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 Collected Essays (1998)

  He very coldly frames a white Northern schoolteacher for this crime, and brings about his death at the hands of a lynch mob. (And I knew that this was exactly what would have happened to Bill, if such a mob had ever got its hands on her.) Unlike the later Ox-BoJV I11cident, in which a similar lynching is partially redeemed by the read ing of a letter, which, presumably, will cause the members of the mob to repent the horror of what they have done and resolve to become better men and women, and also unlike the later Intruder in the Dust, which suggests the same hopeful improbability, They Won)t F01;get ends with the teacher dead and the politician triumphantly re-elected. As he watches the widow walk down the courthouse steps, he mutters, seeming, almost, to stifle a yawn, I wonder if he 1'eally did it) afte1' all. And, yes: I was beginning to understand that. Sylvia Sidney was the only American film actress who re minded me of a colored girl, or woman-which is to say that she was the only American film actress who reminded me of reality. All of the others, without exception, were white, and, even when they moved me (like Margaret Sullavan or Bette Davis or Carole Lombard) they moved me from that distance. Some instinct caused me profoundly to distrust the sense of lif e they projected: this sense of lif e could certainly never, in any case, be used by me, and, while His eye might be on the sparrow, mine had to be on the hawk. And, similarly, while I admired Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney (and, on a more demanding level, Fredric March), the only actor of the era with whom I identified was Henry Fonda. I was not alone. A black friend of mine, after seeing Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wmth, swore that Fonda had colored blood. You could tell, he said, by the way Fonda walked down the road at the end of the film: white men don)t walk like that! and he +9+ THE DEVI L FIND S WORK imitated Fonda's stubborn, patient, wide-l egged hike away ti·om the camera. My reaction to Sylvia Sidney was certainly due, in part, to the kind of film she appeared in during that era-Fu ry; Mary Burns, Fugitive; You and Me; Street Scene (I was certain, even, that I knew the meaning of the title of a film she made with Gene Raymond, which I never saw, Behold My Wife). It was almost as though she and I had a secret: she seemed to know something I knew. Every street in New Yo rk ends in a river: this is the legend which begins the film, Dead End, and I was enormously grateful fi>r it. I had never thought of that bcfi>rc.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  This is not a doctrinaire position, no matter how the Panthers may seem to glori�· Mao or Che or Fanon. (It may perhaps be noted that these men haYe something to say to the century, after all, and may be read with profit, and are not, as public opinion would seem to ha,·e it, merely more subtle, or more dangerous, heroin peddlers.) The necessity for a form of socialism is based on the observation that the world's present economic arrangements doom most of the world to misery; that the way of life dictated by these arrange ments is both sterile and immoral; and, finally, that there is no hope for peace in the world so long as these arrangements obtain. But not only does the \\·orld make its arrangements slowly, and submit to any change only with the greatest reluctance; the idea of a genuine socialism in America, of all places, is an utterly intolerable idea, and those in power, as well as the bulk of the people, will resist so tremendous a heresy with all the force at their command; for which reason, precisely, Huey sits in prison and the blacks of the nation walk in danger. Watch ing Huey, I wondered what force sustained him, and lent him his bright dignity-then I suddenly did not wonder. The very fact that the odds are so great, and the journey, barely begun, NO NAME IN THE STREET so dangerous means that there is no time to waste, and it im·ests every action with an impersonal urgency. It may, for example, seem nothing to feed hot lunches to children at school, but it must be done, for the sake of the health and morale of the child, for the sake of the health and morale of his elders. It may seem nothing to establish a Liberation school, or to insist that all adult Panther members take Polit ical Education classes, but that school, and those classes, can be very potent antidotes to the tranquilizers this country hands out as morality, truth, and history. A needle, or a piece of bread are nothing, but it is very important that all Panther members are forbidden to steal or take even that much fr om the people: and it changes a person when he conceives of himself, in Huey's words, as "an ox to be ridden by the peo ple.'' To study the economic structure of this country, to know which hands control the wealth, and to which end, seems an academic exercise-and yet it is necessary, all of it is necessary, for discipline, for knowledge, and for power.

