Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 357 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Another Country (1962)

  He sighed, smiled. “Hell, I just want to be friends.” She laughed. “Oh, Vivaldo.” “You and I are friends,” he said. “Well—yes. But I’ve always been the wife of a friend of yours. So you never thought of me—” “Sexually,” he said. Then he grinned. “Don’t be so sure.” She flushed, at once annoyed and pleased. “I’m not talking about your fantasies.” “I’ve always admired you,” he said soberly, “and envied Richard.” “Well,” she said, “you’d better get over that.” He said nothing. She rattled the ice around in his empty glass. “Well,” he said, “what am I going to do with it? I’m not a monk, I’m tired of running uptown and paying for it——” “For it’s uptown that you run,” she said, with a smile. “What a good American you are.” This angered him. “I haven’t said they were any better than white chicks.” Then he laughed. “Maybe I better cut the damn thing off.” “Don’t be such a baby. Really. You should hear yourself.” “You’re telling me someone’s going to come along who needs it? Needs me?” “I’m not telling you anything,” she said, shortly, “that you don’t already know.” They heard Richard’s study door open. “I’ll fix you another drink; you might as well get good and drunk.” She bumped into Richard in the hall. He was carrying the manuscript. “Do you want a drink now?” “Love one,” he said, and walked into the living room. From the kitchen she heard their voices, a little too loud, a little too friendly. When she came back into the living room, Vivaldo was leafing through the manuscript. Richard stood by the window. “Just read it,” he was saying, “don’t go thinking about Dostoievski and all that. It’s just a book—a pretty good book.” She handed Richard his drink. “It’s a very good book,” she said. She put Vivaldo’s drink on the table beside him. She was surprised and yet not surprised to realize that she was worried about the effect on Richard of Vivaldo’s opinion. “The next book, though, will be better,” Richard said. “And very different.” Vivaldo put the manuscript down and sipped his drink. “Well,” he said, with a grin, “I’ll read it just as soon as I sober up. Whenever,” he added, grimly, “that may be.” “And tell me the truth, you hear? You bastard.” Vivaldo looked at him. “I’ll tell you the truth.” Years ago, Vivaldo had brought his manuscripts to Richard with almost exactly the same words. She moved away from them both and lit a cigarette. Then she heard the elevator door open and close and she looked at the clock. It was four. She looked at Vivaldo. The bell rang. “There she is,” said Cass. She and Vivaldo stared at each other. “Take it easy,” Richard said. “What’re you looking so tragic about?” “Richard,” she said, “that must be Rufus’s sister.” “Well, go let her in. Don’t leave her waiting in the hall.” As he spoke, the bell rang again.

• From Push (1996)

  You is working 24 hours a day and $26.80 divided by 24 is $1.12. Rhonda say ol bitch would ring a bell when she want Rhonda in the night. Home attendints usually work six days a week. I would only see Abdul on Sundays? When would I go to school? Why I gotta change white woman's diaper and then take money from that and go pay a baby sitter to change my baby's diaper? And what about school? How would I keep up with my reading and writing if I can't keep going to school? I got to work it out before Abdul's birthday. Thas when the letters start coming. Letter say, you wish to keep receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children report to XYZ place by such and such a date or your money will be cut. I mean I don't know exactly what it say but I got the drift, so many girls done told me what happen to them. "OK," Ms Rain say. "Time is up for now, does anyone want to share?" I'm only one raise my hand. "OK Precious, go for it," she say. "I don't really wanna read all I wrote, I jus' wanna kinda say what it is I'm writing about and how it came about. And how I'm really upset—" "What happened?" Aisha say. "Well to make a long story short the counselor at Advancement House pumping me about Mama and Daddy etc, etc, but it's really about workfare —" "How you know?" Rhonda ax. "'Cause I stole my file from Advancement House and read it. All this, 'What you wanna be?' and 'You can talk to me.' They ain' no mutherfucking therapists on our side they just flunkies for the 'fare." Jermaine bust in. "If all they wanna do is place us in slave labor shits and we want to keep going to school, then that means they have a different agenda from us. I wanna work, but not for no mutherfucking welfare check in Central Park. And I be displacing brothers and sisters who really got jobs cleaning up 'cause I'm there working for free. And what kinda shit is it for someone like Precious to have to quit school before she get her G.E.D. to work at some live-in job for old crackers and shit. She'll never make a rise she get stuck in some shit like that!" "Yeah," Ms Rain say, "but is stealing—" "Ms Rain, I didn't steal that file I wouldn't know what my difficulties was!" "You read the whole thing by yourself?" Ms Rain ask. "Yeah, basically," I say, then, "Am I gonna hafta go be home attendant?" "No!" Ms Rain say.

