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

  These strangers from the Continent successfully repelled the Northern invaders; but being well pleased with the fertility and climate of the country, and reinforced by frequent accessions from their countrymen, they turned upon the confederate Britons, drove them to the mountains of Wales and the borders of Scotland, or reduced them to slavery, and within a century and a half they made themselves masters of England. From invaders they became settlers, and established an octarchy or eight independent kingdoms, Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, Northumbria, Mercia, Bernicia, and Deira. The last two were often united under the same head; hence we generally speak of but seven kingdoms or the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy. From this period of the conflict between the two races dates the Keltic form of the Arthurian legends, which afterwards underwent a radical telescopic transformation in France. They have no historical value except in connection with the romantic poetry of mediaeval religion.20 § 10. The Mission of Gregory and Augustin. Conversion of Kent, A.D. 595–604. With the conquest of the Anglo-Saxons, who were heathen barbarians, Christianity was nearly extirpated in Britain. Priests were cruelly massacred, churches and monasteries were destroyed, together with the vestiges of a weak Roman civilization. The hatred and weakness of the Britons prevented them from offering the gospel to the conquerors, who in turn would have rejected it from contempt of the conquered.21 But fortunately Christianity was re-introduced from a remote country, and by persons who had nothing to do with the quarrels of the two races. To Rome, aided by the influence of France, belongs the credit of reclaiming England to Christianity and civilization. In England the first, and, we may say, the only purely national church in the West was founded, but in close union with the papacy. "The English church," says Freeman, "reverencing Rome, but not slavishly bowing down to her, grew up with a distinctly national character, and gradually infused its influence into all the feelings and habits of the English people. By the end of the seventh century, the independent, insular, Teutonic church had become one of the brightest lights of the Christian firmament. In short, the introduction of Christianity completely changed the position of the English nation, both within its own island and towards the rest of the world."22