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

  30. Furthermore, we do not hold (11). Here he gives the third argument, which is as follows: knowing singular things is proper to the senses rather than to any other type of knowing [power], since our entire knowledge of singular things originates with the senses. Yet we do not hold that “ any one of these, ” i.e., any one of the senses, is wisdom, because even though each sense knows that a thing is so, it does not know why it is so; for touch judges that fire is hot but does not know why it is hot. Therefore men of experience, who have a knowledge of singular things but do not know their causes, cannot be called wise men. 31. It is only fitting (12). Here he compares practical art with speculative art; and in regard to this he does three things. First (20), he shows that a speculative art is wisdom to a greater degree than a practical art. Second (ibid.), he answers an objection ( “ The difference ” ). He proves his first statement by this argument: in any of the sciences or arts we find that men with scientific knowledge are more admired and are held in higher esteem than all other men, because their knowledge is held to be nobler and more worthy of the name of wisdom. Now the discoverer of any art at all is admired because he perceives, judges and discerns a cause beyond the perceptions of other men, and not because of the usefulness of his discoveries. We admire him rather “ as being wise, and as distinguishing [a thing] from others. ” As being wise, indeed, in the subtle way in which he investigates the causes of his discoveries, and as distinguishing [a thing] from others insofar as he investigates the ways in which one thing differs from another. Or, according to another interpretation, “ as being distinct from the others ” is to be read passively, as being distinguished in this respect from others. Hence another text has “ one who is different. ” Some sciences, then, are more admirable and worthy of the name of wisdom because their observations are more outstanding, not because they are useful. 32. Therefore, since many useful arts have been discovered (some to provide the necessities of life, as the mechanical arts, and others to introduce us to the sciences, as the logical disciplines), those artists must be said to be wiser whose sciences were discovered not for the sake of utility but merely for the sake of knowing, that is to say, the speculative sciences.