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

  We pass now to the measures taken against the separatists. At first Zwingli tried to persuade them in private conferences, but in vain. Then followed a public disputation, which took place by order of the magistracy in the council hall, Jan. 17, 1525. Grebel was opposed to it, but appeared, together with Manz and Reubli. They urged the usual arguments against infant baptism, that infants cannot understand the gospel, cannot repent and exercise faith. Zwingli answered them, and appealed chiefly to circumcision and 1 Cor. 7:14, where Paul speaks of the children of Christian parents as "holy." He afterwards published his views in a book, "On Baptism, Rebaptism, and Infant Baptism" (May 27, 1525). Bullinger, who was present at the disputation, reports that the Anabaptists were unable to refute Zwingli’s arguments and to maintain their ground. Another disputation was held in March, and a third in November, but with no better result. The magistracy decided against them, and issued an order that infants should be baptized as heretofore, and that parents who refuse to have their children baptized should leave the city and canton with their families and goods. The Anabaptists refused to obey, and ventured on bold demonstrations. They arranged processions, and passed as preachers of repentance, in sackcloth and girdled, through the streets of Zurich, singing, praying, exhorting, abusing the old dragon (Zwingli) and his horns, and exclaiming, "Woe, woe unto Zurich!"141 The leaders were arrested and shut up in a room in the Augustinian convent. A commission of ministers and magistrates were sent to them to convert them. Twenty-four professed conversion, and were set free. Fourteen men and seven women were retained and shut up in the Witch Tower, but they made their escape April 5. Grebel, Manz, and Blaurock were rearrested, and charged with communistic and revolutionary teaching. After some other excesses, the magistracy proceeded to threaten those who stubbornly persisted in their error, with death by drowning. He who dips, shall be dipped,—a cruel irony. It is not known whether Zwingli really consented to the death sentence, but he certainly did not openly oppose it.142

• From Another Country (1962)

  “I often get in past two o’clock,” she said. “Is this the first time you’ve noticed it?” She was astounded at the hostility in her voice. She sipped her drink. Her mind began to play strange tricks on her: her mind was filled, abruptly, with the memory of a field, long ago, in New England, a field with blue flowers in patches here and there. The field was absolutely silent and empty, it sloped gently toward a forest; they were hidden by tall grass. The sun was hot. Richard’s face was above her, his arms and his hands held and inflamed her, his weight pressed her down into the flowers. A little way from them lay his army cap and jacket; his shirt was open to the navel, and the rough, glinting hairs of his chest tortured her breasts. But she was resisting, she was frightened, and his face was full of pain and anger. Helplessly, she reached up and stroked his hair. Oh. I can’t. We’re getting married, remember? And I’m going overseas next week. Anybody can find us here! Nobody ever comes this way. Everybody’s gone away. Not here. Where? “No,” he said, with a dangerous quietness, “it’s not the first time I’ve noticed it.” “Well. It doesn’t matter. I’ve just left Ida.” “With Vivaldo?” She hesitated, and he smiled. “We were all together earlier. Then she and I went up to Harlem and had a drink.” “Alone?” She shrugged. “With lots of other people. Why?” But before he could answer, she added, “Ellis was there. He said he’s going to call you in a couple of days.” “Ah,” he said, “Ellis was there.” He sipped his drink. “And you left Ida with Ellis??” “I left Ida with Ellis’s party.” She stared at him. “What’s going on in your mind?” “And what did you do when you left Ida?” “I came home.” “You came straight home?” “I got into a taxi and I came straight home.” She began to be angry. “What are you cross-examining me for? I will not be cross-examined, you know, not by you, not by anyone.” He was silent—finished his vodka, and walked to the bar. “I think you’re drunk enough already,” she said, coldly. “If you have a question you want to ask me, ask it. Otherwise, I’m going to bed.” He turned and looked at her. This look frightened her, but she willed herself to be calm. “You are not going to bed for a while yet. And I have a great many questions I want to ask you.” “You may ask,” she said. “I may not answer. You’ve waited a very long time, it seems to me, to ask me questions. Maybe you’ve waited too long.” They stared at each other. And she saw, with a sense of triumph that made her ill, that, yes, she was stronger than he. She could break him: for, to match her will, he would be compelled to descend to stratagems far beneath him.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She went, and Stephen sat on by the fire with her eyes half closed and her lips set firmly. She must put away all these thoughts of the past and compel herself to think of the future. This brood- ing over things that were past was all wrong; it was futile, weak- kneed and morbid. She had her work, work that cried out to be done, but no more unworthy books must be written. She must show that being the thing she was, she could climb to success over all opposition, could climb to success in spite of a world that was trying its best to get her under. Her mouth grew hard; her sensitive lips that belonged by rights to the dreamer, the lover, took on a resentful and bitter line which changed her whole face and made it less comely. At that moment the striking likeness of her father appeared to have faded out of her face. Yes, it was trying to get her under, this world with its mighty self-satisfaction, with its smug rules of conduct, all made to be broken by those who strutted and preened themselves on being what they considered normal. They trod on the necks of those thousands of others who, for God knew what reason, were not made as they were; they prided themselves on their indignation, on what they proclaimed as their righteous judgments. They sinned grossly; even vilely at times, like lustful beasts — but yet they were normal! And the vilest of them could point a finger of scorn at her, and be loudly applauded. 290 THE WELL OF LONELINES “God damn them to hell!’ she muttered. Along in the kitchen there was singing again. The young men’s voices rose tuneful and happy, and with them blended Adéle’s young voice, very sexless as yet, like the voice of a choir- boy. Stephen got up and opened the door, then she stood quite still and listened intently. The singing soothed her over-strained nerves as it flowed from the hearts of these simple people. For she did not begrudge them their happiness; she did not resent young Jean with his Adèle, or Pierre who had done a man’s work in his time, or Pauline who was often aggressively female. Bitter she had grown in these years since Morton, but not bitter enough to resent the simple. And then as she listened they suddenly stopped for a little before they resumed their singing, and when they resumed it the tune was sad with the sadness that dwells in the souls of most men, above all in the patient soul of the peasant. ‘Mais comment ferez vous, l’Abbé, Ma Doué? ’ She could hear the soft Breton words quite clearly. ‘Mais comment ferez vous, lP’ Abbé, Pour nous dire la Messe? ’ ‘Quand la nuit sera bien tombée Je tiendrai ma promesse.’ “Mais comment ferez vous, l’ Abbé, Ma Doué, Mais comment ferez vous, l’ Abbé, Sans nappe de fine toile? ’

