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.

Page 54 of 288 · 20 per page

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He was an impressive, rather than a handsome, man, but for all his flash and his speeches, rather homely: I thought he must have a little wife who loved him, and a baby; and that if he did not - which, in fact, was the case - that he should have. I knew nothing, then, of his history, but learned later that he came from an old, respectable, theatrical family (his real name was no more Bliss, of course, than Kitty’s was Butler); that he had left the legitimate stage when he was still a young man, in order to work the halls as a comic singer; and that he managed, now, a dozen artistes, but still, on occasion, took a turn before the footlights - as ‘Walter Waters, Character Baritone’ - for sheer love of the profession. I knew none of this that day in the brougham - but I began to guess a little of it. For we had reached Pall Mall and turned into the Haymarket, where the theatres and the music halls begin; and as we rumbled past them he raised his hand and tilted the brim of his hat in a kind of salute. I have seen old Irishwomen, passing before a church, do something similar. ‘Her Majesty’s,’ he said, nodding to a handsome building on his left: ‘my father saw Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, make her debut there. The Haymarket: managed by Mr Beerbohm Tree. The Criterion, or Cri: a marvel of a theatre, built entirely underground.’ Theatre upon theatre, hall upon hall; and he knew all their histories. ‘Ahead of us, the London Pavilion. Down there’ - we squinted along Great Windmill Street - ‘the Trocadero Palace. On our right, the Prince’s Theatre.’ We passed into Leicester Square; he took a breath. ‘And finally,’ he said - and here he removed his hat entirely, and held it in his lap - ‘finally, the Empire and the Alhambra, the handsomest music halls in England, where every artiste is a star, and the audience is so distinguished that even the gay girls in the gallery - if you’ll pardon my French, Miss Butler, Miss Astley - wear furs, and pearls, and diamonds.’ He tapped on the ceiling of the brougham, and the driver drew to a halt at a corner of the little garden in the middle of the square.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Te tomaré la palabra —digo, un poco divertido por su emoción—. Esta camioneta era de mi padre. Esas son sus cintas. Simplemente nunca llegué a sacarlas después que… falleció hace unos años. Se me ocurre que es la primera en tocar la cinta de Guns N'Roses desde que él la puso en el reproductor. Mira de nuevo a la colección. —Bueno, eso está bien, supongo —murmura—. Claramente no sabes lo que tienes aquí y estos habrían terminado en el fondo de un basurero, por el amor de Dios. Tu padre era un tipo genial. Sonrío, estoy de acuerdo. Coloca cuidadosamente la cinta Guns en su estuche y saca la cinta Def Leppard. —¿Puedo? —pregunta, haciendo un gesto hacia la casetera. Me río entre dientes y cambio de velocidad cuando salimos a la carretera. —Adelante. Escuchamos dos canciones de camino a casa, entramos al pueblo y tomamos un atajo más allá del puente del ferrocarril sobre el río a nuestra derecha. —Vaya, mira eso —dice. Bajo la velocidad y sigo su mirada hacia la derecha, por la ventanilla del lado del pasajero, y veo que el río ha aumentado considerablemente. En lugar del metro ochenta normal de espacio libre entre el puente y el agua, ahora el agua corre como una amenaza justo debajo del fondo del puente. Afortunadamente, la lluvia se ha ralentizado, por lo que no debería subir más. Piso de nuevo el acelerador, llevándonos a casa. —Eso fue divertido —comenta—. Hoy, quiero decir. Arqueó las cejas y la miro. —Quiero decir… —Parpadea, corrigiéndose—. No me refiero a que fue divertido. Quiero decir, espero que no te retrases ni pierdas dinero, pero… —Inhala y exhala, moviendo sus ojos a la ventana—. Un par de veces casi sentí que mi vida estaba en peligro. También parece estar demasiado complacida con eso, y puedo decir por su tono que está sonriendo. —¿Y eso es divertido? —cuestiono. Vuelve a mirar por el parabrisas y se encoge de hombros, la diversión tira de la esquina de su boca. Me río. —Sí, fue divertido. Gracias por ayudar. Me aseguraré de avisarte cuando la próxima tormenta esté a punto de llegar, para que puedas entrar en acción. —Genial. Continúo conduciendo por la carretera hacia nuestra tranquila ciudad, girando a la izquierda y luego a la derecha hacia mi vecindario, contento por primera vez hoy. Es una buena niña. Espero que Cole no lo arruine, porque ya puedo decir que este es el tipo de chica que sería una buena madre y que trabajaría a tu lado, construyendo una vida en lugar de dejarte seco. Y por alguna razón me agrada que haya disfrutado el día. Nadie en mi familia se interesó mucho, ni se enorgulleció, de lo que hago para ganarme la vida. Mi madre me ama, por supuesto, al igual que mi papá antes de morir, pero presionaron tanto para que fuera a la universidad, y ese fue el plan hasta que llegó Cole.