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

  PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. de cæc. et Zacc.) Observe the gracious kindness of the Saviour. The innocent associates with the guilty, the fountain of justice with covetousness, which is the source of injustice. Having entered the publican’s house, He suffers no stain from the mists of avarice, but disperses them by the bright beam of His righteousness. But those who deal with biting words and reproaches, try to cast a slur upon the things which were done by Him; for it follows, And when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, That he was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner. But He, though accused of being a wine-bibber and a friend of publicans, regarded it not, so long as He could accomplish His end. As a physician sometimes can not save his patients from their diseases without the defilement of blood. And so it happened here, for the publican was converted, and lived a better life. Zacchæus stood, and said unto the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any man, I restore him fourfold. Behold here is a marvel: without learning he obeys. And as the sun pouring its rays into a house enlightens it not by word, but by work, so the Saviour by the rays of righteousness put to flight the darkness of sin; for the light shineth in darkness. Now every thing united is strong, but divided, weak; therefore Zacchæus divides into two parts his substance. But we must be careful to observe, that his wealth was not made up from unjust gains, but from his patrimony, else how could he restore fourfold what he had unjustly extorted. He knew that the law ordered what was wrongly taken away to be restored fourfold, that if the law deterred not, a man’s losses might soften him. Zacchæus waits not for the judgment of the law, but makes himself his own judge. THEOPHYLACT. If we examine more closely, we shall see that nothing was left of his own property. For having given half of his goods to the poor, out of the remainder he restored fourfold to those whom he had injured. He not only promised this, but did it. For he says not, “I will give the half, and I will restore fourfold, but, I give, and I restore. To such Christ announces salvation; Jesus saith unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, signifying that Zacchæus had attained to salvation, meaning by the house the inhabitant thereof. And it follows, forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham. For He would not have given the name of a son of Abraham to a lifeless building.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Across the Black Belt, more and more acres were converted to growing pine trees for paper mills and industrial uses. African Americans, largely excluded from this new industry, found themselves confronting new economic challenges even as they won basic civil rights. The brutal era of sharecropping and Jim Crow was ending, but what followed was persistent unemployment and worsening poverty. The region’s counties remained some of the poorest in America. Walter was smart enough to see the trend. He started his own pulpwood business that evolved with the timber industry in the 1970s. He astutely—and bravely—borrowed money to buy his own power saw, tractor, and pulpwood truck. By the 1980s, he had developed a solid business that didn’t generate a lot of extra money but afforded him a gratifying degree of independence. If he had worked at the mill or the factory or had had some other unskilled job—the kind that most poor black people in South Alabama worked—it would invariably mean working for white business owners and dealing with all the racial stress that that implied in Alabama in the 1970s and 1980s. Walter couldn’t escape the reality of racism, but having his own business in a growing sector of the economy gave him a latitude that many African Americans did not enjoy. That independence won Walter some measure of respect and admiration, but it also cultivated contempt and suspicion, especially outside of Monroeville’s black community. Walter’s freedom was, for some of the white people in town, well beyond what African Americans with limited education were able to achieve through legitimate means. Still, he was pleasant, respectful, generous, and accommodating, which made him well liked by the people with whom he did business, whether black or white. Walter was not without his flaws. He had long been known as a ladies’ man. Even though he had married young and had three children with his wife, Minnie, it was well known that he was romantically involved with other women. “Tree work” is notoriously demanding and dangerous. With few ordinary comforts in his life, the attention of women was something Walter did not easily resist. There was something about his rough exterior—his bushy long hair and uneven beard—combined with his generous and charming nature that attracted the attention of some women. Walter grew up understanding how forbidden it was for a black man to be intimate with a white woman, but by the 1980s he had allowed himself to imagine that such matters might be changing. Perhaps if he hadn’t been successful enough to live off his own business he would have more consistently kept in mind those racial lines that could never be crossed.