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 Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Not even the Yahweh of running, Bowerman, was as pious about the sport as Blue Ribbon’s Part-time Employee Number Two. In fact, in 1965, running wasn’t even a sport. It wasn’t popular, it wasn’t unpopular—it just was. To go out for a three-mile run was something weirdos did, presumably to burn off manic energy. Running for pleasure, running for exercise, running for endorphins, running to live better and longer—these things were unheard of. People often went out of their way to mock runners. Drivers would slow down and honk their horns. “Get a horse!” they’d yell, throwing a beer or soda at the runner’s head. Johnson had been drenched by many a Pepsi. He wanted to change all this. He wanted to help all the oppressed runners of the world, to bring them into the light, enfold them in a community. So maybe he was a social worker after all. He just wanted to socialize exclusively with runners. Above all, Johnson wanted to make a living doing it, which was next to impossible in 1965. In me, in Blue Ribbon, he thought he saw a way. I did everything I could to discourage Johnson from thinking like this. At every turn I tried to dampen his enthusiasm for me and my company. Besides not writing back, I never phoned, never visited, never invited him to Oregon. I also never missed an opportunity to tell him the unvarnished truth. In one of my rare replies to his letters I put it flatly: “Though our growth has been good, I owe First National Bank of Oregon $11,000.... Cash flow is negative.” He wrote back immediately, asking if he could work for me full-time. “I want to be able to make it on Tiger, and the opportunity would exist for me to do other things as well—running, school, not to mention being my own boss.” I shook my head. I tell the man Blue Ribbon is sinking like the Titanic, and he responds by begging for a berth in first class. Oh well, I thought, if we do go down, misery loves company. So in the late summer of 1965 I wrote and accepted Johnson’s offer to become the first full-time employee of Blue Ribbon. We negotiated his salary via the mail. He’d been making $460 a month as a social worker, but he said he could live on $400. I agreed. Reluctantly. It seemed exorbitant, but Johnson was so scattered, so

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 28 3/23/2011 2:02:23 TITLE (on archival video) Grand opening of Under One Roof 2:02:24 DANIEL (VO/ON) (CONT’D) and they wanted to name it AIDS Mart. (laughs) And I said no. (chuckles) I said I am gonna pull rank here. I’m the president, and it’s not gonna be called AIDS Mart. (laughs) They said AIDS Mart, AID-Smart. See? I said no. (chuckles) Nobody’s gonna shop at a store called AID-Smart. But Under One Roof just sounded right. I remember working the cash register, and, you know, when you’re working at a store, you’ll usually say thank you to the customer. I swear, every customer would just say thank you. Thank you for doing this, ‘cause, you know, people who weren’t doing anything in the community felt so powerless, and here was one even little way, by shopping, by buying a mug (laughs) or a t-shirt for their Aunt Tillie-- What ended up happening is most of our volunteers were people with AIDS who were on disability. People were sick, but they could get out of bed one day a week and work the cash register. And it became, for a lot of our volunteers, their social life, their only time out of their houses. 2:03:35 GUY (VO/ON) I felt as though we were more compassionate. We were going through things that other people didn’t go through, other people didn’t understand. It just went over everybody’s head, and I just remember how close that brought everybody together. You know, it was just like we didn’t care who you were, but we all had the same burden. And that was just like-- It was just like the glue. 2:04:06 DANIEL (VO/ON) Gay people were never seen as caregivers. They were seen as, you know, uh, good time people, you know, having fun, being wild, and all of a sudden, we were the ultimate caregivers. 2:04:18 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on archival photo) Maitri Maitri Hospice founder, Issan Dorsey 2:04:19 DANIEL (VO/ON) (CONT’D) It changed people’s view of the gay community in a huge way. I remember my father saying--‘cause I was spending so much time taking care of my friends--and he was saying, “These aren’t family.” And I said, “Yes, they

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Not even the Yahweh of running, Bowerman, was as pious about the sport as Blue Ribbon’s Part-time Employee Number Two. In fact, in 1965, running wasn’t even a sport. It wasn’t popular, it wasn’t unpopular—it just was. To go out for a three-mile run was something weirdos did, presumably to burn off manic energy. Running for pleasure, running for exercise, running for endorphins, running to live better and longer—these things were unheard of. People often went out of their way to mock runners. Drivers would slow down and honk their horns. “Get a horse!” they’d yell, throwing a beer or soda at the runner’s head. Johnson had been drenched by many a Pepsi. He wanted to change all this. He wanted to help all the oppressed runners of the world, to bring them into the light, enfold them in a community. So maybe he was a social worker after all. He just wanted to socialize exclusively with runners. Above all, Johnson wanted to make a living doing it, which was next to impossible in 1965. In me, in Blue Ribbon, he thought he saw a way. I did everything I could to discourage Johnson from thinking like this. At every turn I tried to dampen his enthusiasm for me and my company. Besides not writing back, I never phoned, never visited, never invited him to Oregon. I also never missed an opportunity to tell him the unvarnished truth. In one of my rare replies to his letters I put it flatly: “Though our growth has been good, I owe First National Bank of Oregon $11,000.… Cash flow is negative.” He wrote back immediately, asking if he could work for me full-time. “I want to be able to make it on Tiger, and the opportunity would exist for me to do other things as well—running, school, not to mention being my own boss.” I shook my head. I tell the man Blue Ribbon is sinking like the Titanic , and he responds by begging for a berth in first class. Oh well, I thought, if we do go down, misery loves company. So in the late summer of 1965 I wrote and accepted Johnson’s offer to become the first full-time employee of Blue Ribbon. We negotiated his salary via the mail. He’d been making $460 a month as a social worker, but he said he could live on $400. I agreed. Reluctantly. It seemed exorbitant, but Johnson was so scattered, so flighty, and Blue Ribbon was so tenuous—one way or another I figured it was temporary. As ever, the accountant in me saw the risk, the entrepreneur saw the possibility. So I split the difference and kept moving forward. AND THEN I stopped thinking about Johnson altogether. I had bigger problems at the moment. My banker was upset with me.