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Instead, I would stick to dancing and continue plunging my toes into the beautiful, tight, shiny sheaths called pointe shoes. And there was the miracle, made manifest daily on my very own feet. Despite blistered and bloody evidence to the contrary, my feet didn’t hurt at all while ensconced in the shoes, while dancing. They only hurt when the shoes came off, when my foot was released from its satin prison. This curious experience, the ironic marriage of physical discomfort and euphoria, taught me the power of transcendence. My pink pointe shoes became my fetishistic ally, my crown of thorns, my bed of nails. I adored my toe shoes. Alongside my saint obsession, I developed a passion for reading. This passion, I came to believe, detracted from my ultimate success as a dancer by luring me from the circumscribed, nonverbal world of movement to the limitless plains of thought. The Book Phase included: Simone Weil (beyond my scope to emulate); Nietzsche (Thus Spake he to me); Henry Miller (the romance of poverty in Paris!); D. H. Lawrence (John Thomas and Lady Jane); Anaïs Nin (sexual liberation between the sheets and on the page—in Paris); Freud (incest is best—or at least inevitable); Thomas Mann (the poetic profundity of X-rays); Henry James (I am Isabel Archer, living in the wrong era, in the wrong wardrobe); Virginia Woolf (diary after diary right into the river); Erich Fromm; Eric Hoffer; Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death, every page underlined in red); and Søren Kierkegaard (seven tomes in a row, with voluminous notes on either legal pads or index cards . . . I loved Kierkegaard). These books and their revelations constituted my secret life until I was nearly twenty. Then I lost my virginity. And although my deepest interests have perhaps never changed, they immediately became irrevocably diverted to deriving answers—dancing had presented all the questions—from experience, not only books. But while all this reading and searching for external connection went on in the early morning and late at night, my deepest allegiance and dependence belonged elsewhere during the day: on the walls of the dance studio, where I could not escape my savage self. MY MIRROR, MY MASTER Ballet dancing is learned in front of a mirror. Hours and hours and hours and hours in front of a mirror. As a little girl, as a serious student, and then as a professional adult in both classes and rehearsals, I learned that every arch of the foot, every glance of the eye, every angle of the arm, every turn of the leg, every smile, every grimace, every strain is simultaneously performed and witnessed by one’s self, that nebulous entity called consciousness.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  ―le digo cuando volvemos al primer piso―. Lugares donde las personas van a pasar sus vidas y ganar sus sustentos. ―En realidad nunca lo pensé así. ―Se detiene en la parte trasera del edificio, mirando los acres de espacio vacíos más allá―. También es mi sustento de vida, supongo. Miro hacia afuera y noto el espacio al aire libre conectado a la parte trasera del edificio. Es grande, y puedo ya ver una fuente de mármol colocada al azar para una configuración posterior. ―¿Esto será un jardín? ―pregunto, notando que no hay techo―. Es una buena idea. ¿Construirás esto, también? ―Oh, no ―responde―. Una compañía de paisajismo vendrá cuando el edificio esté casi completo y se ocupará de plantar el césped, árboles, e instalar la estética. Justo lo mío. Me encanta el antes y el después, ver la transformación de un espacio al aire libre. ―Te avisaré cuando comiencen ―dice como si leyera mi mente―. Puedes venir de vez en cuando para ver el proceso. Sonrío. ―Gracias. En realidad, me gustaría eso. Además de mis profesores, nadie más sabe que en verdad disfruto ese tipo de cosas. Nuestros ojos se encuentran, y me doy cuenta que hay algo que me estoy perdiendo. No tengo mucho en común con las otras personas en mi vida, ¿no es así? Nos encerramos el uno en el otro pero solo por un momento. Un trabajador pasa, cargando leña por encima de su hombro, y Pike de repente se endereza, rompiendo el contacto conmigo y saludándolo. ―Bueno, debería… ―Muevo mi pulgar detrás de mí―. Irme, supongo. ―Sí ―responde―. También yo. Retrocedo. ―Te veo en casa. Tendré la cena lista a las cinco. Solo asiente y regresa a su trabajo. Casa. ¿No la casa? No es mi hogar, después de todo. Camino de regreso al auto y subo, sintiéndome peor que cuando llegué. ¿La cena a las cinco? Cole no sale hasta las seis. ¿De repente solo olvidé que existía? Envuelvo una toalla alrededor de mi cuerpo y recojo mi ropa sucia, el baño todavía está lleno de vapor. Abriendo la puerta, me asomo al pasillo y me aseguro que está despejado, y corro hacia mi habitación, cerrando mi puerta tras de mí. Sigo olvidando llevar ropa limpia conmigo, así puedo vestirme justo después de ducharme. Aún estoy acostumbrada a tener mi propio lugar y no me preocupaba si cruzaba el pasillo en toalla. Al menos estoy recordando ponerme un short de pijama si bajo por agua a mitad de la noche. Dudo que no muriera de vergüenza si el papá de Cole me viera en ropa interior y camiseta. Tomando mi cepillo, peino mi cabello húmedo y escojo algo para dormir. Veo un resplandor desde afuera y me acerco a las persianas, mirando a través de una grieta. Está oscuro afuera —son más de las nueve—, pero Pike sigue allí, en la entrada, trabajando en mi VW.