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 25. in Matt.) For they clung to Him with love and admiration, and longed to keep Him with them. For who would depart while He performed such miracles? who would not be content to see only His face, and the mouth that uttered such things? Nor as performing miracles only was He an object of admiration, but His whole appearance was overflowing with grace. Therefore when He speaks, they listen to Him in silence, interrupting not the chain of His discourse; for it is said, that they might hear the word of God, &c. It follows, And he stood near the lake of Gennesaret. BEDE. The lake of Gennesaret is said to be the same as the sea of Galilee or the sea of Tiberias; but it is called the sea of Galilee from the adjacent province, the sea of Tiberias from a neighbouring city. Gennesaret however, is the name given it from the nature of the lake itself, (which is thought from its crossing waves to raise a breeze upon itself,) being the Greek expression for “making a breeze to itself.” (quasi a γιννάω et ἀὴρ.) For the water is not steady like that of a lake, but constantly agitated by the breezes blowing over it. It is sweet to the taste, and wholesome to drink. In the Hebrew tongue, any extent of water, whether it be sweet or salt, is called a sea. THEOPHYLACT. But the Lord seeks to avoid glory the more it followed Him, and therefore separating Himself from the multitude, He entered into a ship, as it is said, And he saw two ships standing near the lake: but the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets. CHRYSOSTOM. This was a sign of leisure, but according to Matthew He finds them mending their nets. For so great was their poverty, that they patched up their old nets, not being able to buy new ones. But our Lord was very desirous to collect the multitudes, that none might remain behind, but they might all behold Him face to face; He therefore enters into a ship, as it is said, And he entered into a ship, which was Simon’s, and prayed him. THEOPHYLACT. Behold the gentleness of Christ; He asks Peter; and the willingness of Peter, who was obedient in all things. CHRYSOSTOM. After having performed many miracles, He again commences His teaching, and being on the sea, He fishes for those who were on the shore. Hence it follows, And he sat down and taught the people out of the ship. GREGORY NAZIANZEN. (Orat. 37.) Condescending to all, in order that He might draw forth a fish from the deep, i. e. man swimming in the everchanging scenes and bitter storms of this life.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  60 Lecture 11: Sophocles These characters see him as their protector and their strength. The contrast between Ajax’s heroic code and the more modern code of Odysseus may have endowed Ajax with a kind of archaic grandeur. All six of Sophocles’s isolated protagonists are both repellent and admirable; in Greek, they are called deinos, meaning “terrible, wondrous, strange.” Sophocles’s tragedies are also characterized by an almost total lack of direct human interaction with the gods. Athena is the only god who appears as a character in Sophocles’s plays, and her role in Ajax is far from helpful to the human characters. Unlike the Athena of Aeschylus’s Eumenides, Sophocles’s Athena does not solve any dilemmas or give any useful advice. She is the force behind Ajax’s madness. Furthermore, she brings the mad Ajax out of his tent to mock him in front of Odysseus and goad him into boasting. The sane Odysseus cannot see her, while the mad Ajax can. Thus, the one appearance of an Olympian deity in Sophocles’s extant plays is profoundly disturbing. Once Ajax has regained his sanity, there is no direct divine- human intervention. Athena’s absence after Ajax has regained his sanity re fl ects the situation in the rest of Sophocles’s extant plays. The characters must try to determine the will of the gods through ambiguous omens, prophecies, and oracles and their own understanding of the gods. This underscores the isolation of the characters; they try to take the gods’ will into account but may misinterpret omens and oracles. It also corresponds closely to the realities of human life in general. In this regard, Sophocles is the most “realistic” of the three tragedians. ■ Sophocles, Ajax. Essential Reading 61 Blundell, Helping Friends. Easterling, Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy. Knox, Heroic Temper, chapters 1–2. Reinhardt, “Ajax.” Segal, C. “Visual Symbolism.” 1. Given the small number of Aeschylus’s and Sophocles’s plays that have survived, are we justi fi ed in making stylistic judgments about the difference in the two tragedians’ portrayal of their main characters? 2. Ajax is a dif fi cult character for modern audiences to “identify” with or to feel sympathy toward. Does this have an impact on your reading of the play, or is it still moving even though the main character is not sympathetic? Questions to Consider Supplementary Reading