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  22 Euripides seems to have concluded that “the nous of each one of us is a god.” 23 The philosophers of Athens were about to arrive at the same conclusion. In the 420s, during the darkest phase of the Peloponnesian War, a new philosopher started to attract a devoted circle of disciples in Athens. The son of a stonecutter and a midwife, an unprepossessing man with protruding lips, a flat, snubbed nose, and a paunch, Socrates (c. 469–399) cast a spell over a group of young men from some of the noblest families in the city. But he would talk to anybody at all, rich or poor. Indeed, he needed conversation to achieve his mission. Socrates was intent above all on dismantling received ideas and exploring the true meaning of virtue. But he was asking the right questions at the wrong time. During this crisis, people wanted certainty rather than stringent criticism, and in 399 Socrates was condemned to death for corrupting the young, refusing to honor the gods of the polis, and introducing new gods. He denied the charges, insisting that he was no atheist like Anaxagoras. How could teaching about goodness be corrupting? He could have escaped and was probably expected to do so. But even though the sentence was unjust, he preferred to obey the laws of his beloved Athens to the end: he would die a witness (martys ) to the untruth currently in the ascendant. Socrates did not commit any of his teachings to writing, so we have to rely on the dialogues composed by his pupil Plato (c. 427–347) that claim to record these conversations. Socrates himself had a poor opinion of written discourse. People who read a lot imagined that they knew a great deal, but because they had not inscribed what they had read indelibly on their minds, they knew nothing at all. 24 Written words were like figures in a painting. They seemed alive, but if you questioned them they remained “solemnly silent.” Without the spirited interchange of a human encounter, the knowledge imparted by a written text tended to become static: it “continues to signify just that very same thing forever.” 25 Socrates did not approve of fixed, dogmatically held opinions. When philosophia was written down, it was easily misunderstood, because the author had not been able to tailor his discourse to the needs of a particular group. But a living dialogue could transform a person who took part in it, making him “as happy as any human being can be.” 26 It is difficult for us today to appreciate the power attributed to the spoken word in the premodern world. In his conversations Socrates sought not merely to inform but to form the minds of his interlocutors, producing within them a profound psychological change. Wisdom was about insight—not amassing information. To his dying day, Socrates insisted that he had no interest in teaching anybody anything, because he knew nothing at all.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Buy smaller athletes, or make bigger shirts.) We also had a couple of semifinalists wear our spikes, including an employee, Jim Gorman, who competed in the 1,500. I told Gorman he was taking corporate loyalty too far. Our spikes weren’t that great. But he insisted that he was in “all the way.” And then in the marathon we had Nike-shod runners finish fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. None made the team, but still. Not too shabby. The main event of the trials, of course, would come on the final day, a duel between Prefontaine and the great Olympian George Young. By then Prefontaine was universally known as Pre, and he was far more than a phenom; he was an outright superstar. He was the biggest thing to hit the world of American track and field since Jesse Owens. Sportswriters frequently compared him to James Dean, and Mick Jagger, and Runner’s World said the most apt comparison might be Muhammad Ali. He was that kind of swaggery, transformative figure. To my thinking, however, these and all other comparisons fell short. Pre was unlike any athlete this country had ever seen, though it was hard to say exactly why. I’d spent a lot of time studying him, admiring him, puzzling about his appeal. I’d asked myself, time and again, what it was about Pre that triggered such visceral responses from so many people, including myself. I never did come up with a totally satisfactory answer. It was more than his talent—there were other talented runners. And it was more than his swagger—there were plenty of swaggering runners. Some said it was his look. Pre was so fluid, so poetic, with that flowing mop of hair. And he had the broadest, deepest chest imaginable, set on slender legs that were all muscle and never stopped churning. Also, most runners are introverts, but Pre was an obvious, joyous extrovert. It was never simply running for him. He was always putting on a show, always conscious of the spotlight. Sometimes I thought the secret to Pre’s appeal was his passion. He didn’t care if he died crossing the finish line, so long as he crossed first. No matter what Bowerman told him, no matter what his body told him, Pre refused to slow down, ease off. He pushed himself to the brink and beyond. This was often a counterproductive strategy, and sometimes it was plainly stupid, and occasionally it was suicidal. But it was always uplifting for the crowd. No matter the sport—no matter the human endeavor, really—total effort will win people’s hearts. Of course, all Oregonians loved Pre because he was “ours.” He was born in our midst, raised in our rainy forests, and we’d cheered him since he was a pup. We’d watched him break the national two-mile record as an eighteen-year-old, and we were with him, step by step, through each glorious NCAA championship. Every Oregonian felt emotionally invested in his career.