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

  The writings of Farel are polemical and practical tracts for the times, mostly in French.352 § 63. Peter Viret and the Reformation in Lausanne. Biographies of Viret in Beza’s Icones, in Verheiden’s Imagines et Elogia (with a list of his works, pp. 88–90), by Chenevière (1835), Jaquemot (1856), C. Schmidt (1860). References to him in Ruchat, Le Chroniqueur, Gaberel, Merle D’Aubigné, etc. Farel was aided in his evangelistic efforts chiefly by Viret and Froment, who agreed with his views, but differed from his violent method. Peter Viret, the Reformer of Lausanne, was the only native Swiss among the pioneers of Protestantism in Western Switzerland; all others were fugitive Frenchmen. He was born, 1511, at Orbe, in the Pays de Vaud, and educated for the priesthood at Paris. He acquired a considerable amount of classical and theological learning, as is evident from his writings. He passed, like Luther and Farel, through a severe mental and moral struggle for truth and peace of conscience. He renounced Romanism before he was ordained, and returned to Switzerland. He was induced by Farel in 1531 to preach at Orbe. He met with considerable success, but also with great difficulty and opposition from priests and people. He converted his parents and about two hundred persons in Orbe, to whom he administered the holy communion in 1532. He shared the labors and trials of Farel and Froment in Geneva. An attempt was made to poison them; he alone ate of the poisoned dish, but recovered, yet with a permanent injury to his health. His chief work was done at Lausanne, where he labored as pastor, teacher, and author for twenty-two years. By order of the government of Bern a public disputation was held Oct. 1 to 10, 1536.353 Viret, Farel, Calvin, Fabri, Marcourt, and Caroli were called to defend the Reformed doctrines. Several priests and monks were present, as Drogy, Mimard, Michod, Loys, Berilly, and a French physician, Claude Blancherose. A deputy of Bern presided. The discussion was conducted in French. Farel prepared ten Theses in which he asserts the supremacy of the Bible, justification by faith alone, the high-priesthood and mediatorship of Christ, spiritual worship without ceremonies and images, the sacredness of marriage, Christian freedom in the observance or non-observance of things indifferent, such as fasts and feasts. Farel and Viret were the chief speakers. The result was the introduction of the Reformation, November 1 of the same year. Viret and Pierre Caroli were appointed preachers. Viret taught at the same time in the academy founded by Bern in 1540. Caroli stayed only a short time. He was a native of France and a doctor of the Sorbonne, who had become nominally a Protestant, but envied Viret for his popularity, took offence at his sermons, and wantonly charged him, Farel, and Calvin, with Arianism. He was deposed as a slanderer, and at length returned to the Roman Church.354

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

  Oswald Myconius (1488–1552),323 a native of Luzern, an intimate friend of Zwingli, and successor of Oecolampadius, was to the Church of Basel what Bullinger was to the Church of Zürich,—a faithful preserver of the Reformed religion, but in a less difficult position and more limited sphere of usefulness. He spent his earlier life as classical teacher in Basel, Zürich, Luzern, Einsiedeln, and again in Zürich. His pupil, Thomas Plater, speaks highly of his teaching ability and success. Erasmus honored him with his friendship before he fell out with the Reformation.324 After the death of Zwingli and Oecolampadius, he moved to Basel as pastor of St. Alban (Dec. 22, 1531), and was elected Antistes or chief pastor of the Church of that city, and professor of New Testament exegesis in the university (August, 1532). He was not ordained, and had no academic degree, and refused to take one because Christ had forbidden his disciples to be called Rabbi (Matt. 23:8).325 He carried out the views of Oecolampadius on discipline, and maintained the independence of the Church in its relation to the State and the university. He had to suffer much opposition from Carlstadt, who, by his recommendation, became professor of theology in Basel (1534), and ended there his restless life (1541). He took special interest in the higher and lower schools. He showed hospitality to the numerous Protestants from France who, like Farel and Calvin, sought a temporary refuge in Basel. The English martyrologist, John Foxe, fled from the Marian persecution to Basel, finished and published there the first edition of his Book of Martyrs (1554). On the doctrine of the Eucharist, Myconius, like Calvin after him, occupied a middle ground between Zwingli and Luther. He aided Bucer in his union movement which resulted in the adoption of the Wittenberg Concordia and a temporary conciliation of Luther with the Swiss (1536). He was suspected by the Zürichers of leaning too much to the Lutheran side, but he never admitted the corporal presence and oral manducation; he simply emphasized more than Zwingli the spiritual real presence and fruition of the body and blood of Christ. He thought that Luther and Zwingli had misunderstood each other.326

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

  1. Calvin was, first of all, a theologian. He easily takes the lead among the systematic expounders of the Reformed system of Christian doctrine. He is scarcely inferior to Augustin among the fathers, or Thomas Aquinas among the schoolmen, and more methodical and symmetrical than either. Melanchthon, himself the prince of Lutheran divines and "the Preceptor of Germany," called him emphatically "the Theologian."359 Calvin’s theology is based upon a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He was the ablest exegete among the Reformers, and his commentaries rank among the very best of ancient and modern times. His theology, therefore, is biblical rather than scholastic, and has all the freshness of enthusiastic devotion to the truths of God’s Word. At the same time he was a consummate logician and dialectician. He had a rare power of clear, strong, convincing statement. He built up a body of doctrines which is called after him, and which obtained symbolical authority through some of the leading Reformed Confessions of Faith. Calvinism is one of the great dogmatic systems of the Church. It is more logical than Lutheranism and Arminianism, and as logical as Romanism. And yet neither Calvinism nor Romanism is absolutely logical. Both are happily illogical or inconsistent, at least in one crucial point: the former by denying that God is the author of sin—which limits Divine sovereignty; the latter by conceding that baptismal (i.e. regenerating or saving) grace is found outside of the Roman Church—which breaks the claim of exclusiveness.360 The Calvinistic system is popularly (though not quite correctly) identified with the Augustinian system, and shares its merit as a profound exposition of the Pauline doctrines of sin and grace, but also its fundamental defect of confining the saving grace of God and the atoning work of Christ to a small circle of the elect, and ignoring the general love of God to all mankind (John 3:16). It is a theology of Divine sovereignty rather than of Divine love; and yet the love of God in Christ is the true key to his character and works, and offers the only satisfactory solution of the dark mystery of sin. Arminianism is a reaction against scholastic Calvinism, as Rationalism is a more radical reaction against scholastic Lutheranism.361 Calvin did not grow before the public, like Luther and Melanchthon, who passed through many doctrinal changes and contradictions. He adhered to the religious views of his youth unto the end of his life.362 His Institutes came like Minerva in full panoply out of the head of Jupiter. The book was greatly enlarged and improved in form, but remained the same in substance through the several editions (the last revision is that of 1559). It threw into the shade the earlier Protestant theologies,—as Melanchthon’s Loci, and Zwingli’s Commentary on the True and False Religion,—and it has hardly been surpassed since. As a classical production of theological genius it stands on a level with Origen’s De Principiis, Augustin’s De Civitate Dei, Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, and Schleiermacher’s Der Christliche Glaube.