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  While he was a lecturer at Abd al-Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, one of his pupils was the young Bin Laden. “The life of the Muslim ummah,” Azzam declared, “is solely dependent on the ink of its scholars and the blood of its martyrs.” 6 Scholarship was essential to deepen the ummah’s spirituality, but so was the self-sacrifice of its warriors, since no nation had ever achieved distinction without a strong military. “History does not write its lines, except in blood,” Azzam insisted. “Honor and respect cannot be established except on a foundation of cripples and corpses.” Empires, distinguished peoples, states, and societies cannot be established except with examples. Indeed, those who think that they can change reality or change societies without blood, sacrifices and invalids—without pure innocent souls—do not understand the essence of this din [Islam] and they do not know the method of the best of Messengers. 7 Other Muslim leaders had praised the glory of martyrdom, but none had dwelled so graphically on its violent reality. A community that cannot defend itself, Azzam insisted, will inevitably be dominated by military power. His goal was to create a cadre of scholar-warriors, whose sacrifice would inspire the rest of the ummah. 8 Jihad, he believed, was the Sixth Pillar, on a par with the shehadah, prayer, almsgiving, the Ramadan fast, and hajj. A Muslim who neglected jihad would have to answer to God on the Day of Judgment. 9 Azzam did not make up this theory out of whole cloth. He followed al-Shafii, the eighth-century scholar who had ruled that when the Dar al-Islam was invaded by a foreign power, jihad could become fard ayn, the responsibility of every fit Muslim who lived near the frontier. Modern transport now made it possible for all Muslims to reach the border of Afghanistan, so jihad, Azzam reasoned, was “compulsory upon each and every Muslim on earth.” Once they had liberated Afghanistan, the Arab-Afghans should go on to recover all the other lands wrested from the ummah by non-Muslims—Palestine, Lebanon, Bokhara, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, the Philippines, Burma, South Yemen, Tashkent, and Spain. 10 In his lectures and writings, Azzam depicted the Afghans somewhat idealistically as untouched by the brutal mechanization of modern jahiliyyah; they represented pristine humanity. Fighting the Soviet Goliath, they reminded him of David when he was but a shepherd boy. His tales of the Afghans and Arabs who died as martyrs in this war inspired Muslim audiences worldwide. But Azzam’s martyrs were not suicide bombers or terrorists of any kind. They did not cause their own deaths or kill civilians: they were regular soldiers killed in battle by Soviet troops. Azzam was in fact adamantly opposed to terrorism, and on this point he would eventually part company with Bin Laden and the Egyptian radical Ayman al-Zawahiri. Azzam insistently maintained the orthodox view that killing noncombatants or fellow Muslims like Sadat violated fundamental Islamic teaching.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  So common is this theme among men that we could easily decide that no further analysis is necessary. But Claude reveals another dimension to his arousal, one not visible on the surface: Both in and out of bed I’ve been called the “strong, silent type.” Women always want me to say more about what I feel, to be more passionate and less cool. Even when I come I hardly make a sound. I’ve always picked women who have emotions about everything. I’m sure my attraction has to do with my difficulty expressing myself. It’s almost as if they feel the passion for both of us. I admire these women and wish I could be more like them. By stimulating a lover to be demonstrative in ways he can’t, he maintains a profoundly exciting contrast with his lovers and exposes himself to characteristics he lacks. As it is with Claude, attractive others are, at least in part, mirrors in whom we perceive underdeveloped or missing aspects of our own personalities. Mature lovers recognize that intimate involvements are opportunities for growing. Through our attachments we can gradually cultivate within ourselves the very characteristics we find so appealing in our partners. THE ROYAL ROAD TO YOUR CETJana and Claude’s insights demonstrate how much can be revealed by patiently probing your real-life attractions and encounters. There are, however, limitations to this method. It is important to keep in mind that your CET exists and operates internally even when it is expressed externally through your choices of partners and preferred sexual practices. During partner sex your emphasis is on the interplay between you. Unless both of you are unusually forthright in acting out your innermost desires, the niceties of social-sexual interaction can easily divert you from the unedited content of your CET. Awareness of your CET during partner sex is also limited by the fact that it probably includes one or more aspects you don’t want to act out with a real partner. Quite naturally, you conceal these extremely personal aspects of your CET. In my experience the CET can be most freely explored when it need not be negotiated to mesh with the needs of another. Simon and Gagnon rightly insist that “the sexual dialogue with the other often bears little resemblance to the sexual dialogue with the self.”4 Your CET, with its intimate connection to your deepest and often hidden concerns, has much in common with dreams. Emanating from the subconscious world beyond the constraints of logic, social obligations, and morality, the dream is a canvas upon which anything can be painted. Just as Freud declared the unfettered imagery of dreams to be a “royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities or the mind;”5 sexual fantasies and daydreams are the royal road to your CET. When you allow your fantasies free rein, especially the ones you repeatedly gravitate toward during masturbation, “pure” representations of your CET hover closer to consciousness than at any other time.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  The peoples of the Soviet Union, in many respects, impress me as people who can not yet afford to be honest. When they can be they will either blossom into a marvel or sink into decay. What gets me about the United States is that it pretends to be honest and therefore has so little room to move toward hope. I think that in America there are certain kinds of problems and in Russia there are certain kinds of problems, but basically, when you find people who start from a position where human beings are at the core, as opposed to a position where profit is at the core, the solutions can be very different. I wonder how similar human problems will be solved. But I am not always convinced that human beings are at the core here, either, although there is more lip service done to that idea than in the U.S. I had a meeting the following day with a Madam Izbalkhan, who was the head of the Uzbekistan Society of Friendship. This meeting came about as a result of my request for clarification of my status here at the Conference. When all was said and done, why was there no meeting for oppressed peoples of Black America? Enough said. Madam Izbalkhan talked two hours and she essentially said, well, here’s what our revolution has done for us. And I felt she was implying that any time you want to get yours going, you know, be our guest, just don’t expect us to be involved . But she talked most movingly of the history of the women of Uzbekistan, a history which deserves more writing about than I can give it here. The ways in which the women of this area, from 1924 on, fought to come out from behind complete veiling, from Moslem cloister to the twentieth century. How they gave their lives to go bare-faced, to be able to read. Many of them fought and many of them died very terrible deaths in this battle, killed by their own fathers and brothers. It is a story of genuine female heroism and persistence. I thought of the South African women in 1956 who demonstrated and died rather than carry passbooks. For the Uzbeki women, revolution meant being able to show their faces and go to school, and they died for it. A bronze statue stands in a square of Samarkand, monument to the fallen women and their bravery. Madam went on to discuss the women of modern Uzbekistan and how there was now full equality between the sexes. How many women now headed collective farms, how many women Ministers. She said there were a great many ways in which women governed; there was no difference between men and women now in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I was touched by these statistics, of course, but I also felt that there was a little more to it than met the eye.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  And yet there can be no doubt that Sister Outsider , a collection of essays and speeches drawn from the past eight years of this Black lesbian feminist’s nonfiction prose, makes absolutely clear to many what some already knew: Audre Lorde’s voice is central to the development of contemporary feminist theory. She is at the cutting edge of consciousness. The fifteen selections included here, several of them published for the first time, are essential reading. Whether it is the by now familiar “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” opening us up to the potential power in all aspects of our lives implicit in the erotic, When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the life-force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives. 1 or the recently authored “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger,” probing the white racist roots of hostility between Black women, We are Black women born into a society of entrenched loathing and contempt for whatever is Black and female. We are strong and enduring. We are also deeply scarred. 2 Lorde’s work expands, deepens, and enriches all of our understandings of what feminism can be. But what about the “conflict” between poetry and theory, between their separate and seemingly incompatible spheres? We have been told that poetry expresses what we feel, and theory states what we know; that the poet creates out of the heat of the moment, while the theorist’s mode is, of necessity, cool and reasoned; that one is art and therefore experienced “subjectively,” and the other is scholarship, held accountable in the “objective” world of ideas. We have been told that poetry has a soul and theory has a mind and that we have to choose between them. The white western patriarchal ordering of things requires that we believe there is an inherent conflict between what we feel and what we think—between poetry and theory. We are easier to control when one part of our selves is split from another, fragmented, off balance. There are other configurations, however, other ways of experiencing the world, though they are often difficult to name. We can sense them and seek their articulation. Because it is the work of feminism to make connections, to heal unnecessary divisions, Sister Outsider is a reason for hope. Audre Lorde’s writing is an impulse toward wholeness. What she says and how she says it engages us both emotionally and intellectually. She writes from the particulars of who she is: Black woman, lesbian, feminist, mother of two children, daughter of Grenadian immigrants, educator, cancer survivor, activist. She creates material from the dailiness of her life that we can use to help shape ours.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Out of her desire for wholeness, her need to encompass and address all the parts of herself, she teaches us about the significance of difference —“that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.” 3 A white Jewish lesbian mother, I first read “Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist’s Response” several years ago as I was struggling to accept the inevitability of my prepubescent son’s eventual manhood. Not only would this boy of mine become a man physically, but he might act like one. This awareness turned into a major crisis for me at a time and place when virtually all the lesbian mothers I knew (who I realized, with hindsight, were also white) either insisted that their “androgynous” male children would stay that way, would not grow up to be sexist/misogynist men, or were pressured to choose between a separatist vision of community and their sons. I felt trapped by a narrow range of options. Lorde, however, had wider vision. She started with the reality of her child’s approaching manhood (“Our sons will not grown into women” 4 ) and then asked what kind of man he would become. She saw clearly that she could both love her son fiercely and let him go. In fact, for their mutual survival, she had no choice but to let him go, to teach him that she “did not exist to do his feeling for him.” 5 Lorde and I are both lesbian mothers who have had to teach our boys to do their own emotional work. But her son Jonathan is Black and my son Joshua is white and that is not a trivial difference in a racist society, despite their common manhood. As Lorde has written elsewhere: Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you; we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying. 6 I read “Man Child,” and it was one of those occasions when I can remember something major shifting inside me. I came to understand it was not merely that Lorde knew more about raising sons than I did, although I had been given expert advice. I realized how directly Lorde’s knowledge was tied to her difference—those realities of Blackness and lesbianism that placed her outside the dominant society.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  ForewordWITH ITS PARADOXICAL TITLE, Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde’s most influential book of prose, is ever more trenchant twenty-three years after its first printing—surpassing even the reputation of her poetry, which is no minor feat. Were she here among us in the funky U.S. instead of floating somewhere over the Guinea Coast, Lorde would still want and have to claim that “outsider” stance. These prose works, much like her poetry, position her (and us), as Akasha Gloria Hull said many years ago, “on the line,” refusing the safety of that inside perimeter. I return to these texts again and always—in these times of imperial and unnatural acts, like the war in Iraq and the federal abandonment of the Gulf Coast survivors in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Sister is my sister no matter how I may reject her counsel: “As Black people … we must move against not only those forces which dehumanize us from the outside, but also against those oppressive values which we have been forced to take into ourselves.”1 No matter how angry Sister makes me with her seemingly easy aphorisms: “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”2 No matter how much Sister still asks the hard questions: “Why do Black women reserve a particular voice of fury and disappointment for each other? Who is it we must destroy when we attack each other with that tone of predetermined and correct annihilation?”3 On the shelf with or at the bottom of that stack of other well-mined tomes—The Black Woman: An Anthology; Conditions: Five, The Black Women’s Issue; Lesbian Fiction; Top Ranking—Sister is never far from me. I retain several dog-eared, underlined, coffee-splotched copies of her—at home, at work, on my nightstand—as necessary as my eyeglasses, my second sight. A fall semester of teaching my women’s studies seminar never passes without deploying one of the following texts in theorizing feminist activism: “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” “An Open Letter to Mary Daly,” or “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism.” In one paragraph, Lorde can simultaneously blow away the entire Enlightenment project and use its tools, too. In 1990 I quoted myself in “Knowing the Danger and Going There Anyway,” an article I wrote on Lorde for the Boston feminist newspaper, Sojourner; I’ll change the sister trope and quote myself again: “I said that Audre Lorde’s work is ’a neighbor I’ve grown up with, who can always be counted on for honest talk, to rescue me when I’ve forgotten the key to my own house, to go with me to a tenants’ or town meeting, a community festival’.”4 In 1990, Lorde was still walking among us. Sister Outsider has taken its creator’s place as that good neighbor. And with this new edition, we will have our good neighbor and sister for another generation. May those of us who are Sister Outsider’s old neighbors continue to be inspired by her luminous writing and may those new neighbors be newly inspired. —CHERYL CLARKE 2007