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  206 Lecture 29: The Romance of the Rose The Romance of the Rose Lecture 29 Welcome once again to our series of lectures on the literatures of Europe’s Middle Ages. In this, our fi fth lecture, we will turn to the greatest of all the medieval romances, the 13 th-century The Romance of the Rose. T his is a poem of 21,700 lines composed by two authors who worked some 40 years apart. Guillaume de Lorris wrote some 4,000 lines around 1237. We know virtually nothing about him. He is named but not described by the second author. Jean Chopinel (or Clopinel), better known as Jean de Meun, says that 40 years later, he continued the poem. Indeed he did, adding some 17,000 lines. Of him, we know that he was a sophisticated intellectual, probably a teacher in Paris, and the translator into French of such works as Vegetius on war and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. The Romance enjoyed unprecedented popularity in the Middle Ages. Nearly 300 manuscripts survive, many of them lavishly illustrated. Chaucer translated a portion into English, and there was a German translation, too. The work’s attraction is somewhat diffi cult to understand. It is long, complex, and diffi cult. But the Romance is also surpassingly beautiful, utterly ingenious, and infi nitely fascinating. It simply takes patience to come to terms with it. The Romance of the Rose is a sustained allegory, and this accounts for both its dif fi culty and its interest. Allegory had two distinct kinds of meanings in the Middle Ages, one more prominent than the other. In ancient rhetoric, from Aristotle to Quintilian, allegory meant, more or less, a sustained metaphor. The Middle Ages knew that meaning but also derived from the church fathers an allegorical mode of reading the Bible. Allegory is a trope through which one understands one thing by means of another, or one means something different than what one says. Part of the diffi culty (and interest!) of reading the Romance of the Rose rests in its continuous use of personi fi cation, where various names (to which we

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  443 The phrase “journey-work of the stars” exempli fi es Whitman’s fusion of the mechanical and the visionary. Journey-work is the day’s work of a journeyman. A journeyman was a laborer who had completed his apprenticeship and achieved competence, if not mastery. Whitman respected a good day’s work and workingmen. Because Whitman thought workingmen were just as glorious as the gods of ancient myth, he thought the stars were the product of a good day’s work. Whitman’s way of de fi ning grass exempli fi es his transcendentalism. Not knowing what grass is, he offers a series of guesses. It is the “ fl ag” of the poet’s disposition—meaning banner and also a plant with a long, bladelike leaf. It is “the handkerchief of the Lord,” then a child, then a kind of picture- writing that grows all over the country and, thereby, signifi es union. In calling grass “the beautiful uncut hair of graves,” Whitman evokes a transcendental faith in the permanence and pervasiveness of life. Emerson de fi ned transcendentalism as idealism—the belief in the power of the mind and its thoughts. Transcendentalists believed that every material object in the world symbolized the mind or the relation between the world and the individual center of consciousness. They also believed in a spirit that transcends or crosses the border between life and death. Though it may sound self-important, Whitman’s “Song of Myself” is really a song of all humankind. Although Whitman’s opening lines are the antithesis of Emily Dickinson’s self-effacing poem “I’m nobody! Who are you?” the self that Whitman sings about is a universal one. Whitman differs in this respect from such autobiographers as Rousseau, Wordsworth, and Thoreau. He says almost nothing about his personal life. He claims to identify himself with every man and woman on earth. He is the kept-woman, the sponger, the thief. He is the sea captain and the hounded slave. He feels himself connected with everyone who ever lived. Even while projecting a mood of careless assurance, Whitman associates himself with Christ—as some earlier poets had. Before Whitman, Shelley and Wordsworth both aligned themselves with Christ. In some of his poems, Shelley claimed to bleed and suffer like Christ. Wordsworth placed himself and Coleridge fi rmly in the prophetic tradition.

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

  I answer that, It was most fitting that the Person of the Son should become incarnate. First, on the part of the union; for such as are similar are fittingly united. Now the Person of the Son, Who is the Word of God, has a certain common agreement with all creatures, because the word of the craftsman, i.e. his concept, is an exemplar likeness of whatever is made by him. Hence the Word of God, Who is His eternal concept, is the exemplar likeness of all creatures. And therefore as creatures are established in their proper species, though movably, by the participation of this likeness, so by the non-participated and personal union of the Word with a creature, it was fitting that the creature should be restored in order to its eternal and unchangeable perfection; for the craftsman by the intelligible form of his art, whereby he fashioned his handiwork, restores it when it has fallen into ruin. Moreover, He has a particular agreement with human nature, since the Word is a concept of the eternal Wisdom, from Whom all man’s wisdom is derived. And hence man is perfected in wisdom (which is his proper perfection, as he is rational) by participating the Word of God, as the disciple is instructed by receiving the word of his master. Hence it is said (Ecclus. 1:5): “The Word of God on high is the fountain of wisdom.” And hence for the consummate perfection of man it was fitting that the very Word of God should be personally united to human nature. Secondly, the reason of this fitness may be taken from the end of the union, which is the fulfilling of predestination, i.e. of such as are preordained to the heavenly inheritance, which is bestowed only on sons, according to Rom. 8:17: “If sons, heirs also.” Hence it was fitting that by Him Who is the natural Son, men should share this likeness of sonship by adoption, as the Apostle says in the same chapter (Rom. 8:29): “For whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of His Son.” Thirdly, the reason for this fitness may be taken from the sin of our first parent, for which the Incarnation supplied the remedy. For the first man sinned by seeking knowledge, as is plain from the words of the serpent, promising to man the knowledge of good and evil. Hence it was fitting that by the Word of true knowledge man might be led back to God, having wandered from God through an inordinate thirst for knowledge. Reply to Objection 1: There is nothing which human malice cannot abuse, since it even abuses God’s goodness, according to Rom. 2:4: “Or despisest thou the riches of His goodness?” Hence, even if the Person of the Father had become incarnate, men would have been capable of finding an occasion of error, as though the Son were not able to restore human nature.

