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 Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  The way he talked, out of the corner of his mouth, for instance, the tough air he put on when talking to a cop, the way he spat in disgust, the peculiar curse words he used, the sentimentality, the limited horizon, the passion for playing pool or shooting craps, the staying up all night swapping yarns, the contempt for the rich, the hobnobbing with politicians, the curiosity about worthless things, the respect for learning, the fascination of the dance hall, the saloon, the burlesque, talking about seeing the world and never budging out of the city, idolizing no matter whom so long as the person showed “spunk,” a thousand and one little traits or peculiarities of this sort endeared him to me because it was precisely such idiosyncrasies which marked the fellows I had known as a child. The neighborhood was composed of nothing, it seemed, but lovable failures. The grownups behaved like children and the children were incorrigible. Nobody could rise very far above his neighbor or he’d be lynched. It was amazing that any one ever became a doctor or a lawyer. Even so, he had to be a good fellow, had to pretend to talk like everyone else, and he had to vote the Democratic ticket. To hear MacGregor talk about Plato or Nietzsche, for instance, to his buddies was something to remember. In the first place, to even get permission to talk about such things as Plato or Nietzsche to his companions, he had to pretend that it was only by accident that he had run across their names; or perhaps he’d say that he had met an interesting drunk one night in the back room of a saloon and this drunk had started talking about these guys Nietzsche and Plato. He would even pretend he didn’t quite know how the names were pronounced. Plato wasn’t such a dumb bastard, he would say apologetically. Plato had an idea or two in his bean, yes sir, yes siree. He’d like to see one of those dumb politicians at Washington trying to lock horns with a guy like Plato. And he’d go on, in this roundabout, matter of fact fashion to explain to his crapshooting friends just what kind of a bright bird Plato was in his time and how he measured up against other men in other times. Of course, he was probably a eunuch, he would add, by way of throwing a little cold water on all this erudition. In those days, as he nimbly explained, the big guys, the philosophers, often had their nuts cut off—a fact!—so as to be out of all temptation. The other guy, Nietzsche, he was a real case, a case for the bughouse. He was supposed to be in love with his sister. Hypersensitive like. Had to live in a special climate—in Nice, he thought it was. As a rule he didn’t care much for the Germans, but this guy Nietzsche was different.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Because every street is becoming a Myrtle Avenue, because emptiness is filling the whole continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Because, after a certain time, you can’t enter a single house throughout the length and breadth of the land and find a man standing on his hands singing. It just ain’t done any more. And there ain’t two pianos going at once anywhere, nor are there two men anywhere willing to play all night just for the fun of it. Two men who can play like Ed Bauries and George Neu-miller are hired by the radio or the movies and only a thimbleful of their talent is used and the rest is thrown into the garbage can. Nobody knows, judging from public spectacles, what talent is disposable in the great American continent. Later on, and that’s why I used to sit around on doorsteps in Tin Pan Alley, I would while away the afternoons listening to the professionals mugging it out. That was good too, but it was different. There was no fun in it, it was a perpetual rehearsal to bring in dollars and cents. Any man in America who had an ounce of humor in him was saving it up to put himself across. There were some wonderful nuts among them too, men I’ll never forget, men who left no name behind them, and they were the best we produced. I remember an anonymous performer on the Keith circuit who was probably the craziest man in America, and perhaps he got fifty dollars a week for it. Three times a day, every day in the week, he came out and held the audience spellbound. He didn’t have an act—he just improvised. He never repeated his jokes or his stunts. He gave himself prodigally, and I don’t think he was a hop fiend either. He was one of those guys who are born in the corn crakes and the energy and the joy in him was so fierce that nothing could contain it. He could play any instrument and dance any step and he could invent a story on the spot and string it out till the bell rang. He was not only satisfied to do his own act but he would help the others out. He would stand in the wings and wait for the right moment to break into the other guy’s act. He was the whole show and it was a show that contained more therapy than the whole arsenal of modern science. They ought to have paid a man like this the wages which the President of the United States receives. They ought to sack the President of the United States and the whole Supreme Court and set up a man like this as ruler. This man could cure any disease on the calendar. He was the kind of guy, moreover, as would do it for nothing, if you asked him to. This is the type of man which empties the insane asylums.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  But first you’ve got to get rid of that hatchet-faced wife of yours. Ugh! when I look at her I could spit in her face. I don’t see how a guy like you could ever have married a bitch like that. What was it—just a pair of steaming ovaries? Listen, that’s what’s the matter with you—you’ve got nothing but sex on the brain. . . . No, I don’t mean that either. You’ve got a mind and you’ve got passion and enthusiasm . . . but you don’t seem to give a damn what you do or what happens to you. If you weren’t such a romantic bastard I’d almost swear that you were a Jew. It’s different with me—I never had anything to look forward to. But you’ve got something in you—only you’re too damned lazy to bring it out. Listen, when I hear you talk sometimes I think to myself—if only that guy would put it down on paper! Why you could write a book that would make a guy like Dreiser hang his head. You’re different from the Americans I know; somehow you don’t belong, and it’s a damned good thing you don’t. You’re a little cracked, too—I suppose you know that. But in a good way. Listen, a little while ago, if it had been anybody else who talked to me that way I’d have murdered him. I think I like you better because you didn’t try to give me any sympathy. I know better than to expect sympathy from you. If you had said one false word tonight I’d have really gone mad. I know it. I was on the very edge. When you started in about General Ivolgin I thought for a minute it was all up with me. That’s what makes me think you’ve got something in you . . . that was real cunning! And now let me tell you something . . . if you don’t pull yourself together soon you’re going to be screwy. You’ve got something inside you that’s eating you up. I don’t know what it is, but you can’t put it over on me. I know you from the bottom up. I know there’s something griping you—and it’s not just your wife, nor your job, nor even that nigger wench whom you think you’re in love with. Sometimes I think you were born in the wrong time. Listen, I don’t want you to think I’m making an idol of you but there’s something to what I say . . . if you had just a little more confidence in yourself you could be the biggest man in the world today. You wouldn’t even have to be a writer. You might become another Jesus Christ for all I know. Don’t laugh—I mean it. You haven’t the slightest idea of your own possibilities . . . you’re absolutely blind to everything except your own desires. You don’t know what you want.