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

  Constantine Lascaris, who belonged to a family of high rank in the Eastern empire, gave instruction in the Greek language to Ippolita, the daughter of Francis Sforza, and later the wife of Alfonso, son of Ferdinand I. of Naples. He composed a Greek grammar for her, the first book printed in Greek, 1476. In 1470, he moved to Messina, where he established a flourishing school, and died near the close of the century. Among his pupils was Cardinal Bembo of Venice. His son, John Lascaris, 1445–1535, was employed by Lorenzo de’ Medici to collect manuscripts in Greece, and superintended the printing of Greek books in Florence. He accompanied Charles VIII. to France. In 1513, he was called by Leo X. to Rome, and opened there a Greek and Latin school. In 1518, he returned to France and collected a library for Francis I. at Fontainebleau. Among those who did distinguished service in collecting Greek manuscripts was Giovanni Aurispa, 1369–1459, who went to Constantinople in his youth to study Greek, and bought and sold with the shrewdness of an experienced bookseller. In 1423, he returned from Constantinople with 238 volumes, including Sophocles, Aeschylus, Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch, Lucian. Thus these treasures were saved from ruthless destruction by the Turks, before the catastrophe of 1453 overtook Constantinople. The study of Greek suffered a serious decline in Italy after the close of the 15th century, but was taken up and carried to a more advanced stage by the Humanists north of the Alps. The study of Hebrew, which had been preserved in Europe by Jewish scholars, notably in Spain, was also revived in Italy in the 15th century, but its revival met with opposition. When Lionardo Bruni heard that Poggio was learning the language, he wrote contending that the study was not only unprofitable but positively hurtful. Manetti, the biographer of Nicolas V., translated the Psalms out of Hebrew and made a collection of Hebrew manuscripts for that pontiff. The Camalduensian monk, Traversari, learned the language and, in 1475, began the printing of Hebrew books on Italian presses. Chairs for the study of Hebrew were founded at Bologna, 1488, and in Rome 1514. Passing from the list of the Greek teachers to the Italian Humanists, it is possible to select for mention here only a few of the more prominent names, and with special reference to their attitude to the Church. Lionardo Bruni, 1369–1444, a pupil of Chrysoloras, gives us an idea of the extraordinary sensation caused by the revival of the Greek language. He left all his other studies for the language of Plato and Demosthenes. He was papal secretary in Rome and for a time chancellor of Florence, and wrote letters, orations, histories, philosophical essays and translations from the Greek, among them Aristotle’s Ethics, Politics and Economies, and Plato’s Phaedo, Crito,

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  She has one last task, however, and that is to “murder” (jilt, actually, but Lawrence always speaks of the event in terms of homicide to manly pride) Anton Skrebensky, her first lover, whom Lawrence is anxious to execute on several grounds: a class enemy—an aristocrat, colonialist, and snob, Anton is suspect on even more hateful grounds for his robotlike conventionality and even for his blundering faith in democracy and progress, two ideas Lawrence particularly despises. And furthermore, Anton must be sacrificed as an object lesson in how monstrous the new woman can be. Ursula furnishes graphic proof of this first in treating Anton as an instrument or sex object rather in the manner in which men are accustomed to treat women, then in refusing to be his marital appendage, and finally, in “castrating” him by a series of extremely tenuous and hazy bouts of magic. Her vehicle of destruction is moonlight, for Lawrence is addicted to the notion of the moon as a female symbol, once beneficent, but lately malefic and a considerable public danger. Having polished off the unfortunate young man, Ursula beholds the vision of the rainbow and the promise of a new world, for the old is drowned in the Hood. She alone survives, the new woman awaiting the new man. Ursula has lived in erotic expectation of a mating between the “Sons of God and the daughters of men.”88 Anton was no son of God, only an empty shell in the midst of the deluge. Women in Love presents us with the new man arrived in time to give Ursula her comeuppance and demote her back to wifely subjection. It is important to understand how pressing a mission Lawrence conceived this to be, for he came himself upon the errand. The novel, as stated in the preface, is autobiographical;89 its hero, Rupert Birkin, is Lawrence himself. Much of the description of Birkin is rendered through the eyes of Ursula who is in love with him, so that expressions of admiration abound: his brows have a “curious hidden richness…rich fine exquisite curves, the powerful beauty of life itself, a sense of richness and liberty,”90 we are also asked to see in him “the rare quality of an utterly desirable man”91 which is rather a lot to say of oneself. Birkin is a prophet, the Son of God at last. Women in Love is the first of Lawrence’s books addressed directly to sexual politics. It resumes the campaign against the modern woman, represented here by Hermione and Gudrun. Ursula shall be saved by becoming Birkin’s wife and echo. The other two women are not only damned but the enemy. The portrait of Hermione is probably the most savage personal attack Lawrence ever wrote. She is the new woman as intellectual, a creature to whom both Birkin and the narrator react with almost hysterical hatred, bombarding her with this sort of description: “macabre, something repulsive,” “a terrible void, a lack, a deficiency of being within.”92

