorado. [image "9780785263708_0223_003" file=Image00085.jpg] Before getting off the Greyhound bus, I threw away my pack of cigarettes. I knew I would not be able to smoke while working at camp. The guy who picked me up from the bus station could smell the smoke on my clothes so he sat quietly and asked few questions. Though Paul and I had been in the woods for only a month, we had been traveling around America for several months, and so the first thing I noticed when I got to camp was that these were clean people; they ironed their clothes and that sort of thing. They had clean-shaven faces and spoke through smiles. I liked them, they all looked so new to me, so much like they belonged in storefront windows, like fine china dolls or models for Banana Republic. There was a buzz about me almost immediately. I didn’t want there to be, but I had been traveling for so long I’d forgotten some basic things like sleeping indoors and eating with utensils. Some of the bolder staff members approached me to try to talk. I think they thought I was sort of stupid because they spoke very slowly and made wide motions with their hands as they spoke. “I’m Jane. My name, Jane, what your name?” The camp director, a very conservative man, sent word to me through a servant that I was to shave and wear appropriate clothes. It is true I had gotten a little hairy in the woods. They had rules, these people, they had expectations, and if you did not comply you were socially shunned.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  But seeing Gerda was the deciding factor. I saw immediately that she was the only one many people in town are angry with me for my taste. She is a wonderful being, as there are certainly few on earth. Of course she's very different from you, Tony. You're simpler, you're more natural... My wife's sister is quite simply more vivacious,' he continued, suddenly changing to a lighter tone. “By the way, the fact that Gerda also has temperament is proven by her playing the violin; but she can be a little cold sometimes... In short, it's not the usual yardstick to put on her. She is an artist, a strange, enigmatic, delightful creature.« "Yes, yes," said Tony. She had listened to her brother seriously and attentively. Without thinking about the lamp, they had let the evening fall. Then the corridor door opened, and surrounded by the twilight, an upright figure stood in front of the two of them, in a draped, flowing house dress of snow-white piqué. Heavy, dark red hair framed the white face, and bluish shadows settled in the corners of the close-set brown eyes. It was Gerda, the mother of future Buddenbrooks. Sixth part First chapter Thomas Buddenbrook almost always took his first breakfast alone in his pretty dining room, for his wife used to leave the bedroom very late, as she was often subject to migraines and general depression during the morning. The consul then immediately went to Mengstrasse, where the company's offices remained, had breakfast on the mezzanine floor together with his mother, Christian and Ida Jungmann, and did not meet Gerda again until four o'clock at lunchtime. The bustle of business kept life and activity on the ground floor; but the storeys of the big Mengstrasse building were now really empty and lonely. Little Erika had been taken in by Mademoiselle Weichbrodt as an internal pupil, poor Klothilde had gone with her four or five pieces of furniture to the widow of a high school teacher, a doctor Krauseminz, on a cheap pension, even the servant Anton had left the house to and when Christian was in the club, at four o'clock the consul and Mamsell Jungmann sat at the round table, in which not a single board was left, and who sat in the wide dining temple with his idols lost, now all alone together. With the death of Consul Johann Buddenbrook, social life in Mengstrasse came to an end, and apart from visits from this or that clergyman, the Consul saw no other guests around than the members of her family on Thursday.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  How a false note hurts the musician! or an offence against good manners the man of the world! How rapid is progress in a science when its first principles have been so well impressed upon us that we reproduce them mentally with perfect distinctness and ease! How slow and uncertain, on the other hand, is our learning of the principles themselves, when familiarity with the still more elementary percepts connected with the subject has not given us an adequate predisposition!—Apperceptive attention may be plainly observed in very small children when, hearing the speech of their elders, as yet unintelligible to them, they suddenly catch a single known word here and there, and repeat it to themselves; yes! even in the dog who looks round at us when we speak of him and pronounce his name. Not far removed is the talent which mind-wandering school-boys display during the hours of instruction, of noticing every moment in which the teacher tells a story. I remember classes in which, instruction being uninteresting, and discipline relaxed, a buzzing murmur was always to be heard, which invariably stopped for as long a time as an anecdote lasted. How could the boys, since they seemed to hear nothing, notice when the anecdote began? Doubtless most of them always heard something of the teacher's talk; but most of it had no connection with their previous knowledge and occupations, and therefore the separate words no sooner entered their consciousness than they fell out of it again; but, on the other hand, no sooner did the words awaken old thoughts, forming strongly-connected series with which the new impression easily combined, than out of new and old together a total interest resulted which drove the vagrant ideas below the threshold of consciousness, and brought for a while settled attention into their place."[338] Passive intellectual attention is immediate when we follow in thought a train of images exciting or interesting per se ; derived, when the images are interesting only as means to a remote end, or merely because they are associated with something which makes them dear. Owing to the way in which immerse numbers of real things become integrated into single objects of thought for us, there is no clear line to be drawn between immediate and derived attention of an intellectual sort. When absorbed in intellectual attention we may become so inattentive to outer things as to be 'absent-minded,' 'abstracted,' or 'distraits .' All revery or concentrated meditation is apt to throw us into this state. "Archimedes, it is well known, was so absorbed in geometrical meditation that he was first aware of the storming of Syracuse by his own death-wound, and his exclamation on the entrance of the Roman soldiers was: Noli turbare circulos meos ! In like manner Joseph Scaliger, the most learned of men, when a Protestant student in Paris, was so engrossed in the study of Homer that he became aware of the massacre of St.