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 359 of 447 · 20 per page

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Seeing her straitly guarded by Marato and being thereby hindered of their purpose, one day, as the ship fared on at full speed under sail and Marato stood at the poop, looking out on the sea and nowise on his guard against them, they went of one accord and laying hold of him suddenly from behind, cast him into the sea, nor was it till they had sailed more than a mile farther that any perceived Marato to be fallen overboard. Alatiel, hearing this and seeing no possible way of recovering him, began anew to make moan for herself; whereupon the two lovers came incontinent to her succour and with soft words and very good promises, whereof she understood but little, studied to soothe and console the lady, who lamented not so much her lost husband as her own ill fortune. After holding much discourse with her at one time and another, themseeming after awhile they had well nigh comforted her, they came to words with one another which should first take her to lie with him. Each would fain be the first and being unable to come to any accord upon this, they first with words began a sore and hot dispute and thereby kindled into rage, they clapped hands to their knives and falling furiously on one another, before those on board could part them, dealt each other several blows, whereof one incontinent fell dead, whilst the other abode on life, though grievously wounded in many places.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Growing up in this very school system, Camila had learned the importance of challenging injustice, of being an “upstander.” So she began to shout the dean’s name. “Mr. Williams! Mr. Williams!” she yelled. He invited her to the front of the auditorium and handed her the mic. “Hi, I’m Camila,” she said. “I’m a twelfth-grader and I think what you just said is not okay and is extremely sexist and promoting ‘rape culture.’ If I want to wear a tank top and shorts because it’s hot, I should be able to do that and that has no correlation to how much ‘respect’ I hold for myself. What you’re saying is just continuing this cycle of blaming the victim.” The students in the auditorium cheered, and Camila handed back the mic. “Thank you, Camila. I totally agree,” Mr. Williams said as she walked back to her seat. Then he added, “But there’s a time and a place for that type of clothing.” This was not the first earful I’d gotten about girls’ provocative dress: from parents, from teachers, from administrators, from girls themselves. Parents went to battle over the skimpiness of shorts, the clingy V-necks, the tush-cupping yoga pants that showed “everything.” Why do girls have to dress like that? moms asked, even as some wore similar outfits themselves. Principals tried to impose decorum, but ended up inciting rebellion. In suburban Chicago, eighth-graders picketed a proposed policy against leggings. High-schoolers in Utah took to the Internet when they discovered digitally raised necklines and sleeves added to female classmates’ shirts in their yearbook photos. Boys run afoul of dress codes when they flout authority: “hippies” defying the establishment, “thugs” in saggy pants. For girls, the issue is sex. Enforcing modesty is considered a way both to protect and to contain young women’s sexuality; and they, by association, are charged with controlling young men’s. After the assembly, the dean of attendance, who was female, stopped Camila in the hallway. “I totally get that you’re trying to empower yourself,” she told the girl, “but it’s a bit distracting. You have male teachers, and there are male students.” “Maybe you shouldn’t be hiring male teachers that are focused on staring at my boobs!” Camila shot back. The dean said they could continue the conversation later. “Later” never came.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  In any case, I would argue that waiting to address rape until college is years too late. Sexual assault is even more common among secondary students; the difference is that their schools don’t have the same duty to report it. Twenty-eight percent of female college freshmen in a 2015 survey of a large private university in upstate New York said they had been victims of either attempted or completed forcible or incapacitated rape before college—between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. As in the early 1990s, many of the recent incidents that have shocked the nation also took place among younger kids. In the fall of 2012, Steubenville, Ohio, became the Glen Ridge of its day after two football players hauled a drunk, insensible sixteen-year-old girl from party to party, taking turns sexually violating her, spitting on her, even urinating on her as classmates looked on, some cheering. Like the Glen Ridge jocks, who would, without asking their partners, Scotch tape photos to their high school’s trophy case of themselves in flagrante delicto, these boys weren’t content simply to assault their victim; they needed to document the “achievement.” One member of the Steubenville “rape crew” tweeted such gems as “Some people deserve to be peed on” and “You don’t sleep through a wang in the butthole” and “Song of the night is definitely Rape Me by Nirvana.” Another boy posted a picture of the victim on Instagram, her head lolling back as the boys carried her by her wrists and ankles. In a YouTube video, a laughing young man calls her “deader than,” respectively, Nicole Simpson, John F. Kennedy, Trayvon Martin, and the toddler Caylee Anthony. Was online bragging about rape part of a new, ominous trend? A year earlier, a pair of boys in Louisville, Kentucky (fine students and athletes at a prestigious Catholic school), made news when they passed around cell phone pictures of themselves assaulting a sixteen-year-old who lay drunk and semiconscious in her kitchen. Audrie Pott, a fifteen-year-old from Saratoga, California, committed suicide after photos of an assault perpetrated while she was passed out drunk were posted on the Internet. Ditto Rehtaeh Parsons, a seventeen-year-old girl from Nova Scotia, Canada, who was gang-raped while incapacitated.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  The extent to which Eva is inundated by sexually aggressive and inappropriate circumstances, especially to the point that they seem almost monolithic, is also evident in other instances. Beyond her early violation with a "dirty popsicle stick" and later rape by Tyrone, even Eva's cousin Alfonso is relentless in his solicitation of sex that ranges from wanting to "feel her up" to a desire to actually "get her started." Even blood ties or familial relations do not protect her from male sexual aggression. While she runs away, escaping Alfonso, her interactions with Moses Tripp-whom she meets at a bar and stabs in the hand in selfdefense from sexual violation-make evident her subsequent refusals to tolerate inappropriate sexual advances. Because she does not delineate to the authorities what circumstances led to her committing the crime, she, at age seventeen, serves time in prison, where, ironically, she meets and later marries her husband, James Hunn: a fifty-two-year-old man whose initial gestures of "tenderness" toward her later evolve into masculine power and domination. The incident with Moses Tripp foreshadows what happens with Davis Carter, whom she later meets at a bar and "shacks up" with briefly, before killing him with poison and then castrating him. And while she never explicates what exactly led to her horrendous crime-his confining her to his apartment, her discovery that he is married, and/or his sexual dehumanization of her-what does become evident is that Davis embodies the cumulative sexualized aggression and male sexual hegemony that she has experienced throughout her lifetime. "`You know what I think,"' the psychiatrist asserts to Eva during a session, "`I think [Davis] came to represent all the men you'd known in your life"' (81).