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

  My grandmother Frances Noah was the family matriarch. She ran the house, looked after the kids, did the cooking and the cleaning. She’s barely five feet tall, hunched over from years in the factory, but rock hard and still to this day very active and very much alive. Where my grandfather was big and boisterous, my grandmother was calm, calculating, with a mind as sharp as anything. If you need to know anything in the family history, going back to the 1930s, she can tell you what day it happened, where it happened, and why it happened. She remembers it all. My great-grandmother lived with us as well. We called her Koko. She was super old, well into her nineties, stooped and frail, completely blind. Her eyes had gone white, clouded over by cataracts. She couldn’t walk without someone holding her up. She’d sit in the kitchen next to the coal stove, bundled up in long skirts and head scarves, blankets over her shoulders. The coal stove was always on. It was for cooking, heating the house, heating water for baths. We put her there because it was the warmest spot in the house. In the morning someone would wake her and bring her to sit in the kitchen. At night someone would come take her to bed. That’s all she did, all day, every day. Sit by the stove. She was fantastic and fully with it. She just couldn’t see and didn’t move. Koko and my gran would sit and have long conversations, but as a five-year-old I didn’t think of Koko as a real person. Since her body didn’t move, she was like a brain with a mouth. Our relationship was nothing but command prompts and replies, like talking to a computer. “Good morning, Koko.” “Good morning, Trevor.” “Koko, did you eat?” “Yes, Trevor.” “Koko, I’m going out.” “Okay, be careful.” “Bye, Koko.” “Bye, Trevor.” — The fact that I grew up in a world run by women was no accident. Apartheid kept me away from my father because he was white, but for almost all the kids I knew on my grandmother’s block in Soweto, apartheid had taken away their fathers as well, just for different reasons. Their fathers were off working in a mine somewhere, able to come home only during the holidays. Their fathers had been sent to prison. Their fathers were in exile, fighting for the cause. Women held the community together. “Wathint’Abafazi Wathint’imbokodo!” was the chant they would rally to during the freedom struggle. “When you strike a woman, you strike a rock.” As a nation, we recognized the power of women, but in the home they were expected to submit and obey.

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

  “Yes, Mom,” I explained, “but the lion is a Christ figure. Technically, he is Jesus. It’s a story to explain Jesus.” She wasn’t comfortable with that. “No, no. No false idols, my friend.” Eventually I wore her down. That was a big win. If my mother had one goal, it was to free my mind. My mother spoke to me like an adult, which was unusual. In South Africa, kids play with kids and adults talk to adults. The adults supervise you, but they don’t get down on your level and talk to you. My mom did. All the time. I was like her best friend. She was always telling me stories, giving me lessons, Bible lessons especially. She was big into Psalms. I had to read Psalms every day. She would quiz me on it. “What does the passage mean? What does it mean to you? How do you apply it to your life?” That was every day of my life. My mom did what school didn’t. She taught me how to think. — The end of apartheid was a gradual thing. It wasn’t like the Berlin Wall where one day it just came down. Apartheid’s walls cracked and crumbled over many years. Concessions were made here and there, some laws were repealed, others simply weren’t enforced. There came a point, in the months before Mandela’s release, when we could live less furtively. It was then that my mother decided we needed to move. She felt we had grown as much as we could hiding in our tiny flat in town. The country was open now. Where would we go? Soweto came with its burdens. My mother still wanted to get out from the shadow of her family. My mother also couldn’t walk with me through Soweto without people saying, “There goes that prostitute with a white man’s child.” In a black area she would always be seen as that. So, since my mom didn’t want to move to a black area and couldn’t afford to move to a white area, she decided to move to a colored area.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  But almost immediately I discarded this side of my nature and allowed myself to bask in the warm, immediate light which his profound and natural intuition of things created. To come into his presence gave me the sensation of being undressed, or rather peeled, for it was much more than mere nakedness which he demanded of the person he was talking to. In talking to me he addressed himself to a me whose existence I had only dimly suspected, the me, for example, which emerged when, suddenly, reading a book, I realized that I had been dreaming. Few books had this faculty of putting me into a trance, this trance of utter lucidity in which, unknown to oneself, one makes the deepest resolutions. Roy Hamilton’s conversation partook of this quality. It made me more than ever alert, preternaturally alert, without at the same time crumbling the fabric of dream. He was appealing in other words, to the germ of the self, to the being who would eventually outgrow the naked personality, the synthetic individuality, and leave me truly alone and solitary in order to work out my own proper destiny. Our talk was like a secret language in the midst of which the others went to sleep or faded away like ghosts. For my friend MacGregor it was baffling and irritating; he knew me more intimately than any of the other fellows but he had never found anything in me to correspond to the character which I now presented him with. He spoke of Roy Hamilton as a bad influence, which again was deeply true since this unexpected meeting with his half brother served more than anything else to alienate us. Hamilton opened my eyes and gave me new values, and though later I was to lose the vision which he had bequeathed me, nevertheless I could never again see the world, or my friends, as I had seen them prior to his coming. Hamilton altered me profoundly, as only a rare book, a rare personality, a rare experience, can alter one. For the first time in my life I understood what it was to experience a vital friendship and yet not to feel enslaved or attached because of the experience. Never, after we parted, did I feel the need of his actual presence; he had given himself completely and I possessed him without being possessed. It was the first clean, whole experience of friendship, and it was never duplicated by any other friend. Hamilton was friendship itself, rather than a friend.