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

  Several causes combined for the destruction of Protestantism in Upper Italy. The Catholic natives were never friendly to the heretical refugees who settled among them, and called them banditi, which has the double meaning of exile and outlaw. They reproached the Grisons for receiving them after they had been expelled from other Christian countries. They were kept in a state of political vassalage, instead of being admitted to equal rights with the three leagues. The provincial governors were often oppressive, sold the subordinate offices to partisans, and enriched themselves at the expense of the inhabitants. The Protestants were distracted by internal feuds. The Roman Counter-Reformation was begun with great zeal and energy in Upper Italy and Switzerland by the saintly Cardinal Charles Borromeo, archbishop of Milan. Jesuits and Capuchins stirred up the hatred of the ignorant and superstitious people against the Protestant heretics. In the Grisons themselves the Roman Catholic party under the lead of the family of Planta, and the Protestants, headed by the family of Salis, strove for the mastery. The former aimed at the suppression of the Reformation in the leagues as well as the dependencies, and were suspected of treasonable conspiracy with Spain and Austria. The Protestant party held a court (Strafgericht, a sort of tribunal of inquisition) at Thusis in 1618, which included nine preachers, and condemned the conspirators. The aged Zambra, who in the torture confessed complicity with Spain, was beheaded; Nicolaus Rusca, an esteemed priest, leader of the Spanish Catholic interests in the Valtellina, called the hammer of the heretics, was cruelly tortured to death; Bishop John Flugi was deposed and outlawed; the brothers Rudolf and Pompeius Planta, the Knight Jacob Robustelli, and other influential Catholics were banished, and the property of the Plantas was confiscated. These unrighteous measures created general indignation. The exiles fostered revenge, and were assured of Spanish aid. Robustelli returned, after his banishment, to the Valtellina, and organized a band of about three hundred desperate bandits from the Venetian and Milanese territories for the overthrow of the government of the Grisons and the extermination of Protestantism.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Sometimes, when she said this, he simply looked at her coldly, from a great distance, as though he wondered what on earth she was trying to say. His look seemed to accuse her of ignorance and indifference. And, as she watched his face, her eyes became more despairing than ever but at the same time filled with some immense sexual secret which tormented her. He had put off going back to work until he began to be afraid to go to work. Sometimes, when she said that there was nothing wrong in being colored, he answered, “Not if you a hard-up white lady.” The first time he said this, she winced and said nothing. The second time she slapped him. And he slapped her. They fought all the time. They fought each other with their hands and their voices and then with their bodies: and the one storm was like the other. Many times—and now Rufus sat very still, pressing darkness against his eyes, listening to the music—he had, suddenly, without knowing that he was going to, thrown the whimpering, terrified Leona onto the bed, the floor, pinned her against a table or a wall; she beat at him, weakly, moaning, unutterably abject; he twisted his fingers in her long pale hair and used her in whatever way he felt would humiliate her most. It was not love he felt during these acts of love: drained and shaking, utterly unsatisfied, he fled from the raped white woman into the bars. In these bars no one applauded his triumph or condemned his guilt. He began to pick fights with white men. He was thrown out of bars. The eyes of his friends told him that he was falling. His own heart told him so. But the air through which he rushed was his prison and he could not even summon the breath to call for help. Perhaps now, though, he had hit bottom. One thing about the bottom, he told himself, you can’t fall any farther. He tried to take comfort from this thought. Yet there knocked in his heart the suspicion that the bottom did not really exist. “I don’t want to die,” he heard himself say, and he began to cry. The music went on, far from him, terribly loud. The lights were very bright and hot. He was sweating and he itched, he stank. Vivaldo was close to him, stroking his head; the stuff of Vivaldo’s sweater stifled him. He wanted to stop crying, stand up, breathe, but he could only sit there with his face in his hands. Vivaldo murmured, “Go ahead, baby, let it out, let it all out.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  “There was only one thing for me to do, as Rufus used to say, and that was to hit the A train. So I hit it. Nothing was clear in my mind at first. I used to see the way white men watched me, like dogs. And I thought about what I could do to them. How I hated them, the way they looked, and the things they’d say, all dressed up in their damn white skin, and their clothes just so, and their little weak, white pricks jumping in their drawers. You could do any damn thing with them if you just led them along, because they wanted to do something dirty and they knew that you knew how. All black people knew that. Only, the polite ones didn’t say dirty. They said real. I used to wonder what in the world they did in bed, white people I mean, between themselves, to get them so sick. Because they are sick, and I’m telling you something that I know. I had a couple of girl friends and we used to go out every once in a while with some of these shitheads. But they were smart, too, they knew that they were white, and they could always go back home, and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it. I thought to myself, Shit, this scene is not for me. Because I didn’t want their little change, I didn’t want to be at their mercy. I wanted them to be at mine.” She sipped her drink.