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  After discrimination, association! Already in the last chapter I have had to invoke, in order to explain the improvement of certain discriminations by practice, the 'association' of the objects to be distinguished, with other more widely differing ones. It is obvious that the advance of our knowledge must consist of both operations; for objects at first appearing as wholes are analyzed into parts, and objects appearing separately are brought together and appear as new compound wholes to the mind. Analysis and synthesis are thus the incessantly alternating mental activities, a stroke of the one preparing the way for a stroke of the other, much as, in walking, a man's two legs are alternately brought into use, both being indispensable for any orderly advance. The manner in which trains of imagery and consideration follow each other through our thinking, the restless flight of one idea before the next, the transitions our minds make between things wide as the poles asunder, transitions which at first sight startle us by their abruptness, but which, when scrutinized closely, often reveal intermediating links of perfect naturalness and propriety—all this magical, imponderable streaming has from time immemorial excited the admiration of all whose attention happened to be caught by its omnipresent mystery. And it has furthermore challenged the race of philosophers to banish something of the mystery by formulating the process in simpler terms. The problem which the philosophers have set themselves is that of ascertaining principles of connection between the thoughts which thus appear to sprout one out of the other, whereby their peculiar succession or coexistence may be explained. But immediately an ambiguity arises: which sort of connection is meant? connection thought-of , or connection between thoughts ? These are two entirely different things, and only in the case of one of them is there any hope of finding 'principles.' The jungle of connections thought of can never be formulated simply. Every conceivable connection may be thought of—of coexistence, succession, resemblance, contrast, contradiction, cause and effect, means and end, genus and species, part and whole, substance and property, early and late, large and small, landlord and tenant, master and servant,—Heaven knows what, for the list is literally inexhaustible. The only simplification which could possibly be aimed at would be the reduction of the relations to a smaller number of types, like those which such authors as Kant and Renouvier call the 'categories' of the understanding.[462] According as we followed one category or another we should sweep, with our thought, through the world in this way or in that. And all the categories would be logical, would be relations of reason. They would fuse the items into a continuum. Were this the sort of connection sought between one moment of our thinking and another, our chapter might end here. For the only summary description of these infinite possibilities of transition, is that they are all acts of reason , and that the mind proceeds from one object to another by some rational path of connection.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  By what means, then, through what fiction [!] can we turn round and play them off upon self? Or how comes it that we obtain any satisfaction by putting self in the place of the other party? Perhaps the simplest form of the reflected act is that expressed by Self-worth and Self-estimation, based and begun upon observation of the ways and conduct of our fellow-beings. We soon make comparisons among the individuals about us; we see that one is stronger and does more work than another, and, in consequence perhaps, receives more pay. We see one putting forth perhaps more kindness than another, and in consequence receiving more love. We see some individuals surpassing the rest in astonishing feats, and drawing after them the gaze and admiration of a crowd. We acquire a series of fixed associations towards persons so situated; favorable in the case of the superior, and unfavorable to the inferior. To the strong and laborious man we attach an estimate of greater reward, and feel that to be in his place would be a happier lot than falls to others. Desiring, as we do, from the primary motives of our being, to possess good things, and observing these to come by a man's superior exertions, we feel a respect for such exertion and a wish that it might be ours. We know that we also put forth exertions for our share of good things; and on witnessing others, we are apt to be reminded of ourselves and to make comparisons with ourselves, which comparisons derive their interest from the substantial consequences. Having thus once learned to look at other persons as performing labors, greater or less, and as realizing fruits to accord; being, moreover, in all respects like our fellows,—we find it an exercise neither difficult nor unmeaning to contemplate self as doing work and receiving the reward. . . . As we decide between one man and another,—which is worthier, . . . so we decide between self and all other men; being, however, in this decision under the bias of our own desires." A couple of pages farther on we read: "By the terms Self-complacency, Self-gratulation, is indicated a positive enjoyment in dwelling upon our own merits and belongings. As in other modes, so here, the starting point is the contemplation of excellence or pleasing qualities in another person, accompanied more or less with fondness or love." Self-pity is also regarded by Professor Bain, in this place, as an emotion diverted to ourselves from a more immediate object, "in a manner that we may term fictitious and unreal. Still, as we can view self in the light of another person, we can feel towards it the emotion of pity called forth by others in our situation."