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

  “Yes, Mom,” I explained, “but the lion is a Christ figure. Technically, he is Jesus. It’s a story to explain Jesus.” She wasn’t comfortable with that. “No, no. No false idols, my friend.” Eventually I wore her down. That was a big win. If my mother had one goal, it was to free my mind. My mother spoke to me like an adult, which was unusual. In South Africa, kids play with kids and adults talk to adults. The adults supervise you, but they don’t get down on your level and talk to you. My mom did. All the time. I was like her best friend. She was always telling me stories, giving me lessons, Bible lessons especially. She was big into Psalms. I had to read Psalms every day. She would quiz me on it. “What does the passage mean? What does it mean to you? How do you apply it to your life?” That was every day of my life. My mom did what school didn’t. She taught me how to think. — The end of apartheid was a gradual thing. It wasn’t like the Berlin Wall where one day it just came down. Apartheid’s walls cracked and crumbled over many years. Concessions were made here and there, some laws were repealed, others simply weren’t enforced. There came a point, in the months before Mandela’s release, when we could live less furtively. It was then that my mother decided we needed to move. She felt we had grown as much as we could hiding in our tiny flat in town. The country was open now. Where would we go? Soweto came with its burdens. My mother still wanted to get out from the shadow of her family. My mother also couldn’t walk with me through Soweto without people saying, “There goes that prostitute with a white man’s child.” In a black area she would always be seen as that. So, since my mom didn’t want to move to a black area and couldn’t afford to move to a white area, she decided to move to a colored area.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  He was going to be the best salesman in America after his release. I might almost say that he seemed happy. He said not to worry about him, he would get along all right. He said everybody was swell to him and that he had nothing to complain about. I left him somewhat in a daze. I went to a nearby beach and decided to take a swim. I saw everything with new eyes. I almost forgot to return home, so absorbed had I become in my speculations about this chap. Who could say that everything that happened to him had not happened for the best? Perhaps he might leave the prison a full-fledged evangelist instead of a salesman. Nobody could predict what he might do. And nobody could aid him because he was working out his destiny in his own private way. There was another chap, a Hindu named Guptal. He was not only a model of good behavior—he was a saint. He had a passion for the flute which he played all by himself in his miserable little room. One day he was found naked, his throat slit from ear to ear, and beside him on the bed was his flute. At the funeral there were a dozen women who wept passionate tears, including the wife of the janitor who had murdered him. I could write a book about this young man who was the gentlest and the holiest man I ever met, who had never offended anybody and never taken anything from anybody, but who had made the cardinal mistake of coming to America to spread peace and love. There was Dave Olinski, another faithful, industrious messenger who thought of nothing but work. He had one fatal weakness—he talked too much. When he came to me he had already been around the globe several times and what he hadn’t done to make a living isn’t worth telling about. He knew about twelve languages and he was rather proud of his linguistic ability. He was one of those men whose very willingness and enthusiasm is their undoing. He wanted to help everybody along, show everybody how to succeed. He wanted more work than we could give him—he was a glutton for work. Perhaps I should have warned him, when I sent him to his office on the East Side, that he was going to work in a tough neighborhood, but he pretended to know so much and he was so insistent on working in that locality (because of his linguistic ability) that I said nothing. I thought to myself—you’ll find out quickly enough for yourself. And sure enough, he was only there a short time when he got into trouble. A tough Jewboy from the neighborhood walked in one day and asked for a blank. Dave, the messenger, was behind the desk. He didn’t like the way the man asked for the blank. He told him he ought to be more polite.

