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 Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  She preferred a gentler portrait of my father. She would tell the story of when he arrived to accept his Phi Beta Kappa key in his favorite outfit—jeans and an old knit shirt with a leopard-print pattern. “Nobody told him it was this big honor, so he walked in and found everyone standing around this elegant room dressed in tuxedos. The only time I ever saw him embarrassed.” And Gramps, suddenly thoughtful, would start nodding to himself “It’s a fact, Bar,” he would say. “Your dad could handle just about any situation, and that made everybody like him. Remember the time he had to sing at the International Music Festival? He’d agreed to sing some African songs, but when he arrived it turned out to be this big to-do, and the woman who performed just before him was a semi-professional singer, a Hawaiian gal with a full band to back her up. Anyone else would have stopped right there, you know, and explained that there had been a mistake. But not Barack. He got up and started singing in front of this big crowd—which is no easy feat, let me tell you—and he wasn’t great, but he was so sure of himself that before you knew it he was getting as much applause as anybody.” My grandfather would shake his head and get out of his chair to flip on the TV set. “Now there’s something you can learn from your dad,” he would tell me. “Confidence. The secret to a man’s success.” That’s how all the stories went—compact, apocryphal, told in rapid succession in the course of one evening, then packed away for months, sometimes years, in my family’s memory. Like the few photographs of my father that remained in the house, old black-and-white studio prints that I might run across while rummaging through the closets in search of Christmas ornaments or an old snorkle set. At the point where my own memories begin, my mother had already begun a courtship with the man who would become her second husband, and I sensed without explanation why the photographs had to be stored away. But once in a while, sitting on the floor with my mother, the smell of dust and mothballs rising from the crumbling album, I would stare at my father’s likeness—the dark laughing face, the prominent forehead and thick glasses that made him appear older than his years—and listen as the events of his life tumbled into a single narrative.

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

  ORIGEN. Jesus frequently went down with His disciples, for He is not always dwelling on the mount, for they who were troubled with various diseases were not able to ascend the mount. For this reason now also He went down to them who were below. It follows: And he was subject to them, &c. GREEK EXPOSITOR. (ubi sup.) Sometimes by His word He first institutes laws, and He afterwards confirms them by His work, as when He says, The good shepherd layeth down his life for his sheep. (John 10:11) For shortly after seeking our salvation He poured out His own life. But sometimes He first sets forth in Himself an example, and afterwards, as far as words can go, draws therefrom rules of life, as He does here, shewing forth by His work these three things above the rest, the love of God, honour to parents, but the preferring God also to our parents. For when He was blamed by His parents, He counts all other things of less moment than those which belong to God; again, He gives His obedience also to His parents. BEDE. For what is the teacher of virtue, unless he fulfil his duty to his parents? What else did He do among us, than what He wished should be done by us? ORIGEN. Let us then also ourselves be subject to our parents. But if our fathers are not, let us be subject to those who are our fathers. Jesus the Son of God is subject to Joseph and Mary. But I must be subject to the Bishop who has been constituted my father. It seems that Joseph knew that Jesus was greater than he, and therefore in awe moderated his authority. But let every one see, that oftentimes he who is subject is the greater. Which if they who are higher in dignity understand, they will not be clated with pride, knowing that their superior is subject to them. GREGORY OF NYSSA. (Orat. in 1 Cor. 15:28.) Further, since the young have not yet perfect understanding, and have need to be led forward by those who have advanced to a more perfect state; therefore when He arrived at twelve years, He is obedient to His parents, to shew that whatever is made perfect by moving forward, before that it arrives at the end profitably embraces obedience, (as leading to good.) BASIL. (in Const. Mon. 4.) But from His very first years being obedient to His parents, He endured all bodily labours, humbly and reverently. For since His parents were honest and just, yet at the same time poor, and ill supplied with the necessaries of life, (as the stable which administered to the holy birth bears witness,) it is plain that they continually underwent bodily fatigue in providing for their daily wants. But Jesus being obedient to them, as the Scriptures testify, even in sustaining labours, submitted Himself to a complete subjection.

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

  AMBROSE. And can you wonder if He who is subject to His mother, also submits to His Father? Surely that subjection is a mark not of weakness but of filial duty. Let then the heretic so raise his head as to assert that He who is sent has need of other help; yet why should He need human help, in obeying His mother’s authority? He was obedient to a handmaid, He was obedient to His pretended father, and do you wonder whether He obeyed God? Or is it a mark of duty to obey man, of weakness to obey God? BEDE. The Virgin, whether she understood or whether she could not yet understand, equally laid up all things in her heart for reflection and diligent examination. Hence it follows, And his mother laid up all these things, &c. Mark the wisest of mothers, Mary the mother of true wisdom, becomes the scholar or disciple of the Child. For she yielded to Him not as to a boy, nor as to a man, but as unto God. Further, she pondered upon both His divine words and works, so that nothing that was said or done by Him was lost upon her, but as the Word itself was before in her womb, so now she conceived the ways and words of the same, and in a manner nursed them in her heart. And while indeed she thought upon one thing at the time, another she wanted to be more clearly revealed to her; and this was her constant rule and law through her whole life. It follows, And Jesus increased in wisdom. THEOPHYLACT. Not that He became wise by making progress, but that by degrees He revealed His wisdom. As it was when He disputed with the Scribes, asking them questions of their law to the astonishment of all who heard Him. You see then how He increased in wisdom, in that He became known to many, and caused them to wonder, for the shewing forth of His wisdom is His increase. But mark how the Evangelist, having interpreted what it is to increase in wisdom, adds, and in stature, declaring thereby that an increase or growth in age is an increase in wisdom.