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

  9. When Jesus heard these things, he marvelled at him, and turned him about, and said unto the people that followed him, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. 10. And they that were sent, returning to the house, found the servant whole that had been sick. TITUS BOSTRENSIS. When He had strengthened His disciples by more perfect teaching, He goes to Capernaum to work miracles there; as it is said, When he had ended all his sayings, he entered into Capernaum. AUGUSTINE. (de Con. Ev. l. ii. c. 20.) Here we must understand that He did not enter before He had ended these sayings, but it is not mentioned what space of time intervened between the termination of His discourse, and His entering into Capernaum. For in that interval the leper was cleansed whom Matthew introduced in his proper place. AMBROSE. But having finished His teaching, He rightly instructs them to follow the example of His precepts. For straightway the servant of a Gentile centurion is presented to the Lord to be healed. Now the Evangelist, when he said that the servant was about to die, did not err, because he would have died had he not been healed by Christ. EUSEBIUS. Although that centurion was strong in battle, and the prefect of the Roman soldiers, yet because his particular attendant lay sick at his house, considering what wonderful things the Saviour had done in healing the sick, and judging that these miracles were performed by no human power, he sends to Him, as unto God, not looking to the visible instrument by which He had intercourse with men; as it follows, And when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto him, &c. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) How then will that be true which Matthew relates, A certain centurion came to him, seeing that he himself did not come? unless upon careful consideration we suppose that Matthew made use of a general mode of expression. For if the actual arrival is frequently said to be through the means of others, much more may the coming be by others. Not then without reason, (the centurion having gained access to our Lord through others,) did Matthew, wishing to speak briefly, say that this man himself came to Christ, rather than those by whom he sent his message, for the more he believed the nearer he came.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  440 Lecture 64: Herman Melville insofar as it can be known. The whale seems like one of the huge and terrifying creatures of ancient epic and fabulous tale. But Melville’s beast is a real one—as real as any fi ctional character can be. The great white whale in Moby Dick is based on factual reports about two actual whales. To authenticate his novel, Melville takes pains to classify and analyze whales in the course of the story. Besides being witty and even sexy at times, the explanatory chapters on whales and whaling are essential to Melville’s enterprise in the book as a whole. Through Ishmael, Melville struggles to comprehend the vastness of the whale. All his efforts show that no one can truly know the whale without risking his life in fi rsthand experience of it. The character of Bulkington epitomizes both the intellectual and physical daring celebrated by the novel. Though Bulkington has just returned from a four-year voyage when Ishmael fi rst meets him, he signs on to the Pequod for another voyage. In Bulkington’s irresistible impulse to sail away again, Ishmael fi nds a symbol of immortal daring. Bulkington perishes with the crew of the ship when it goes down. In the eyes of Ishmael, Bulkington’s heroic commitment to “landlessness” makes him a demigod. However, because Bulkington is not psychologically dark enough to embody the “power of Blackness,” the protagonist of the novel is a fi gure of rich contradiction. Ahab combines nobility and wickedness. He’s a knot of contradictions. At times, he sounds like a dictator determined to have his way. But he also speaks of his soul as predetermined and of himself as the Fates’ lieutenant, helpless to disobey orders. In spite of all his contradictions, Ahab epitomizes self-assertion: the undying defi ance of impersonal forces. ■ Besides being witty and even sexy at times, the explanatory chapters on whales and whaling are essential to Melville’s enterprise in the book as a whole. 441 Melville, Moby Dick , 2 nd ed., edited by Harrison Hayford and Herschel Parker. Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography, 2 vols. 1. How does Queegueg affect Ishmael’s conception of cannibals? 2. Besides the fact that Captain Ahab outranks Starbuck, his fi rst mate, what enables Ahab to overcome Starbuck’s objections to his mad and dangerous quest? Essential Reading Supplementary Reading Questions to Consider