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  The Black Power and gay liberation movements of the 196os and 1970s challenged and redefined identity politics, especially the meanings of "blackness" and "homosexuality" respectively. Neither of these movements, however, did much to create a space to empower black "sexual minorities" who were marginalized in American society because of both their race and sexual orientation.10 Black nationalist discourse, a major ideological and discursive component of Black Power, largely ascribed heterosexuality as "normative" and, thereby, as a requisite for its essentialized notion of "blackness" ; and the term "gay," within the rhetoric of gay liberationists, almost always connoted "whiteness."11 While heterosexuality typically constituted "normative" sexual behavior in the Black Power movement and black nationalist thought, within the Black Panther Party lesbians and gay individuals also served, sometimes openly, in positions of authority. For, as David Hilliard, Black Panther Party founding member and chief of staff, posits, "There were gay operatives in the Black Panther Party working at the highest levels of leadership. [...] Still, no one ever asked you to define your sexual orientation. We didn't divide ourselves like that. First and foremost you were a Black Panther."12 Hilliard's remarks complicate the organization's stance surrounding sexuality within the movement: the Party-and, arguably, the larger black nationalist movement-was not exclusively heterosexual, and its constituents were not required to specify their sexual orientation. Yet, its prioritization of race and racial solidarity precluded, if not overlooked, the intersectionality of race and sexuality: sexual diversity within a racialized collective context. The Black Panther Party-much like, if not reflective of the larger Black Power movement-further compartmentalized race and sexual orientation into an "either/or" binary. And so, while the movement succeeded unequivocally in transforming the racial, sociocultural, political, and class consciousness of black people, it did not fully embrace or acknowledge the sexual politics within the movement and the black community at large." The gay liberation movement, on the other hand, offered a valuable discourse on sexual politics that challenged heteronormativity, as well as the stigmatization associated with homosexuality. As a largely white (upper-) middle-class urban movement whose ideologies were reflective of these demographics, it was largely inattentive to the needs and struggles of its nonwhite, non-middle-class constituents.14 It did little to break away from social stratification predicated on race and class or to articulate a racialized sexuality. It largely conflated homosexuality and sexual labels such as "gay" and "lesbian" with whiteness. Thus, white middle-class sexual minorities came to define and represent, if not constitute, "the gay identity." Black sexual minorities in the gay liberation struggle, similar to those in the Black Power movement, were trapped, then, within what black feminist scholar Barbara Smith identifies as the "contradictions" and "invisibilities" of being black and gay: further silenced, excluded, and marginalized by the pervasive homophobia and racism in the black and gay movements, respectively. 15

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  9 He said to them, “What do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, ‘Lighten the yoke (burden) which your father put on us’?” 10 The young men who had grown up with him answered, “This is what you should say to this people who told you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but as for you, make our yoke lighter’—say this to them: ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins [and my reign will be even more severe]. 11 ‘And now, whereas my father loaded you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with c scorpions.’ ” 12 Jeroboam and all the people came back to Rehoboam on the third day, just as the king had instructed, saying, “Return to me on the third day.” 13 The king answered the people harshly and d ignored the advice which the elders had given him, 14 and spoke to them in accordance with the advice of the young men, saying, “My father made your yoke heavy, but as for me, I will add to your yoke; my father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.” 15 So the king did not listen to the people; for the situation was from the LORD , so that He might fulfill His word which He spoke through Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat. [1 Kin 11:29–33 ] The Kingdom Divided; Jeroboam Rules Israel 16 So when all [the ten northern tribes of] Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people replied to the king, saying, “What portion do we have in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse; To your tents, O Israel! Look now after e your own house, David!” Then Israel went back to their tents. 17 But as for the sons (descendants) of Israel who lived in the cities of Judah [including Benjamin], Rehoboam reigned over them. 18 Then King Rehoboam sent f Adoram, who was in charge of the forced labor [to represent him], and all Israel stoned him to death. And King Rehoboam quickly mounted his chariot to escape to Jerusalem. 19 So Israel (the ten northern tribes) has rebelled against the house (royal line) of David to this day (the date of this writing). 20 It came about when all Israel heard that Jeroboam had returned, that they sent word and called him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel. None followed the house of David except the tribe of Judah [including Benjamin]. 21 Now when Rehoboam arrived in Jerusalem, he assembled all the [fighting men from the] house of Judah, with the tribe of Benjamin, 180,000 chosen warriors, to fight against the house of Israel to bring the kingdom back to Rehoboam the son of Solomon.