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

  Again, we must bear in mind that a thing is called great in two ways: first, in an absolute quantity, and thus the gift of glory is greater than the gift of grace that sanctifies the ungodly; and in this respect the glorification of the just is greater than the justification of the ungodly. Secondly, a thing may be said to be great in proportionate quantity, and thus the gift of grace that justifies the ungodly is greater than the gift of glory that beatifies the just, for the gift of grace exceeds the worthiness of the ungodly, who are worthy of punishment, more than the gift of glory exceeds the worthiness of the just, who by the fact of their justification are worthy of glory. Hence Augustine says: “Let him that can, judge whether it is greater to create the angels just, than to justify the ungodly. Certainly, if they both betoken equal power, one betokens greater mercy.” And thus the reply to the first is clear. Reply to Objection 2: The good of the universe is greater than the particular good of one, if we consider both in the same genus. But the good of grace in one is greater than the good of nature in the whole universe. Reply to Objection 3: This objection rests on the manner of acting, in which way creation is God’s greatest work. Whether the justification of the ungodly is a miraculous work?Objection 1: It would seem that the justification of the ungodly is a miraculous work. For miraculous works are greater than non-miraculous. Now the justification of the ungodly is greater than the other miraculous works, as is clear from the quotation from Augustine [2238](A[9]). Hence the justification of the ungodly is a miraculous work. Objection 2: Further, the movement of the will in the soul is like the natural inclination in natural things. But when God works in natural things against their inclination of their nature, it is a miraculous work, as when He gave sight to the blind or raised the dead. Now the will of the ungodly is bent on evil. Hence, since God in justifying a man moves him to good, it would seem that the justification of the ungodly is miraculous. Objection 3: Further, as wisdom is a gift of God, so also is justice. Now it is miraculous that anyone should suddenly obtain wisdom from God without study. Therefore it is miraculous that the ungodly should be justified by God. On the contrary, Miraculous works are beyond natural power. Now the justification of the ungodly is not beyond natural power; for Augustine says (De Praed. Sanct. v) that “to be capable of having faith and to be capable of having charity belongs to man’s nature; but to have faith and charity belongs to the grace of the faithful.” Therefore the justification of the ungodly is not miraculous.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Considering the ways in which otherwise respectable, educated, middle-class, liberal Black women refigure the terrain of Black gender, Black militancy, and Black queerness, this work augments a growing body of scholarship that locates Black radicalism in the work of Black women labor activists.55 The story of serious Black women’s intellectual thought is not solely the province of Black women on the radical left. While elevating the stories of radical left Black women demonstrates the pitfalls of focusing on respectable racial elites like many of the women under consideration in this book, again, our contemporary commitment to rejecting the ideology of middle-class respectability should not foreclose our engagement with significant sites of Black women’s knowledge production in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A Procession of ChaptersIn chapter one, I expand the intellectual geography I am mapping in Beyond Respectability by examining the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) as a site of Black female knowledge production. In particular, I use the work of Fannie Barrier Williams, a Chicago-based clubwoman, to map many of the key intellectual interventions of the NACW as a school of social thought. Drawing on Williams’s theorization of what she calls organized anxiety, I take up and critically examine her claim that the NACW was responsible for creating “race public opinion” and, by extension, giving shape and form to an emergent Black public sphere. As a concept, organized anxiety politicizes the emotional lives of Black women and constitutes one more iteration of the ways that race women invoked embodied discourse in their public intellectual work. I also examine her invocation of a discourse that I term American peculiarity, a kind of oppositional discourse challenging claims of American exceptionalism. Finally, I interrogate her concept of racial sociality, a sophisticated way to think about ideas of racial unity and social connections between African Americans of different geographic and class backgrounds. Williams was a formidable political theorist, who, through her work in the NACW, introduced a rich conceptual milieu through which to think about Black politics, Black organizations, and gender politics in the late nineteenth century.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  Pindar speaks of ‘the light of noble (kalos) deeds unquenchable for ever’ (Isthm. 4.42). Xenophon speaks of Socrates as a pattern of nobleness (kalos) (Xenophon, Symposium 8.17). Virtue, he says, brings honour (kalos) to you, and good to the state (Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.5.28). Plato uses it to describe the good conduct in a boy which is a credit to the city of Athens where he is brought up (Plato, Symposium 183d). Socrates, Xenophon says, discussed what is godly, what is ungodly; what is beautiful (kalos), and what is ugly (Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.1.16). Chrysippus the Stoic held that all that is good is beautiful (Diogenes Laertius, 7.101). Kalos describes the beauty which lies in the deed which is honourable and fine. We may best of all see the meaning of kalos, if we contrast it with agathos which is the common Greek word for good. Agathos is that which is practically and morally good; kalos is that which is not only practically and morally good, but that which is also aesthetically good, which is lovely and pleasing to the eye. Hort, commenting on James 2.7, says: ‘Kalos is what is good as seen, as making a direct impression on those who come in contact with it—not only good in result, which would be agathos.’ In the creation story when God looked at the world which he had made, he saw that it was good (Gen. 1.8), and kalos is the word which is used. When a thing or a person is agathos, it or he is good in the moral and practical sense of the term, and in the result of its or his activity; but kalos adds to the idea of goodness the idea of beauty, of loveliness, of graciousness, of winsomeness. Agathos appeals to the moral sense; but kalos appeals also to the eye. Aristotle defines nobility (to kalon) as that which is agreeable or desirable in itself (Rhetoric 1364b 27). He describes it as being at one and the same time agreeable in itself and worthy of praise, as being good and pleasant (ibid. 1366a 33). Latin translates this word kalos by the word honestus; and Cicero defines that which is honestus as being ‘such that, even if its utility is taken away, and even if any rewards and fruits which come from it are removed, it can still be praised for its own sake’ (De Fin. 2.45). Tacitus describes the quality in honestus as ‘that quality which makes a man worthy of praise, even if you strip him of everything else’ (Histories 4.5). In anything that is kalos or honestus there is an innate and indestructible loveliness and attraction.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Compassion, therefore, was inseparable from humanity; instead of being motivated by self-interest, a truly humane person was consistently oriented toward others. The disciplined practice of shu took you into a dimension of experience that was transcendent because it went beyond the egotism that characterizes most human transactions. The Buddha (c. 470–390 BCE) would have agreed.6 He claimed to have discovered a realm of sacred peace within himself that he called nirvana (“blowing out”), because the passions, desires, and selfishness that had hitherto held him in thrall had been extinguished like a flame. Nirvana, he claimed, was an entirely natural state and could be achieved by anybody who put his regimen into practice. One of its central disciplines was a meditation on four elements of the “immeasurable” love that exists within everyone and everything: maitri (“loving kindness”), the desire to bring happiness to all sentient beings; karuna (“compassion”), the resolve to liberate all creatures from their pain; mudita (“sympathetic joy”), which takes delight in the happiness of others; and finally upeksha (“even-mindedness”), an equanimity that enables us to love all beings equally and impartially. These traditions, therefore, agree that compassion is natural to human beings, that it is the fulfillment of human nature, and that in calling us to set ego aside in a consistently empathetic consideration of others, it can introduce us to a dimension of existence that transcends our normal self-bound state. Later, as we shall see, the three monotheistic religions would arrive at similar conclusions, and the fact that this ideal surfaced in all these faiths independently suggests that it reflects something essential to the structure of our humanity. Compassion is something that we recognize and admire; it has resonated with human beings throughout history, and when we encounter a truly compassionate man or woman we feel enhanced. The names of the Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry (1780–1845), Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), the hospital reformer, and Dorothy Day (1897–1980), founder of the Catholic Worker movement, have all become bywords for heroic philanthropy. Despite the fact that they were women in an aggressively male society, all three succeeded in making the compassionate ideal a practical, effective, and enduring force in a world that was in danger of forgetting it. The immense public veneration of Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–68), Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama shows that people are hungry for a more compassionate and principled form of leadership. On a different level, the popular cult of the late Diana, Princess of Wales and the extravagant displays of grief after her death in 1997 suggest that, despite her personal difficulties, her warm, hands-on approach was experienced as a welcome contrast to the more distant and impersonal manner of other public figures.