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

  [image file=image_rsrc2UP.jpg] Alexandra was a farm originally named for the wife of the white man who owned it. Like Sophiatown and other black spots populating white areas before apartheid, Alex started out as a squatter settlement where blacks gathered and lived when coming to Johannesburg to find work. What was unique about Alex is that this farmer sold plots of land to some of the black tenants in the time before it was illegal for blacks to own property. So while Sophiatown and other black ghettos were razed and rebuilt as white suburbs, Alex fought and held on and asserted its right to exist. Wealthy white suburbs like Sandton grew around it, but Alex remained. More squatters came and more squatters came, putting up makeshift shacks and shanties. They look like the slums in Mumbai or the favelas in Brazil. The first time I saw the favelas in Rio I said, “Yeah, that’s Alexandra, but on a hill.” Soweto was beautiful because, after democracy, you watched Soweto grow. Soweto has become a proper city unto itself. People went from three-room houses to five-room houses to three-bedroom houses with garages. There was room to grow because the piece of land from the government gave you something to build on. Alexandra can’t do that. Alex can’t get any bigger, because it’s pinned in on all sides, and it can’t build up, because it’s mostly shacks. When democracy came, people flooded into Alex from the homelands, building new shacks in the backyards of other shacks with still more shacks attached to the backside of those shacks, growing more dense and more compressed, leaving close to 200,000 people living in a few square kilometers. Even if you go back today, Alex hasn’t changed. It can’t change. It’s physically impossible for it to change. It can only be what it is. [image file=image_rsrc2UR.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc2US.jpg] THE CHEESE BOYSMy friend Bongani was a short, bald, super-buff guy. He wasn’t always that way. His whole life he’d been skinny, and then a bodybuilding magazine found its way into his hands and changed his life. Bongani was one of those people who brought out the best in everybody. He was that friend who believed in you and saw the potential in you that nobody else did, which was why so many of the township kids gravitated toward him, and why I gravitated toward him as well. Bongani was always popular, but his reputation really took off when he beat up one of the more infamous bullies in the school. That cemented his status as sort of the leader and protector of the township kids.

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

  Objection 3: Further, it is written (Gal. 4:4, 5, 6): “God sent His Son . . . that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons of God, God hath sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying: ‘Abba’ [Father].” Therefore it belongs to Him to adopt, Who has the Son and the Holy Ghost. But this belongs to the Father alone. Therefore it befits the Father alone to adopt. On the contrary, It belongs to Him to adopt us as sons, Whom we can call Father; whence it is written (Rom. 8:15): “You have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: ‘Abba’ [Father].” But when we say to God, “Our Father,” we address the whole Trinity: as is the case with the other names which are said of God in respect of creatures, as stated in the [4110]FP, Q[33], A[3], OBJ[1]; cf. [4111]FP, Q[45], A[6]. Therefore to adopt is befitting to the whole Trinity. I answer that, There is this difference between an adopted son of God and the natural Son of God, that the latter is “begotten not made”; whereas the former is made, according to Jn. 1:12: “He gave them power to be made the sons of God.” Yet sometimes the adopted son is said to be begotten, by reason of the spiritual regeneration which is by grace, not by nature; wherefore it is written (James 1:18): “Of His own will hath He begotten us by the word of truth.” Now although, in God, to beget belongs to the Person of the Father, yet to produce any effect in creatures is common to the whole Trinity, by reason of the oneness of their Nature: since, where there is one nature, there must needs be one power and one operation: whence our Lord says (Jn. 5:19): “What things soever the Father doth, these the Son also doth in like manner.” Therefore it belongs to the whole Trinity to adopt men as sons of God. Reply to Objection 1: All human individuals are not of one individual nature, so that there need be one operation and one effect of them all, as is the case in God. Consequently in this respect no comparison is possible. Reply to Objection 2: By adoption we are made the brethren of Christ, as having with Him the same Father: Who, nevertheless, is His Father in one way, and ours in another. Whence pointedly our Lord says, separately, “My Father,” and “Your Father” (Jn. 20:17). For He is Christ’s Father by natural generation; and this is proper to Him: whereas He is our Father by a voluntary operation, which is common to Him and to the Son and Holy Ghost: so that Christ is not the Son of the whole Trinity, as we are.

