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 45 of 447 · 20 per page

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  μῆνις, Dor. μᾶνις, ἡ : gen. μήνιος, later μήνιδος, v.1. Plat. Rep. 390 Ε, Ael. ap. Suid. 5. ν. ᾿Αρχίλοχος, Themist., etc.: (v. sub *uaw) :---τυγαΐλ; from Hom. downwards mostly of the wrath of the gods, 1]. ; also of the implacable wrath of Achilles, 1. 1, al., cf. Arist. Rhet. 2. 24, 6; of the revengeful temper of a people, Hes. Sc. 21.—Ep. word, used by Pind. P. 4. 284, and Trag.; also by Hdt. 7. 134, 137, in the proper sense of divine wrath, as in Aesch. Ag. 701, Plat. 1. ο., Legg. 880 E, Hipp. Ma. 282 A; of injured parents, Aesch. Ag. 155, Cho. 294; of suppliants, Id. Eum. 234, cf. Eur. Heracl. 762;—c. gen. objecti, ὅτου .. μ. τόσηνδε πράγματος στήσας ἔχεις Soph. O. T. 699 :—in late Com., Menand. Incert. 55, 499- ἀνάγκη μὲν καὶ ταῦτ᾽ ἐπίστασθαι .. , οὐδὲν μὴν κωλύει κτλ. Plat, Phaedr. φ μηνίς, ίδος, ἣ, -- μηνίσκος, Auson. Prof. 25; ἀράν, ἐν νόθος 3 962 : II. any crescent-shaped body, esp. 1. a covering to protect the head of statues (like the nimbus or glory of Christian Saints, ) Ar. Av. 1114, ubi v. Interpp., cf. Hemst. Luc. Tim. 51. 2. a crescent-shaped figure, used in finding areas, Arist. An. Pr. 2.25, 2, Soph. Elench. 11, 3 and 7. 3. a crescent-shaped line of battle, Polyb. 3. 118, 5. 4. a neck-ornament, Lxx (Isai. 3. 10. cf. Judic. 8, 21). μηνίτης [1], ov, 6, a wrathful man, Arr. Epict. 4. 5, 18, where Schweigh. restores μηνυτής. μηνίω [v. fin.], Dor. pavlw: fut. @ not till LXx: aor. éunvica: (μῆ- vis). To cherish wrath, be wroth against, vent one’s wrath on, ο. dat. pers., wnve ᾿Αχαιοῖσιν 1]. 1. 422; ᾿Αγαμέμνονι μήνιε δίῳ 18. 2573 ᾿Αθηναῖοι ὑμῖν μηνίουσι Hat. 9. 7, cf. 5. 84., 7. 229; c. gen. rei, ἱρῶν μηνίσας because of .., Il. 5.178; πατρὶ μηνίσας φόνου Soph. Ant. 1177; ἔργου ἕκατι τοῦδε μ. Id. Tr. 274; θεοῖς .. μηνίουσιν és γένος Id. O. C. 695; ς. acc. cogn., οὐδ᾽ ἃ μηνίεις φράσας Ib. 1274:—but in Hom. mostly absol., and of heroes, μήνι᾽ ᾿Αχιλλεύς 1]. 12. Io, etc.; rarely of common men, 6 ξεῖνος δ᾽ εἴπερ μάλα pnvie Od. 17. 14:—the Med. in act. sense, οὐδεὶς .. μηνίεται Aesch. Eum. 101.—Poetic Verb, used by Hdt. and in later Prose, as Diod., Plut., etc.; for Arist. (Rhet. 2. 24, 6, An. Post. 2. 13, 18) uses it in reference to Homer. A later form is μηνιάω, q. v. [In aor. @ always: as for pres. and impf., Hom. uses f in arsi in μήνϊεν 1]. 2. 769, and Aesch. l.c. in μηνῖεται; but elsewhere Hom. has pnviet, ἐμήνϊον, μήντϊε in thesi; Eur. also has μᾶνϊω in a dochmius, Hipp. 1146; pnviwy in a senarian, Id. Rhes. 494. ]