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  After education, the next step was organization. It was the Abolitionist Movement which gave American women their first opportunity for political action and organization. In the United States, where the Woman’s Movement began and from whence it spread to other Western countries and beyond the Western world, it was the cause of eradicating slavery which provided the impetus for the emancipation of women. It was around this issue American women acquired their first political experience and developed the methods they were to use throughout most of their campaign and until the turn of the century: petition, and agitation carried on to educate the public. There is something logical in the fact that they should first band together for another cause than their own: it fulfills the “service ethic” in which they were indoctrinated. Slavery was probably the only circumstance in American life sufficiently glaring in its injustice and monumental evil to impel women to break that taboo of decorum which stifled and controlled them more efficiently than the coil of their legal, educational, and financial disabilities. Eleanor Flexner’s Century of Struggle, the major scholarly history of women in the United States, assesses the campaign against slavery in these terms: It was in the abolition movement that women first learned to organize, to hold public meetings, to conduct petition campaigns. As abolitionists they first won the right to speak in public and began to evolve a philosophy of their place in society and of their basic rights. For a quarter of a century the two movements, to free the slave and to liberate the woman, nourished and strengthened one another.22 The first generation of feminists were active and dedicated abolitionists: the Grimké sisters, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony. This does not, of course, imply that abolitionists were always remarkably sympathetic towards feminism. Frederick Douglass and Henry Blackwell were, Garrison too; but the plight of Lucy Stone is fairly typical—she was encouraged to speak on the rights of blacks during weekends for the larger crowds, but allowed to devote herself to the rights of women only on weekdays, lest her espousal of the latter detract from public support for the former. 23

• From My People (2022)

  It wasn’t obvious to everyone in his own ranks that he should be so welcoming, so inclusive. It was obvious to Mandela. It also earned him and the Afrikaner president who freed him, F. W. de Klerk, the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1993, the year before Mandela replaced de Klerk. Mandela further solidified his credentials as Father of the Nation, the whole nation, when he pitched up at a rugby match wearing the team cap. The Springboks team had been all-white, and blacks associated them with apartheid, but when the game was over, and the team had won the 1995 Rugby World Cup, a broadly smiling Mandela walked onto the field, shook the team captain’s hand, and encouraged the entire nation to “get behind our boys.” He had another nasty divorce, from Winnie, in the interim, though they eventually reconciled. When his eldest son died of an AIDS-related illness, the country saw Mandela as a grieving father, one who also stood up and told the nation—his nation—that there was no shame in being HIV-infected, and that people living with HIV should not be stigmatized. It was a dramatic departure from the position of Thabo Mbeki, his successor and the president at the time, who had dismissed the connection between HIV and AIDS. In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom , published in 1994, the year he assumed the presidency, Mandela wrote: “To be the father of a nation is a great honor, but to be the father of a family is a greater joy. But it was a joy I had far too little of.” And so Mandela wasted no time in trying to locate the father he had not been to his biological children, their children, and those of his third wife, Graça Machel. I interviewed Mandela in 1994, a few days before he was to be sworn in as president of the Republic of South Africa. I apologized to him for not being able to be at the inauguration itself, explaining that there was hardly anything on earth that would make me miss that historic occasion, but that my son Chuma was graduating from Emory University, in Atlanta, on the same day. And I needed to fly back for it. At that, Mandela relaxed his stiff, about-to-be-interviewed posture, leaned forward slightly in his chair, and smiled, with an enveloping warmth. “Of course you have to be there. You can always interview me,” he said. I found myself responding, “Thank you, Tata”—just what a child of Mandela would have called him. Now I am reminded of something else I learned during my years in the country—which is probably why South Africans, though sad now that the Father of the Nation has closed his eyes forever, will not be desolate.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  He was slipping his cue back in the wall rack even as he spoke. I was deep in my own headachy admiration of Daddy’s equanimity when poof , he appeared at my side. Then Dole was saying we should all go fuck ourselves, and Daddy was balling up his fist to catch that cowboy under his jaw with an uppercut. Dole arched back a few paces, then looked down at his shirt. It was, of course, a cowboy shirt. Seeing its little embroidered violets (his ex-wife had done crewelwork) speckled with blood where his buck teeth had bitten down on his own bottom lip obviously pissed him off. If he’d stopped to think, though, Dole might have backed off a step, apologized, squirted club soda on some napkins to sponge off his shirt. That would have ended things, for Daddy had dropped his arms to his sides. But Dole made a tactical error. He grabbed the pool cue he’d leaned against the bar and swung it in a whistling arc at Daddy about eye-level, in a motion so wide and slow only a moron would have failed to catch that cue midair and sucker-punch Dole in the throat with it. Which is what Daddy did. Dole cooperated by falling down. He lay on the linoleum in an x-shape. Lucy fetched his Stetson to balance on his big belly. “That was better than Gunsmoke ,” she told Daddy. He never took me to the Legion again. Nor to any bar. Nor fishing nor hunting nor out to throw dice nor to the Farm Royal for chicken-fried steak nor to Fisher’s Bait Shop on Christmas Eve morning, nor anywhere that my mere female presence might provoke some goofball into mouthing off, in which case Daddy would have to tear him a new asshole. No policy to this effect got announced, but that’s how it worked out. So over the years, Daddy and I grew abstract to each other. We knew each other in theory and loved in theory. But if placed in proximity—when I came home, say—any room we sat in would eventually fall into a soul-sucking quiet I could hardly stand. He started off every visit by piling a plate up for me as you would for a linebacker. Meanwhile, I’d urge him to retell some old story everybody else had long since gotten sick of. I’d recorded a few for an oral-history project in college, and that set a precedent. But any story eventually trailed off into quiet. He’d say he had to go check on his truck (translate: sit alone in the dark garage sneaking pulls off a bourbon bottle), or the phone would ring and I’d fly to answer it. Liquor had eaten away at Daddy. He got mean-mouthed those last few years before the stroke. Mother bore the brunt of it, but it cropped up with other folks too.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  The ambition behind such a play on the part of the church was breathtaking. And Haggis had stepped into the middle of it with an innocent jest. Cruise turned his attention to the other Scientologists in the industry. Many had gone quiet following the scandals in the church or had never openly admitted their affiliation with the church. Cruise called a meeting of other Scientology celebrities and urged them to become more outspoken about their religion. The popular singer Beck, who had grown up in the church, subsequently began speaking openly about his faith. Erika Christensen, a rising young actress who was also a second-generation Scientologist, called Cruise her spiritual mentor. Inspired by a new sense of activism, a group of Scientology actors turned against Milton Katselas, the gray eminence of the Beverly Hills Playhouse. No one had been more instrumental in forging the bond between Scientology and Hollywood. Katselas had been a longtime friend of Hubbard’s and still kept a photograph of him on his desk. The two men were similar in many ways, but especially in their transformative effect on those who studied under them. Humorous, compassionate, and charismatic, but also vain and demanding, Katselas was not above bullying his students to make a point; however, many of them felt that he had taken them to a higher level of artistry than they had ever thought they could achieve. When Katselas addressed an acting student, it wasn’t just about technique; his lessons were full of savvy observations about life and behavior. One of those students, Allen Barton, was a classical pianist as well as a promising actor. When Katselas heard him play, he found him a teacher and paid for his piano lessons. Barton eventually arranged a recital on a Sunday evening. Katselas showed up at the theater at eight that morning, just as the piano was being delivered. He noticed that the stage was scratched, there were piled-up boxes spilling out of the wings, and a large spiral staircase—a prop from an old production—was left on the stage, because it was simply too big to move. Barton explained that he was going to cover up as much as possible with black drapes. Katselas called his office and within an hour ten people arrived. He sent Barton off to relax and prepare himself for the performance. When Barton returned that afternoon, the staircase was gone, the boxes had disappeared, the stage had been sanded and painted, and four trees surrounded the piano. Even the pots the trees were planted in had been painted to match the backdrop. The overall effect was stunning. “ Have a good show,” Katselas said, and walked away. Overwhelmed, Barton ran after him. “How can I ever thank you?” he asked. As he drove off, Katselas said, “Learn to expect it of yourself.” Such stories became a part of the Katselas legend.