• From Vox (1992)

  103 down my coffee and I said, 'Okay. I accept everything you say. I'll specify the couch size, I'll specify high-end dubbed Italian-import porno, but still I just don't trust myself to buy the right blanket. That's what worries me. And I see now that I really need the right blanket to complete this. Will you help me pick out a blanket?' And she said, Tonight?' And I said, Teah it has to be tonight, it really does, because tomorrow I'll want to send in the ad, and as you say I have got to include the size, the color, everything, if I want this to work. I need your help with this.' And she said okay." "What kind of blanket did you get?" "We went to this discount place, kind of a seedy place, blinding fluorescence, in a strip right near where we work, and we went to the blanket department, and there were all these big blankets stuffed into clear plastic con tainers with snaps, some awful-looking, but some not so bad, and it was very strange, it was as if the two of us were a real couple shopping for a blanket. She poked around, looking at this and that, and I'd go, 'What about this?' and she'd feel it, make a judicious face, nod. But then, when she'd covered both aisles, she said, 'No, I just don't see any blanket with a fringe, I mean a real fringe. I think I better get back.' I said, 'No, we'll go to another store!' and she said, 'Nah, the good stores will be closing by the time we get there. If there'd been a decent fringe avail able here, I could have helped you with the selection, but I think you're on your own now.' I went nuts. I

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  At the heart of the argument over consent is another argument over alcohol. How drunk is too drunk to mean yes? How drunk is too drunk to be unable to say no? Who bears responsibility for making that call? An estimated 80 percent of campus assaults involve alcohol, typically consumed voluntarily; often both victim and assailant (or assailants) have been drinking. As I wrote earlier, the party culture on college campuses (as well as in many high school communities) can act as cover for rapists, especially repeat rapists. Yet in 2013, when Emily Yoffe wrote on Slate DoubleX that girls should be warned that heavy drinking increases their vulnerability to having sexual violence perpetrated against them, she was pilloried for victim-blaming. The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Jezebel, Salon, Huffington Post, the Daily Mail, Feministing, and even colleagues at Slate DoubleX itself labeled her a “rape apologist.” During the ensuing furor, a generation gap emerged. Older women—that is, women the same age as Yoffe (a category that includes this author)—thought her advice sounded sensible. She wasn’t, after all, saying that a drunk girl deserved to be raped or that it was her fault if she was. Nor was she saying that sobriety guaranteed protection against sexual assault. She only seemed to be voicing what most of us would tell our daughters: alcohol reduces your ability to recognize and escape a dangerous situation. Women metabolize liquor differently from men, too, reaching a higher blood alcohol level drink for drink and becoming more impaired than a guy the same size and weight. Given the prevalence of binge drinking on campus, shouldn’t they know that? Many young women, though, countered with a stance similar to the one they held on dress codes: don’t tell us not to drink, tell rapists not to rape. If you really want to reduce assault, they said, wouldn’t it be equally, if not more, logical to target boys’ alcohol abuse, especially since perpetrators are about as likely to be drinking as victims? Alcohol has proven to have a profound influence on would-be rapists’ behavior. It lowers their inhibition; it allows them to disregard social cues or a partner’s hesitation; it gives them the nerve they may not otherwise have to use force; and it offers a ready justification for misconduct. The more that potential rapists drink, the more aggressive they are during an assault, and the less aware of their victims’ distress. By contrast, sober guys not only are less sexually coercive but will more readily step up if they believe an alcohol-related assault is in the offing.