• From The City of God

  In the same city of Carthage lived Innocentia, a very devout woman of the highest rank in the state. She had cancer in one of her breasts, a disease which, as physicians say, is incurable. Ordinarily, therefore, they either amputate, and so separate from the body the member on which the disease has seized, or, that the patient's life may be prolonged a little, though death is inevitable even if somewhat delayed, they abandon all remedies, following, as they say, the advice of Hippocrates. This the lady we speak of had been advised to by a skillful physician, who was intimate with her family; and she betook herself to God alone by prayer. On the approach of Easter, she was instructed in a dream to wait for the first woman that came out from the baptistery [1618] after being baptized, and to ask her to make the sign of Christ upon her sore. She did so, and was immediately cured. The physician who had advised her to apply no remedy if she wished to live a little longer, when he had examined her after this, and found that she who, on his former examination, was afflicted with that disease was now perfectly cured, eagerly asked her what remedy she had used, anxious, as we may well believe, to discover the drug which should defeat the decision of Hippocrates. But when she told him what had happened, he is said to have replied, with reli gious politeness, though with a contemptuous tone, and an expression which made her fear he would utter some blasphemy against Christ, "I thought you would make some great discovery to me. "She, shuddering at his indifference, quickly replied, "What great thing was it for Christ to heal a cancer, who raised one who had been four days dead? "When, therefore, I had heard this, I was extremely indignant that so great a miracle wrought in that well-known city, and on a person who was certainly not obscure, should not be divulged, and I considered that she should be spoken to, if not reprimanded on this score. And when she replied to me that she had not kept silence on the subject, I asked the women with whom she was best acquainted whether they had ever heard of this before. They told me they knew nothing of it. "See," I said, "what your not keeping silence amounts to, since not even those who are so familiar with you know of it. "And as I had only briefly heard the story, I made her tell how the whole thing happened, from beginning to end, while the other women listened in great astonishment, and glorified God.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  According to one acquaintance, he was “a heavy drinker who often ended up embroiled in shouting matches and fistfights with other young men over an attractive night-club dancer or barmaid.”134 But bin Laden would eventually become completely fixated on religion, first through Wahhabism, a very strict Islamic sect prevalent in Saudi Arabia. Later he created his own idiosyncratic amalgam of beliefs much like other cult leaders. Osama bin Laden also saw himself as someone on a divinely mandated messianic mission. His holy war against the “infidels” began in Afghanistan. First, he fought the Russians, and a mythology soon developed around him. The former playboy was now cast as a heroic figure. However, bin Laden spent most of the war as a fund-raiser in relative safety. “He was not a valiant warrior on the battlefield,” according to one source, who said bin Laden actually “fought in only one important battle.”135 According to the Cult Information Center of Great Britain, al-Qaeda indoctrinated its members and formed a closed, totalitarian society.136 This was accomplished by putting recruits through months spent at isolated training camps.137 These camps served much like cult compounds, which have historically produced brainwashed followers after periods of isolation and information control coupled with rigid indoctrination. One captured al-Qaeda member, Al-Owhali, testified that he was first trained within an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan for a month and then was moved to a “jihad camp.” Only after the conclusion of his training was the possibility of a “mission,” discussed, one that might lead to his “martyrdom.”138 This evolving process of training coincides with the often-deceptive pattern of coercive persuasion used by groups called “cults.” Initiates may not come to know the group’s ultimate goals and their role in that agenda until the group has manipulated their thinking and molded a new mind-set. Osama bin Laden once admitted this fact to his supporters in a discussion recorded on videotape. He said that the men who conducted the 2001 World Trade Center attack only knew that it was “a martyrdom operation” in America. Bin Laden said, “We did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the plane.”139 Much like the way Jim Jones used Christianity, bin Laden operated through a facade of “Islamic beliefs” and the cause of “liberation.” His disciples were told that Muslims were under attack and that Islam itself was in danger. “The snake is America,” bin Laden told al-Qaeda members, “and we have to stop them. We have to cut the head of the snake.”140 But the establishment in Saudi Arabia rejected bin Laden’s brand of religion. In 1991 the Saudi royal family officially expelled and denounced bin Laden. And he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994. From 1991 to 1996, he lived in Sudan until that country also asked him to leave.141 Islamic scholars have denounced the religious premise of bin Laden’s violent beliefs.