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Already in the last chapter I have had to invoke, in order to explain the improvement of certain discriminations by practice, the 'association' of the objects to be distinguished, with other more widely differing ones. It is obvious that the advance of our knowledge must consist of both operations; for objects at first appearing as wholes are analyzed into parts, and objects appearing separately are brought together and appear as new compound wholes to the mind. Analysis and synthesis are thus the incessantly alternating mental activities, a stroke of the one preparing the way for a stroke of the other, much as, in walking, a man's two legs are alternately brought into use, both being indispensable for any orderly advance. The manner in which trains of imagery and consideration follow each other through our thinking, the restless flight of one idea before the next, the transitions our minds make between things wide as the poles asunder, transitions which at first sight startle us by their abruptness, but which, when scrutinized closely, often reveal intermediating links of perfect naturalness and propriety—all this magical, imponderable streaming has from time immemorial excited the admiration of all whose attention happened to be caught by its omnipresent mystery. And it has furthermore challenged the race of philosophers to banish something of the mystery by formulating the process in simpler terms. The problem which the philosophers have set themselves is that of ascertaining principles of connection between the thoughts which thus appear to sprout one out of the other, whereby their peculiar succession or coexistence may be explained. But immediately an ambiguity arises: which sort of connection is meant? connection thought-of, or connection between thoughts? These are two entirely different things, and only in the case of one of them is there any hope of finding 'principles.' The jungle of connections thought of can never be formulated simply. Every conceivable connection may be thought of—of coexistence, succession, resemblance, contrast, contradiction, cause and effect, means and end, genus and species, part and whole, substance and property, early and late, large and small, landlord and tenant, master and servant,—Heaven knows what, for the list is literally inexhaustible. The only simplification which could possibly be aimed at would be the reduction of the relations to a smaller number of types, like those which such authors as Kant and Renouvier call the 'categories' of the understanding. [462] According as we followed one category or another we should sweep, with our thought, through the world in this way or in that. And all the categories would be logical, would be relations of reason.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  For Thomas Buddenbrook himself, this piece of the world was at the harbor, between ships, sheds and warehouses, where butter was needed , fish, water, tar and oiled iron smelled, been the favorite and most interesting place to stay from an early age; and since his son's joy and sympathy did not express themselves of their own accord, he had to be careful to wake them up… What were the names of the steamers that plied Copenhagen? Najaden ... Halmstadt ... Friederike Oeverdieck ... "Well, that you at least know these, my boy, that's nicesomething . You'll remember the others too... Yes, some of the people who wind up the sacks have the same name as you, my dear, because they were baptized after your grandfather. And my name often appears among her children... and Mama's too... Then they get a little something every year... Well, let's walk past this attic and don't talk to the men; we have nothing to say about that; that's a competitor..." "Do you want to come with us, Hanno?" he said another time... "A new ship belonging to our shipping company will be launched this afternoon. I baptize it… would you like it?” And Hanno stated that he wanted to. He went and heard his father's christening speech, watched him pour a bottle of champagne on the bow and looked with strange eyes after the ship, which slid down the sloping plane completely smeared with green soap and into the high foaming water... On certain days of the year, on Palm Sunday, when confirmations took place, or on New Year's Day, Senator Buddenbrook made a tour of visits to a number of houses to which he was socially indebted, and as his wife preferred to attend on such occasions with nervousness and migraines, he asked Hanno to accompany him. And Hanno wanted to do this too. He got into his father's cab and sat silently at his side in the reception room, observing with quiet eyes his easy, tactful, and so varied, so carefully modulated behavior towards the people. He watched as he said to Lieutenant Colonel and District Commander Herr von Rinnlingen, who, as he was leaving, emphasized that he very much appreciated the honor of this visit. put his arm around his shoulder for a moment with amiable alarm; how elsewhere he received a similar remark calmly and earnestly, and at a third parried it with an ironically exaggerated counter-compliment... All with a formal skill of word and gesture which he evidently liked to produce to his son's admiration and from which he taught himself promised effect. But little Johann saw more than he was supposed to, and his eyes, those shy, golden-brown eyes with a bluish shadow, observed too well.