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

  Only in exceptional cases did Anthony leave his solitude; and then he made a powerful impression on both Christians and heathens with his hairy dress and his emaciated, ghostlike form. In the year 311, during the persecution under Maximinus, he appeared in Alexandria in the hope of himself gaining the martyr’s crown. He visited the confessors in the mines and prisons, encouraged them before the tribunal, accompanied them to the scaffold; but no one ventured to lay hands on the saint of the wilderness. In the year 351, when a hundred years old, he showed himself for the second and last time in the metropolis of Egypt, to bear witness for the orthodox faith of his friend Athanasius against Arianism, and in a few days converted more heathens and heretics than had otherwise been gained in a whole year. He declared the Arian denial of the divinity of Christ worse than the venom of the serpent, and no better than heathenism which worshipped the creature instead of the Creator. He would have nothing to do with heretics, and warned his disciples against intercourse with them. Athanasius attended him to the gate of the city, where he cast out an evil spirit from a girl. An invitation to stay longer in Alexandria he declined, saying: "As a fish out of water, so a monk out of his solitude dies." Imitating his example, the monks afterward forsook the wilderness in swarms whenever orthodoxy was in danger, and went in long processions with wax tapers and responsive singing through the streets, or appeared at the councils, to contend for the orthodox faith with all the energy of fanaticism, often even with physical force. Though Anthony shunned the society of men, yet he was frequently visited in his solitude and resorted to for consolation and aid by Christians and heathens, by ascetics, sick, and needy, as a heaven-descended physician of Egypt for body and soul. He enjoined prayer, labor, and care of the poor, exhorted those at strife to the love of God, and healed the sick and demoniac with his prayer. Athanasius relates several miracles performed by him, the truth of which we leave undecided though they are far less incredible and absurd than many other monkish stories of that age. Anthony, his biographer assures us, never boasted when his prayer was heard, nor murmured when it was not, but in either case thanked God. He cautioned monks against overrating the gift of miracles, since it is not our work, but the grace of the Lord; and he reminds them of the word: "Rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven." To Martianus, an officer, who urgently besought him to heal his possessed daughter, he said: "Man, why dost thou call on me? I am a man, as thou art. If thou believest, pray to God, and he will hear thee." Martianus prayed, and on his return found his daughter whole.