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

  When the Donatists hereupon appealed from this ecclesiastical tribunal to the judgment of the emperor himself, he likewise declared against them at Milan in 316, and soon afterward issued penal laws against them, threatening them with the banishment of their bishops and the confiscation of their churches. Persecution made them enemies of the state whose help they had invoked, and fed the flame of their fanaticism. They made violent resistance to the imperial commissioner, Ursacius, and declared that no power on earth could induce them to hold church fellowship with the "rascal" (nebulo) Caecilian. Constantine perceived the fruitlessness of the forcible restriction of religion, and, by an edict in 321, granted the Donatists full liberty of faith and worship. He remained faithful to this policy of toleration, and exhorted the Catholics to patience and indulgence. At a council in 330 the Donatists numbered two hundred and seventy bishops. Constans, the successor of Constantine, resorted again to violent measures; but neither threats nor promises made any impression on the party. It came to blood. The Circumcellions, a sort of Donatist mendicant monks, who wandered about the country among the cottages of the peasantry,661 carried on plunder, arson, and murder, in conjunction with mutinous peasants and slaves, and in crazy zeal for the martyr’s crown, as genuine soldiers of Christ, rushed into fire and water, and threw themselves down from rocks. Yet there were Donatists who disapproved this revolutionary frenzy. The insurrection was suppressed by military force; several leaders of the Donatists were executed, others were banished, and their churches were closed or confiscated. Donatus the Great died in exile. He was succeeded by one Parmenianus. Under Julian the Apostate the Donatists again obtained, with all other heretics and schismatics, freedom of religion, and returned to the possession of their churches, which they painted anew, to redeem them from their profanation by the Catholics. But under the subsequent emperors their condition grew worse, both from persecutions without and dissensions within. The quarrel between the two parties extended into all the affairs of daily life; the Donatist bishop Faustinus of Hippo, for example, allowing none of the members of his church to bake bread for the Catholic inhabitants. § 70. Augustine and the Donatists. Their Persecution and Extinction. At the end of the fourth century, and in the beginning of the fifth, the great Augustine, of Hippo, where there was also a strong congregation of the schismatics, made a powerful effort, by instruction and persuasion, to reconcile the Donatists with the Catholic church. He wrote several works on the subject, and set the whole African church in motion against them. They feared his superior dialectics, and avoided him wherever they could.

• From Another Country (1962)

  The way some people treat them—! They tell me about it, they tell me everything. I like them, I really do. They’re very sweet. And, of course, they make wonderful escorts. You haven’t got to worry about them.” “They don’t cost much, either,” said Vivaldo. “I’ll pick one up for you next week and we can keep him around the house as a pet.” “I simply am not able, today, am I, to say anything that will please you?” “Stop trying so hard. Ellis, where are you taking us for this business-mixed-with-pleasure drink?” “Curb your enthusiasm. We’re practically there.” They turned away from the park, toward Eighth Street, and walked into a downstairs bar. Ellis was known here, naturally; they found a booth and ordered. “Now, the extent of the business,” Ellis said, looking from Ida to Vivaldo, “is very simple. I’ve helped other people and I think I can help Miss Scott.” He looked at Ida. “You aren’t ready yet. You’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do and a hell of a lot to learn. And I’d like you to drop by my office one afternoon this week so we can go into all this in detail. You’ve got to study and work and you’ve got to keep alive while you’re doing all that and maybe I can help you work that out.” Then he looked at Vivaldo. “And you can come, too, if you think I’m trying to exploit Miss Scott unfairly. Is it your intention to act as her agent?” “No.” “You don’t have any reason to distrust me; you just don’t like me, is that it?” “Yes,” said Vivaldo after a moment, “I guess that’s right.” “Oh, Vivaldo,” Ida moaned. “That’s all right. It’s always good to know where you stand. But you certainly aren’t going to allow this—prejudice—to stand in Miss Scott’s way?” “I wouldn’t dream of it. Anyway, Ida does what she wants.” Ellis considered him. He looked briefly at Ida. “Well. That’s reassuring.” He signaled for the waiter and turned to Ida. “What day shall we make it? Tuesday, Wednesday?” “Wednesday might be better,” she said, hesitantly. “Around three o’clock?” “Yes. That’s fine.” “It’s settled, then.” He made a note in his engagement book, then took out his billfold, picked up the check and gave a ten-dollar bill to the waiter. “Give these people anything they want,” he said, “it’s on me.” “Oh, are you going now?” asked Ida. “Yes. My wife will kill me if I don’t get home in time to see the kids before I go to the studio. See you Wednesday.” He held out his hand to Eric. “Glad to have met you, Red; all the best. Maybe you’ll do a show for me, one day.” He looked down at Vivaldo. “So long, genius.

• From Push (1996)