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I was speaking at a pastors conference in San Francisco, and I was telling them about my friends from Reed and what it looks like to talk about Jesus in that place. Somebody asked me what it was like to deal with all the immorality at Reed, and that question really struck me because I have never thought of Reed as an immoral place, and I suppose I never thought of it as an immoral place because somebody like Nathan can go there and talk like Elmer Fudd, and nobody will ever make fun of him. And if Nathan were to go to my church, which I love and would give my life for, he would unfortunately be made fun of by somebody somewhere, behind his back and all, but it would happen, and that is such a tragic crime. Nobody would bother to find out that he is a genius. Nobody would know that he is completely comfortable talking the way he talks and not knowing his left from his right because he has spent four years in a place where what you are on the surface does not define you, it does not label you. And that is what I love about Reed College because even though there are so many students having sex and tripping on drugs and whatever, there is also this foundational understanding that other people exist and they are important, and to me Reed is like heaven in that sense. I wish everybody could spend four years in a place like that, being taught the truth, that they matter regardless of their faults, regardless of their insecurities.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  There was a character in the movie, this guy who was a drug dealer and a jerk, and everybody else in the movie loved him and wanted to have sex with him. One of my housemates, Grant, was saying to me the other day that girls always like bad guys. My friend Amy is like that I think. And so was my friend Suzy, but Suzy said she got over it and now she likes guys who are relatively nice and stable. The thing about Tom Toppins, though, is that he really believed things. He wasn’t swayed. The same thing that was in the drug dealer in that grimy movie that I absolutely do not recommend is the same thing that was in Tom Toppins: belief. Drug Dealer Dude was not looking for somebody to pat him on the back and teach him things, he was moving, going, sure of something, even if it was all depravity, even if he was leading people into hell. If you believe something, passionately, people will follow you. People hardly care what you believe, as long as you believe something. If you are passionate about something, people will follow you because they think you know something they don’t, some clue to the meaning of the universe. Passion is tricky, though, because it can point to nothing as easily as it points to something. If a rapper is passionately rapping about how great his rap is, his passion is pointing to nothing. He isn’t helping anything. His beliefs are self-serving and shallow. If a rapper, however, is rapping about his community, about oppression and injustice, then he is passionate about a message, something outside himself. What people believe is important. What people believe is more important than how they look, what their skills are, or their degree of passion. Passion about nothing is like pouring gasoline in a car without wheels. It isn’t going to lead anybody anywhere. My friend Andrew the Protester believes things. Andrew goes to protests where he gets pepper-sprayed, and he does it because he believes in being a voice of change. My Republican friends get frustrated when I paint Andrew as a hero, but I like Andrew because he actually believes things that cost him something. Even if I disagree with Andrew, I love that he is willing to sacrifice for what he believes. And I love that his beliefs are about social causes. Andrew says it is not enough to be politically active. He says legislation will never save the world. On Saturday mornings Andrew feeds the homeless. He sets up a makeshift kitchen on a sidewalk and makes breakfast for people who live on the street. He serves coffee and sits with his homeless friends and talks and laughs, and if they want to pray he will pray with them. He’s a flaming liberal, really. The thing about it is, though, Andrew believes this is what Jesus wants him to do. Andrew does not believe in empty passion.