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

  Whether the vow of obedience is the chief of the three religious vows?Objection 1: It would seem that the vow of obedience is not the chief of the three religious vows. For the perfection of the religious life was inaugurated by Christ. Now Christ gave a special counsel of poverty; whereas He is not stated to have given a special counsel of obedience. Therefore the vow of poverty is greater than the vow of obedience. Objection 2: Further, it is written (Ecclus. 26:20) that “no price is worthy of a continent soul.” Now the vow of that which is more worthy is itself more excellent. Therefore the vow of continence is more excellent than the vow of obedience. Objection 3: Further, the greater a vow the more indispensable it would seem to be. Now the vows of poverty and continence “are so inseparable from the monastic rule, that not even the Sovereign Pontiff can allow them to be broken,” according to a Decretal (De Statu Monach., cap. Cum ad monasterium): yet he can dispense a religious from obeying his superior. Therefore it would seem that the vow of obedience is less than the vow of poverty and continence. On the contrary, Gregory says (Moral. xxxv, 14): “Obedience is rightly placed before victims, since by victims another’s flesh, but by obedience one’s own will, is sacrificed.” Now the religious vows are holocausts, as stated above ([3799]AA[1],3, ad 6). Therefore the vow of obedience is the chief of all religious vows. I answer that, The vow of obedience is the chief of the three religious vows, and this for three reasons. First, because by the vow of obedience man offers God something greater, namely his own will; for this is of more account than his own body, which he offers God by continence, and than external things, which he offers God by the vow of poverty. Wherefore that which is done out of obedience is more acceptable to God than that which is done of one’s own will, according to the saying of Jerome (Ep. cxxv ad Rustic Monach.): “My words are intended to teach you not to rely on your own judgment”: and a little further on he says: “You may not do what you will; you must eat what you are bidden to eat, you may possess as much as you receive, clothe yourself with what is given to you.” Hence fasting is not acceptable to God if it is done of one’s own will, according to Is. 58:3, “Behold in the day of your fast your own will is found.” Secondly, because the vow of obedience includes the other vows, but not vice versa: for a religious, though bound by vow to observe continence and poverty, yet these also come under obedience, as well as many other things besides the keeping of continence and poverty.

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

  JEROME. The Evangelist couples the names throughout in pairs. So he puts together Peter and Andrew, brothers not so much according to the flesh as in spirit; James and John who left their father after the flesh to follow their true Father; James the son of Zebedee and John his brother. He calls him the son of Zebedee, to distinguish him from the other James the son of Alphæus. CHRYSOSTOM. Observe that he does not place them according to their dignity; for to me John would seem to be greater not than others only, but even than his brother. REMIGIUS. (e Beda.) James is interpreted ‘The supplanter,’ or ‘that supplanteth;’ for he not only supplanted the vices of the flesh, but even contemned the same flesh when Herod put him to death. John is interpreted ‘The grace of God,’ because he deserved before all to be loved by the Lord; whence also in the favour of His especial love, he leaned at supper in the Lord’s bosom. Philip and Bartholomew. (e Beda.) Philip is interpreted, ‘The mouth of a lamp,’ or ‘of lamps,’ because when he had been enlightened by the Lord, he straightway sought to communicate the light to his brother by the means of his mouth. Bartholomew is a Syriac, not a Hebrew, name, and is interpreted ‘The son of him that raiseth watera,’ that is, of Christ, who raises the hearts of His preachers from earthly to heavenly things, and hangs them there, that the more they penetrate heavenly things, the more they should steep and inebriate the hearts of their hearers with the droppings of holy preaching. Thomas, and Matthew the Publican. JEROME. The other Evangelists in this pair of names put Matthew before Thomas; and do not add, the Publican, that they should not seem to throw scorn upon the Evangelist by bringing to mind his former life. But writing of himself he both puts Thomas first in the pair, and styles himself the Publican; because, where sin hath abounded, there grace shall much more abound. (Rom. 5:20.) REMIGIUS. (e Beda.) Thomas is interpreted ‘an abyss,’ or ‘a twin,’ which in Greek is Didymus. Rightly is Didymus interpreted an abyss, for the longer he doubted the more deeply did he believe the effect of the Lord’s passion, and the mystery of His Divinity, which forced him to cry, My Lord and my God. (John 20:28.) Matthew is interpreted ‘given,’ because by the Lord’s bounty he was made an Evangelist of a Publican. James the son of Alphæus, and Thaddæus. RABANUS. (e Beda.) This James is he who in the Gospels, and also in the Epistle to the Galatians, is called the Lord’s brother. For Mary the wife of Alphæus was the sister of Mary the mother of the Lord; John the Evangelist calls her Mary the wife of Cleophas, probably because Cleophas and Alphæus were the same person. Or Mary herself on the death of Alphæus after the birth of James married Cleophas.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  He added a cubit to the race, by giving it back its dignity, its strength, its need of creation. He saw everything as creation, as solar joy. He didn’t record it in orderly fashion, he recorded it musically. He was indifferent to the fact that the French have a tin ear—he was orchestrating for the whole world simultaneously. What was my amazement then, when some years later I arrived in France, to find that there were no monuments erected to him, no streets named after him. Worse, during eight whole years I never once heard a Frenchman mention his name. He had to die in order to be put in the pantheon of French deities—and how sickly must they look, his deific contemporaries, in the presence of this radiant sun! If he had not been a physician, and thus permitted to earn a livelihood, what might not have happened to him! Perhaps another able hand for the garbage trucks! The man who made the Egyptian frescoes come alive in all their flaming colors, this man could just as well have starved to death for all the public cared. But he was an ocean and the critics drowned in this ocean, and the editors and the publishers and the public too. It will take aeons for him to dry up, to evaporate. It will take about as long as for the French to acquire a musical ear. If there had been no music I would have gone to the madhouse like Nijinsky. (It was just about this time that they discovered that Nijinsky was mad. He had been found giving his money away to the poor—always a bad sign!) My mind was filled with wonderful treasures, my taste was sharp and exigent, my muscles were in excellent condition, my appetite was strong, my wind sound. I had nothing to do except to improve myself, and I was going crazy with the improvements I made every day. Even if there were a job for me to fill I couldn’t accept it, because what I needed was not work but a life more abundant. I couldn’t waste time being a teacher, a lawyer, a physician, a politician or anything else that society had to offer. It was easier to accept menial jobs because it left my mind free. After I was fired from the garbage trucks I remember taking up with an Evangelist who seemed to have great confidence in me. I was a sort of usher, collector and private secretary. He brought to my attention the whole world of Indian philosophy. Evenings when I was free I would meet with my friends at the home of Ed Bauries who lived in an aristocratic section of Brooklyn. Ed Bauries was an eccentric pianist who couldn’t read a note. He had a bosom pal called George Neumiller with whom he often played duets. Of the dozen or so who congregated at Ed Bauries’ home nearly every one of us could play the piano.