  "OK, well I need a copy of your mother's budget, a current phone or utilities bill, OK?" "OK." I stare at her hard. "I got to go get all that now?" "No, no relax, we're gonna give you a few tests; test your reading and math level, see whether to put you in pre-G.E.D. or G.E.D." "What's the difference?" "Well G.E.D. classes are for students whose basic skills are up to par and they're ready to just go into a class and start working on their G.E.D. Pre-G.E.D. is when the student needs some work to get to the level of the G.E.D. class." "What level that?" "Well, to enter G.E.D. classes a student should be able to read on an eighth-grade level. They should score 8.0 or better on the TABE reading test." "I was in the ninfe grade at I.S. 146." "Then," Cornrows smile at me, "you should have no problem." "What's the problem?" I axes the fat dark-skin woman who is looking over my shoulder at my answer sheet. She got leggings like mine 'cept hers black. She got on blue blouse, look nice, like silk. She look OK I guess. I like light-skin people, they nice. I likes slim people too. Mama fat black, if I weigh two hundred she weigh three. The fat lady is looking at me. I looks back, she ain' answered my question. "What's the problem?" I axes again. "Well I think maybe you may need to take the test again—" "You the teacher?" "One of them." "What you teach?" "I teach the G.E.D. class." "Who the other teacher?" "Ms Rain." "What she teach?" "Ms Rain teaches the pre-G.E.D. reading class." I know thas where I b'long, "Thas where I b'long," I tell her. "Hmmm," go fat black heifer and look at me. I don't believe this bitch no teacher. "Do you want to take the test again?" "No." For me this nuffin' new. There has always been something wrong wif the tesses. The tesses paint a picture of me wif no brain. The tesses paint a picture of me an' my muver—my whole family, we more than dumb, we invisible. One time I seen us on TV. It was a show of spooky shit, an' castles, you know shit be all haunted. And the peoples, well some of them was peoples and some of them was vampire peoples. But the real peoples did not know it till it was party time. You know crackers eating roast turkey and champagne and shit. So it's five of 'em sitting on the couch; and one of 'em git up and take a picture. Got it? When picture develop (it's instamatic) only one person on the couch. The other peoples did not exist.

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

  "Let your pontiff boast as he may of the succession of Peter: even if he should make good his title to it, he will establish nothing more than that obedience is due to him from the Christian people so long as he himself maintains his fidelity to Christ, and does not deviate from the purity of the gospel … . A prophet should be judged by the congregation (1 Cor. 14:29). Whoever exempts himself from this must first expunge his name from the list of the prophets .... "As to your assertion, that our only aim in shaking off this tyrannical yoke was to set ourselves free for unbridled licentiousness after (so help us!) casting away all thoughts of future life, let judgment be given after comparing our conduct with yours. We abound, indeed, in numerous faults; too often do we sin and fall. Still, though truth would, modesty will not, permit me to boast how far we excel you in every respect, unless, perchance, you except Rome, that famous abode of sanctity, which having burst asunder the cords of pure discipline, and trodden all honor under foot, has so overflowed with all kinds of iniquity, that scarcely anything so abominable has ever been before." At the close of his letter, Sadolet had cited the Reformers as criminals before the judgment-seat of God, in an imaginary confession to the effect that they had been actuated by base motives of pride and disappointed ambition in their assaults upon the holy Church and the vicegerent of Christ, and become guilty of "great seditions and schisms." Calvin takes up the challenge by a counter-confession, which introduces us into the very heart of the great religious struggle of the sixteenth century, and is perhaps the ablest vindication of the Reformation to be found in the controversial literature of that time. He puts that movement on the ground of the Word of God against the commandments of men, and justifies it by the protests of the Hebrew prophets against the corruptions of the Levitical priesthood, and Christ’s fearful denunciations of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who nailed the Saviour to the cross. The same confession contains also an incidental account of the spiritual experience and conversion of the author, who speaks for himself as well as his colleagues. We give it in full. "Consider now what serious answer you are to make for yourself and your party. Our cause, as it is supported by the truth of God, will be at no loss for a complete defence. I am not speaking of our persons; their safety will be found not in defence, but in humble confession and suppliant deprecation. But in so far as our ministry is concerned, there is none of us who will not be able thus to speak: —

• From Push (1996)

  I'm on Adam Clayton Powell Blvd which I usually avoid cause it's where Ma's restaurant. ROTI 'N MORE Take Out or Eat In, is. But today I don't care, I don't wanna be homeless again. It happen again I might not get up from it. I gotta do something. So I'm on the Avenue (which is also the Boulevard) near 134th Street moving, trash can by trash can, toward 133rd. I pass ROTI 'N MORE. I look up and see a FOR RENT sign in the window, and next to sign is Kimberton. Our eyes meet. His is shock, mine is like a kiss, my brother! Always my first thought of him is before he rape me then the memory roll in like fog. I see Kimberton's mouth fall open at the horror of me bent over, hands gripped around the black bags. I remember my hands grating coconut, washing rice, stirring peas, scrubbing pots in cold greasy water, pulling the catheter out the old man's penis, scraping shit from old Mrs Feld's age spot ass. I look back at him. I am not ashamed. I could be dead all these years. Rage hot fill me. Kimberton 's eyes glowing like radioactive in my mind, his fly eyes, his hands pushing me down on the bed, years. Years. Kimberton comes to the door. He has on some clothes that cost a lot and should look great but he just look foreign and skinny and dark. He don't look like American man like he want to. I stare. This a man fuck his sister and say so what. This a man go to dental school, graduate high school at sixteen. A credit to his family and race, Ma say. But I'm his family and race ain't I? "What do you want?" he say. I don't speak. "Ma already buried. No one can find you to tell you." Ma dead? The fog like a coming down on me. Kimberton step toward me, pull one hundred dollar bill from his wallet. To take it I would have to put the bags down. I look down at Kimberton's orange colored leather shoes, stupid pointed toes, and up to his head which is beginning to bald. I figure I better get moving 'fore the fog is too thick to see my way out. Kimberton is walking behind me now saying stupid things. "We wondered about you." It's like some kinda dribble, his voice, that fall on top the fog. "You wanted it as much as I did!" he say. How could he say that. I keep walking, such a long way I have to go. It's a guy at the soup kitchen, Asian guy, advocate from Young and Homeless, find out I got a work history get me job cleaning office building over in East Harlem.