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

  II. On the second head it is to be noted, that the Prophet treats of five things which relate to the dignity of Christ. (1) He commends Him from His fairness. (2) From the power of His strength. These two qualities are included in the name of David, which signifies that which is desirable to the sight, and which is strong of arm. Now, Christ was desirable to the sight, on account of His exceeding beauty: “Thou art fairer than the children of men,” Ps. 45:2. “Which things the angels desire to look into,” 1 Peter 1:12. Christ was also strong of arm, on account of His admirable fortitude. S. Augustine speaks of Him as being bound in hand, and fixed to the Cross, and yet having made war against the power of the air. “If I speak of strength, lo, He is strong,” Job. 9:19. (3) He commends Him on account of His innate holiness: “A righteous Branch,” i.e., in conception, because He is alone without sin. “Therefore, also, that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God,” S. Luke 1:35. (4) From His regal dignity: “A King shall reign.” “For He is Lord of Lords, and King of Kings,” Rev. 17:14. (5) From the brightness of His wisdom: “And shall be wise,” Vulg. “In Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” Colos. 2:3. III. On the third head it is to be noted, that Christ came into the world that He might judge and reward us, or, as it is here expressed, to “execute justice and judgment in the earth.” (1) Judgment in condemning the unbelieving: “He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the Name of the Only Begotten Son of God,” S. John 3:18. (2) In justifying and loving those who believe: “God so loved the world, that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved,” S. John 3:16, 17. We ought to believe in Him by faith, which guides us, and operates in us for our salvation. We ought to fly from sin, lest we be condemned: “He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned,” S. Mark 16:16. From which condemnation may He deliver us, &c. HOMILY L THE COMING ONE TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.—(FROM THE GOSPEL)“Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world.”—S. John 6:14.