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  At last he too was carbolicked and bandaged, and Stephen had time to examine her companion. It occurred to her that she had better introduce herself, so she said: ‘I’m Stephen Gordon.’ ‘And I’m Angela Crossby,’ came the reply; ‘we’ve taken The Grange, just the other side of Upton.’ Angela Crossby was amazingly blonde, her hair was not so much golden as silver. She wore it cut short like a mediæval page; it was straight, and came just to the lobes of her ears, which at that time of pompadours and much curling gave her an unusual appearance. Her skin was very white, and Stephen decided that this woman would never have a great deal of colour, nor would her rather wide mouth be red, it would always remain the tint of pale coral. All the colour that she had seemed to lie in her eyes, which were large and fringed with long fair lashes. Her eyes were of rather an unusual blue that almost seemed to be tinted with purple, and their candid expression was that of a child —very innocent it was, a trustful expression. And Stephen as she looked at those eyes felt indignant, remembering the gossip she had heard about the Crossbys. The Crossbys, as she knew, were deeply resented. He had been an important Birmingham magnate who had lately retired from some hardware concern, on account of his health, or so ran the gossip. His wife, it was rumoured, had been on the stage in New York, so that her antecedents were doubtful—no one really knew anything at all about her, but her curious hair gave grounds for suspicion. An American wife who had been an actress was a very bad asset for Crossby. Nor was Crossby himself a prepossessing person; when judged by the county’s standards, he bounded. Moreover he showed signs of unpardonable meanness. His subscription to the Hunt had been a paltry five guineas. He had written to say that his very poor health would preclude his hunting, and had actually added that he hoped the Hunt would keep clear of his covers! And then every one felt a natural resentment that The Grange should have had to be sacrificed for money—quite a small Tudor house it was yet very perfect. But Captain Ramsay, its erstwhile owner, had died recently, leaving large debts behind him, so his heir, a young cousin who lived in London, had promptly sold to the first wealthy bidder—hence the advent of Mr. Crossby. Stephen, looking at Angela, remembered these things, but they suddenly seemed devoid of importance, for now those child-like eyes were upon her, and Angela was saying: ‘I don’t know how to thank you for saving my Tony, it was wonderful of you!