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

  His system was more critical and rationalistic than mystic and philosophical.889 He was chiefly zealous for the consistent practical enforcement of the irreconcilable dualism which he established between the gospel and the law, Christianity and Judaism, goodness and righteousness.890 He drew out this contrast at large in a special work, entitled "Antitheses." The God of the Old Testament is harsh, severe and unmerciful as his law; he commands, "Love thy neighbor, but hate thine enemy," and returns "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth;" but the God of the New Testament commands, "Love thine enemy." The one is only just, the other is good. Marcion rejected all the books of the Old Testament, and wrested Christ’s word in Matt. 5:17 into the very opposite declaration: "I am come not to fulfil the law and the prophets, but to destroy them." In his view, Christianity has no connection whatever with the past, whether of the Jewish or the heathen world, but has fallen abruptly and magically, as it were, from heaven.891 Christ, too, was not born at all, but suddenly descended into the city of Capernaum in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, and appeared as the revealer of the good God, who sent him. He has no connection with the Messiah, announced by the Demiurge in the Old Testament; though he called himself the Messiah by way of accommodation. His body was a mere appearance, and his death an illusion, though they had a real meaning.892 He cast the Demiurge into Hades, secured the redemption of the soul (not of the body), and called the apostle Paul to preach it. The other apostles are Judaizing corrupters of pure Christianity, and their writings are to be rejected, together with the catholic tradition. In over-straining the difference between Paul and the other apostles, he was a crude forerunner of the Tübingen school of critics. Marcion formed a canon of his own, which consisted of only eleven books, an abridged and mutilated Gospel of Luke, and ten of Paul’s epistles. He put Galatians first in order, and called Ephesians the Epistle to the Laodicaeans. He rejected the pastoral epistles, in which the forerunners of Gnosticism are condemned, the Epistle to the Hebrews, Matthew, Mark, John, the Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and the Apocalypse. Notwithstanding his violent antinomianism, Marcion taught and practiced the strictest ascetic self-discipline, which revolted not only from all pagan festivities, but even from marriage, flesh, and wine. (He allowed fish). He could find the true God in nature no more than in history. He admitted married persons to baptism only on a vow of abstinence from all sexual intercourse.893 He had a very gloomy, pessimistic view of the world and the church, and addressed a disciple as "his partner in tribulation, and fellow-sufferer from hatred."