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

  Thus then does God work in every worker, according to these three things. First as an end. For since every operation is for the sake of some good, real or apparent; and nothing is good either really or apparently, except in as far as it participates in a likeness to the Supreme Good, which is God; it follows that God Himself is the cause of every operation as its end. Again it is to be observed that where there are several agents in order, the second always acts in virtue of the first; for the first agent moves the second to act. And thus all agents act in virtue of God Himself: and therefore He is the cause of action in every agent. Thirdly, we must observe that God not only moves things to operated, as it were applying their forms and powers to operation, just as the workman applies the axe to cut, who nevertheless at times does not give the axe its form; but He also gives created agents their forms and preserves them in being. Therefore He is the cause of action not only by giving the form which is the principle of action, as the generator is said to be the cause of movement in things heavy and light; but also as preserving the forms and powers of things; just as the sun is said to be the cause of the manifestation of colors, inasmuch as it gives and preserves the light by which colors are made manifest. And since the form of a thing is within the thing, and all the more, as it approaches nearer to the First and Universal Cause; and because in all things God Himself is properly the cause of universal being which is innermost in all things; it follows that in all things God works intimately. For this reason in Holy Scripture the operations of nature are attributed to God as operating in nature, according to Job 10:11: “Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh: Thou hast put me together with bones and sinews.” Reply to Objection 1: God works sufficiently in things as First Agent, but it does not follow from this that the operation of secondary agents is superfluous. Reply to Objection 2: One action does not proceed from two agents of the same order. But nothing hinders the same action from proceeding from a primary and a secondary agent. Reply to Objection 3: God not only gives things their form, but He also preserves them in existence, and applies them to act, and is moreover the end of every action, as above explained.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The door would bang and Charles would appear, nimbly swaggering in his frayed knickers and flapping sleeves. He’d grab something to eat from the kitchen and wheel into the den, yelling his lines in a mocking voice. “You see, sir, I don’t think my mother would like me to be a pirate. Would your mother like you to be a pirate, Slightly?” She went to the play on opening night and sat in the front row with Jarold and Daniel. Charles was vibrant on stage. His airy movements had more authority than anyone else’s in the cast, except the lead. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. The pale little girl playing Wendy lay fainting before him in her white nightgown, her long brown hair fanned across his feet. He said, “When ladies used to come to me in dreams I said, ‘Pretty mother, pretty mother.’ But when at last she really came, I shot her.” Tears came to her eyes. She looked at Jarold and saw him smiling and blinking rapidly. Charles said, “I know I am just Tootles and nobody minds me. But the first who does not behave to Wendy like an English gentleman, I will blood him severely.” When the play ended, Virginia went to the dressing room. It was an old classroom with heavy wooden mirrors propped against the walls and cardboard boxes full of makeup and cold cream on the desks. Children were leaping around the room, chattering and singing songs from the play in sarcastic voices. They were bright-eyed and demonic when seen up close. Virginia saw Charles. She saw him dip his hand into a jar of cold cream, turn and slap it across a timid-looking girl’s face. The girl smiled painfully and tried to laugh. Another girl pointed at her and laughed. Charles turned away. — She dreamed of a conversation with Lily. They were sitting at the kitchen table with cups of tea before them. She said, “After I had Daniel, the doctors told me that I shouldn’t have any more children. They said it would be unsafe. I was lying there in the hospital when they came in and announced, ‘While we’ve got you here, we’re going to tie your tubes.’ And I said, ‘Oh, no, you’re not.’ I wouldn’t let them do it, and the next year I had Charles.” She smiled foolishly at Lily. The dream-Lily smiled back. “Charles is a beautiful boy,” she said. “I think he may be a genius in a way people don’t yet understand.” “Don’t ever tell Daniel or Jarold I said this, but Charles is my favorite child. He’s precious and special.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  And even, “Knock it off.” An oldie but goodie that snaps me out of brain rot. His business advice, in particular, was often applicable to other areas of life, too. He’d remind me to “do the hard thing first,” which sometimes meant making the hard call, tackling the annoying job, and getting the tough stuff behind me without delay. Every time I’ve followed his guidance, I inevitably feel a weight lifting off my chest, even when it was a task from hell. Another one of his gems was to encourage me to ask myself the candid question I often didn’t want to even think about: Have I reached the point of diminishing returns? If the answer was yes—meaning the blood, sweat, and frustration weren’t remotely paying off—he’d follow up with another classic: “Go where the sun shines the hottest.” To me, this means directing my attention to where the energy, action, and opportunity is, as opposed to just going through the motions, eking out crumbs out of obligation. Dad’s