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

  I answer that, In miraculous works it is usual to find three things: the first is on the part of the active power, because they can only be performed by Divine power; and they are simply wondrous, since their cause is hidden, as stated above ([2239]FP, Q[105], A[7]). And thus both the justification of the ungodly and the creation of the world, and, generally speaking, every work that can be done by God alone, is miraculous. Secondly, in certain miraculous works it is found that the form introduced is beyond the natural power of such matter, as in the resurrection of the dead, life is above the natural power of such a body. And thus the justification of the ungodly is not miraculous, because the soul is naturally capable of grace; since from its having been made to the likeness of God, it is fit to receive God by grace, as Augustine says, in the above quotation. Thirdly, in miraculous works something is found besides the usual and customary order of causing an effect, as when a sick man suddenly and beyond the wonted course of healing by nature or art, receives perfect health; and thus the justification of the ungodly is sometimes miraculous and sometimes not. For the common and wonted course of justification is that God moves the soul interiorly and that man is converted to God, first by an imperfect conversion, that it may afterwards become perfect; because “charity begun merits increase, and when increased merits perfection,” as Augustine says (In Epist. Joan. Tract. v). Yet God sometimes moves the soul so vehemently that it reaches the perfection of justice at once, as took place in the conversion of Paul, which was accompanied at the same time by a miraculous external prostration. Hence the conversion of Paul is commemorated in the Church as miraculous. Reply to Objection 1: Certain miraculous works, although they are less than the justification of the ungodly, as regards the good caused, are beyond the wonted order of such effects, and thus have more of the nature of a miracle. Reply to Objection 2: It is not a miraculous work, whenever a natural thing is moved contrary to its inclination, otherwise it would be miraculous for water to be heated, or for a stone to be thrown upwards; but only whenever this takes place beyond the order of the proper cause, which naturally does this. Now no other cause save God can justify the ungodly, even as nothing save fire can heat water. Hence the justification of the ungodly by God is not miraculous in this respect. Reply to Objection 3: A man naturally acquires wisdom and knowledge from God by his own talent and study. Hence it is miraculous when a man is made wise or learned outside this order. But a man does not naturally acquire justifying grace by his own action, but by God’s. Hence there is no parity.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  Kalos is used not only of persons; it can describe any thing which is handsome and fair. Homer uses it of a great and goodly court in a splendid house (Odyssey 14.7). He uses it of a beautifully wrought shield (Iliad 11.33); of the fair cloak and tunic which Circe brought to Odysseus (Odyssey 10.365); or a robe made for the goddess Athene, fairest in its broiderings (Iliad 6.224); of a fair tract of orchard land (Iliad 12.314). Wherever this word is found there is the idea of loveliness, of attractiveness, of graciousness, of that which delights the heart and gives pleasure to the eyes. Further, kalos is the adjective which implies love and admiration. Her citizens who loved her called Athens the Beautiful (kalos). Aristophanes tells how Sitalces, as a lover would, writes on the walls of the city: ‘Athens is beautiful’ (Acharnians 144). Pindar speaks of ‘inglorious old age reft of all share of blessings’ (Olymp. 1.84). Xenophon tells how Croesus promised the Lydians, when he became king, that whatever fair possession man or woman had would come to them (Xenophon, Cyropcedia 7.2.13). Herodotus uses kalos in an interesting way. Speaking of the essential modesty which should characterize life, he says: ‘Men have long ago made wise (kalos) rules for our learning’ (Herodotus, 1.8). He says that, compared with the Persians, the barbarous Massagetae have no experience of the gracious (kalos) things of life (Herodotus, 1.207). Kalos describes the things which make life gracious and lovely and good to live. Still further, although kalos has this essential idea of beauty, it also has the idea of usefulness. The beauty which kalos describes is not merely decorative; it is also useful to men. So Homer, describing Phæacia, says: ‘A fair (kalos) harbour lies on each side of the city’ (Odyssey 6.263). He uses it of a favourable wind. ‘They embarked and set sail from broad Crete with the North wind blowing fresh and fair (kalos)’ (Odyssey 14.299). Thucydides uses kalos to describe a well situated camp (Thucydides, 5.60). Xenophon uses kalos to describe coins which are made of genuine silver and which are not counterfeit, debased, worn or clipped (Memorabilia 3.1.9.). The Greeks often spoke of a kalos chronos, a good time, a fitting time to do something. Kalos in Greek also means beautiful and honourable in the moral sense. Homer, speaking of rapacious men, says: ‘It is not honourable (kalos) or just to rob the guests of Telemachus’ (Odyssey 20.294). When Antigone desires to bury the body of her brother Polyneices, although the giving of the last rites of love has been forbidden, and when she is warned that she will suffer for what she desires to do, her answer is: ‘Tis sweet (kalos) to me to die in such employ’ (Sophocles, Antigone 72).