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

  After his death, the public distress, which he had labored to alleviate, culminated in a general famine, and the ungrateful populace of Rome was on the point of destroying his library, when the archdeacon Peter stayed their fury by asserting that he had seen the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove hovering above Gregory’s head as he wrote his books. Hence he is represented with a dove. He was buried in St. Peter’s under the altar of St. Andrew. Note. Estimates of Gregory I. Bishop Bossuet (as quoted by Montalembert, II. 173) thus tersely sums up the public life of Gregory: "This great pope ... subdued the Lombards; saved Rome and Italy, though the emperors could give him no assistance; repressed the new-born pride of the patriarchs of Constantinople; enlightened the whole church by his doctrine; governed the East and the West with as much vigor as humility; and gave to the world a perfect model of ecclesiastical government." To this Count Montalembert (likewise a Roman Catholic) adds: "It was the Benedictine order which gave to the church him whom no one would have hesitated to call the greatest of the popes, had not the same order, five centuries later, produced St. Gregory VII .... He is truly Gregory the Great, because he issued irreproachable from numberless and boundless difficulties; because he gave as a foundation to the increasing grandeur of the Holy See, the renown of his virtue, the candor of his innocence, the humble and inexhaustible tenderness of his heart." "The pontificate of Gregory the Great," says Gibbon (ch. 45), "which lasted thirteen years, six months, and ten days, is one of the most edifying periods of the history of the church. His virtues, and even his faults, a singular mixture of simplicity and cunning, of pride and humility, of sense and superstition, were happily suited to his station and to the temper of the times." Lau says (in his excellent monograph, pp. 302, 306): "The spiritual qualities of Gregory’s character are strikingly apparent in his actions. With a clear, practical understanding, he combined a kind and mild heart; but he was never weak. Fearful to the obstinate transgressor of the laws, on account of his inflexible justice, he was lenient to the repentant and a warm friend to his friends, though, holding, as he did, righteousness and the weal of the church higher than friendship, he was severe upon any neglect of theirs. With a great prudence in managing the most different circumstances, and a great sagacity in treating the most different characters, he combined a moral firmness which never yielded an inch of what he had recognized as right; but he never became stubborn. The rights of the church and the privileges of the apostolical see he fought for with the greatest pertinacity; but for himself personally, he wanted no honors. As much as he thought of the church and the Roman chair, so modestly he esteemed himself.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  But she talked most movingly of the history of the women of Uzbekistan, a history which deserves more writing about than I can give it here. The ways in which the women of this area, from 1924 on, fought to come out from behind complete veiling, from Moslem cloister to the twentieth century. How they gave their lives to go bare-faced, to be able to read. Many of them fought and many of them died very terrible deaths in this battle, killed by their own fathers and brothers. It is a story of genuine female heroism and persistence. I thought of the South African women in 1956 who demonstrated and died rather than carry passbooks. For the Uzbeki women, revolution meant being able to show their faces and go to school, and they died for it. A bronze statue stands in a square of Samarkand, monument to the fallen women and their bravery. Madam went on to discuss the women of modern Uzbekistan and how there was now full equality between the sexes. How many women now headed collective farms, how many women Ministers. She said there were a great many ways in which women governed; there was no difference between men and women now in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I was touched by these statistics, of course, but I also felt that there was a little more to it than met the eye. It sounded too easy, too pat. Madam spoke of the daycare centers, of kindergartens where children could be cared for on collective farms. The kindergartens are free in large cities like Moscow and Tashkent. But in Samarkand, there’s a nominal fee of about two rubles a month, which is very little, she said. I asked her one question, whether “men are encouraged to work in the kindergartens to give the children a gentle male figure at an early age.” Madam Izbalkhan hesitated for a moment. “No,” she said. “We like to believe that when the children come to the kindergarten they acquire a second mother.” Madam Izbalkhan was a very strong and beautiful and forthright woman, excellently in charge of her facts, with a great deal of presence, and I returned from my meeting with her almost overwhelmed and over-graped. The grapes in Uzbekistan are incredible fruit. They seem to have a life of their own. They’re called “the bridesmaid’s little finger,” and that’s about the size of them. They’re very long, and green, and they’re absolutely the most delicious. I came away with revolutionary women in my head. But I feel very much now still that we, Black Americans, exist alone in the mouth of the dragon. As I’ve always suspected, outside of rhetoric and proclamations of solidarity, there is no help, except ourselves. When I asked directly about the USSR’s attitude toward American racism, Madam said reproachfully that of course the USSR cannot interfere in the internal affairs of any other nation. I wish now I had asked her about Russian Jews.