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

  This body of law was an improvement upon the arbitrary and barbaric severity of princes. It, at least, started out from the principles of justice and humanity. But it degenerated into an attempt to do for the individual action of the Christian world what the Pharisees attempted to do for Jewish life. It made the huge mistake of substituting an endless number of enactments, often the inventions of casuistry, for inclusive, comprehensive moral principles. It put a crushing restraint upon the progress of thought and bound weights, heavy to be borne, upon the necks of men. It had the virtues and all the vices of the papal system. It protected the clergy in the commission of crimes by demanding that they be tried in ecclesiastical courts for all offences whatsoever. It became a mighty support for the papal claims. It confirmed and perpetuated the fiction of the pseudo-Isidorian decretals and perpetrated new forgeries. It taught that the decisions of Rome are final.1849 As Christ is above the law, even so is the pope.1850 Döllinger closes his examination of the Decretum, by pronouncing it; "filled through and through with forgery and error" and says "it entered like a mighty wedge into the older structural organization of the Church and split it apart. " The canon law also gave its sanction to the devilish principle of ecclesiastical compulsion, declaring that physical force is to be used to coerce ecclesiastical dissidents. It justified wars against the enemies of religion and the persecution of heretics, even as Sarah, the type of the heavenly Jerusalem, persecuted her handmaid Hagar. And it declared, with Urban II., that he who kills one who is under the sentence of excommunication is not to be dealt with as a murderer.1851 These principles, set forth in clear statements, were advocated by Thomas Aquinas and the other Schoolmen and asserted by the greatest of the popes. At last the legalistic tyranny became too heavy for the enlightened conscience of Europe to bear, as was the case with the ceremonial law in the days of the Apostles, against which Peter protested at the council of Jerusalem and Paul in his Epistles. The Reformers raised their voices in protest against it. Into the same flames which consumed the papal bull at Wittenberg, 1520, Luther threw a copy of the canon law, the one representing the effrontery of an infallible pope, the other the intolerable arrogance of a human lawgiver in matters of religion, and both destructive of the liberty of the individual. In his Address to the Christian Nobles, Luther declared that it did not contain two lines adapted to instruct a religious man and that it includes so many dangerous regulations that the best disposition of it is to make of it a dung heap. Even in the Catholic world its enactments have been largely superseded by the canons of the council of Trent, the papal decretals issued since, and the concordats between Catholic princes and the papal see.