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  (1) He takes the last one first. Jesus did not choose his task; God chose him for it. At his baptism, there came to Jesus the voice which said: ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you’ (Psalm 2:7). (2) Jesus has gone through the most bitter human experiences and understands what it is to be human with all its strength and weakness. The writer to the Hebrews has four great thoughts about him. (a) He remembers Jesus in Gethsemane. That is what he is thinking of when he speaks of Jesus’ prayers and entreaties, his tears and his cry. The word he uses for cry (kraugē) is very significant. It is an involuntary sound, a cry that is uttered in the stress of some tremendous tension or searing pain. So, the writer to the Hebrews says that there is no agony of the human spirit through which Jesus has not come. The Rabbis had a saying: ‘There are three kinds of prayers, each loftier than the preceding – prayer, crying and tears. Prayer is made in silence; crying with raised voice; but tears overcome all things.’ Jesus knew even the desperate prayer of tears. (b) Jesus learned from all his experiences because he met them all with reverence. The Greek phrase for ‘He learned from what he suffered’ is a linguistic jingle – emathen aph’ hōn epathen. And this is an idea which keeps recurring in the Greek thinkers. They are always connecting mathein, to learn, and pathein, to suffer. Aeschylus, the earliest of the great Greek dramatists, had as a kind of continual text: ‘Learning comes from suffering’ (pathei mathos). He calls suffering a kind of savage grace from the gods. Herodotus declared that his sufferings were acharista mathēmata, ungracious ways of learning. A traditional Irish proverb says of the poets: We learn in suffering what we teach in song. God speaks to us in many experiences of life, and not least in those which try our hearts and souls. But we can hear his voice only when we accept in reverence what comes to us. If we accept it with resentment, the rebellious cries of our own hearts make us deaf to the voice of God. (c) By means of the experiences through which he passed, both the Authorized and the Revised Standard Versions say that Jesus was made perfect (teleioun). Teleioun is the verb of the adjective teleios. Teleios can quite correctly be translated as perfect as long as we remember what the Greeks understood by that perfection. In Greek thought, a thing was teleios if it perfectly carried out the purpose for which it was designed. When people used the word, they were not thinking in terms of abstract and metaphysical perfection; they were thinking in terms of function. What the writer to the Hebrews is saying is that all the experiences of suffering through which Jesus passed perfectly fitted him to become the Saviour of the world.

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

  More recently, however, the old heresies concerning virginity and poverty have been revived by men who, while pretending to defend the truth, have gone from bad to worse, and who, not content with teaching, like Jovinian that a condition of wealth is as meritorious as voluntary poverty, or with preferring riches to poverty, as did Vigilantius, hold that poverty is to be absolutely condemned; and that it is not lawful for a man to leave all things for Christ, unless he enter an Order which possesses some common property, or can support itself by means of manual labour. They further assert that the poverty commended by the Scriptures is not that actual poverty whereby a man strips himself of all temporal possessions, but that habitual poverty which causes him to despise those earthly goods which he actually owns. We will now proceed to refute this mistaken opinion. (1st) We will prove that for evangelical perfection, not only habitual poverty is required, but, likewise that actual poverty which consists in the renunciation of material possessions. (2nd) We shall show that perfection is attained, even by those who own no common property. (3rd) We shall make it evident that manual labour is not essential to perfection, even where men possess nothing. (4th) We shall refute the arguments whereby our adversaries seek to maintain their errors. 1. In order to prove that evangelical poverty requires, not only habitual, but likewise actual poverty, we will remind our readers of the words: “If you would be perfect, go, sell all” etc. (Matt xix. 21). Now he who sells all that he has and distributes it to the poor practises not merely habitual, but likewise actual poverty. Hence actual poverty is needed for evangelical perfection. Again, evangelical perfection consists in the imitation of Christ, who was poor not only in desire, but in fact. The Gloss, on the words, “Go to the sea” (Matt. xvii.) says, “So great was the poverty of the Lord that he had not wherewith to pay the tribute money.” Again, on the words, “the foxes have holes” etc. (Luke ix.), the Gloss says: “our Lord meant to say that His poverty was so extreme that He had no shelter, and no roof to call His own.” We might adduce many other proofs that actual poverty pertains to evangelical perfection. The Apostles were mirrors of evangelical perfection. They practised actual poverty, renouncing all that they possessed. “Behold” (said St. Peter) “we have left all things” (Matt. xix. 27). Hence St. Jerome writes to Hebidia: “ Would you be perfect and attain to the highest dignity? Do as the Apostles did. Sell all that you have and give to the poor, and follow our Saviour. Alone, and stripped of all things, follow only the Cross in its bare poverty.” Hence actual poverty forms part of evangelical perfection.

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

  The Summa contra Gentiles is in the unique position of a classic whereof the author’s manuscript is still in great part extant. It is now in the Vatican Library. The manuscript consists of strips of parchment, of various shades of colour, contained in an old parchment cover to which they were originally stitched. The writing is in double columns, minute and difficult to decipher, abounding in abbreviations, often passing into a kind of shorthand. Through many passages a line is drawn in sign of erasure: but these remain not less legible than the rest, and are printed as foot notes in the Propaganda edition: they do not appear in the present translation. To my mind, these erasures furnish the best proof of the authenticity of the autograph, which is questioned by S. E. Frette, editor of Divi Thomae Opera Omnia (Vives, Paris, 1874), vol. XII, preface iv-vi. An inscription on the cover states that the manuscript is the autograph of St Thomas, and that it was brought from Naples to the Dominican convent at Bergamo in 1354: whence its name of the Bergamo autograph.’ Many leaves were lost in the sack of the convent by the armies of the first French Revolution; and the whole of Book IV is missing. The frequent erasures of the Saint himself lend some countenance to the omissions of his translator. Re-reading his manuscript in the twentieth century, St Thomas would have been not less ready than he showed himself in the thirteenth century to fulfil the Horatian precept, saepe stylum vertas. J. R. BOOK I CHAPTER I THE FUNCTION OF THE WISE MANMy mouth shall discuss truth, and my lips shall detest the ungodly (Prov. vii, 7).