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Pre and the coach were clashing constantly, two headstrong guys with different ideas about training methods and running styles. Bowerman took the long view: a distance runner peaks in his late twenties. He therefore wanted Pre to rest, preserve himself for certain select races. Save something, Bowerman kept pleading. But of course Pre refused. I’m all-out, all the time, he said. In their relationship I saw a mirror of my relationship with banks. Pre didn’t see the sense in going slow—ever. Go fast or die. I couldn’t fault him. I was on his side. Even against our coach. Above all, however, Pre was broke. The know-nothings and oligarchs who governed American amateur athletics at that time decreed that Olympic athletes couldn’t collect endorsement money, or government money, which meant our finest runners and swimmers and boxers were reduced to paupers. To stay alive Pre sometimes tended bar in Eugene, and sometimes he ran in Europe, taking illicit cash from race promoters. Of course those extra races were starting to cause issues. His body—in particular his back—was breaking down. At Blue Ribbon we worried about Pre. We talked about him often, formally and informally, around the office. Eventually we came up with a plan. To keep him from injuring himself, to avoid the shame of him going around with a begging bowl, we hired him. In 1973 we gave him a “job,” a modest salary of five thousand dollars a year, and access to a beach condo Cale owned in Los Angeles. We also gave him a business card that said National Director of Public Affairs . People often narrowed their eyes and asked me what that meant. I narrowed my eyes right back. “It means he can run fast,” I said. It also meant he was our second celebrity athlete endorser. The first thing Pre did with his windfall was go out and buy himself a butterscotch MG. He drove it everywhere—fast. It looked like my old MG. I remember feeling enormously, vicariously proud. I remember thinking: We bought that. I remember thinking Pre was the living, breathing embodiment of what we were trying to create. Whenever people saw Pre going at his breakneck pace—on a track, in his MG—I wanted them to see Nike. And when they bought a pair of Nikes, I wanted them to see Pre. I felt this strongly about Pre even though I’d only had a few conversations with the man. And you could hardly call them conversations. Whenever I saw him at a track, or around the Blue Ribbon offices, I became mute. I tried to con myself; more than once I told myself that Pre was just a kid from Coos Bay, a short, shaggy-haired jock with a porn star mustache. But I knew better. And a few minutes in his presence would prove it. A few minutes was all I could take.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  I moved slowly, as if in a nightmare, through Manila, through endless crowds and fathomless gridlock, toward the hotel where MacArthur once occupied the penthouse. I was fascinated by all the great generals, from Alexander the Great to George Patton. I hated war, but I loved the warrior spirit. I hated the sword, but loved the samurai. And of all the great fighting men in history I found MacArthur the most compelling. Those Ray-Bans, that corncob pipe—the man didn’t lack for confidence. Brilliant tactician, master motivator, he also went on to head the U.S. Olympic Committee. How could I not love him? Of course, he was deeply flawed. But he knew that. You are remembered, he said, prophetically, for the rules you break. I wanted to book a night in his former suite. But I couldn’t afford it. One day, I vowed. One day I shall return. I went to Bangkok, where I rode a long pole boat through murky swamps to an open-air market that seemed a Thai version of Hieronymous Bosch. I ate birds, and fruits, and vegetables I’d never seen before, and never would again. I dodged rickshaws, scooters, tuk-tuks, and elephants to reach Wat Phra Kaew, and one of the most sacred statues in Asia, an enormous six-hundred-year-old Buddha carved from a single hunk of jade. Standing before its placid face I asked, Why am I here? What is my purpose? I waited. Nothing. Or else the silence was my answer.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Like all the ancient gods, Bowerman lived on a mountaintop. His majestic ranch sat on a peak high above the campus. And when reposing on his private Olympus, he could be vengeful as the gods. One story, told to me by a teammate, brought this fact pointedly home. Apparently there was a truck driver who often dared to disturb the peace on Bowerman Mountain. He took turns too fast, and frequently knocked over Bowerman’s mailbox. Bowerman scolded the trucker, threatened to punch him in the nose, and so forth, but the trucker paid no heed. He drove as he pleased, day after day. So Bowerman rigged the mailbox with explosives. Next time the trucker knocked it over—boom. When the smoke cleared, the trucker found his truck in pieces, its tires reduced to ribbons. He never again touched Bowerman’s mailbox. A man like that—you didn’t want to get on his wrong side. Especially if you were a gangly middle-distance runner from the Portland suburbs. I always tiptoed around Bowerman. Even so, he’d often lose patience with me, though I remember only one time when he got really sore. I was a sophomore, being worn down by my schedule. Class all morning, practice all afternoon, homework all night. One day, fearing that I was coming down with the flu, I stopped by Bowerman’s office to say that I wouldn’t be able to practice that afternoon. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Who’s the coach of this team?” “You are.” “Well, as coach of this team I’m telling you to get your ass out there. And by the way… we’re going to have a time trial today.” I was close to tears. But I held it together, channeled all my emotion into my run, and posted one of my best times of the year. As I walked off the track I glowered at Bowerman. Happy now, you son of a—? He looked at me, checked his stopwatch, looked at me again, nodded. He’d tested me. He’d broken me down and remade me, just like a pair of shoes. And I’d held up. Thereafter, I was truly one of his Men of Oregon. From that day on, I was a tiger. I heard back right away from Bowerman. He wrote to say he was coming to Portland the following week, for the Oregon Indoor. He invited me to lunch at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, where the team would be staying. January 25, 1964. I was terribly nervous as the waitress showed us to our table. I recall that Bowerman ordered a hamburger, and I said croakily: “Make it two.” We spent a few minutes catching up. I told Bowerman about my trip around the world. Kobe, Jordan, the Temple of Nike. Bowerman was especially interested in my time in Italy, which, despite his brushes with death, he remembered fondly. At last he came to the point. “Those Japanese shoes,” he said. “They’re pretty good. How about letting me in on the deal?”