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

  Nevertheless, the emperor should pay the pope the reverence which a first-born son pays to his father, such reverence as Charlemagne paid to Leo III.38 In denying the subordination of the civil power, Dante rejects the figure comparing the spiritual and temporal powers to the sun and moon,39 and the arguments drawn from the alleged precedence of Levi over Judah on the ground of the priority of Levi’s birth; from the oblation of the Magi at the manger and from the sentence passed upon Saul by Samuel. He referred the two swords both to spiritual functions. Without questioning the historical occurrence, he set aside Constantine’s donation to Sylvester on the ground that the emperor no more had the right to transfer his empire in the West than he had to commit suicide. Nor had the pope a right to accept the gift.40 In the Inferno Dante applied to that transaction the oft-quoted lines:41— "Ah, Constantine, of how much ill was cause, Not thy conversion, but those rich domains Which the first wealthy pope received of thee." The Florentine poet’s universal monarchy has remained an ideal unrealized, like the republic of the Athenian philosopher.42 Conception of popular liberty as it is conceived in this modern age, Dante had none. Nevertheless, he laid down the important principle that the government exists for the people, and not the people for the government.43 The treatise De monarchia was burnt as heretical, 1329, by order of John XXII. and put on the Index by the Council of Trent. In recent times it has aided the Italian patriots in their work of unifying Italy and separating politics from the Church according to Cavour’s maxim, "a free Church in a free state." In the front rank of the champions of the temporal power of the papacy stood Aegidius Colonna, called also Aegidius Romanus, 1247–1316.44 He was an Augustinian, and rose to be general of his order. He became famous as a theological teacher and, in 1287, his order placed his writings in all its schools.45 In 1295 he was made archbishop of Bourges, Boniface setting aside in his favor the cleric nominated by Coelestine. Aegidius participated in the council in Rome, 1301, which Philip the Fair forbade the French prelates to attend. He was an elaborate writer, and in 1304 no less than 12 of his theological works and 14 of his philosophical writings were in use in the University of Paris. The tract by which Aegidius is chiefly known is his Power of the Supreme Pontiff—De ecclesiastica sive de summit pontificis potestate. It was the chief work of its time in defence of the papacy, and seems to have been called forth by the Roman Council and to have been written in 1301.46 It was dedicated to Boniface VIII. Its main positions are the following: — The pope judges all things and is judged by no man, 1 Cor. 2:15. To him belongs plenary power, plenitudo potestatis.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken My [solemn] covenant which I made with their fathers.” 11 Therefore thus says the LORD , “Behold I am bringing disaster and suffering on them which they will not be able to escape; though they cry to Me, I will not listen to them. 12 “Then the cities of Judah and the people of Jerusalem will go and cry to the [man-made] gods to whom they burn incense, but they cannot save them in the time of their disaster. 13 “For [as many as] the number of your cities are your gods, O Judah; and [as many as] the number of the streets of Jerusalem are the altars you have set up to the shameful thing, altars to burn incense to Baal. 14 “Therefore do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry or prayer for them, for I shall not listen when they cry to Me in the time of their disaster. 15 “What right has My beloved [to be] in My house When she has done many vile things and acted treacherously [over and over again]? Can vows and the meat of your sacrifices remove your wickedness from you and cancel the consequences of your sin, So that you can [escape your judgment and] rejoice?” 16 The LORD [acknowledged you once as worthy and] called your name, “A green olive tree, fair and beautiful in fruit and form”; But with the roar of a great tempest He has set fire to it, And its branches are worthless. [Ps 52:8 ; Jer 21:14 ] 17 For the LORD of hosts, who planted you, has pronounced evil and horror against you because of the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah, which they have done to provoke Me [to anger] by offering sacrifices and burning incense to Baal. Plots against Jeremiah 18 Then the LORD gave me knowledge [of their plot], and I knew it; So You [O LORD ] revealed their deeds to me. 19 But I was like a gentle and tame lamb brought to the slaughter; And I did not know that they had devised plots and schemes against me, saying, “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit; Let us cut him off from the land of the living, That his name be remembered no longer.” 20 But, O LORD of hosts, who judges righteously, Who tests the feelings and the heart (mind), Let me see Your vengeance on them, For to You I have committed my cause. 21 Therefore thus says the LORD regarding the men of Anathoth, who seek your life, saying, “Do not prophesy in the name of the LORD , so that you will not die by our hand.” 22 Therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts, “Behold, I am about to punish them.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  7 “All the men allied with you Shall send you on your way to the border; The men who were at peace with you Shall deceive you and overpower you; Those who eat your bread [those you trust] Shall set a hostile ambush for you. (There is no understanding of it.) 8 “Will I not on that day,” says the LORD , “Destroy the wise men from Edom [removing all wisdom] And understanding from the c mountain of Esau? 9 “And your mighty men shall be dismayed and demoralized, O d Teman, So that everyone from the mountain of Esau may be cut off in the slaughter. Edom Denounced 10 “Because of the violence you did against your brother Jacob, Shame shall cover you [completely], And you shall be cut off forever. 11 “On the day that [Jerusalem was destroyed] you stood aloof [from your brother Jacob]— On the day that strangers took his forces captive and carried off his wealth, And foreigners entered his gates And cast lots for Jerusalem [dividing the city for plunder]— You too were like one of them [collaborating with the enemy]. [Num 20:18–20 ; Amos 1:11 , 12 ] 12 “Do not gaze and gloat [in triumph] over your brother’s day, The day when his misfortune came. Do not rejoice over the sons of Judah In the day of their destruction; Do not speak arrogantly [jeering and maliciously mocking] In the day of their distress. 13 “Do not enter the gate of My people In the day of their disaster; Yes, you, do not look [with delight] on their misery In the day of their ruin, And do not loot treasures In the day of their ruin. 14 “Do not stand at the crossroad To cut down those [of Judah] who escaped; And do not hand over [to the enemy] those [of Judah] who survive In the day of their distress. The Day of the LORD and the Future 15 “For the [judgment] day of the LORD draws near on all the nations. As you have done, it shall be done to you [in retribution]; Your [evil] dealings will return on your own head. [Ps 137:7–9 ; Is 2:10–22 ; Zeph 3:8–20 ; Zech 12:1–14 ; Rev 19:11–21 ] 16 “Because just as you [Edom] drank on My holy mountain [desecrating it in the revelry of the destroyers], So shall all the nations drink continually [one by one, of My wrath]; Yes, they shall drink and swallow [the full measure of punishment] And become as though they had never existed. [Rev 16:14–16 ] 17 “But on Mount Zion [in Jerusalem] there shall be [deliverance for] those who escape, And it shall be holy [no pagan will defile it]; And the house of Jacob shall possess their [former] possessions. [Ezek 36 ; Joel 2:32 ] 18 “Then the house of Jacob shall be a fire And the house of Joseph a flame [in executing God’s wrath]; But the house of Esau will be like stubble.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  [Deut 16:21 ] 15 “And in anger and wrath I shall execute vengeance On the nations which have not obeyed [such vengeance as they have not known before].” Micah 6 God’s Indictment of His People 1 H EAR NOW what the LORD is saying, “Arise, plead your case before the mountains, And let the hills [as witnesses] hear your voice. 2 “Hear, O mountains, the indictment of the LORD , And you enduring foundations of the earth, For the LORD has a case (a legal complaint) against His people, And He will dispute (challenge) Israel. 3 “O My people, what have I done to you [since you have turned away from Me]? And how have I wearied you? Answer Me. 4 “For I brought you up from the land of Egypt And ransomed you from the house of slavery, And I sent before you Moses [to lead you], Aaron [the high priest], and Miriam [the prophetess]. 5 “My people, remember now What Balak king of Moab devised [with his evil plan against Israel] And what Balaam the son of Beor answered him [turning the curse into blessing for Israel], [Remember what the LORD did for you] from a Shittim to Gilgal, So that you may know the righteous and saving acts [displaying the power] of the LORD .” [Num 23:7–24 ; 24:3–24 ; Josh 3:1 ; 4:19 ] What God Requires of Man 6 With what shall I come before the LORD [to honor Him] And bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, With yearling calves? 7 Will the LORD be delighted with thousands of rams, Or with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my acts of rebellion, The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 8 He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you Except to be just, and to love [and to diligently practice] kindness (compassion), And to walk humbly with your God [setting aside any overblown sense of importance or self-righteousness]? [Deut 10:12 , 13 ] 9 The voice of the LORD shall call to the city [of Jerusalem]— And it is sound wisdom to heed [solemnly] and fear Your name [with awe-filled reverence]; “Hear, O tribe [the rod of punishment]. Who has appointed its time? 10 “Are there not still treasures gained by wickedness In the house of the wicked, And a short (inaccurate) measure [for grain] that is cursed? [Deut 25:14–16 ] 11 “Can I [be guiltless and] justify deceptive scales And a bag of dishonest weights? [1 Thess 4:6 ] 12 “For the rich men of the city are full of violence [of every kind]; Her inhabitants speak lies And their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. 13 “So also I will make you sick, striking you down, Desolating and devastating you, because of your sins.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  [Is 24:22 ] 9 “You will go up [against them], you will come like a storm; you shall be like a cloud covering the land, you and all your troops, and many peoples with you.” 10 ‘Thus says the Lord GOD , “It will come about on that day that thoughts will come into your mind, and you will devise an evil plan, 11 and you will say, ‘I will go up against an open country; I will come against those who are at rest and peaceful, who live securely, all of them living without walls and having neither bars nor gates, 12 to take spoil and seize plunder, to turn your hand against the ruins which are now inhabited, and against the people who are gathered from the nations, who have acquired cattle and goods, who live at the b center of the world [Israel].’ 13 “Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish (southern Spain), with all its young lions (villages) will say to you, ‘Have you come to take spoil? Have you assembled your hordes [of fighting men] to seize plunder, to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take great spoil?’ ” ’ 14 “Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say to Gog, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD , “On that day when My people Israel live securely, will you not become aware of it [and become active]? 15 “You will come from your place in the remote parts of the north, you and many nations with you, all of them riding horses, a great horde, and a mighty army; 16 and you will go up against My people Israel like a cloud to cover the land. In the last days it will come about that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me when I show Myself holy through you before their eyes, O Gog.” 17 ‘Thus says the Lord GOD , “Are you the one of whom I spoke in former days through My servants, the prophets of Israel, who prophesied in those days for many years that I would bring you (Gog) against them? 18 “It will come about on that day, when Gog comes against the land of Israel,” says the Lord GOD , “that My wrath will rise and show on My face. 19 “In My zeal and in My blazing rage I declare that on that day there will most certainly be a c great earthquake in the land of Israel, 20 so that the fishes of the sea, the birds of the sky, the animals of the field, all the creatures that crawl on the earth, and all the men that are on the face of the earth will tremble and shake at My presence; the mountains will crumble, the steep places will fall, and every wall will fall to the ground.