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

  The adversaries of Calvin were, with a few exceptions, the same who had driven him away in 1538. They never cordially consented to his recall. They yielded for a time to the pressure of public opinion and political necessity; but when he carried out the scheme of discipline much more rigorously than they had expected, they showed their old hostility, and took advantage of every censurable act of the Consistory or Council. They hated him worse than the pope.729 They abhorred the very word "discipline." They resorted to personal indignities and every device of intimidation; they nicknamed him "Cain," and gave his name to the dogs of the street; they insulted him on his way to the lecture-room; they fired one night fifty shots before his bed-chamber; they threatened him in the pulpit; they approached the communion table to wrest the sacred elements from his hands, but he refused to profane the sacrament and overawed them. On another occasion he walked into the midst of an excited crowd and offered his breast to their daggers. As late as October 15, 1554, he wrote to an old friend: "Dogs bark at me on all sides. Everywhere I am saluted with the name of ’heretic,’ and all the calumnies that can possibly be invented are heaped upon me; in a word, the enemies among my own flock attack me with greater bitterness than my declared enemies among the papists."730 And yet in the midst of these troubles be continued to discharge all his duties, and found time to write some of his most important works. It seems incredible that a man of feeble constitution and physical timidity should have been able to triumph over such determined and ferocious opposition. The explanation is in the justice of his cause, and the moral purity and "majesty of his character, which so strongly impressed the Genevese. We must distinguish two parties among Calvin’s enemies—the Patriots, who opposed him on political grounds, and the Libertines, who hated his religion. It would be unjust to charge all the Patriots with the irreligious sentiments of the Libertines. But they made common cause for the overthrow of Calvin and his detested system of discipline. They had many followers among the discontented and dissolute rabble which abounds in every large city, and is always ready for a revolution, having nothing to lose and everything to gain. 1. The Patriots or Children of Geneva (Enfants de Genève), as they called themselves, belonged to some of the oldest and most influential families of Geneva,—Favre (or Fabri), Perrin, Vandel, Berthelier, Ameaux.731 They or their fathers had taken an active part in the achievement of political independence, and even in the introduction of the Reformation, as a means of protecting that independence. But they did not care for the positive doctrines of the Reformation. They wanted liberty without law. They resisted every encroachment on their personal freedom and love of amusements. They hated the evangelical discipline more than the yoke of Savoy.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  I return exhausted from our latest attempt: a hellish, traumatic afternoon, fractious, gusty and sour. I’d met Stuart and Mandy out on the hill. ‘I’ll run the dogs for you,’ he said. ‘See if we can get a point for her.’ But Mabel wasn’t having any of it. She bated and twittered and glared. She hated the dogs, she hated it all. I hated it too. I fed her up and drove us home. Then I started pulling clothes from a wardrobe, attempting to transform myself into a cheerful, civilised person who does things like go to art galleries. I brush the burrs from my hair, wash my face, shrug on a skirt, push the sleeves of a cashmere jumper back to my elbows, paint a black line over each eyelid. Foundation. Mascara. A smear of lipsalve to seal my wind-dried mouth, a pair of shiny boots with heels that make me worry that I can’t run in them – for running seems essential these days – and I check the result in a mirror. It is a good disguise. I’m pleased with how convincing it seems. But it’s getting late, and I’m running against the clock. I have twenty minutes to get to a gallery for the opening of an art exhibition. I’m supposed to give a talk about it in a few weeks’ time and I have to see the bloody thing first. I battle with sleep as I drive, and by the time I reach the gallery doors my knees are ready to give way. I expect a room of paintings and sculpture. But when I open the doors there’s something so unexpected inside my brain turns cartwheels. It is a full-sized bird hide built of rough-hewn pine, and it is – I read the sign – an exact copy of a real structure in California. Seeing it in the gallery is as disconcerting as opening a fridge door and finding a house within. The hide is dark inside and packed with people peering through a window in one wall. I look out of it too. Oh! I see the trick. It is a neat one. The artist has filmed the view from the real hide, and is projecting it onto a screen beyond the window. It shows a soaring California condor, a huge, dusty-black carrion-eating vulture rendered nearly extinct by persecution, habitat destruction and poisoning from lead-contaminated carcasses. By the late 1980s only twenty-seven birds remained, and in a last-ditch effort to save the species they were trapped and taken into captivity so that their domestic-bred young could be used to repopulate the wild. Some people tried to stop this happening. They believed honestly and sincerely that once all the birds were captive, condors would cease to exist. These birds are made of wildness, they argued. A captive condor is a condor no more.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  They stop talking as I approach. He recognises me. I recognise him. ‘Hello!’ I say brightly, and explain what I am doing with a hawk on this hallowed ground. ‘Hmm,’ he says, eyeing Mabel with suspicion. ‘Are you going to catch students with it?’ ‘Only if they’re causing trouble.’ Then I whisper conspiratorially, ‘Let me have the names.’ It is the right answer. A shout of laughter. He is fascinated by the hawk, and wants to know more about it, but he is working and duty calls. ‘Excuse me,’ he says, and he sets his shoulders once again, narrows his eyes into the sun, and stalks off towards some poor tourists who’ve decided to have a picnic on the corner of the college rugby pitch. I flew her later in the day. I flew her earlier. I fed her rabbit with fur and rabbit without. I fed her chicks that I’d gutted and skinned and rinsed in water. I reduced her weight. I raised it. I reduced it again. I wore different clothes. I tried everything to fix the problem, certain that the problem couldn’t be fixed because the problem was me. Sometimes she flew straight to my fist, sometimes straight over it, and there was no way of knowing which it would be. Every flight was a monstrous game of chance, a coin-toss, and what was at stake felt something very like my soul. I began to think that what made the hawk flinch from me was the same thing that had driven away the man I’d fallen for after my father’s death. Think that there was something deeply wrong about me, something vile that only he and the hawk could see. And every evening I wrote in the journal I’d kept since the hawk arrived. I made notes in terse, impersonal shorthand, detailing the weather, Mabel’s behaviour, measurements of weight and wind and food. They read like aviation reports, things to be broadcast in clipped tones from the Air Ministry roof: 2lb 1½oz light winds, sunny, 4 p.m. 35 yards four flights quick response, overshot last two. Washed chicks. But they were changing. 2lb 1½oz clear, slight breeze, 4.30 p.m. three flights 35 yards overshot every time. Awful. Rabbit. ???!! They were no longer entirely about the hawk. Dull. Headache. Hard to get out today. Am I ill? 2lb 1¼oz rabbit three flights 25 yards overshot on last why? Have to fix this what am I doing wrong? Sun, stiff breeze. 4 p.m. Rabbit, but same as yesterday 20 yards OK – at 25 overshot twice: 2lb 1¼oz rest of day horrible because I had to see people, have to pretend everything fine. On and on. Wish they would FUCK OFF AND LEAVE ME ALONE. The anger was vast and it came out of nowhere. It was the rage of something not fitting; the frustration of trying to put something in a box that is slightly too small.

• From Little Women (1868)

  The tent is for your especial benefit and that oak is your drawing room, this is the messroom and the third is the camp kitchen. Now, let's have a game before it gets hot, and then we'll see about dinner." Frank, Beth, Amy, and Grace sat down to watch the game played by the other eight. Mr. Brooke chose Meg, Kate, and Fred. Laurie took Sallie, Jo, and Ned. The English played well, but the Americans played better, and contested every inch of the ground as strongly as if the spirit of '76 inspired them. Jo and Fred had several skirmishes and once narrowly escaped high words. Jo was through the last wicket and had missed the stroke, which failure ruffled her a good deal. Fred was close behind her and his turn came before hers. He gave a stroke, his ball hit the wicket, and stopped an inch on the wrong side. No one was very near, and running up to examine, he gave it a sly nudge with his toe, which put it just an inch on the right side. "I'm through! Now, Miss Jo, I'll settle you, and get in first," cried the young gentleman, swinging his mallet for another blow. "You pushed it. I saw you. It's my turn now," said Jo sharply. "Upon my word, I didn't move it. It rolled a bit, perhaps, but that is allowed. So, stand off please, and let me have a go at the stake." "We don't cheat in America, but you can, if you choose," said Jo angrily. "Yankees are a deal the most tricky, everybody knows. There you go!" returned Fred, croqueting her ball far away. Jo opened her lips to say something rude, but checked herself in time, colored up to her forehead and stood a minute, hammering down a wicket with all her might, while Fred hit the stake and declared himself out with much exultation. She went off to get her ball, and was a long time finding it among the bushes, but she came back, looking cool and quiet, and waited her turn patiently. It took several strokes to regain the place she had lost, and when she got there, the other side had nearly won, for Kate's ball was the last but one and lay near the stake. "By George, it's all up with us! Goodbye, Kate. Miss Jo owes me one, so you are finished," cried Fred excitedly, as they all drew near to see the finish. "Yankees have a trick of being generous to their enemies," said Jo, with a look that made the lad redden, "especially when they beat them," she added, as, leaving Kate's ball untouched, she won the game by a clever stroke. Laurie threw up his hat, then remembered that it wouldn't do to exult over the defeat of his guests, and stopped in the middle of the cheer to whisper to his friend, "Good for you, Jo! He did cheat, I saw him.