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  When my sister and I visited my father we would eat from the grill every night, which is something we never did with my mother. My father would crumble Ritz crackers into the meat and add salt and sauces, and I thought, perhaps, he was some sort of chef, some sort of person who ought to write books about cooking meat. Later he would take my sister and me to the grocery store and buy us a toy, any toy we wanted. We’d pace the long aisle of shiny prizes, the trucks and Barbies and pistols and games. In the checkout line I’d cling to the shiny, slick box in stillness and silence. On the drive home we’d take turns sitting on his lap so we could drive, and whoever wasn’t steering would work the shifter, and whoever worked the steering wheel could drink from my father’s can of beer. It is not possible to admire a person more than I admired that man. I know, from the three visits I made to him, the blended composite of love and fear that exists only in a boy’s notion of his father. There were years between his calls. My mother would answer the phone, and I knew by the way she stood silently in the kitchen that it was him. A few days later he would come for a visit, always changed in the showing of his age—the new wrinkles, the grayed hair, and thick skin around his eyes—and within days we would go to his apartment for the weekend. About the time I entered middle school, he disappeared completely. Today I wonder why it is God refers to Himself as “Father” at all. This, to me, in light of the earthly representation of the role, seems a marketing mistake. Why would God want to call Himself Father when so many fathers abandon their children? As a child, the title Father God offered an ambiguous haze with which to interact. I understood what a father did as well as I understood the task of a shepherd. All the vocabulary about God seemed to come from ancient history, before video games, Palm Pilots, and the Internet. If you would have asked me, I suppose I would have told you there was a God, but I could not have formulated a specific definition based on my personal experience. Perhaps it was because my Sunday school classes did much to help us memorize commandments and little to teach us who God was and how to relate to Him, or perhaps it was because they did and I wasn’t listening. Nevertheless, my impersonal God served me fine as I had no need of the real thing. I needed no deity to reach out of heaven and wipe my nose, so none of it actually mattered. If God was on a dirt road walking toward me, He was on the other side of a hill, and I hadn’t begun to look for Him anyway.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Trevor, the young guy in the picture, looks like Justin Timberlake, like the lead singer of a boy band. He has tight hair that curls just out of the shoot, and he’s dyed it blond. Trev is the kid, the rookie on our team of misfits. He is just out of high school a few years and rides a Yamaha crotch-rocket motorcycle so fast that when he lets me drive it, I can hardly keep the front wheel on the ground. He is a learner, with a solid heart like a sponge that absorbs, and he wants to become a very good man. Trevor is one of my favorite people. He is my Nintendo buddy. We yell profanities at each other while playing NFL Blitz. I usually win because he is slow with the fingers. Sometimes, after I beat him in the game, he crawls into his little bed and cries himself to sleep. After that I usually feel sorry for him, and I let him win a game or two. Rookie. I liked them all very much, but we had hard times. I was a serious recluse before I moved in with the guys at Graceland. When you live on your own for years, you begin to think the world belongs to you. You begin to think all space is your space and all time is your time. It is like in that movie About a Boy where Nick Hornby’s chief character, played by Hugh Grant, believes that life is a play about himself, that all other characters are only acting minor roles in a story that centers around him. My life felt like that. Life was a story about me because I was in every scene. In fact, I was the only one in every scene. I was everywhere I went. If somebody walked into my scene, it would frustrate me because they were disrupting the general theme of the play, namely my comfort or glory. Other people were flat characters in my movie, lifeless characters. Sometimes I would have scenes with them, dialogue, and they would speak their lines, and I would speak mine. But the movie, the grand movie stretching from Adam to the Antichrist, was about me. I wouldn’t have told you that at the time, but that is the way I lived. Tuck was one of my best friends when he moved in. He is still one of my best friends, but for a while I wanted to kill him. He did not understand that life was a movie about me. Nobody ever told him. He would knock on my door while I was reading, come in and sit down in a chair opposite me, and then he would want to talk, he would want to hear about my day. I couldn’t believe it. The audacity to come into my room, my soundstage, and interrupt the obvious flow of the story with questions about how I am.