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

  She was convinced that the intellectual talents of an organized African American womanhood could be used to shift the weight off of Black women who suffered under “the vile imputations of a diseased public opinion.” 53 Though this was not a wholly original conclusion, as Black women had been fighting for a place in public life throughout the century, this active assertion of Black women’s ability to mold public opinion and reshape the American mind, was new and was an outgrowth of shifting late-nineteenth-century conversations in political theory. After 1893, the concept of “public opinion” recurs repeatedly in Williams’s theorizing. Not only does she invoke it in the World’s Fair speech, but she also claims, as I will discuss shortly, that the NACW created the first “race public opinion.” The title of an article she penned in 1904 is “The Negro and Public Opinion.” Theoretical work on the concept of public opinion first appeared in Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. But there was a resurgence of conversation about the concept in the work of political theorist Viscount James Bryce, whose classic political tome, American Commonwealth (1888), devoted twelve chapters of the book to delineating the operations of public opinion, its forms, functions, and effects in the American body politic. It is not clear whether Williams read Bryce’s work, but his work received much popular coverage in the national press, making it conceivable that her deliberate engagements with the concept of public opinion do attempt at some level to engage his work. In a chapter of American Commonwealth called “The Nature of Public Opinion,” Bryce delineated the differences between passive and active public opinion. Passive opinion referred to “the opinion of those who have no special interest in politics, or concern with them beyond that of voting, of those who receive or propagate, but do not originate, views on public matters.” 54 However, taking into account that “opinion does not merely grow; it is also made,” Bryce observed that “[t]here is not merely the passive class of persons; there is the active class, who occupy themselves primarily with public affairs, who aspire to create and lead opinion.” 55 Disturbed “that public opinion concerning the Negro in this country is largely based on ignorance of nearly everything that is good and prophetic in the life of the race,” 56 Williams was interested in the ways that race women and the organizations they created could function as an active class of opinion shapers. Williams argued, “[T]he National Association has also been useful to an important extent in creating what may be called a race public opinion.” 57 To be clear, this assertion from Williams constitutes political theorizing. She studies, then offers a name, for a social phenomenon.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Sabbath Restored 15 In those days I saw some in Judah who were treading wine presses on the Sabbath, and bringing in sheaves or sacks of grain and loading them on donkeys, as well as wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. So I protested and warned them on the day they sold the produce. 16 Also men of Tyre were living there who brought fish and all kinds of merchandise, and they were selling them to the people of Judah on the Sabbath, even in Jerusalem. 17 Then I reprimanded the nobles of Judah, and said to them, “What is this evil thing that you are doing—profaning the Sabbath day? 18 “Did your fathers (ancestors) not do the same, and did our God not bring all this trouble on us and on this city? Yet you are adding to the wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath.” 19 Now when it began to get dark at the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath [began], I commanded that the doors be shut and not be opened until after the Sabbath. Then I stationed some of my servants at the gates so that no load [of merchandise] would enter [Jerusalem] on the Sabbath day. 20 So once or twice the merchants and sellers of every kind of merchandise spent the night outside Jerusalem. 21 But I warned them, saying, “Why do you spend the night by the wall? If you do so again, I will c use force against you.” From that time on, they did not come on the Sabbath. 22 And I commanded the Levites to purify themselves and come and guard the gates to keep the Sabbath day holy. O my God, remember me concerning this also and have compassion on me according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness. Mixed Marriages Forbidden 23 In those days I also saw Jews who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. 24 As for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them knew how to speak [Hebrew] the language of Judah, but only the language of his own people. 25 So I contended with them and cursed them and struck some of them and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters [in marriage] to their sons, nor take [any of] their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. 26 “Did not Solomon king of Israel sin [greatly against God] regarding these things? Yet among the many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel; nevertheless the foreign women caused even him to sin [by turning to other gods and so, judged by God, he lost his kingdom].