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE DIALOGUE LIST TRT: 1:29:51 Prepared By: CaptionMax 441 N. Varney Street Burbank, CA 91502 (818) 295-2500 March 23, 2011 WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 1 3/23/2011 1:00:08 ED (VO/ON) There was nothing extraordinary about the fact that you’d lose the people that you love, ‘cause it’s gonna happen to all of us. It’s just that it happened in this targeted community of people who were disenfranchised and separated from their families. And a whole group of other people stepped up and became their family. 1:00:36 PAUL (VO) We are not some network of people who just like to have sex. We are not some ephemeral subculture that comes and dissolves and goes. This is a community that was tested in a way almost no community on earth is ever tested, and succeeded in what it was trying to do, which is save as many lives of people as it could, stop the civil rights attacks and then try to use that example to transform the world. 1:00:52 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on protest sign) WE DON’T LET OUR FRIENDS GET HURT 1:01:00 PAUL (CONT’D) If you’re ever facing a natural disaster as extraordinary as AIDS was in the- the last quarter of the- the last century, you should be so lucky as to be in a community like the queer community of San Francisco. 1:01:15 DANIEL (VO/ON) When I talk to young people particularly, they’ll say, what was it like? I mean, the only thing I can liken it to is a war zone, but most of us have never lived in a war zone, but it was-- It’s-- You never knew where the bomb was gonna drop. I decided to do this interview because I’ve- I’ve been around for the entire epidemic, and I’ve seen so many parts of it, and I think there’s a lot of people from-- I mean, none of my friends are around from the beginning. So I want to tell their story as much as I want to tell my story. I think that’s why. 1:02:02 MAIN TITLE We Were Here 1:02:18 GUY (VO) I came to San Francisco back in the late seventies. 1:02:19 TITLE Guy 1:02:24 GUY (ON/VO) (CONT’D) You know, there were more gay people coming here. There was all these love children. It was right at the end

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  My students apparently weren’t any more capable than I of balancing this equation. Their homework papers were dreadful. That is, with the exception of Miss Parks! She aced the first assignment. With the next and the next she established herself as the top student in the class. And she didn’t just get every answer right. Her penmanship was exquisite. Like Japanese calligraphy. A girl that looked like that—and whip smart? She went on to record the highest grade in the class on the midterm. I don’t know who was happier, Miss Parks or Mr. Knight. Not long after I handed back the tests she lingered at my desk, asking if she could have a word. Of course, I said, reaching for my wrist rubber bands, giving them a series of vehement snaps. She asked if I might consider being her adviser. I was taken back. “Oh,” I said. “Oh. I’d be honored.” Then I blurted: “How would you… like… a job?” “A what?” “I’ve got this little shoe company… uh… on the side. And it needs some bookkeeping help.” She was holding her textbooks against her chest. She adjusted them and fluttered her eyelashes. “Oh,” she said. “Oh. Well. Okay. That sounds… fun.” I offered to pay her two dollars an hour. She nodded. Deal. DAYS LATER SHE arrived at the office. Woodell and I gave her the third desk. She sat, placed her palms on the desktop, looked around the room. “What do you want me to do?” she asked. Woodell handed her a list of things—typing, bookkeeping, scheduling, stocking, filing invoices—and told her to pick one or two each day and have at it. But she didn’t pick. She did them all. Quickly, and with ease. Inside a week neither Woodell nor I could remember how we’d ever gotten along without her. It wasn’t just the quality of Miss Parks’s work that we found so valuable. It was the blithe spirit in which she did it. From Day One, she was all in. She grasped what we were trying to do, what we were trying to build here. She felt that Blue Ribbon was unique, that it might become something special, and she wanted to do what she could to help. Which proved to be a lot. She had a remarkable way with people, especially the sales reps we were continuing to hire. Whenever they came into the office, Miss Parks would size them up, fast, and either charm them or put them in their place, depending on what was called for. Though shy, she could be wry, funny, and the sales reps—that is, the ones she liked—often left laughing, looking back over their shoulders, wondering what just hit them.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Forgive me: Your place is taken by the hundreds of angels who drift into my life.” He invokes someone beyond the room.) “Anyway, child, I am a P-H-D—that is, a doctor, child—a Doctor of Learning: I dont cut up people; I dig into their minds to find, perhaps, a latent jewel! Like a deep-sea diver, I stand breathless before the unopened oyster!... And Alfredo (you see, I spent some time in Mexico, as I have told you, with the American embassy)—and, oh, yes, I must tell you about the actress Lola del Rey: a Magnificent woman—the most beautiful in the world—.... I must explain that although my preference is for youngmen—as you may—have—gathered,” he laughed, “I can still admire beauty even in the other, less fair sex. I will tell you about Lola—but later—and I must also tell you about the mistress of the President, at the time—oh, it was a scandal!—she was a movie actress, and then his wife—oh, later!... Now I must hear all about you.” He repeated the facts of my age, weight, height. “And then, of course—” He indicated on his palm what he had previously determined on mine. Then he went on: “There are three chief categories of angels—though their areas are sometimes not so well defined: earthbound, seafaring, ethereal.... The first, child, are the truckdrivers, the marines. One of my finest loves was an All-American. The day he learned he’d been chosen, he came to me, he was my student, and he said: ‘Tante Goulu, I want you to be the first to know.’ He autographed a football for me. I detested football, but I adored him, and he had such a simplicity, such a desire to be on The Team—I helped him along, with his grades—Why, had it not been for my fondness for him, the world might have been deprived of one of its—What was he now? Oh, yes, a tackle! The world would have been deprived of one of its great tackles!... And the next category of angels is the seafaring: the sailors. I suppose perhaps they are the original angels. I would watch them in San Diego—one summer I spent at La Jolla—as they invaded our streets, descending, all white, as if just arrived from Heaven, scattering themselves among the rest of us, unworthy, mortals!... I knew one, once, a young sailor who stayed with me. He was a very small boy, like a golden child. Outside of his uniform, he would have been an ethereal angel. He was the boyfriend of a very famous writer—who later used one of the sailor’s beautifully naïve expressions as the title of a book.... Shall I amuse you, child? (Our interviews must have comic relief: The porter must come humorously to the castle door to admit the murderer.)...