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Andy was, in my mind, and not because he ever so described him self , Martin's "right-hand man." He was present-absol utely present. He saw what was happening. He took upon himself his responsibility for knowing what he knew, and for seeing what he saw. I have heard Andy attempt to describe himself only once: when he was trying to clarifY something about me, to someone else. So, I learned, one particular evening, what his Christian ministry meant to him. Let me spell that out a little. The text comes from the New Testament, Matthew 25: 40: Inasmuch as ye have done it unt o one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unt o me. I am in the strenuous and far from dull position of having news to deliver to the Western world- for example: black is not a synonym for slave. Do not, I counsel you, attempt to defend yourselves against this stunning, unwieldy and unde sired message. You will hear it again: indeed, this is the only message the Western world is lik ely to be hearing from here on out. I put it in this somewhat astringent fashion because it is necessary, and because I speak, now, as the grandson of a slave, a direct descendant of a born-again Christian. My con venion, as Countee Cullen puts it, came high-priced/! belong to Jesus Christ. I am also speaking as an ex-min ister of the Gospel, and, therefore, as one of the born again. I was in structed to feed the hu ngry, clothe the naked and visit those in prison. I am far indeed from my youth, and from my fath er's house, but I have not forgotten these instructions, and I pray upon my soul that I never will. The people who call themselves "born again" today have simply become members of the richest, most exclu sive private club in the world, a club that the man from Galilee could not possibly hope-or wish to enter. Inasmuch as ye have done it unt o the least of these my breth ren, ye have done it unto me. That is a hard saying. It is hard 784 OPEN LETTER TO THE BORN AGAIN 785 to live with that. It is a merciless description of our respon sibility for one another. It is that hard light under which one makes the moral choice. That the Western world has forgotten that such a thing as the moral choice exists, my history, my flesh, and my soul bear witness. So, if I may say so, docs the predicament into which the world's most celebrated born again Christian has managed to hurl Mr.

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

  SANCTIFICATION OF CHRIST’S MOTHERAs appears from the foregoing exposition, the Blessed Virgin Mary became the mother of God’s Son by conceiving of the Holy Spirit. Therefore it was fitting that she should be adorned with the highest degree of purity, that she might be made conformable to such a Son. And so we are to believe that she was free from every stain of actual sin-not only of mortal sin but of venial sin. Such freedom from sin can pertain to none of the saints after Christ, as we know from 1 John 1:8: “If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” But what is said in the Canticle of Canticles 4:7, “You are all fair, my love, and there is no spot in you,” can well be understood of the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God. Mary was not only free from actual sin, but she was also, by a special privilege, cleansed from original sin. She had, indeed, to be conceived with original sin, inasmuch as her conception resulted from the commingling of both sexes. For the privilege of conceiving without impairment of virginity was reserved exclusively to her who as a virgin conceived the Son of God. But the commingling of the sexes which, after the sin of our first parent, cannot take place without lust, transmits original sin to the offspring. Likewise, if Mary had been conceived without original sin, she would not have had to be redeemed by Christ, and so Christ would not be the universal redeemer of men, which detracts from His dignity. Accordingly we must hold that she was conceived with original sin, but was cleansed from it in some special way. Some men are cleansed from original sin after their birth from the womb, as is the case with those who are sanctified in baptism. Others are reported to have been sanctified in the wombs of their mothers, in virtue of an extraordinary privilege of grace. Thus we are told with regard to Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb of you mother I knew you; and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you” (Jer. 1:5). And in Luke 1:15 the angel says of John the Baptist: “He shall be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb.” We cannot suppose that the favor granted to the precursor of Christ and to the prophet was denied to Christ’s own mother. Therefore we believe that she was sanctified in her mother’s womb, that is, before she was born.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  He was then, and is now, working all the time, or perhaps it \\'ould be more accurate to say that he is seeing all the time; and the reality of his seeing caused me to begin to see. Now, what I began to see was not, at that ti me, to tell the truth, his painting; that came later; what I saw, first of all, was a brown leaf on black asphalt, oil moving like mercury in the black water of the gutter, grass pushing itself up through a crevice in the sidewalk. And because I was seeing it with Beauford, because Beauford caused me to see it, the very col ours underwent a most disturbing and salutary change. The brown leaf on the black asphalt, fi>r example-what colours were these, really? To stare at the leaf long enough, to try to apprehend the leaf, was to discover many colours in it; and though black had been described to me as the absence of light, it became very clear to me that if this were true, we would never have been able to see the colour; black: the light is trapped in it and struggles upward, rather like that grass pushing upward through the cement. It was humbling to be forced to realise that the light fell down fr om heaven, on everything, on everybody, and that the light was always chang ing. Paradoxically, this meant for me that memory is a traitor and that life docs not contain the past tense: the sunset one saw yesterday, the leaf that burned, or the rain that fell, have not really been seen unless one is prepared to see them every day. As Bcauf(Jrd is, to his eternal credit, and for our health and hope. Perhaps I am so struck by the light in Beauford's paintings because he comes fr om darkness-as I do, as, in fact, we all do. But the darkness of Bcauf(>rd's beginnings, in Tennessee, many years ago, was a black-blue midnight indeed, opaque, and full of sorrow. And I do not know, nor will any of us ever really know, what kind of strength it was that enabled him to make so dogged and splendid a journey. In any case, fr om 7 20 ON THE PAINTER BEAUFORD DELANEY 7 21 Tennessee, he eventually came to Paris (I have the impression that he walked and swam) and for a while lived in a suburb of Paris, Clamart.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I never fully appreciated what he was saying until the night Jimmy Dill was executed. — I had the privilege of meeting Rosa Parks when I first moved to Montgomery. She would occasionally come back to Montgomery from Detroit, where she lived, to visit dear friends. Johnnie Carr was one of those friends. Ms. Carr had befriended me, and I quickly learned that she was a force of nature—charismatic, powerful, and inspiring. She had been, in many ways, the true architect of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. She had organized people and transportation during the boycott and done a lot of the heavy lifting to make it the first successful major action of the modern Civil Rights Movement, and she succeeded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. She was in her late seventies when I first met her. “Now Bryan, I’m going to call you from time to time and I’m going ask you to do this or that and when I ask you to do something you’re going to say ‘Yes, ma’am,’ okay?” I chuckled—and I said, “Yes, ma’am.” She would sometimes call just to check in on me, and on occasion she would invite me over when Ms. Parks came to town. “Bryan, Rosa Parks is coming to town, and we’re going to meet over at Virginia Durr’s house to talk. Do you want to come over and listen?” When Ms. Carr called me, she either wanted me to go some place to “speak” or to go some place to “listen.” Whenever Ms. Parks came to town, I’d be invited to listen. “Oh, yes, ma’am. I’d love to come over and listen,” I’d always say, affirming that I understood what to do when I arrived. Ms. Parks and Ms. Carr would meet at Virginia Durr’s home. Ms. Durr was also a larger-than-life personality. Her husband, Clifford Durr, was an attorney who had represented Dr. King throughout his time in Montgomery. Ms. Durr was determined to confront injustice well into her nineties. She frequently asked me to accompany her to various places or invited me over to dinner. EJI started renting her home for our law students and staff during the summers when she was away. When I would go over to Ms. Durr’s home to listen to these three formidable women, Rosa Parks was always very kind and generous with me. Years later, I would occasionally meet her at events in other states, and I ended up spending a little time with her. But mostly, I just loved hearing her and Ms. Carr and Ms. Durr talk. They would talk and talk and talk. Laughing, telling stories, and bearing witness about what could be done when people stood up (or sat down, in Ms. Parks’s case). They were always so spirited together. Even after all they’d done, their focus was always on what they still planned to do for civil rights.