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  I came back to the city and my sad serenity vanished. At night I’d be about to drift off to sleep when I’d sit straight up, gasping for air. The magazine I worked for published an editorial on homosexuality for no particular reason. It denounced the “chic new trend toward treating homosexuality as though it were a different way rather than a lesser way.” The essay deplored homosexuals’ “glibly self-justifying references to the ancients.” It actually said, “We must blush for fifth-century Athens.” In conclusion, the essay read: “Let’s face the sour music: homosexuality is not a sophisticated or naughty aberration but a pathetic malady. We must make certain that in this era of drugs, free sex, and sloppy liberal rhetoric the Homintern, that conspiracy of bitter inverts who already have a stranglehold over the theater, fashion, and fiction, does not pervert the lives of decent people by glamorizing vice, neutering the female body, and making the fine old art of being a mature man or woman look dull—or as they would say, campy.” When I cried in group therapy about Sean, about the helplessness I felt now, Simon said, “I wanna hear about de goils.” A rage I couldn’t control boiled up inside me. The other men in the group had to pull me off Simon. I knocked his chair over and was sitting on him, choking him with both hands and shouting, over and over, “Don’t you ever, don’t you ever—” but I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. I’d always regarded my sister as the norm. She had managed to marry, have children, settle in the suburbs and lead a respectable life. I saw her only occasionally when I was home for the holidays, and then she’d shyly press her three children forward. One Christmas Eve she and I stayed awake all night trying to sort out the parts of a tricycle to be assembled according to instructions written in English by a Japanese. I never talked to her about my real feelings or my real life, but I assumed I knew everything about hers. Then she announced that she wanted to visit me in New York. She’d be coming without her husband but with the neighbor lady, Peg. Since by now I was making a decent living, I bought a new sofa bed for them. My sister was in love with Peg. Awkward, bespectacled, ashamed, my sister gazed at the handsome Peg with adoration and recounted to me by the hour the sad saga of Peg’s life (brutal parents, elderly husband, delinquent children, unfulfilled artistic ambitions). It was obvious to me that Peg didn’t love my sister but enjoyed all the attention, something her husband wasn’t providing.