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

  In general the hierarchy formed a powerful and wholesome check on the imperial papacy, and preserved the freedom and independence of the church toward the temporal power. That age had only the alternative of imperial or episcopal despotism; and of these the latter was the less hurtful and the more profitable, because it represented the higher intellectual and moral interests. Without the hierarchy, the church in the Roman empire and among the barbarians would have been the football of civil and military despots. It was, therefore, of the utmost importance, that the church, at the time of her marriage with the state, had already grown so large and strong as to withstand all material alteration by imperial caprice, and all effort to degrade her into a tool. The Apostolic Constitutions place the bishops even above all kings and magistrates.240 Chrysostom says that the first ministers of the state enjoyed no such honor as the ministers of the church. And in general the ministers of the church deserved their honor. Though there were prelates enough who abused their power to sordid ends, still there were men like Athanasius, Basil, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine, Leo, the purest and most venerable characters, which meet us in the fourth and fifth centuries, far surpassing the contemporary emperors. It was the universal opinion that the doctrines and institutions of the church, resting on divine revelation, are above all human power and will. The people looked, in blind faith and superstition, to the clergy as their guides in all matters of conscience, and even the emperors had to pay the bishops, as the fathers of the churches, the greatest reverence, kiss their hands, beg their blessing, and submit to their admonition and discipline. In most cases the emperors were mere tools of parties in the church. Arbitrary laws which were imposed upon the church from without rarely survived their makers, and were condemned by history. For there is a divine authority above all thrones, and kings, and bishops, and a power of truth above all the machinations of falsehood and intrigue. The Western church, as a whole, preserved her independence far more than the Eastern; partly through the great firmness of the Roman character, partly through the favor of political circumstances, and of remoteness from the influence and the intrigues of the Byzantine court. Here the hierarchical principle developed itself from the time of Leo the Great even to the absolute papacy, which, however, after it fulfilled its mission for the world among the barbarian nations of the middle ages, degenerated into an insufferable tyranny over conscience, and thus exposed itself to destruction. In the Catholic system the freedom and independence of the church involve the supremacy of an exclusive priesthood and papacy; in the Protestant, they can be realized only on the broader basis of the universal priesthood, in the self-government of the Christian people; though this is, as yet, in all Protestant established churches more or less restricted by the power of the state.

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

  Leo, who occupied the papal chair from 440 to 461, with an ability, a boldness, and an unction displayed by none of his predecessors, and by few of his successors, and who, moreover, on this occasion represented the whole Occidental church, protested in various letters against the Robber Synod, which had presumed to depose him; and he wisely improved the perplexed state of affairs to enhance the authority of the papal see. He wrote and acted with imposing dignity, energy, circumspection, and skill, and with a perfect mastery of the question in controversy;—manifestly the greatest mind and character of his age, and by far the most distinguished among the popes of the ancient Church. He urged the calling of a new council in free and orthodox Italy, but afterwards advised a postponement, ostensibly on account of the disquiet caused in the West by Attila’s ravages, but probably in the hope of reaching a satisfactory result, even without a council, by inducing the bishops to subscribe his Epistola Dogmatica. 1617 At the same time a political change occurred, which, as was often the case in the East, brought with it a doctrinal revolution. Theodosius died, in July, 450, in consequence of a fall from his horse; he left no male heirs, and the distinguished general and senator Marcian became his successor, by marriage with his sister Pulcheria, 1618 who favored Pope Leo and the dyophysite doctrine. The remains of Flavian were honorably interred, and several of the deposed bishops were reinstated. To restore the peace of the empire, the new monarch, in May, 451, in his own name and that of his Western colleague, convoked a general council; not, however, to meet in Italy, but at Nicaea, partly that he might the better control it partly that he might add to its authority by the memories of the first ecumenical council. The edict was addressed to the metropolitans, and reads as follows: "That which concerns the true faith and the orthodox religion must be preferred to all other things. For the favor of God to us insures also the prosperity of our empire. Inasmuch, now, as doubts have arisen concerning the true faith, as appears from the letters of Leo, the most holy archbishop of Rome, we have determined that a holy council be convened at Nicaea in Bithynia, in order that by the consent of all the truth may be tested, and the true faith dispassionately and more explicitly declared, that in time to come no doubt nor division may have place concerning it. Therefore let your holiness, with a convenient number of wise and orthodox bishops from among your suffragans, repair to Nicaea, on the first of September ensuing. We ourselves also, unless hindered by wars will attend in person the venerable synod."1619

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  Engels’ analysis is not simply negative. It does in fact provide a model for change. His proposals are both equitable and feasible recommendations for the general conduct of sexuality in a revolutionary society. He has a certain reasonable appreciation of fidelity and advocates temporary associations, freed of the economic considerations of the older forms and based on “individual sexlove,” his own precise if rather colorless phrase for a phenomenon whose development he traces to fairly recent times, and evolving from courtly and romantic love. In insisting that the economic element be utterly purged from all sexual associations Engels went beyond other nineteenth-century theorists by arguing that marriage would continue to be a variety of prostitution (e.g., sex in return for money or commodities) until it ceases to be in any sense an involuntary contract essentially economic in character. The analogy he adopts here is interesting: a woman who enters upon or perseveres in a marriage for economic motives is in the position of a worker who contracts himself to an employment disadvantageous to his interests or inclinations, merely in order to eat. Other theorists-Mill, for example-urged woman’s right to work, to enter the professions etc., but imagined many women and most married women would remain in the home tending children and continuing in economic dependency. But Engels is both more logical and more radical: only with the end of male economic dominion and the entrance of women into the economic world on perfectly equal and independent terms will sexual love cease to be barter in some manner based on financial coercion. Quite as one would expect, Engels’ foresight is strongest in the area of economy. Mill had thought legal change would be sufficient and was content that if women obtained suffrage and a just property law, most might well continue in their traditional roles. Engels realized very well that woman’s legal disabilities were not the cause but merely the effect of patriarchy. The removal of such invidious law would not give women equal status unless it were accompanied with total social and economic equality and every opportunity of personal fulfillment in productive work. Engels’ argument that one cannot be a dependent and still an equal is very compelling. There is no free contract, such as marriage might ideally become, Engels insists, unless both members are free in every respect, including the economic. Here his argument is based on the observation that the concentration of all economic resources into male hands has made the relation of the sexes much like that of one economic class to another:

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  Because it did not cover Genet’s last three plays, Sartre’s biography leaves its subject still a rebel, failing to report his final metamorphosis into revolutionary. With The Balcony, The Blacks, and The Screens, we have a new Genet evolved beyond the imperfect subversive Sartre saw in the novels, Deathwatch, and The Maids. Genet’s originally subjective antisocialism has gradually taken an objective form in the theater, aiming toward what he states in a recent essay to be his final ambition-namely, to disappear behind his work.54 While irony increases, romantic myth drops away, and with it, that dichotomy between the two one finds in his earlier works, particularly the wonderfully urbane and self-conscious Thief’s Journal. It is a feature of The Miracle of the Rose as well, which alternates between exaggerated celebrations of the prison world and jaded expressions of how “disillusioned” and bored with it Genet is becoming. Perhaps the very pitch of ironic attitude is reached in L’Enfant Criminel, a radio talk where, in the manner of a modest proposer, Genet urges greater inhumanity in reformatories, that youthful offenders may “keep in touch with the revolt that makes them so beautiful.”55 To advance past rebellion Genet is forced to discard the remnants of his ironic and paradoxical faith, for the step from rebellion to revolution is a step beyond nostalgia (for what one has known and hated and enjoyed defacing) toward the creation of new alternate values. Rebels can be “contained”—especially if they are sentimental ones. The idea of “femininity” as presented in the novels: abject abdicating martyrdom, broken by an undercurrent of sedition, takes a new course in the late works for the theater, becoming an attitude of rebellious intransigence, which with Genet’s expanding sympathy and humanity, his increasing interest in politics, grows into an identification with oppressed groups of both sexes: maids, blacks, Algerians, proles, all those who are in the feminine or subordinate role toward capital, racism, or empire.56 The negative aspect of femininity as a slave mentality is now one which its victims struggle against with increasing fury, at first with futile self-destructiveness in The Maids, then with growing understanding and success in each succeeding play.

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

  The first distinct fact in the church history of Scotland is the apostolate of St. Ninian at the close of the fourth century, during the reign of Theodosius in the East. We have little reliable information of him. The son of a British king, he devoted himself early to the ministry of Christ. He spent some time in Rome, where the Pope commissioned him to the apostolate among the heathen in Caledonia, and in Gaul with Bishop Martin of Tours, who deserves special praise for his protest against the capital punishment of heretics in the case of the Priscillianists. He began the evangelization of the Southern Picts in the Eastern districts of modern Scotland. He built a white stone church called "Candida Casa," at Whittern (Quhithern, Witerna) in Galloway, on the South-Westem border of Scotland by the sea side, and dedicated it to the memory of St. Martin, who had died in that year (397).74 This was the beginning of "the Great Monastery" ("Magnum Monasterium") or monastery of Rosnat, which exerted a civilizing and humanizing influence on the surrounding country, and annually attracted pilgrims from England and Scotland to the shrine of St. Ninian. His life has been romanized and embellished with legends. He made a newborn infant indicate its true father, and vindicate the innocence of a presbyter who had been charged by the mother with the crime of violation; he caused leeks and herbs to grow in the garden before their season; he subdued with his staff the winds and the waves of the sea; and even his relics cured the sick, cleansed the lepers, and terrified the wicked, "by all which things," says Ailred, his biographer, "the faith of believers is confirmed to the praise and glory of Christ."

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

  By the labors of Columba and his successors, Iona has become one of the most venerable and interesting spots in the history of Christian missions. It was a light-house in the darkness of heathenism. We can form no adequate conception of the self-denying zeal of those heroic missionaries of the extreme North, who, in a forbidding climate and exposed to robbers and wild beasts, devoted their lives to the conversion of savages. Columba and his friends left no monuments of stone and wood; nothing is shown but the spot on the South of the island where he landed, and the empty stone coffin where his body was laid together with that of his servant; his bones were removed afterwards to Dunkeld. The old convent was destroyed and the monks were killed by the wild Danes and Norsemen in the tenth century. The remaining ruins of Iona—a cathedral, a chapel, a nunnery, a graveyard with the tombstones of a number of Scottish and Norwegian and Irish kings, and three remarkable carved crosses, which were left of three hundred and sixty that (according to a vague tradition) were thrown into the sea by the iconoclastic zeal of the Reformation—are all of the Roman Catholic period which succeeded the original Keltic Christianity, and which lived on its fame. During the middle ages Iona was a sort of Jerusalem of the North, where pilgrims loved to worship, and kings and noblemen desired to be buried. When the celebrated Dr. Johnson, in his Tour to the Hebrides, approached Iona, he felt his piety grow warmer. No friend of missions can visit that lonely spot, shrouded in almost perpetual fog, without catching new inspiration and hope for the ultimate triumph of the gospel over all obstacles.84