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

  Glory be to Jesus in the Sacrament of His Heart. Glory be to Jesus in the Sacrament of His Blood. Glory be to Jesus in the Sacrament of His Five Wounds. Glory be to the Holy Ghost, who overshadowed the Mother of God. Glory be to the Holy Ghost, by whom the Word was made flesh. Glory be to the Holy Ghost, by whom Jesus offered Himself without spot to God. Glory be to the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, whom the Word Incarnate sent. Glory be to the Holy Ghost, whom the Father sent in the name of Jesus. Glory be to the Holy Ghost, who loved us and came to us at Pentecost. Glory be to the Holy Ghost, by whom we say, ‘Jesus.’ Glory be to the Eternal Father, who loved us and gave us His Son and His Spirit. Glory be to the Eternal Father, who comes to us and dwells in us. Glory be to the Eternal Father, to whom we have access, by Jesus, in One Spirit. THE PERFECTION OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFESAINT THOMAS AQUINAS COPYRIGHT © 2015 BY AETERNA PRESS . ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK. TRANSLATED BY JOHN PROCTER, O.P. UNDER THE TITLE THE RELIGIOUS STATE, THE EPISCOPATE AND THE PRIESTLY OFFICE ST. LOUIS: B. HERDER, 1902, AND LONDON: SANDS, 1903 REPRINT: THE NEWMAN PRESS, WESTMINSTER MARYLAND, 1950 CONTENTSTHE PERFECTION OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE PROLOGUE In Which Is Set Forth the Author’s Intention In Undertaking this Work CHAPTER I That the Perfection of the Spiritual Life Is to Be Understood Absolutely (simpliciter) According to Charity CHAPTER II Perfection Is Understood to Mean Both the Love of God, and the Love of Our Neighbour CHAPTER III The Perfection of Divine Love Which Exists in God Alone CHAPTER IV The Perfection of Divine Love Which Exists in Those Who Have Attained to Beatitude CHAPTER V The Perfection of Divine Love Which is Necessary to Salvation CHAPTER VI The Perfection of Divine Love Which is A Matter of Counsel CHAPTER VII The First Means of Perfection, Viz.: the Renunciation of Earthly Possessions CHAPTER VIII The Second Means of Perfection Which is the Renunciation, of Earthly Ties and of Matrimony CHAPTER IX Aids to the Preservation of Chastity CHAPTER X Of the Third Means of Perfection, Namely, the Abnegation of Our Own Will CHAPTER XI The Three Means of Perfection, of Which We Have Hitherto Been Speaking, Belong, Peculiarly, to the Religious State CHAPTER XII Refutation of the Errors of Those Who Presume to Detract From the Merit of Obedience, Or of Vows CHAPTER XIII The Pefection of Brotherly Love Which is Necessary for Salvation CHAPTER XIV The Perfection of Love of Our Neighbour Considered As A Matter of Counsel CHAPTER XV What is Required to Constitute the State of Perfection CHAPTER XVI The State of Perfection is A Condition Befitting Bishops and Religious CHAPTER XVII The Episcopal Office is More Sacred Than is the Religious Life

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  It wasn't long before a preparatory note appeared in the "Advertisements" that promised a detailed recapitulation of the history of the well-respected trading house for the holiday itself - and it hardly needed it to draw the attention of the laudable merchants. But as far as the family was concerned, Justus Kröger was the first to bring up what was to come on Thursday, and Mrs. Permaneder made sure that, once the dessert had been taken away, the venerable leather folder with the family documents was ceremonially laid out, and that as a preliminary celebration studied in detail the data known from the life of the late Johan Buddenbrook, Hanno's great-great-grandfather, the founder of the company. When he had the sores and when he had the real smallpox, when he had fallen from the third floor onto the kiln and when he had fallen into a violent fever with madness, she left with a religious seriousness. she could not do enough, she went back to the 16th century to the oldest known Buddenbrook, to the one who had been a councilor at Grabau and to the garment tailor in Rostock, who "did himself very well" - which was underlined - and had so many children, alive and dead... "What a splendid person!" she exclaimed, and set to work reciting old yellowed and torn letters and celebratory poems... * It goes without saying that Herr Wenzel was the first to wish well on the morning of July 7th. "Yes, Mr. Senator, a hundred years!" he said, letting knife and strop play nimbly in his red hands... "And about half of it, I may say, I shaved in the dear family, and that's something you experience a lot with you when you're always the first to speak to the boss... The late Herr Konsul was always the most talkative in the morning, and then he asked me: Wenzel, he asks, what do you think of the rye? Do you want me to sell it or do you think it will go up?..." “Yes, Wenzel, I can't imagine the whole thing without you either. Your job, as I have sometimes told you, is really very attractive. When you're done with your tour in the morning, you're smarter than everyone, because then you've had the bosses of about every big house under the knife and you know the mood of each one, and that's why everyone can envy you, because that is very interesting." “There's some truth to that, Mr. Senator. But as for Mr. Senator's own mood, if I may say so... Mr. Senator a little pale again this morning?” "So? Yes, I've got a headache, and it's not likely to go away anytime soon, because I think I'm going to be busy today." “I think so too, Senator. Participation is great, participation is very great. Mr. Senator, look out the window afterwards. A lot of flags!