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

  Athanasius is the theological and ecclesiastical centre, as his senior contemporary Constantine is the political and secular, about which the Nicene age revolves. Both bear the title of the Great; the former with the better right, that his greatness was intellectual and moral, and proved itself in suffering, and through years of warfare against mighty, errors and against the imperial court. Athanasius contra mundum, et mundus contra Athanasium, is a well-known sentiment which strikingly expresses his fearless independence and immovable fidelity to his convictions. He seems to stand an unanswerable contradiction to the catholic maxim of authority: Quod sem per, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est, and proves that truth is by no means always on the side of the majority, but may often be very unpopular. The solitary Athanasius even in exile, and under the ban of council and emperor, was the bearer of the truth, and, as he was afterwards named, the "father of orthodoxy."1926 On a martyrs’ day in 313 the bishop Alexander of Alexandria saw a troop of boys imitating the church services in innocent sport, Athanasius playing the part of bishop, and performing baptism by immersion.1927 He caught in this a glimpse of future greatness; took the youth into his care; and appointed him his secretary, and afterwards his archdeacon. Athanasius studied the classics, the Holy Scriptures, and the church fathers, and meantime lived as an ascetic. He already sometimes visited St. Anthony in his solitude. In the year 325 he accompanied his bishop to the council of Nicaea, and at once distinguished himself there by his zeal and ability in refuting Arianism and vindicating the eternal deity of Christ, and incurred the hatred of this heretical party, which raised so many storms about his life. In the year 3281928 he was nominated to the episcopal succession of Alexandria, on the recommendation of the dying Alexander, and by the voice of the people, though not yet of canonical age, and at first disposed to avoid the election by flight; and thus he was raised to the highest ecclesiastical dignity of the East. For the bishop of Alexandria was at the same time metropolitan of Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis.

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

  In the formation of his religious character his mother Nonna, one of the noblest Christian women of antiquity, exerted a deep and wholesome influence. By her prayers and her holy life she brought about the conversion of her husband from the sect of the Hypsistarians, who, without positive faith, worshipped simply a supreme being; and she consecrated her son, as Hannah consecrated Samuel, even before his birth; to the service of God. "She was," as Gregory describes her, "a wife according to the mind of Solomon; in all things subject to her husband according to the laws of marriage, not ashamed to be his teacher and his leader in true religion. She solved the difficult problem of uniting a higher culture, especially in knowledge of divine things and strict exercise of devotion, with the practical care of her household. If she was active in her house, she seemed to know nothing of the exercises of religion; if she occupied herself with God and his worship, she seemed to be a stranger to every earthly occupation: she was whole in everything. Experiences had instilled into her unbounded confidence in the effects of believing prayer; therefore she was most diligent in supplications, and by prayer overcame even the deepest feelings of grief over her own and others’ sufferings. She had by this means attained such control over her spirit, that in every sorrow she encountered, she never uttered a plaintive tone before she had thanked God." He especially celebrates also her extraordinary liberality and self-denying love for the poor and the sick. But it seems to be not in perfect harmony with this, that he relates of her: "Towards heathen women she was so intolerant, that she never offered her mouth or hand to them in salutation.1967 She ate no salt with those who came from the unhallowed altars of idols. Pagan temples she did not look at, much less would she have stepped upon their ground; and she was as far from visiting the theatre." Of course her piety moved entirely in the spirit of that time, bore the stamp of ascetic legalism rather than of evangelical freedom, and adhered rigidly to certain outward forms. Significant also is her great reverence for sacred things. "She did not venture to turn her back upon the holy table, or to spit upon the floor of the church." Her death was worthy of a holy life. At a great age, in the church which her husband had built almost entirely with his own means, she died, holding fast with one hand to the altar and raising the other imploringly to heaven, with the words: "Be gracious to me, O Christ, my King!" Amidst universal sorrow, especially among the widows and orphans whose comfort and help she had been, she was laid to rest by the side of her husband near the graves of the martyrs. Her affectionate son says in one of the poems in which he extols her piety and her blessed end: "Bewail, O mortals, the mortal race; but when one dies, like Nonna, praying, then weep I not."