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  and employed a large number of high-born linguists in its civil service. In the 860s, Michael III selected for its Slav mission two brothers, Methodius, a provincial governor, and Constantine (who called himself Cyril after he became a monk), a state philosophy teacher. They were born in Thessalonica, the sons of a staff-officer, and had previously been on diplomatic assignments. When Michael decided to switch them to missionary work, in 862, he said to them: ‘You are both natives of Thessalonica, and all Thessalonicans speak pure Slav.’ He admitted that previous attempts to create a viable Slavonic alphabet had failed, for a variety of technical reasons. Constantine-Cyril, who was an accomplished linguist and bibliophile, appears to have invented a form of written Slav in less than a year, so that when the brothers left on mission in 863 they were able to take with them selections from the gospels already translated; and in due course Constantine translated into Slavonic, according to his contemporary biographer, ‘the whole ecclesiastical office, matins, the hours, vespers, compline and the mass’. He appears to have adapted the alphabet from his local dialect of southern Macedonia, then intelligible much further north. The oldest Slavonic manuscripts are in two scripts: what are termed Glagolitic and Cyrillic. Scholars now agree that it was Glagolitic that Constantine invented; Cyrillic, called after him, was developed later, by Methodius’s disciples, probably in Bulgaria, in the attempt to adapt Greek uncial writing of the ninth century to the phonetic peculiarities of Slavonic speech. Glagolitic is more complicated, and may have been developed from Greek minuscule script, plus adaptations from Semitic and perhaps Coptic. It was a highly distinct and original creation, entitling Constantine to rank among the great philologists. Cyrillic, except for half a dozen letters, is little more than an adaptation of the Greek alphabet; it thus had the merit of simplicity, and close connection with the script possessing the most prestige and widest range. Even today, the church-books of the Orthodox Slavs, Bulgarians, Serbs and Russians are printed in a slightly simplified form of Cyrillic, and of course their modern alphabets are based on it. (The Rumanians, too, used it until the late seventeenth century.) At the same time, the translations made by the brothers laid the foundations of a new literary language, known to modern scholars as Old Church Slavonic. After Greek and Latin, it became the third international language of Europe, the common literary idiom of Russians, Bulgarians, Serbs and Rumanians. Byzantium triumphed over Rome in most of the Slav world because it showed itself willing to compromise over the cultural issue. But the point must be made

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  The manhood of the poor was more sacred to it than the property of the rich. In this fundamental attitude the Hebrew Law differs widely from the Roman Law, which was formulated in a despotic State and amidst a flagrant monopoly of wealth, and is responsible for much of the excessive reverence for private property rights in our Western civilization. Some of the laws were purely ideal conceptions. The Year of Jubilee provided for a universal shake-up and a new start all around every fifty years; it was to restore the slave to liberty and the peasant to his land, and lift to the saddle again those families that had been thrown by a stumble in some gopher-hole of misfortune. We know that this beautiful scheme remained a Utopia which even post-exilic zeal for the Law managed to disregard. Other laws were set aside by the ruthlessness of the strong. Only those were likely to be really effective which were firmly based on ancient custom. But in any case these were the ideals of social life that lived in the nobler hearts of Israel, and these ideals either created the prophetic convictions, or they were the product of the prophetic preaching. We rightly hold that social ideals of such moral value could grow only out of a religious life of high value. But the reverse is also historically true: that the high religious life of Israel could develop only within a nation that cherished and maintained such social ideals. We have seen that the religion of the prophets was not the quiet devoutness of private religion. They lived in the open air of national life. Every heart-beat of their nation was registered in the pulse-throb of the prophets. They made the history of their nation, but in turn the history of their nation made them. They looked open-eyed at the events about them and then turned to the inner voice of God to interpret what they saw. They went to school with a living God who was then at work in his world, and not with a God who had acted long ago and put it down in a book. They learned religion by the laboratory method of studying contemporary life. Consequently their conception of God and of God’s purposes was enlarged and clarified as their political horizon grew wider and clearer. The first rise of widespread prophetism of which we have any record in Israel was historically connected with the raids and invasions of the Philistines (about 1020 b.c. ). Against their united and disciplined forces the scattered tribes were helpless. The national calamity created a religious revival. We catch glimpses of bands of prophets moving about in rhythmical processions, with music and song, spreading a contagious religious ecstasy. In Samuel the popular emotion found a practical, statesmanlike expression. The result was the election of the first king, the most important step toward organized national unity.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Explicitly throwing off the parochial dictates of the cult of true womanhood, Hopkins argued for a more expansive intellectual vision for the true race woman. An explicitly Black woman–centered formulation of race womanhood became necessary because existing ideas about public and private did not accurately demarcate the social terms of Black womanhood. Unsurprisingly, the public was historically considered a male domain, in stark contrast to the private, domestic “woman’s sphere.” And even these ideas about a woman’s or domestic sphere were deeply racialized, so that “private and domestic” was a stand-in for “white womanhood.” Jean Bethke Elshtain defines the public as “the opposite of private,” and as that which “pertains to the people as a whole, to community, or nation-wide concerns, to the common good, to things open in sight, and to those things that may be used or shared by all members of the community.”12 Political theorist Mary Hawkesworth concludes that “because only some men—men of a specific race, class, education, and ancestry—are positioned to represent the public, the ‘public’ is a raced, classed, and gendered concept.13 Thus, when Black women advocated for opportunities to engage their thought leadership “beyond woman’s sphere,” they were arguing explicitly for the right to do intellectual work in public space. Lucy Craft Laney, a Georgia school educator and founder of the Haines Institute in Augusta, argued a similar position for an expanded public role for Black women in an 1899 speech: The educated Negro woman, the woman of character and culture, is needed in the schoolroom not only in the kindergarten, and in the primary and the secondary school; but she is needed in high school, the academy, and the college. Only those of character and culture can do successful lifting, for she who would mould character must herself possess it. Not alone in the schoolroom can the intelligent woman lend a lifting hand, but as a public lecturer she may give advice, helpful suggestions, and important knowledge that will change a whole community and start its people on the upward way. To be convinced of the good that can be done for humanity by this means one need only recall the names of Lucy Stone, Mary Livermore, Frances Harper, Frances Willard and Julie Ward Howe. The refined and noble Negro woman may lift much with this lever.14