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “There now,” said Miss Steele, affectedly simpering, “everybody laughs at me so about the Doctor, and I cannot think why. My cousins say they are sure I have made a conquest; but for my part I declare I never think about him from one hour’s end to another. ‘Lord! here comes your beau, Nancy,’ my cousin said t’other day, when she saw him crossing the street to the house. My beau, indeed! said I—I cannot think who you mean. The Doctor is no beau of mine.” “Aye, aye, that is very pretty talking—but it won’t do—the Doctor is the man, I see.” “No, indeed!” replied her cousin, with affected earnestness, “and I beg you will contradict it, if you ever hear it talked of.” Mrs. Jennings directly gave her the gratifying assurance that she certainly would not, and Miss Steele was made completely happy. “I suppose you will go and stay with your brother and sister, Miss Dashwood, when they come to town,” said Lucy, returning, after a cessation of hostile hints, to the charge. “No, I do not think we shall.” “Oh, yes, I dare say you will.” Elinor would not humour her by farther opposition. “What a charming thing it is that Mrs. Dashwood can spare you both for so long a time together!” “Long a time, indeed!” interposed Mrs. Jennings. “Why, their visit is but just begun!” Lucy was silenced. “I am sorry we cannot see your sister, Miss Dashwood,” said Miss Steele. “I am sorry she is not well—” for Marianne had left the room on their arrival. “You are very good. My sister will be equally sorry to miss the pleasure of seeing you; but she has been very much plagued lately with nervous head-aches, which make her unfit for company or conversation.” “Oh, dear, that is a great pity! but such old friends as Lucy and me!—I think she might see us; and I am sure we would not speak a word.” Elinor, with great civility, declined the proposal. Her sister was perhaps laid down upon the bed, or in her dressing gown, and therefore not able to come to them. “Oh, if that’s all,” cried Miss Steele, “we can just as well go and see her.” Elinor began to find this impertinence too much for her temper; but she was saved the trouble of checking it, by Lucy’s sharp reprimand, which now, as on many occasions, though it did not give much sweetness to the manners of one sister, was of advantage in governing those of the other. CHAPTER XXXIII. After some opposition, Marianne yielded to her sister’s entreaties, and consented to go out with her and Mrs. Jennings one morning for half an hour. She expressly conditioned, however, for paying no visits, and would do no more than accompany them to Gray’s in Sackville Street, where Elinor was carrying on a negotiation for the exchange of a few old-fashioned jewels of her mother.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  And with this admirable discretion did she defer the assurance of her finding their mutual relatives more disagreeable than ever, and of her being particularly disgusted with his mother, till they were more in private. “But why were you not there, Edward?—Why did you not come?” “I was engaged elsewhere.” “Engaged! But what was that, when such friends were to be met?” “Perhaps, Miss Marianne,” cried Lucy, eager to take some revenge on her, “you think young men never stand upon engagements, if they have no mind to keep them, little as well as great.” Elinor was very angry, but Marianne seemed entirely insensible of the sting; for she calmly replied, “Not so, indeed; for, seriously speaking, I am very sure that conscience only kept Edward from Harley Street. And I really believe he has the most delicate conscience in the world; the most scrupulous in performing every engagement, however minute, and however it may make against his interest or pleasure. He is the most fearful of giving pain, of wounding expectation, and the most incapable of being selfish, of any body I ever saw. Edward, it is so, and I will say it. What! are you never to hear yourself praised!—Then you must be no friend of mine; for those who will accept of my love and esteem, must submit to my open commendation.” The nature of her commendation, in the present case, however, happened to be particularly ill-suited to the feelings of two thirds of her auditors, and was so very unexhilarating to Edward, that he very soon got up to go away. “Going so soon!” said Marianne; “my dear Edward, this must not be.” And drawing him a little aside, she whispered her persuasion that Lucy could not stay much longer. But even this encouragement failed, for he would go; and Lucy, who would have outstaid him, had his visit lasted two hours, soon afterwards went away. “What can bring her here so often?” said Marianne, on her leaving them. “Could not she see that we wanted her gone!—how teazing to Edward!” “Why so?—we were all his friends, and Lucy has been the longest known to him of any. It is but natural that he should like to see her as well as ourselves.” Marianne looked at her steadily, and said, “You know, Elinor, that this is a kind of talking which I cannot bear. If you only hope to have your assertion contradicted, as I must suppose to be the case, you ought to recollect that I am the last person in the world to do it. I cannot descend to be tricked out of assurances, that are not really wanted.”