• From Going Clear (2013)

  It was not surprising that Hubbard would hire as his personal assistant Richard de Mille, son of the legendary producer and director Cecil B. DeMille, who had started Paramount Pictures and was in some ways responsible for the creation of Hollywood itself. In 1955, a year after the church’s founding, an editorial in Ability, a publication affiliated with the church, urged Scientologists to recruit celebrities. A long list of desirable prospects followed, including Marlene Dietrich, Walt Disney, Jackie Gleason, John Ford, Bob Hope, and Howard Hughes. “If you want one of these celebrities as your game, write us at once so the notable will be yours to hunt without interference,” the editorial promised. “If you bring one of them home you will get a small plaque as your reward.” Author William Burroughs and actor Stephen Boyd were drawn into the church in its early days. Scientology was a religion rather perfectly calibrated for its time and place, since American culture, and soon the rest of the world, was bending increasingly toward the worship of celebrity, with Hollywood as its chief shrine. At the end of the sixties, the church established its first Celebrity Centre, in Hollywood. (There are now satellites in Paris, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Munich, Florence, London, New York, Las Vegas, and Nashville.) The object was to “make celebrities even better known and to help their careers with Scientology,” Hubbard wrote. “By accomplishing this Major Target I know that Celebrity Centres can take over the whole acting-artists world.” Hubbard was particularly interested in stars whose careers had crested but still had enough luster that they could be rehabilitated and made into icons of Scientology. The prototype was Gloria Swanson, one of the greatest stars of the silent movie era, who personified the lavish glamour of that era. Although she never regained the international fame she had known before the talkies, she continued acting on television and in occasional movies—most memorably, as Norma Desmond in the 1950 classic Sunset Boulevard. Hubbard’s top auditor, Peggy Conway, a South African entertainer, ardently cultivated Swanson, calling her “My Adorable Glory,” in her many letters to the star, although she saves her highest praise for Hubbard, who was also her auditor: “The Master did his Sunday best on me,” she wrote Swanson in 1956. “He never went to bed—we talked the clock around—day after day—night after night—I was six thousand light years above Arcturus—what a genius is our Great Red Father!”

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

  The arrival of Columba at Iona was the beginning of the Keltic church in Scotland. The island was at that time on the confines of the Pictic and Scotic jurisdiction, and formed a convenient base for missionary labors among the Scots, who were already Christian in name, but needed confirmation, and among the Picts, who were still pagan, and had their name from painting their bodies and fighting naked. Columba directed his zeal first to the Picts; he visited King Brude in his fortress, and won his esteem and co-operation in planting Christianity among his people. "He converted them by example as well as by word" (Bede). He founded a large number of churches and monasteries in Ireland and Scotland directly or through his disciples.85 He was involved in the wars so frequent in those days, when even women were required to aid in battle, and he availed himself of military force for the overthrow of paganism. He used excommunication very freely, and once pursued a plunderer with maledictions into the sea until the water reached to his knees. But these rough usages did not interfere with the veneration for his name. He was only a fair type of his countrymen. "He had," says Montalembert, "the vagabond inclination, the ardent, agitated, even quarrelsome character of the race." He had the "perfervidum ingenium Scotorum." He was manly, tall and handsome, incessantly active, and had a sonorous and far-reaching voice, rolling forth the Psalms of David, every syllable distinctly uttered. He could discern the signs of the weather. Adamnan ascribes to him an angelic countenance, a prophetic fore-knowledge and miracles as great as those performed by Christ, such as changing water into wine for the celebration of the eucharist, when no wine could be obtained, changing bitter fruit into sweet, drawing water from a rock, calming the storm at sea, and curing many diseases. His biography instead of giving solid facts, teems with fabulous legends, which are told with childlike credulity. O’Donnell’s biography goes still further. Even the pastoral staff of Columba, left accidentally upon the shore of Iona, was transported across the sea by his prayers to meet its disconsolate owner when he landed somewhere in Ireland.86 Columba died beside the altar in the church while engaged in his midnight devotions. Several poems are ascribed to him—one in praise of the natural beauties of his chosen island, and a monastic rule similar to that of St. Benedict; but the "regula ac praecepta" of Columba, of which Wilfrid spoke at the synod of Whitby, probably mean discipline or observance rather than a written rule.87

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

  Augustine, the man with upturned eye, with pen in the left hand, and a burning heart in the right (as he is usually represented), is a philosophical and theological genius of the first order, towering like a pyramid above his age, and looking down commandingly upon succeeding centuries. He had a mind uncommonly fertile and deep, bold and soaring; and with it, what is better, a heart full of Christian love and humility. He stands of right by the side of the greatest philosophers of antiquity and of modern times. We meet him alike on the broad highways and the narrow footpaths, on the giddy Alpine heights and in the awful depths of speculation, wherever philosophical thinkers before him or after him have trod. As a theologian he is facile princeps, at least surpassed by no church father, scholastic, or reformer. With royal munificence he scattered ideas in passing, which have set in mighty motion other lands and later times. He combined the creative power of Tertullian with the churchly spirit of Cyprian, the speculative intellect of the Greek church with the practical tact of the Latin. He was a Christian philosopher and a philosophical theologian to the full. It was his need and his delight to wrestle again and again with the hardest problems of thought, and to comprehend to the utmost the divinely revealed matter of the faith.2160 He always asserted, indeed, the primacy of faith, according to his maxim: Fides praecedit intellectum; appealing, with theologians before him, to the well-known passage of Isaiah vii. 9 (in the LXX.): "Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis." But to him faith itself was an acting of reason, and from faith to knowledge, therefore, there was a necessary transition.2161 He constantly looked below the surface to the hidden motives of actions and to the universal laws of diverse events. The metaphysician and the Christian believer coalesced in him. His meditatio passes with the utmost ease into oratio, and his oratio into meditatio. With profundity he combined an equal clearness and sharpness of thought. He was an extremely skilful and a successful dialectician, inexhaustible in arguments and in answers to the objections of his adversaries. He has enriched Latin literature with a greater store of beautiful, original, and pregnant proverbial sayings, than any classic author, or any other teacher of the church.2162 He had a creative and decisive hand in almost every dogma of the church, completing some, and advancing others. The centre of his system is the free redeeming grace of God in Christ, operating through the actual, historical church. He is evangelical or Pauline in his doctrine of sin and grace, but catholic (that is, old-catholic, not Roman Catholic) in his doctrine of the church. The Pauline element comes forward mainly in the Pelagian controversy, the catholic-churchly in the Donatist; but each is modified by the other.