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I would stretch across my bed for hours and imagine life in a big house, visited by important friends who rode new bikes, whose fathers had expensive haircuts and were interviewed on the news. I have been with my own father only three times, each visit happening in my childhood, each visit happening in cold weather. He was a basketball coach, and I do not know why he left my mother. I only know he was tall and handsome and smelled like beer; his collar smelled like beer, his hands like beer, and his coarse, unshaven face smelled like beer. I do not drink much beer myself, but the depth of the scent has never left me. My friend Tony the Beat Poet will be drinking a beer at Horse Brass Pub and the smell will send me to a pleasant place that exists only in recollections of childhood. My father was a big man, I think, bigger than most, stalky and strong like a river at flood. On my second visit to my father I saw him throw a football across a gym, drilling the spiral into the opposite hoop where it shook the backboard. There was no action my father committed that I did not study as a work of wonder. I watched as he shaved and brushed his teeth and put on his socks and shoes in motions that were more muscle than grace, and I would stand at his bedroom door hoping he wouldn’t notice my awkward stare. I looked purposely as he opened a beer, the tiny can hiding itself in his big hand, the foam of it spilling over the can, his red lips slurping the excess, his tongue taking the taste from his mustache. He was a brilliant machine of a thing. When my sister and I visited my father we would eat from the grill every night, which is something we never did with my mother. My father would crumble Ritz crackers into the meat and add salt and sauces, and I thought, perhaps, he was some sort of chef, some sort of person who ought to write books about cooking meat. Later he would take my sister and me to the grocery store and buy us a toy, any toy we wanted. We’d pace the long aisle of shiny prizes, the trucks and Barbies and pistols and games. In the checkout line I’d cling to the shiny, slick box in stillness and silence. On the drive home we’d take turns sitting on his lap so we could drive, and whoever wasn’t steering would work the shifter, and whoever worked the steering wheel could drink from my father’s can of beer. It is not possible to admire a person more than I admired that man. I know, from the three visits I made to him, the blended composite of love and fear that exists only in a boy’s notion of his father. There were years between his calls.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  the centre, for a device, a Love concealed by Force His sword, poniard, and the devices upon them, corre- sponded to the rest ; in short, he was admirably ac- coutred ; and he was such a good horseman that all who saw him neglected the pleasures of the chase to see the paces and the leaps which Elisor made his horse per- form. After escorting the queen to the place where, the toils were spread, he alighted and went to aid her majesty to dismount. At the moment she held out her arms he opened his cloak, which covered his new cuirass, and said, " Be pleased, madam, to look here ; " and with- out awaiting her reply, he set her gently on the ground. When the chase was ended, the queen returned to the palace without speaking to Elisor. After supper she called him to her, and told him he was the greatest liar she had ever seen, for he had promised to show her at the chase the lady of his love, and yet he had done no such thing ; but for her part, she was resolved for the future to make no account of him. Elisor, fearing that the queen had not understood what he had said to her, replied that he had kept his word, and that he had shown her not only the woman, but also that thing in all the world which he loved best. Affecting ignorance of his meaning, she declared she was not aware that he had shown her any of the ladies. " That is true," replied Elisor ; "but what did I show you when you dismounted from your horse .■* ' " Nothing," said the queen, " but a mirror you had on your chest." '• And what did you see in the mirror } " " Nothing but myself." " Consequently, madam, T have kept my word and obeyed you. Never did anything enter my heart but that which you saw when you looked at my chest. She 240 'J'lli^ ItEPTAMEKON OF THE {Novd 24

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

  In process of time, however, many were to enter the Church who would not live up to this standard of perfection. This was not to the case before the dispersion of the Jews, but afterwards, when the Church was disseminated among the Gentiles. When this state of things came to pass, the prelates of the Churches judged that landed property might advantageously be bestowed upon the churches, and this not as before, for the sake of the perfect, but on account of the weaker brethren who could not attain to the perfection of the earlier Christians. But there were, nevertheless, both at that time and later, certain men who were zealous for primitive perfection and who, like the monks of Egypt, gathered themselves into congregations and renounced all possessions. St. Gregory (III Dial.) mentions a certain holy Isaac who, coming from Syria into Italy, practised in the West the perfection which he had learned in the East. His disciples would frequently humbly beseech him to accept, for the use of the monastery, the property offered to him; but, anxious to preserve his property inviolate, he made the decisive reply that “a monk seeking earthly possessions is no monk.” This saying cannot be understood to refer to private property, since we are told that what was offered to Isaac, was pressed on him for the use of his monastery. Neither is it to be inferred that all monks who hold possessions in common are deficient in religious perfection. The words of Isaac were instigated by his fear of his failing in