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

  For this offence he was imprisoned by the Council for two months and condemned to a fine of sixty dollars. He made an apology and retracted his words. But Calvin was not satisfied, and demanded a second trial. The Council condemned him to a degrading punishment called the amende honorable, namely, to parade through the streets in his shirt, with bare head, and a lighted torch in his hand, and to ask on bended knees the pardon of God, of the Council, and of Calvin. This harsh judgment provoked a popular outbreak in the quarter of St. Gervais, but the Council proceeded in a body to the spot and ordered the wine-shops to be closed and a gibbet to be erected to frighten the mob. The sentence on Ameaux was executed April 5, 1546. Two preachers, Henri de la Mare and Aimé Maigret, who had taken part in the drinking scene, were deposed. The former had said before the Council that Calvin was, a good and virtuous man, and of great intellect, but sometimes governed by his passions, impatient, full of hatred, and vindictive." The latter had committed more serious offences.766 4. Pierre Vandel was a handsome, brilliant, and frivolous cavalier, and loved to exhibit himself with a retinue of valets and courtesans, with rings on his fingers and golden chains on his breast. He had been active in the expulsion of Calvin, and opposed him after his recall. He was imprisoned for his debaucheries and insolent conduct before the Consistory. He was Syndic in 1548. He took a leading part in the conspiracy of Perrin and shared his condemnation and exile.767 5. Philibert Berthelier (or Bertelier, Bertellier), an unworthy son of the distinguished patriot who, in 1519, had been beheaded for his part in the war of independence, belonged to the most malignant enemies of Calvin. He had gone to Noyon, if we are to believe the assertion of Bolsec, to bring back scandalous reports concerning the early life of the Reformer, which the same Bolsec published thirteen years after Calvin’s death, but without any evidence.768 If the Libertines had been in possession of such information, they would have made use of it. Berthelier is characterized by Beza as "a man of the most consummate impudence" and "guilty of many iniquities." He was excommunicated by the Consistory in 1551 for abusing Calvin, for not going to church, and other offences, and for refusing to make any apology. Calvin was absent during these sessions, owing to sickness. Berthelier appealed to the Council, of which he was the secretary. The Council at first confirmed the decision of the Consistory, but afterwards released him, during the syndicate of Perrin and the trial of Servetus, and gave him letters of absolution signed with the seal of the Republic (1553).769

• From Little Women (1868)

  We can't tell him so, but he won't do it again, take my word for it." Meg drew her aside, under pretense of pinning up a loose braid, and said approvingly, "It was dreadfully provoking, but you kept your temper, and I'm so glad, Jo." "Don't praise me, Meg, for I could box his ears this minute. I should certainly have boiled over if I hadn't stayed among the nettles till I got my rage under control enough to hold my tongue. It's simmering now, so I hope he'll keep out of my way," returned Jo, biting her lips as she glowered at Fred from under her big hat. "Time for lunch," said Mr. Brooke, looking at his watch. "Commissary general, will you make the fire and get water, while Miss March, Miss Sallie, and I spread the table? Who can make good coffee?" "Jo can," said Meg, glad to recommend her sister. So Jo, feeling that her late lessons in cookery were to do her honor, went to preside over the coffeepot, while the children collected dry sticks, and the boys made a fire and got water from a spring near by. Miss Kate sketched and Frank talked to Beth, who was making little mats of braided rushes to serve as plates. The commander in chief and his aides soon spread the tablecloth with an inviting array of eatables and drinkables, prettily decorated with green leaves. Jo announced that the coffee was ready, and everyone settled themselves to a hearty meal, for youth is seldom dyspeptic, and exercise develops wholesome appetites. A very merry lunch it was, for everything seemed fresh and funny, and frequent peals of laughter startled a venerable horse who fed near by. There was a pleasing inequality in the table, which produced many mishaps to cups and plates, acorns dropped in the milk, little black ants partook of the refreshments without being invited, and fuzzy caterpillars swung down from the tree to see what was going on. Three white-headed children peeped over the fence, and an objectionable dog barked at them from the other side of the river with all his might and main. "There's salt here," said Laurie, as he handed Jo a saucer of berries. "Thank you, I prefer spiders," she replied, fishing up two unwary little ones who had gone to a creamy death. "How dare you remind me of that horrid dinner party, when yours is so nice in every way?" added Jo, as they both laughed and ate out of one plate, the china having run short. "I had an uncommonly good time that day, and haven't got over it yet. This is no credit to me, you know, I don't do anything. It's you and Meg and Brooke who make it all go, and I'm no end obliged to you. What shall we do when we can't eat anymore?" asked Laurie, feeling that his trump card had been played when lunch was over. "Have games till it's cooler.