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

  We add the eloquent testimony of an American author, Parke Godwin (History of France, N. Y., 1860, vol. i. p. 410): "There is to me something indescribably grand in the figure of many of the barbaric chiefs—Alariks, Ataulfs, Theodoriks, and Euriks—who succeeded to the power of the Romans, and in their wild, heroic way, endeavored to raise a fabric of state on the ruins of the ancient empire. But none of those figures is so imposing and majestic as that of Karl, the son of Pippin, whose name, for the first and only time in history, the admiration of mankind has indissolubly blended with the title the Great. By the peculiarity of his position in respect to ancient and modern times—by the extraordinary length of his reign, by the number and importance of the transactions in which he was engaged, by the extent and splendor of his conquests, by his signal services to the Church, and by the grandeur of his personal qualities—he impressed himself so profoundly upon the character of his times, that he stands almost alone and apart in the annals of Europe. For nearly a thousand years before him, or since the days of Julius Caesar, no monarch had won so universal and brilliant a renown; and for nearly a thousand years after him, or until the days of Charles V. of Germany, no monarch attained any thing like an equal dominion. A link between the old and new, he revived the Empire of the West, with a degree of glory that it had only enjoyed in its prime; while, at the same time, the modern history of every Continental nation was made to begin with him. Germany claims him as one of her most illustrious sons; France, as her noblest king; Italy, as her chosen emperor; and the Church as her most prodigal benefactor and worthy saint. All the institutions of the Middle Ages—political, literary, scientific, and ecclesiastical—delighted to trace their traditionary origins to his hand: he was considered the source of the peerage, the inspirer of chivalry, the founder of universities, and the endower of the churches; and the genius of romance, kindling its fantastic torches at the flame of his deeds, lighted up a new and marvellous world about him, filled with wonderful adventures and heroic forms. Thus by a double immortality, the one the deliberate award of history, and the other the prodigal gift of fiction, he claims the study of mankind."