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  All these works became truly valuable and useful only in the hands of the Christian church, to which they ultimately fell. Greece gave the apostles the most copious and beautiful language to express the divine truth of the Gospel, and Providence had long before so ordered political movements as to spread that language over the world and to make it the organ of civilization and international intercourse, as the Latin was in the middle ages, as the French was in the eighteenth century and as the English is coming to be in the nineteenth. "Greek," says Cicero, "is read in almost all nations; Latin is confined by its own narrow boundaries." Greek schoolmasters and artists followed the conquering legions of Rome to Gaul and Spain. The youthful hero Alexander the Great, a Macedonian indeed by birth, yet an enthusiastic admirer of Homer, an emulator of Achilles, a disciple of the philosophic world-conqueror, Aristotle, and thus the truest Greek of his age, conceived the sublime thought of making Babylon the seat of a Grecian empire of the world; and though his empire fell to pieces at his untimely death, yet it had already carried Greek letters to the borders of India, and made them a common possession of all civilized nations. What Alexander had begun Julius Caesar completed. Under the protection of the Roman law the apostles could travel everywhere and make themselves understood through the Greek language in every city of the Roman domain. The Grecian philosophy, particularly the systems of Plato and Aristotle, formed the natural basis for scientific theology; Grecian eloquence, for sacred oratory; Grecian art, for that of the Christian church. Indeed, not a few ideas and maxims of the classics tread on the threshold of revelation and sound like prophecies of Christian truth; especially the spiritual soarings of Plato,73 the deep religious reflections of Plutarch,74 the sometimes almost Pauline moral precepts of Seneca.75 To many of the greatest church fathers, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and in some measure even to Augustine, Greek philosophy was a bridge to the Christian faith, a scientific schoolmaster leading them to Christ. Nay, the whole ancient Greek church rose on the foundation of the Greek language and nationality, and is inexplicable without them.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Hase (Kirchengesch. p. 91, tenth ed.): "Die lateinische Kirche hatte fast nur Übersetzungen, bis Tertullianus, als Heide Rhetor und Sachwalter zu Rom, mit reicher griechischer Gelehrsamkeit, die auch der Kirchenvater gern sehen liess, Presbyter in seiner Vaterstadt Karthago, ein strenger, düsterer, feuriger Character, dem Christenthum aus punischem Latein eine Literatur errang, in welcher geistreiche Rhetorik, genialer so wie gesuchter Witz, der sinnliches Anfassen des Idealen, tiefes Gefühl and juridische Verstandesansicht mit einander ringen. Er hat der afrikanischen Kirche die Losung angegeben: Christus sprach: Ich bin die Wahrheit, nicht, das Herkommen. Er hat das Gottesbewusstsein in den Tiefen der Seele hochgehalten, aber ein Mann der Auctoritaet hat er die Thorheit des Evangeliums der Weltweisheit seiner Zeitgenossen, das Unglaubliche der Wunder Gottes dem gemeinen Weltverstande mit stolzer Ironie entgegengehalten. Seine Schriften, denen er unbedenklich Fremdes angeeignet und mit dent Gepraege seines Genius versehen hat, sind theils polemisch mit dem höchsten Selbstvertraun der katholischen Gesinnung gegen Heiden, Juden und Haeretiker, theils erbaulich; so jedoch, dass auch in jenen das Erbauliche, in diesen das Polemische für strenge Sitte und Zucht vorhanden ist." Hauck (Tertullian’s Leben und Schriften, p. 1) Unter den Schriftstellern der lateinischen Christenheit ist Tertullian einer der bedeutendsten und intressantesten. Er ist der Anfänger der lateinischen Theologie, der nicht nur ihrer Sprache seinen Stempel aufgeprägt hat, sondern sie auch an die Bahn hinwies, welche sie lange einheilt. Seine Persönlichkeit hat ebensoviel Anziehendes als Abstossendes; denn wer könnte den Ernst seines sittlichen Strebens, den Reichthum und die Lebhaftigkeit seines Geistes, die Festigkeit seiner Ueberzeugung und die stürmische Kraft seiner Beredtsamkeit verkennen? Allein ebensowenig lässt sich übersehen, dass ihm in allen Dingen das Mass fehlte. Seine Erscheinung hat nichts Edles; er war nicht frei von Bizzarem, ja Gemeinem. So zeigen ihn seine Schriften, die Denkmäler seines Lebens Er war ein Mann, der sich in unaufhörlichen Streite bewegte: sein ganzes Wesen trägt die Spuren hievon." Cardinal Hergenröther, the first Roman Catholic church historian now living (for Döllinger was excommunicated in 1870), says of Tertullian (in his Kirchengesch. I. 168, second ed., 1879): "Strenge und ernst, oft beissend sarkastisch, in der, Sprache gedrängt und dunkel der heidnischen Philosophie durchaus abgeneigt, mit dem römischen Rechte sehr vertraut, hat er in seinen zahlreichen Schriften Bedeutendes für die Darstellung der Kirchlichen Lehre geleistet, und ungeachtet seines Uebertritts zu den Montanisten betrachteten ihn die späteren africanischen Schriftsteller, auch Cyprian, als Muster und Lehrer."