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  (vi) Sometimes this call will come to men through men. Paul tells the Thessalonians that ‘their call’ came through ‘his gospel’ (II Thess. 2.14). It is the great glory of the Christian that he can, if he will, transmit to others the call that he has himself heard. The Christian—and that does not mean only the preacher—can be the bearer of God’s invitation to glory to his fellow-men. We may finally note that twice this word kalein is used of Jesus. (i) It is used of ‘the call of the disciples’ (Matt. 4.21). (ii) It is used of ‘the call to repentance’ (Luke 5.32). Jesus calls men to fellowship with himself and to a life which is a new life. The Christian is called to be Christ’s friend and is therefore called to be a new man. The two things go together. The Christian life is at one and the same time an invitation to privilege, to responsibility and to glory. And at the back of it there remains the haunting thought that the tragedy of life is to refuse the invitation of God. KALOSTHE WORD OF WINSOMENESSKalos is a characteristic NT word to describe a characteristic quality of the Christian life. In the NT kalos occurs no fewer than 100 times. Usually in the AV it is simply translated good, although occasionally it is translated honest (e.g., Rom. 12.17; II Cor. 8.21). Honest in this connexion does not primarily mean telling the truth; it is used in the Latin sense of honestus, which means, handsome, gracious, fair to look upon. In classical Greek kalos is one of the noblest of words; and all through its history it never loses a certain splendour. Originally it referred to beauty of form. It could be applied to any person who was lovely or to any thing that was beautiful. Candaules believed his queen to be the fairest (kallistē, the superlative) of all women (Herodotus, 1.8). In Homer Nireus is the comeliest (kallistos) man of all the Greeks who came to Troy (Iliad 2.673). Athene the goddess appeared to Odysseus in the form of a woman beautiful and tall (Odyssey 13.289). When kalos describes persons in Homer it very often appears in company with megas, which means tall. There is stateliness in the beauty which kalos describes. Xenophon describes Cyrus as most handsome (kallistos) in person, most generous in heart (Xenophon, Cyropœdia 1.2.1). In the Memorabilia Xenophon tells how Critobulus tells Socrates that he desires the skill to win a good soul and a fair (kalos) face (Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.6.30). Kalos is used of any part of the body which is fair and shapely. Homer describes Menelaus with his shapely (kalos) legs and ankles stained with blood in the battle (Iliad 4.147); he speaks of the fair (kalos) flesh of Aphrodite the goddess of love (Iliad 5.354).

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  E’s narrative of the patriarchs, however, never mentioned the covenant with Abraham, and gave more prominence to Jacob, his grandson, whom God renamed “Israel.” But of even greater importance to E was the story of the exodus, in which the little-known god Yahweh had defeated Egypt, the greatest power in the region. It showed that it was possible for a marginal people to overcome oppression and break out of obscurity, as the little kingdom of Israel had become a major power in the Near East during the ninth century.25 For E, Moses was the prophet par excellence. It was he, not Abraham who turned history around. J was sometimes quite critical of Moses,26 while E was filled with sympathy for his hero during the long march through the wilderness to the Promised Land. When Yahweh’s anger flared out against his people, E poignantly described Moses’ anguish: “Why do you treat your servant so badly?” he demanded of his god. “I am not able to carry this nation by myself alone. The weight is too much for me. If this is how you want to deal with me, I would rather you killed me! If only I had found favour in your eyes, and not lived to see such misery as this!”27 There is nothing similar to this in J’s portrait of Moses. Neither J nor E presented Moses as a great lawgiver. When they described the covenant on Mount Sinai, they did not even mention the Ten Commandments. J has no legislation at all in his narrative, while E included only a collection of ninth-century laws—often called the Covenant Code —which stressed the importance of justice to the poor and weak.28 Law had not yet become numinous in Israel and Judah. Sinai was significant to J and E because Moses and the elders had seen Yahweh there. They described them climbing to the summit to meet their god. “They saw the God of Israel beneath whose feet there was, it seemed, a sapphire pavement pure as the heavens themselves. . . . They gazed on God. They ate and drank.”29 This is the oldest account of the Sinai apparition, and may reflect an ancient liturgical reenactment of the theophany, which had included a communion banquet.30