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

  At last he completed his active obedience by the passive obedience of suffering in cheerful resignation to the holy will of God. Hated and persecuted by the Jewish hierarchy, betrayed into their hands by Judas, accused by false witnesses, condemned by the Sanhedrin, rejected by the people denied by Peter, but declared innocent by the representative of the Roman law and justice, surrounded by his weeping mother and faithful disciples, revealing in those dark hours by word and silence the gentleness of a lamb and the dignity of a God, praying for his murderers, dispensing to the penitent thief a place in paradise, committing his soul to his heavenly Father he died, with the exclamation: "It is finished!" He died before he had reached the prime of manhood. The Saviour of the world a youth! He died the shameful death of the cross the just for the unjust, the innocent for the guilty, a free self, sacrifice of infinite love, to reconcile the world unto God. He conquered sin and death on their own ground, and thus redeemed and sanctified all who are willing to accept his benefits and to follow his example. He instituted the Lord’s Supper, to perpetuate the memory of his death and the cleansing and atoning power of his blood till the end of time. The third day he rose from the grave, the conqueror of death and hell, the prince of life and resurrection. He repeatedly appeared to his disciples; he commissioned them to preach the gospel of the resurrection to every creature; he took possession of his heavenly throne, and by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit he established the church, which he has ever since protected, nourished, and comforted, and with which he has promised to abide, till he shall come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead. This is a meagre outline of the story which the evangelists tell us with childlike simplicity, and yet with more general and lasting effect than could be produced by the highest art of historical composition. They modestly abstained from adding their own impressions to the record of the words and acts of the Master whose "glory they beheld, the glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." Who would not shrink from the attempt to describe the moral character of Jesus, or, having attempted it, be not dissatisfied with the result? Who can empty the ocean into a bucket? Who (we may ask with Lavater) "can paint the glory of the rising sun with a charcoal?" No artist’s ideal comes up to the reality in this case, though his ideals may surpass every other reality. The better and holier a man is, the more he feels his need of pardon, and how far he falls short of his own imperfect standard of excellence.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  2 No matter how much Sister still asks the hard questions: “Why do Black women reserve a particular voice of fury and disappointment for each other? Who is it we must destroy when we attack each other with that tone of predetermined and correct annihilation?” 3 On the shelf with or at the bottom of that stack of other well-mined tomes—The Black Woman: An Anthology; Conditions: Five, The Black Women’s Issue; Lesbian Fiction; Top Ranking—Sister is never far from me. I retain several dog-eared, underlined, coffee-splotched copies of her —at home, at work, on my nightstand—as necessary as my eyeglasses, my second sight. A fall semester of teaching my women’s studies seminar never passes without deploying one of the following texts in theorizing feminist activism: “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” “An Open Letter to Mary Daly,” or “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism.” In one paragraph, Lorde can simultaneously blow away the entire Enlightenment project and use its tools, too. In 1990 I quoted myself in “Knowing the Danger and Going There Anyway,” an article I wrote on Lorde for the Boston feminist newspaper, Sojourner; I’ll change the sister trope and quote myself again: “I said that Audre Lorde’s work is ’a neighbor I’ve grown up with, who can always be counted on for honest talk, to rescue me when I’ve forgotten the key to my own house, to go with me to a tenants’ or town meeting, a community festival’.” 4 In 1990, Lorde was still walking among us. Sister Outsider has taken its creator’s place as that good neighbor. And with this new edition, we will have our good neighbor and sister for another generation. May those of us who are Sister Outsider’s old neighbors continue to be inspired by her luminous writing and may those new neighbors be newly inspired. —CHERYL CLARKE 2007 Notes 1. “Learning from the 60s,” p. 135. 2. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” p. 112. 3. “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger,” p. 159. 4. Cheryl Clarke, The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry, 1980–2005 (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006). Introduction WHEN WE BEGAN EDITING Sister Outsider—long after the book had been conceptualized, a contract signed, and new material written—Audre Lorde informed me, as we were working one afternoon, that she doesn’t write theory. “I am a poet,” she said. Lorde’s stature as a poet is undeniable.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  But another major de b ate rages in our cultu re about whether we need to acknowledge claims from no n human nature. Does the "self-forgetful p l easure" that we can take "in th e sheer alien pointless independent existence of animals, b irds, stones, an d tre es" bring us closer to the moral good, as Iris Murdoch claims? 15 So m e strands of the ecological movement have made this a central issue. In anothe r form: does wilderness have a cl a im o n us, a demand for its preservatio n, no t one grounded on long-term prudence, hedging our bets to hold onto wh at might pay off eventually for humans, but fo r its own sake? 16 Or to l eap t o a quite different domain, is there a non-in strumental good in making t he tr u t h manifest? I s it a good thing to do (her e it is really inappropriate to s pe ak o f obligation) even when it can't possibly contribute to any other good (rel ie v e sufferi ng, end injustice) and may very likel y exact a terrible cost fr om t h e teller? Why do we admire Mande l sta m , fo r instance, whose 1932 poem ab o u t Stalin cost him his freedom, and e vent ual ly hi s lif e ? 17 I am not neutral, of course; I accept a ll three of these ' ex t r a- hum an' cl ai m s (and more). But I believe that even those who a r e agnosti c on thes e iss ues w i ll Moral Sources • Io .3 ag r ee t h at the philosophies I am criticizing here prejudge them irrevocably. Th i s t h ey do not because they are inspired by one side but because this i n s p i r a ti on is hidden, where it can't come up for debate. The human c e n t r e d n es s is then unassailable. It appears in the (supp osed) defining c ha r a ct e ris tics of moral theory, such as the maximization of general happi ne s s , or act ion on a maxim that can be universalized, or action on a norm that a l l p a rt icip ants could accept in unconstrained debate.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The Chinese had an aristocratic code, known as the li (“rituals”), that ruled the behavior of the individual but also of the state, and that functioned in a way similar to our international law. The ru (“ritualists”) now based their reform of this code on the conduct of the sage kings Yao and Shun, whom they presented as models of restraint, altruism, forbearance, and kindness.28 This new ideology was clearly critical of regimes guided by violent, arrogant, or selfish policies. Yao, it claimed, had been so “reverent, intelligent, accomplished, sincere, and mild” that the potency (de) of these qualities had radiated from him to all Chinese families and created the Great Peace.29 In an extraordinary act of self-abnegation, Yao had bequeathed the empire to the lowborn Shun, passing over his own son because he was deceitful and quarrelsome. Shun even behaved with courtesy and respect to his father, who had tried to murder him. The reformed li were designed to help the gentlemen cultivate these same qualities. A junzi’s demeanor should be “sweet and calm.”30 Instead of asserting himself aggressively, he should “yield” (rang) to others, and far from stifling him, this would perfect his humanity (ren). The reformed li were therefore expressly designed to curb belligerence and chauvinism.31 Political life should instead be dominated by restraint and yielding.32 “The li teach us that to give free rein to one’s feelings and let them follow their bent is the way of barbarians,” explained the ritualists; “the ceremonial fixes degrees and limits.”33 In the family, the eldest son should minister to his father’s every need, addressing him in a low, humble voice, never expressing anger or resentment; in return, a father must treat all his children fairly, kindly, and courteously. The system was so designed that each family member received a measure of reverence.34 We do not know exactly how all this worked out in practice; certainly many Chinese continued to strive aggressively for power, but it seems that by the end of the seventh century, a significant number of those living in the traditional principalities were beginning to value moderation and self-control and even the peripheral states of Qi, Jin, Chu, and Qin accepted these ritualized imperatives.35