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  The world’s most famous Oregonian at the time was Ken Kesey, whose blockbuster novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , appeared in 1962, the exact moment I left on my trip around the world. I knew Kesey at the University of Oregon. He wrestled, and I ran track, and on rainy days we’d do indoor workouts at the same facility. When his first novel came out I was stunned by how good it was, especially since the plays he’d written in school had been dreck. Suddenly he was a literary lion, the toast of New York, and yet I never felt starstruck in his presence, as I did in Pre’s. In 1973 I decided that Pre was every bit the artist that Kesey was, and more. Pre said as much himself. “A race is a work of art,” he told a reporter, “that people can look at and be affected in as many ways as they’re capable of understanding.” Each time Pre came into the office, I noted, I wasn’t alone in my swooning. Everyone became mute. Everyone became shy. Men, women, it didn’t matter, everyone turned into Buck Knight. Even Penny Knight. If I was the first to make Penny care about track and field, Pre was the one who made her a real fan. Hollister was the exception to this rule. He and Pre had an easy way around each other. They were like brothers. I never once saw Hollister act any differently with Pre than he did with, say, me. So it made sense to have Hollister, the Pre Whisperer, bring Pre in, help us get to know him, and vice versa. We arranged a lunch in the conference room. When the day came, it wasn’t wise, but it was typical of Woodell and me—we chose that moment to tell Hollister that we were tweaking his duties. In fact, we told him the second his butt hit the chair in the conference room. The change would affect how he got paid. Not how much, just how. Before we could fully explain, he threw down his napkin and stormed out. Now we had nobody to help us break the ice with Pre. We all stared silently into our sandwiches. Pre spoke first. “Is Geoff coming back?” “I don’t think so,” I said. Long pause. “In that case,” Pre said, “can I eat his sandwich?” We all laughed, and Pre seemed suddenly mortal, and the luncheon ultimately proved invaluable. Shortly after that day, we soothed Hollister, and tweaked his duties again. From now on, we said, you’re Pre’s full-time liaison. You’re in charge of handling Pre, taking Pre out on the road, introducing Pre to the fans. In fact, we told Hollister, take the boy on a cross-country tour. Hit all the track meets, state fairs, high schools, and colleges you can. Go everywhere, and nowhere. Do everything, and nothing. Sometimes Pre would conduct a running clinic, answering questions about training and injuries.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Ajax, as a gender-progressive man, accepts and encourages Sula's unconventionality and complexities as "brilliant," autonomous, "tough," and, most importantly, complete. Both Sula and Ajax engage comfortably in their unrestrained relationship. Sula's receptivity to, and behavior with, Ajax does not even remotely resemble any of her previous (inter)actions with men-whom she usually used and then discarded-because these men, unlike Ajax, only objectified, sexualized, and longed to dominate her. It is precisely because of Ajax's fair treatment that Sula is able to consider, if not desire, what she never before had. As Morrison elucidates in an interview: [T]he one man who talked to [Sula], and thought she was worthy of conversation, and who let her be. [...] [Ajax] was a man who was not intimidated by her; he was interested in her. He treated her as a whole person, [...] not as a vessel, not as a symbol of himself. He was secure enough and free enough and bright enough-he wasn't terrorized by her because she was odd. [...] When a man is whole himself, when he's touched the borders of his own life, and he's not proving something to somebody else-white men or other men and so on-then the threats of emasculation, the threats of castration, the threats of something taking over disappear.35 In her characterization of Ajax and his relationship with Sula as "unconventional," Morrison provides an alternative (re) configuration of black manhood and womanhood, as well as an alternative paradigm governing heterosexual relationships, outside nationalist constructions and the classical black female script. In her assessment of Sula and Ajax's relationship, and especially Ajax's openness to Sula-and the agency, womanfreedom, and unconventionality she engenders-Morrison indicts and critiques those black cultural nationalists who, in their quest to reclaim black manhood, internalized hegemonic ideologies and, thereby, viewed liberated black women as both threatening and emasculatory.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  It was a fierce, tough stare, honed during many intense negotiations. A lot of Dictaphones had moved out the door after that stare. He was waiting for me to bend, to up my offer, but for once in my life I had leverage, because I had nothing left to give. “Take it or leave it” is like four of a kind. Hard to beat. Finally Owen turned to his son. I think we both knew from the start that Johnson would be the one to settle this, and I saw in Johnson’s face that two contrary desires were fighting for his heart. He didn’t want to accept my offer. But he didn’t want to quit. He loved Blue Ribbon. He needed Blue Ribbon. He saw Blue Ribbon as the one place in the world where he fit, an alternative to the corporate quicksand that had swallowed most of our schoolmates and friends, most of our generation. He’d complained a million times about my lack of communication, but in fact my laissez-faire management style had fostered him, unleashed him. He wasn’t likely to find that kind of autonomy anywhere else. After several seconds he reached out his hand. “Deal,” he said. “Deal,” I said, shaking it. We sealed our new agreement with a six-mile run. As I remember, I won. WITH JOHNSON ON the East Coast, and Bork taking over his store, I was awash in employees. And then I got a call from Bowerman asking me to add yet another. One of his former track guys—Geoff Hollister. I took Hollister out for a hamburger, and we got along fine, but he cinched the deal by not even flinching when I reached into my pocket and found I didn’t have any money to pay for lunch. So I hired him to