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Josiah was crucial to the Deuteronomists. They revered him as a new Moses and believed that he was a greater king than David.122 Besides reforming the law, the Deuteronomists also rewrote the history of Israel, which, they believed, had culminated in the reign of Josiah. First, they edited the earlier J and E narratives, adapting them to seventh-century conditions.123 They made no additions to the stories about the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who did not interest them, but concentrated on Moses—who had liberated his people from slavery in Egypt—at a time when Josiah was hoping to become independent of the pharaoh. Next, they extended the chronicle of the exodus to include the book of Joshua and the story of his conquest of the northern highlands. The Deuteronomist historians saw the time of Joshua as a golden age, when the people were truly devoted to Yahweh,124 and were convinced that Israel was about to embark on another glorious era. Like Moses, Josiah would shake off the yoke of Pharaoh; like Joshua, he would conquer the territories vacated by Assyria, and restore the true faith of Yahweh. Finally, in the books of Samuel and Kings, the Deuteronomists wrote a history of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, which strongly condemned the northern kingdom and argued that the Davidic kings of Judah were the rightful rulers of the whole of Israel. The Deuteronomic corpus thus gave powerful endorsement to Josiah’s religious and political programs. But this was not cheap propaganda. The Deuteronomists were learned men and their achievement was remarkable. They drew on earlier materials—old royal archives, law codes, sagas, and liturgical texts—to create an entirely new vision, making the ancient traditions speak to the new circumstances of Israel under Josiah. In some ways, Deuteronomy reads like a modern document. Its vision of a secular sphere, an independent judiciary, a constitutional monarchy, and a centralized state look forward to our own day. The Deuteronomists also developed a much more rational theology, discounting much ancient myth.125 God did not come down from heaven to speak to Moses on Mount Sinai; you could not actually see God, as some of the Israelites believed, nor could you manipulate him by offering sacrifice. God certainly did not live in the temple: the authors put a long prayer on the lips of Solomon after his dedication of the temple, which made it clear that the shrine was simply a house of prayer, not a link between heaven and earth. “Can God really live with man on earth?” Solomon asked incredulously. “Why the heavens and their own heaven cannot contain you—how much less this house that I have built!”126 Israel did not own its land because Yahweh had chosen to dwell on Mount Zion, as the old mythology had claimed, but because the people observed Yahweh’s statutes and worshiped him exclusively.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  He saw me looking at it. “Yea. This brotha got dick control. You betta believe it!” he told me as I put my clothes back on quickly. As Life opened my boss’s office door to leave, I still couldn’t speak. I wanted to ask him if he wanted a paper towel to clean his face, but he didn’t seem to care that my juices were still wet on his skin. I was so turned on by Life’s rugged sex appeal that I’d forgotten all about betraying crazy Smooth. “You real sweet, boo,” Life told me before going out the door. “But there are two kinds of thugs on these streets. Thugs like Smooth who are selfish and grimy, and thugs like me who are just rough around the edges. If you get tired of Smooth controlling your every move, you know how to get at me. I would never hurt you. I only want to make you feel good,” Life wiped his face with his hands. As he stood holding the door open I caught a peek of my boss walking into the main foyer. I ran over and shoved an empty FedEx box in Life’s hands and tried to pass him off as someone I’d called to pick up a package. I watched Life walk past my boss, wishing he’d move a helluva lot faster, but being the man he was, he maintained his normal swagger. “Good morning,” I said when my boss walked into his office. “I was just getting a few things organized in your office—I hope you don’t mind. You told me to give you a reason to consider giving me that raise,” I teased. “I’d say you just earned it for giving me that award-winning performance,” he laughed, then cleared his throat. “I came in early today. I was in the restroom when you and your thug friend arrived. You closed the door but you didn’t lock it, Yani. The only thing I was missing was a jar of Vaseline and a bag of popcorn.” I looked down at the bulge in his pants and said, “Well, Daddy, I guess today it was my turn to put on a show for once, not yours. And since you peeped all my action, I’m sure you could tell that my thug baby was giving me the time of my life.” PRETTY MF Gerald K. Malcom He dug her out. She screamed like someone was committing a murder. His back, full of sweat, housed her hands. Then her fingers. Then her nails. Then her pleasure. He dug her out. It was that grimy dick he gave her that impressed. It was the way he reached for the sky and came slamming down into her. It was that R&B dick that dug and swirled and stopped and posed and dug again, pressing against her clit. He eased out with a slick grin. She screamed pieces of his name in between obscenities.