wisdom is a potent reminder: Don’t stay stuck in old, ineffectual rhythms because they feel safe. Trust that what’s meant for you doesn’t require you to drain your life force to experience success or fulfillment. Never one to sugarcoat or side-shimmy his way around what he observed, Dad would call me out if he caught me being hypocritical. Especially when I was a fountain of good advice to others but avoided applying that very same advice to my own life. Like if he saw me blowing off my own doctors’ visits, he’d say, “Practice what you preach.” I’ll never forget the day I was booked to appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show. I called my parents to share the exciting news. Naturally, they were overjoyed for me. But Dad slid in one little piece of wisdom before we hung up: “stay humble.” Later, at his celebration-of-life service, I learned that when the episode aired, he ditched the business conference he was attending so he and a few work buddies could huddle around the TV in his hotel room, cheering me on, with a box of tissues at the ready. He’d remind me, “Keep the promises you make to yourself, because time is precious.” If we can’t keep the promises we make to ourselves, how are we going to keep those we make to others (at least without generating unneeded resentment)? Watching him keep his biggest promise, to get to know himself more before he died, inspired me to do the same. I hope it inspires you, too. My favorite nugget of guidance from Dad came toward the end, when he told me to “stop and smell the lizards.” He meant “roses,” but his medications had scrambled the metaphors.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  I remember him as a slender, neat little man with a dusky complexion, gray-green eyes flecked with rust, a dark, bushy mustache, and a mobile Adam’s apple bobbing conspicuously above the opal and gold snake ring that held the knot of his tie. He also wore opals on his fingers and in his cuff links. A gold chainlet encircled his frail hairy wrist, and there was usually a carnation in the buttonhole of his dove-gray, mouse-gray or silver-gray summer suit. It was only in summer that I used to see him. After a brief stay in Rozhestveno he would go back to France or Italy, to his château (called Perpigna) near Pau, to his villa (called Tamarindo) near Rome, or to his beloved Egypt, from which he would send me picture postcards (palm trees and their reflections, sunsets, pharaohs with their hands on their knees) crossed by his thick scrawl. Then, in June again, when the fragrant cheryomuha (racemose old-world bird cherry or simply “racemosa” as I have baptized it in my work on “Onegin”) was in foamy bloom, his private flag would be hoisted on his beautiful Rozhestveno house. He traveled with half-a-dozen enormous trunks, bribed the Nord-Express to make a special stop at our little country station, and with the promise of a marvelous present, on small, mincing feet in high-heeled white shoes would lead me mysteriously to the nearest tree and delicately pluck and proffer a leaf, saying, “Pour mon neveu, la chose la plus belle au monde—une feuille verte.” Or he would solemnly bring me from America the Foxy Grandpa series, and Buster Brown—a forgotten boy in a reddish suit: if one looked closely, one could see that the color was really a mass of dense red dots. Every episode ended in a tremendous spanking for Buster, which was administered by his wasp-waisted but powerful Ma, who used a slipper, a hairbrush, a brittle umbrella, anything—even the bludgeon of a helpful policeman—and drew puffs of dust from the seat of Buster’s pants. Since I had never been spanked, those pictures conveyed to me the impression of strange exotic torture not different from, say, the burying of a popeyed wretch up to his chin in the torrid sand of a desert, as represented in the frontispiece of a Mayne Reid book. 4Uncle Ruka seems to have led an idle and oddly chaotic life. His diplomatic career was of the vaguest kind. He prided himself, however, on being an expert in decoding ciphered messages in any of the five languages he knew. We subjected him to a test one day, and in a twinkle he turned the sequence “5.13 24.11 13.16 9.13.5 5.13 24.11” into the opening words of a famous monologue in Shakespeare.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Next day I led Reece and the Boss straight to the farmer’s place, but to my surprise he told me that I had agreed to give him two dollars a head, whereas I had bargained with him for only one dollar. His son backed up the farmer’s statement and the Irish helper declared that he was sorry to disagree with me, but I was mistaken; it was two dollars I had said. They little knew the sort of men they had to deal with. “Where are the cattle?” Ford asked, and we went down to the pasture where they were penned. “Count them, Harris,” said Ford, and I counted six hundred and twenty head. Fifty odd had disappeared, but the farmer wanted to persuade me that I had counted wrongly. Ford went about and soon found a rough lean-to stable where there were thirty more head of Texan cattle. These were driven up and soon disappeared in the herd; Reece and I began to move the herd towards the entrance. The farmer declared he would not let us go, but Ford looked at him a little while and then said very quietly, “You have stolen enough cattle to pay you. If you bother with us, I will make meat of you—see!