go around the state selling Tigers, thereby making him Full-time Employee Number Three. Soon Bowerman phoned again. He wanted me to hire another person. Quadrupling my staff in the span of a few months? Did my old coach think I was General Motors? I might have balked, but then Bowerman said the job candidate’s name. Bob Woodell. I knew the name, of course. Everyone in Oregon knew the name. Woodell had been a standout on Bowerman’s 1965 team. Not quite a star, but a gritty and inspiring competitor. With Oregon defending its second national championship in three years, Woodell had come out of nowhere and won the long jump against vaunted UCLA. I’d been there, I’d watched him do it, and I’d gone away mighty impressed. The next day there had been a bulletin on TV. An accident at Oregon’s Mother’s Day Celebrations. Woodell and twenty of his frat brothers were hoisting a float down to the Millrace, a stream that wound through campus. They were trying to flip it over and someone lost their footing. Then someone lost their hold. Someone else let go. Someone screamed, everyone ran. The float collapsed, trapping Woodell underneath, crushing his first lumbar vertebra.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  In April 1965 he wrote to say he’d quit his day job. He’d always hated it, he said, but the last straw had been a distressed woman in the San Fernando Valley. He’d been scheduled to check on her, because she’d threatened to kill herself, but he’d phoned her first to ask “if she really was going to kill herself that day.” If so, he didn’t want to waste the time and gas money driving all the way out to the valley. The woman, and Johnson’s superiors, took a dim view of his approach. They deemed it a sign that Johnson didn’t care. Johnson deemed it the same way. He didn’t care, and in that moment, Johnson wrote me, he understood himself, and his destiny. Social work wasn’t it. He wasn’t put here on this earth to fix people’s problems. He preferred to focus on their feet. In his heart of hearts Johnson believed that runners are God’s chosen, that running, done right, in the correct spirit and with the proper form, is a mystical exercise, no less than meditation or prayer, and thus he felt called to help runners reach their nirvana. I’d been around runners much of my life, but this kind of dewy romanticism was something I’d never encountered. Not even the Yahweh of running, Bowerman, was as pious about the sport as Blue Ribbon’s Part-time Employee Number Two. In fact, in 1965, running wasn’t even a sport. It wasn’t popular, it wasn’t unpopular—it just was. To go out for a three-mile run was something weirdos did, presumably to burn off manic energy. Running for pleasure, running for exercise, running for endorphins, running to live better and longer—these things were unheard of. People often went out of their way to mock runners. Drivers would slow down and honk their horns. “Get a horse!” they’d yell, throwing a beer or soda at the runner’s head. Johnson had been drenched by many a Pepsi. He wanted to change all this. He wanted to help all the oppressed runners of the world, to bring them into the light, enfold them in a community. So maybe he was a social worker after all. He just wanted to socialize exclusively with runners. Above all, Johnson wanted to make a living doing it, which was next to impossible in 1965. In me, in Blue Ribbon, he thought he saw a way. I did everything I could to discourage Johnson from thinking like this. At every turn I tried to dampen his enthusiasm for me and my company. Besides not writing back, I never phoned, never visited, never invited him to Oregon. I also never missed an opportunity to tell him the unvarnished truth. In one of my rare replies to his letters I put it flatly: “Though our growth has been good, I owe First National Bank of Oregon $11,000.… Cash flow is negative.”

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Protestant Germany is richer than any other country in, manuals and compends of church history for the use of students. We mention Engelhardt (1834), Niedner (Geschichte der christl. Kirche, 1846, and Lehrbuch, 1866), Hase (11th ed. 1886), Guericke (9th ed. 1866, 3 vols.), Lindner (1848–’54), Jacobi (1850, unfinished), Fricke (1850), Kurtz (Lehrbuch, 10th ed. 1887, in 2 vols., the larger Handbuch, unfinished), Hasse (edited by Köhler, 1864, in 3 small vols.), Köllner (1864), Ebrard (1866) 2 vols.), Rothe (lectures edited by Weingarten, 1875, 2 vols.), Herzog (1876–’82, 3 vols.), H. Schmid (1881, 2 vols.). Niedner’s Lehrbuch (1866) stands first for independent and thorough scholarship, but is heavy. Hase’s Compend is unsurpassed for condensation, wit, point, and artistic taste, as a miniature picture.32 Herzog’s Abriss keeps the medium between voluminous fulness and enigmatic brevity, and is written in a candid Christian spirit. Kurtz is clear, concise, and evangelical.33 A new manual was begun by Möller, 1889. The best works on doctrine history (Dogmengeschichte) are by Münscher, Geiseler, Neander, Baur, Hagenbach, Thomasius, H. Schmid, Nitzsch, and Harnack (1887). It is impossible to do justice here to the immense service which Protestant Germany has done to special departments of church history. Most of the fathers, popes, schoolmen and reformers, and the principal doctrines of Christianity have been made the subject of minute and exhaustive historical treatment. We have already mentioned the monographs of Neander and Baur, and fully equal to them are such masterly and enduring works as Rothe’s Beginnings of the Christian Church, Ullmann’s Reformers before the Reformation, Hasse’s Anselm of Canterbury, and Dorner’s History of Christology. (b) French works. Dr. Etienne L. Chastel (Professor of Church History in the National Church at Geneva, d. 1886) wrote a complete Histoire du Christianisme (Paris, 1881–’85, 5 vols.). Dr. Merle D’aubigné (Professor of Church History in the independent Reformed Seminary at Geneva, d. 1872) reproduced in elegant and eloquent French an extensive history both of the Lutheran and Calvinistic Reformation, with an evangelical enthusiasm and a dramatic vivacity which secured it an extraordinary circulation in England and America (far greater, than on the Continent), and made it the most popular work on that important period. Its value as a history is somewhat diminished by polemical bias and the occasional want of accuracy. Dr. Merle conceived the idea of the work during the celebration of the third centenary of the German Reformation in 1817, in the Wartburg at Eisenach, where Luther translated, the New Testament and threw his inkstand at the devil. He labored on it till the year of his death.34 Dr. Edmund De Pressensé (pastor of a free church in Paris, member of the National Assembly, then senator of France), and able scholar, with evangelical Protestant convictions similar to those of Dr. Merle, wrote a Life of Christ against Renan, and a History of Ancient Christianity, both of which are translated into English.35