the virtue of poverty, a danger which threatens many religious who own property in common. For, as St. Jerome says in his epitaph on Nepotian to the Bishop Hehodorus, “Some men are richer as religious than they were as laymen. Now that they belong to Christ the Poor, they own wealth which they never possessed when they belonged to Satan the opulent; and the Church mourns over the riches of those whom the world formerly regarded as beggars.” Hence St. Gregory, speaking of St. Isaac, says, “He feared to lose the treasure of his poverty, just as a miser fears to lose his hoard of perishable wealth, and the Lord, to manifest his holiness, has glorified him.” For, as St. Gregory tells us farther on, “he became known far and wide for his spirit of prophecy and his great gift of miracles.” Hence it is evident that the absence of any possessions, either common or private, is for some men the path to sublime perfection.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  had happened by some accident, spurred towards hun at once to help him. As soon as he was within reach, the CordeHer struck him a blow of the same staff with which he had struck the valet, unhorsed and fell upon him ; but the gentleman, being very strong, threw his arms round the Cordelier, and hugged him so roughly, that he not only prevented his doing him any more mis- chief, but made him drop the poniard. The wife caught it up at once and gave it to her husband. At the same time she seized him bv his hood and held him with all her might, whilst her husband stabbed him several times with the poniard. The Cordelier, being unable to do anything else, begged for quarter, and confessed the crime he had committed. The gentleman granted him his life, and begged his wife to go for his people, and a cart to carry the prisoner away, which she did, throwing off her Cordelier's robes, and hurrying home in her shift and cropped hair. The gentleman's retainers all has- tened to help him to bring home the wolf he had cap- tured ; and the culprit was afterwards sent by the gentle- man to Flanders to be tried by the emperor's officers. He not only confessed the crime for which he was tried, but also avowed a fact, which was afterwards verified on the spot by special commissioners sent for that purpose, which was, that several other ladies and handsome girls had been taken to that convent in the same manner as this Cordelier had attempted to carry off the lady of whom we are speaking, and if he did not succeed, this was owing to nothing else than the goodness of God, who always takes upon Him the defence of those who trust in Him. The girls and the other stolen spoil found in the monastery were removed, and the monks were burned with the monastery, in perpetual memoriil of a crime so horrible. We see from this that there is Fourth day.} QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 297 nothing more cruel than love when its principle is vice, as there is nothing more humane or more laudable when it dwells in a virtuous heart.* I am very sorry, ladies, that truth does not furnish us with so many tales to the advantage of the Cordeliers as contrariwise. I like this order, and should be very glad to know some story in which I could praise them, But we are so pledged to speak the truth, that I cannot con- ceal it after the rej^ort of persons so worthy of belief ; though, at the same time, I assure you that if the Cor- delieis of the present day did anything worthy of mem- ory which was to their honour, I would do justice to it with more alacrity than I have told the truth in the story I have just related to you.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  his wife and mother-in-law, he was received by ihem both with the most contumelious reproaches, and that, unable to endure his shame and remorse, he died a few days after. That is not true. The battle of Pavia was fought on the 24th of February, 1525, and the Duke of Alen^on did not die until the nth of April, that is to say, more than a month after his arrival in Lyon. It appears from the testimony of an eye-witness, brought to light by the last editors of the Heptameron, that he was carried off by a pleurisy in five days, that he was comforted on his death-bed by his wife and her mother, that he spoke with profound re^et of the king's misfortune, but that nothing escaped his own lips or those of the two ladies to indicate the faintest idea on either side that he had not done his duty at Pavia. The first five years of Margaret's wedded life were passed in privacy in her duchy of Alengon, but from the date of her brother's accession to the throne, in January, 1515, her talents were employed with advantage in affairs of state. " Such was her discourse," says Brantome, "that the ambassadors who addressed her were extremely taken with it, and gave a high character of it to their countrvmen on their return, and by this she became a good assistant to the king her brother \ for they always waited on her after their principal audience, and frequently, when he had affairs of importance, he referred them entirely to her determination, she so well knowing how to engage and entertain them with her fine speeches, and being very artful and dexterous in pumping out their secrets : these qualifications the king would often say made her of great use to him in facilitating his affairs. So that I have heard there was an emulation between the two sisters who should serve her brother best ; the one — the Queen of Hungary — her brother the emperor, the other, her brother King Francis ; b ;t the former by war and force, th.: latter by the activity of her fine wit and complaisance. . . . During the imprison- ment of the king her brother, she was of great assistance to the regent her mother in governing the kingdom, keeping the princes and grandees quiet, and gaining upon the nobility ; XXIV MEMOIR OF MARGARET, for she was of very easy access, and won the hearts of al! people by the fine accomplishments she was mistress of." *