—cold meat”, and the farmer moved aside and kept quiet. That night we had a great feast and the day after Ford announced that he had sold the whole of the cattle to two hotel proprietors and got nearly as much money as if we had not lost a hoof. My five thousand dollars became six thousand, five hundred. The courage shown by the common people in the fire, the wild humor coupled with the consideration for the women, had won my heart. This is the greatest people in the world, I said to myself, and was proud to feel at one with them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ON THE TRAIL! Chapter VIII. Prompted by Dell, before leaving Chicago I bought some books for the winter evenings, notably Mill’s “Political Economy”; Carlyle’s “Heroes and Hero Worship” and “Latter Day Pamphlets”; Col. Hay’s “Dialect Poems”, too and three medical books, and took them down with me to the ranch. We had six weeks of fine weather, during which I broke in horses under Reece’s supervision, and found out that gentleness and especially carrots and pieces of sugar were the direct way to the heart of the horse; discovered, too, that a horse’s bad temper and obstinacy were nearly always due to fear. A remark of Dell that a horse’s eye had a magnifying power and that the poor, timid creatures saw men as trees walking, gave me the clue and soon I was gratified by Reece saying that I could “gentle” horses as well as anyone on the ranch, excepting Bob.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  An old mulatto woman kept our offices tidy and clean for a few dollars monthly from each of us, and one night I was awakened by her groans and cries: she lived in a garret up two flights of stairs and was evidently suffering from indigestion and very much frightened, as colored folk are apt to be when anything ails them: “I’m gwine to die!” she told me a dozen times. I treated her with whisky and warm water, heated on my little gas-heater and sat with her till at length she fell asleep. She declared next day I had saved her life and she’d never forget it “Nebber, fo sure!” I laughed at her and forgot all about it. Every afternoon I went over to Liberty Hall for an hour or so to keep in touch with events, though I left the main work to Will Thompson. One day I was delighted to find that Bret Harte was coming to lecture for us: his subject “The Argonauts of ’49”: I got some of his books from the bookstore kept by a lame man named Crew, I think, on Massachusetts Street, and read him carefully. His poetry did not make much impression on me, mere verse, I thought it; but “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” and other stories seemed to me almost masterpieces in spite of their romantic coloring and tinge of melodrama. Especially the description of Oakhurst, the gambler, stuck in my mind: it will be remembered that when crossing the “divide”, Oakhurst advised the party of outcasts to keep on travelling till they reached a place of safety. But he did not press his point: he decided it was hopeless and then came Bret Harte’s extraordinary painting phrase: “life to Oakhurst was at best an uncertain sort of game and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the dealer.” There is more humor and insight in the one sentence than in all the ridiculously overpraised works of Mark Twain. One afternoon I was alone in the box-office of Liberty Hall when Rose came in, as pretty as ever. I was delighted to renew our acquaintance and more delighted still to find that she would like tickets for Bret Harte’s lecture. “I didn’t know that you cared for reading, Rose?” I said, a little surprised. “Professor Smith and you would make anybody read,” she cried, “at any rate you started me.” I gave her the tickets and engaged to take her for a buggy-ride next day. I felt sure Rose liked me; but she soon surprised me by showing a stronger virtue than I usually encountered. She kissed me when I asked her in the buggy but told me at the same time that she didn’t care much for kissing: “all men”, she said, “are after a girl for the same thing; it’s sickening; they all want kisses and try to touch you and say they love you; but they can’t love and I don’t want their kisses.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  A day or two afterwards we had made friends and a little later, Reece got me measured for two pairs of cord-breeches and had promised to teach me how to ride. They were cowpunchers, he said, with his strong English accent and were going down to the Rio Grande to buy cattle and drive ’em back to market here or in Kansas City. Cattle, it appeared, could be bought in South Texas for a dollar a head or less and fetched from fifteen to twenty dollars each in Chicago. “Of course we don’t always get through unscathed” Reece remarked, “The Plain Indians—Cherokees, Blackfeet and Sioux—take care of that; but one herd in two gets through and that pays big.” I found they had brought up a thousand head of cattle from their ranch near Eureka, Kansas and a couple of hundred head of horses. To cut a long story short, Reece fascinated me: he told me that Chihuahua was the Mexican province just across the Rio Grande from Texas and at once, I resolved to go on the Trail with these cowpunchers if they’d take me. In two or three days Reece told me I shaped better at riding than anyone he had ever seen, though, he added “when I saw your thick short legs I thought you’d never make much of a hand at it.” But I was strong and had grown nearly six inches in my year in the States and I turned in my toes as Reece directed and hung on to the English saddle by the grip of my knees till I was both tired and sore. In a fortnight Reece made me put five cent pieces between my knees and the saddle and keep them there when galloping or trotting. This practice soon made a rider of me so far as the seat was concerned and I had already learned that Reece was a past-master in the deeper mysteries of the art for he told me he used to ride colts in the hunting field in England and “that’s how you learn to know horses” he added significantly. One day I found out that Dell knew some poetry, literature too, and economics and that won me completely; when I asked them would they take me with them as a cowboy, they told me I’d have to ask the Boss, but there was no doubt he’d consent, and he consented, after one sharp glance.