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

  These efforts to make visible and legible the plight of Black women and girls, this campaign to rescue them from political and social obscurity, fits within the long history, documented in this book, of Black women making the case that Black women’s lives are worthy of study and that their struggles are worthy of social remedy. The organizing of Crenshaw, Harris-Perry, Smith, and others also places these race women within a history of Black women using institutional access and resources to make the plight of Black women and girls visible. It is frustrating that Black women have to keep fighting such battles in every generation. But this book demonstrates that they have a very robust and multigenerational playbook to aid their efforts. Harris-Perry’s time as a host at MSNBC was nothing if not embattled. In 2014, when Ta-Nehisi Coates, an editor at Atlantic, wrote that Harris-Perry is “America’s foremost public intellectual,” there was a firestorm of controversy after Dylan Byers, a journalist at Politico, suggested that such assertions damaged Coates’s credibility.7 Though Harris-Perry achieved what no other tenured Black woman professor has ever achieved in being the eponymous host of her own major cable network show, Byers still called her intellectual credentials into question. When Harris-Perry departed her show in February 2016 after a contentious struggle with the network over editorial control of her show, she wrote in an email to her staff: “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by [Andy] Lack, [Phil] Griffin, or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back. I have wept more tears than I can count and I find this deeply painful, but I don’t want back on air at any cost.”8 Harris-Perry’s dignified and costly stance against a major corporation reflects the enduring battles for dignity and self-authorship that have characterized Black women’s intellectual work in the public sphere. But her decision to make visible both the love and the pain caused by the decision to leave on her own terms also reflects a long history of Black women naming the embodied and affective sacrifices that shape their advocacy work on behalf of Black communities. It also reflects the ways that Black women thinkers in the public sphere continually move beyond the politics of respectability and the dictates of dissemblance, when situations warrant it, opting to make their pain, their anger, and their contempt for injustice visible and palpable. The resolute defiance contained in Harris-Perry’s statement, that “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes,” reminds us of Black women’s continuing quest for what Anna Julia Cooper called “undisputed dignity” and the right to have one’s voice and one’s humanity respected as equal to that of white men with power.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The Knight’s Tale Heere bigynneth the Knyghtes Tale PART ONE Once upon a time, as the old stories tell us, there was a duke named Theseus. He was the lord and governor of fabled Athens, and in his day he had won an unrivalled reputation as a conqueror. No one was more splendid under the sun. He had taken many rich kingdoms. By wise generalship and force of arms he had conquered the land of the Amazons, formerly known as Scythia, and wedded there its queen, Hippolita. He brought home his prize, his bride, with great celebrations and rejoicings. He also brought back with him her younger sister, Emily, who will be the heroine of this story. So for the time being I will leave Theseus at his victory parade. You can imagine the scene. The armies march in rank. POMP. MUSIC. HURRAHS. The wagons bring up the rear, stuffed with booty. It was glorious stuff. Of course, if I had more time, I would like to tell you all about the victory of Theseus over the Amazons. Knights like to speak of war. And what a fight that was! I wish I could tell you about the pitched battle between the Athenians and the Amazon women. I wish I could tell you how Theseus laid siege, in more than one sense, to the beautiful and fiery Hippolita. I would like to have described the glorious wedding feast, and then I might have added the detail of the tempest that threatened to overwhelm their ships on their return to Athens. But there we are. It cannot be done in the time allotted to me. God knows I have ahead of me a large field to furrow, and the oxen at my plough are not the strongest beasts I have known. The remains of my story are long enough. I will not hinder any of this fair company. Let every man and woman here tell their tale in turn. Then we shall know who has won the supper. Where was I? Oh yes. Duke Theseus. Well. When he had come close to Athens with his new bride, in all his glory, he noticed that there were some women kneeling in the highway; they kneeled in rows beside each other, two by two, and they were all clothed in black. They were screeching and crying and beating their breasts. I doubt that anyone has heard such bitter lamentation. They did not cease their cries until they had managed to get hold of the reins of the duke’s horse. Of course he was very angry. ‘What kind of women are you,’ he asked, ‘that ruin my triumphant homecoming with your tears and wails? Are you so envious of my honour that you cry out like scalded cats? Who has offended you? Who has done you hurt? I will do my best to help you, if I can. And then why on earth are you all wearing black?

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  There was even a time when, to show his prowess as a performer, he agreed to take the part of Herod in the pageant plays. But what was the good of all this posturing? The point is that Alison loved another. No. Not the carpenter. Of course she could not love her husband. She loved the clerk and lodger, Nicholas. Absolon might as well go whistle in the wind. She treated him as a joke. She turned him into her pet monkey, and laughed at his screechings. The proverb is quite right. The one who is closest comes first. Out of sight is out of mind. Lively Nicholas was there in the house with her, while poor distraught Absolon was on the other side of town. You might say that Nicholas stood in his light. So good luck to you, young scholar, even though Absolon will wail ‘Alas!’ It happened that one Saturday the carpenter had gone back to Osney Abbey. Alison and Nicholas took advantage of his absence and conferred together. This was their plan. Nicholas would come up with a ruse to beguile the jealous old sod; if everything went well, then she would nestle in his arms all night. That was what both of them wanted. So without more ado Nicholas left her, and took up on a platter enough meat and drink to sustain him in his chamber for a day or two. If the carpenter asked after him, she was to say that she did not know where he was. That she had not seen him. That she had not heard from him. That she even wondered if he was ill - the maid had called for him, but there had been no answer from him. So all that Saturday there was silence. Nicholas lay very quietly in his chamber, eating and drinking and doing anything else he fancied. I could not say what. This lasted until Sunday evening. The old carpenter was by now in a state of some alarm, and wondered if his lodger had taken ill. Could it be the white death? ‘I am afraid,’ he said, ‘by the bones of all the saints. Something is wrong with Nicholas. God forbid that he should have died suddenly! This wicked world is uncertain enough. I saw today a corpse borne to church, who last Monday I saw at work.’ Then he turned to his servant-boy, Robin. ‘Go upstairs,’ he said, ‘and shout for him at his door. Knock on it with a stone, if you wish. Find out what’s going on. Then come and tell me.’