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  3. For this reason, Christianity destroyed all the other religions while promoting its own. In this, it was unique among the religions of antiquity, which explains a good deal of its SUCCESS. C. The exclusive claims of the religion were matched by the fierce devotion of some of its followers. This, too, may have accounted for Christianity’s success. 1. Little of such exclusive devotion could be found in pagan religions. 2. But some Christians were willing to stay true to their religious commitments even when faced with torture and death. According to early Christian authors, such as Justin and Tertullian, this made an impression on bystanders. In Tertullian’s words, “The blood of the martyrs is seed.” IV. Christianity grew at a steady pace over the decades, up to the early fourth century, when Constantine converted and changed everything. 149 A. The details of Constantine’s conversion are sketchy, and the surviving accounts are legendary. B. The most well known account—allegedly described by Constantine himself—involves his dream the night before his significant battle with his rival for power, Maxentius, in 312 C.E., in which he saw the sign of the cross and was told, “by this, conquer.” V. The steady growth of Christianity over the decades of the second and third centuries was largely based on a message of exclusivistic devotion to the Christian God, backed by reports of acts of miraculous power demonstrating the religion’s superiority to all others. When the Roman emperor finally converted to this once-persecuted faith, it was on its way to becoming the religion of the empire and, from there, the most significant religion in the history of Western civilization and culture. Essential Reading: Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians. Ramsey Macmullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire. Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity. Supplementary Reading: John Carroll, Constantine’s Sword. Bart Ehrman, After the New Testament, chapter 2. Questions to Consider: 1. What would the world be like today if the vast majority of religions were inclusivistic—as they were in the Roman world—rather than exclusivistic? Would this have any effect on social and political conflicts? 2. Try to mount arguments for Constantine’s conversion being (a) a good thing and (b) a bad thing for the future of Christianity. 150 Lecture Ten—Transcript The Christianization of the Roman Empire In the previous lecture, we began to see how the earliest Christians spread their religion throughout the Roman Empire. It was largely spread by word of mouth, as Christians tried to convince their pagan friends, family, neighbors and acquaintances of the essence of the Christian message. This message was believed to be validated by the miraculous deeds performed by Jesus’s apostles. In this lecture, we will consider further aspects of the Christian mission, how far and quickly the religion spread, the reasons for its success, and its ultimate reach to the upper echelons of the Roman government before becoming, finally, the official religion of the empire by the late fourth century.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  70 Because students are taught to follow the rabbinic method of study, they engage in the same discussions and must make their own contribution to this never-ending conversation. In some versions of the Talmud, there was a space on each page for a student to add his own commentary. He learned that nobody had the last word, that truth was constantly changing, and that while tradition was of immense importance, it must not compromise his own judgment. If he did not add his own remarks to the sacred page, the line of tradition would come to an end. Religious discourse should not be cast in stone; the ancient teachings required constant revision. “What is Torah?” asked the Bavli. “It is the interpretation of Torah.” 71 As Christianity spread in the Hellenistic world, the more educated converts brought with them the insights and expectations of their own Greek education. From an early date, they regarded Christianity as a philosophia that had much in common with the Greek schools. It took courage to become a Christian, as the churches were subjected to sporadic but intense bouts of persecution by the Roman authorities. When Jesus had failed to return, Jewish Christianity petered out, and by the beginning of the second century, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism had parted company. Once Christians made it clear that they were no longer members of the synagogue, they were regarded by the Romans as impious fanatics who had committed the cardinal sin of breaking with the parent faith. Christians were accused of atheism because they refused to honor the patronal gods of the empire, so some tried to prove that Christianity was no superstitio but a new school of philosophy. One of the earliest of these apologists was Justin (100–160), a pagan convert from Samaria in the Holy Land. He had dabbled in Stoicism and Pythagorean spirituality but found what he was looking for in Christianity, which he regarded as the culmination of both Judaism and Greek philosophy. Philosophers also saw their great sages— Socrates, Plato, Zeno, Epicurus—as “sons of God,” and Christians used the same kind of terminology—Logos, Spirit, and God—as the Stoics. In the prologue to his gospel, Saint John had said that Jesus was the incarnate “Word” or “Logos” of God 72 —the very same Logos, Justin argued, that had inspired Plato and Socrates. There was no Greek equivalent to the Hebrew Shekhinah , so increasingly Christians used the term Logos to describe the divine Presence that they could experience but that was essentially separate from God’s inmost nature.