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

  The Incarnation of God was made known to man by adequate signs. The Godhead cannot be better evidenced than by those things that are proper to God. Now it is proper to God to be able to change the laws of nature, by performing a work that is above nature, whose author He is. Hence it is a most appropriate proof of divinity, if works are done that transcend the laws of nature, such as giving sight to the blind, cleansing lepers, raising the dead to life. Now, Christ performed such works as these: hence, when He was asked (Lk. 7:20), Art thou he that art to come, or look me for another? He proved His divinity by these works, replying, The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, etc. And there was no need to create another world, for this was neither in the plan of divine wisdom, nor in the nature of things. If, however, it be contended that like miracles are related to have been done by others, as the eighth argument suggested, we must observe that Christ’s way of doing them was very different, and more God-like. Others did these things by praying; Christ, by commanding, as acting by His own power. Moreover, not only did He do these things Himself, but gave the power to do these and greater things still, to others who worked miracles by merely calling on His name. Again, Christ worked miracles not only on men’s bodies, but also on their souls: which latter works are much greater. Thus, for instance, through Him and the invocation of His name, the Holy Ghost was given, by Whom men’s hearts were kindled with the fire of divine love, their minds suddenly filled with the knowledge of divine things, and the tongues of simple men made eloquent in declaring God’s truth to the people. Such works are an evident proof of Christ’s divinity, for no mere man could have done them. Hence the Apostle says (Heb. 2:3, 4) that the salvation of mankind having begun to be declared by the Lord, was confirmed unto us by them that heard him: God also bearing them witness by signs, and wonders, and divers miracles, and distributions of the Holy Ghost.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It has to be complicated. That day, for ex ample, he was dealing with the press, with photographers, with his law yer, with me, with prison regulations, with his notoriety in the prison, with the latest pronouncements of Police Chief Gain, with the shape of the terror speedily en gulfing his friends and co-w orkers, and he was also, after all, at that moment, standing in the shadow of the gas chamber. Anyone, under such circumstances, can be pardoned for be ing rattled or e\·en rude, but Huey was beautiful, and spoke with perfect candor of what was on his mind. Huey belie,·es, and I do, too, in the necessity of establishing a form of so cialism in this country-what Bobby Seale would probably call a "Yan kee-Doodle type" socialism. This means an indigenous socialism, formed by, and responding to, the real needs of the American people. This is not a doctrinaire position, no matter how the Panthers may seem to glori�· Mao or Che or Fanon. (It may perhaps be noted that these men haYe something to say to the century, after al l, and may be read with profit, and are not, as public opinion would seem to ha,·e it, merely more subtle, or more dangerous, heroin peddlers.) The necessity for a form of socialism is based on the observation that the world's present economic arrangements doom most of the world to misery; that the way of lif e dictated by these arrange ments is both sterile and immoral; and, finally, that there is no hope for peace in the world so long as these arrangements obtain. But not only does the \\·orld make its arrangements slowly , and submit to any change only with the greatest reluctance; the idea of a genuine socialism in America, of all places, is an utterly intolerable idea, and those in power, as well as the bulk of the people, will resist so tremendous a heresy with all the force at their command; for which reason, precisely, Huey sits in prison and the blacks of the nation walk in danger. Watch ing Hu ey, I wondered what force sustained him, and lent him his bright dignity-t hen I suddenly did not wonder. The very fact that the odds are so great, and the journey, barely begun, NO NAM E IN THE STREE T so dangerous means that there is no time to waste, and it im·ests every action with an impersonal urgency. It may, for example, seem nothing to feed hot lunches to children at school, but it must be done, for the sake of the health and morale of the child, for the sake of the health and morale of his elders. It may seem nothing to establish a Liberation school, or to insist that all adult Panther members take Polit ical Education classes, but that school, and those classes, can be very potent antidotes to the tranquilizers this country hands out as morality, truth, and history.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But in the Catfish Row where I was born, the truth, they said, will out. And certainly something comes "out" in Ruth Attaway's miming of "My Man's Gone Now," some genuine depth is touched which has nothing to do with the vulgar production in which she is, for the rest of the time, quite than klessly trapped. No one can admire Sidney Poitier more than I do, but he is entirely wrong for the role of Porgy. He does not succeed in making me believe that he is afraid of Crown, Crown's wounds, or the police, or buzzards-or, indeed, of anything else; nor do I believe for a moment that he is unable to get up off that cart and walk. The very qualities which lend him his distinction-his intelligence, virility, and grace-operate against him here. Yet he does do something else which is ut terly remarkable, especially against the eery sexual chill ema nating from Miss Dandridge: he makes me believe that he loves Bess. Poi tier is, in fact, one of the very few actors on the American screen who is not compelled to spend most of his cinema time proving that he is not afraid of women. One is not compelled to watch him flexing his muscles and screwing up his courage in order to approach his mortal enemy and accomplish the unspeakable. There is a great and instructive irony in this. That image one is compelled to hold of another person-in order, as I have said, to retain one's image of oneself -may become that person's trial, his cross, his death. It may or may not become his prison; but it inevitably becomes one's own. People who thought of Bessie Smith as a coarse black woman, and who let her die, were f.1 r less free than Bessie, who had escaped all their definitions by becoming herself. This is still the only way to become a man or a woman-or an artist. Now Billie Holiday has escaped forever from managers, landlords, locked hotels, fear, poverty, illness, and the watchdogs of morality and the law. "I had a long, long way to go," she used to sing. Well, she made it, all the way from Catfish Row, and no one has managed to define her yet.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  He was a brilliant trial lawyer at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and had just been recruited to take over the SPDC, whose mission was to assist condemned people on death row in Georgia. He showed none of the disconnect between what he did and what he believed that I’d seen in so many of my law professors. When we met he warmly wrapped me in a full-body hug, and then we started talking. We didn’t stop till we’d reached Atlanta. “Bryan,” he said at some point during our short flight, “capital punishment means ‘them without the capital get the punishment.’ We can’t help people on death row without help from people like you.” I was taken aback by his immediate belief that I had something to offer. He broke down the issues with the death penalty simply but persuasively, and I hung on every word, completely engaged by his dedication and charisma. “I just hope you’re not expecting anything too fancy while you’re here,” he said. “Oh, no,” I assured him. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with you.” “Well, ‘opportunity’ isn’t necessarily the first word people think of when they think about doing work with us. We live kind of simply, and the hours are pretty intense.” “That’s no problem for me.” “Well, actually, we might even be described as living less than simply. More like living poorly—maybe even barely living, struggling to hang on, surviving on the kindness of strangers, scraping by day by day, uncertain of the future.” I let slip a concerned look, and he laughed. “I’m just kidding...kind of.” He moved on to other subjects, but it was clear that his heart and his mind were aligned with the plight of the condemned and those facing unjust treatment in jails and prisons. It was deeply affirming to meet someone whose work so powerfully animated his life. There were just a few attorneys working at the SPDC when I arrived that winter. Most of them were former criminal defense lawyers from Washington who had come to Georgia in response to a growing crisis: Death row prisoners couldn’t get lawyers. In their thirties, men and women, black and white, these lawyers were comfortable with one another in a way that reflected a shared mission, shared hope, and shared stress about the challenges they faced. After years of prohibition and delay, executions were again taking place in the Deep South, and most of the people crowded on death row had no lawyers and no right to counsel. There was a growing fear that people would soon be killed without ever having their cases reviewed by skilled counsel. We were getting frantic calls every day from people who had no legal assistance but whose dates of execution were on the calendar and approaching fast. I’d never heard voices so desperate. When I started my internship, everyone was extremely kind to me, and I felt immediately at home.