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  “Sounds good,” Jeff said. Polly walked up the hill toward the house, fuming. A man answered the door. He said his name was Mischa, and he was quite handsome, although his ears were odd—the inner parts poked out farther than the rims, which gave him an air of studiousness. He took her to a waiting room, and then she met Lila, a cheerful busty woman who wore bifocals. “What do you want?” Lila asked. “I don’t know—a Cape house on a knoll and a husband?” said Polly. “Can’t help you.” “Then I don’t want anything,” said Polly. “You’re unhappy with your boyfriend because he’s acting like a shit.” “Yes, and he and I have different taste in plays.” “Do you still like men?” “Yes, I love men. I’ve always loved men.” Lila picked up the phone. “Mischa, our friend Polly needs to spend some time in the Hall of the Penises.” Mischa was there in a moment. He took Polly’s hand and led her to a very large room—a kind of dance studio with a refinished floor, hung all the way around with green curtains made of shot silk. One wall had enormous windows that overlooked the hills. There were two other women in the room. Polly nodded at them and they introduced themselves. One was Saucie, and one had a name like Donna. Polly said to Saucie, “What are those odd little bumps there in the curtains?” “They’re what you think they are,” said Saucie. Polly found a drape cord and pulled it to make some of the green fabric slide to one side. She saw many little toadlike things hanging out from holes in the wall at about crotch height. She said, “All those little brown toadlike things are penises?” “Yep,” said Saucie. “And balls.” “They go all around the room,” said Donna. “What are we supposed to do with them?” asked Polly. Saucie handed her a tasseled knee pillow. “I think we’re supposed to talk to them, or maybe even suck them off.” Donna whispered, “I think that one there is my husband.” Polly was surprised. “Is that good or bad?” “Not entirely sure,” said Donna. “And I’m guessing that one there is my ex-husband,” said Saucie. Then it occurred to Polly to wonder whether one of the penises was Jeff ’s. She toured the rows carefully to see if she could spot Jeff ’s organ hanging out among the crowd. But she couldn’t be sure. Which was all in all a relief. He was probably still down in the glade, she thought, chatting up the topless girl in the polka-dot skirt.

• From The City of God

  383 statue whose head is of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay; all were shattered, Daniel saw in his vision, by a stone cut out of a mountain without human hands. Powerful Israelite critique of empire—Augustine takes this in; takes this on. But he complements this theological story with a psychological one he develops from Sallust about the libido dominandi, showing how the human desire for imperium, for rule, for always seeking to dominate—whether in Egypt, or Babylon, or Persia, or Macedon, or Rome—always captures the central public concern. However, and this is quite important, it’s not only that domination’s spatial reach is extended in this generalization of imperium from Rome to the rest of the Ancient Near East, it’s also the type of activity that counts as a manifestation of the libido dominandi—the lust to dominate—that is broadened here. Human history, in general, is now seen as a history of confusion with various forms of false clarity imposed by various kinds of force. This should not be surprising; after all, the worldly city, in general—symbolized always by Babylon for Augustine—means, for him, confusion. Debates—philosophical, literary, cultural; not just political—are always, in this city, inevitable and intractable. The unity of the earthly city is never a spontaneous harmony of a multitude, but must be reestablished through multitudinous forms of violence incessantly. It is a rigid singularity, imposed precariously only by force and typically by the force of imperium. In this way, the history of the world—the history of the saeculum—is nothing more than a history of various moments and kinds of domination. Augustine suggests here that the central characteristic of the city of the world, its common nature, is the way it is dedicated to the satisfaction of desire—the desires of its fallen members. And these desires seem multiple, but in their essence, they are actually drearily uniform, for everyone competes for the same objects. Thus, human society is at war with itself—each at war with his or her neighbor Lecture 18 Transcript—Translating the Imperium (Book 18)

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  I applied for a practical nursing program, but was told that I was too nearsighted. Whether this was concern for me or another excuse for racist choices, I never knew. Through an employment agency, I finally got a job at a hospital in the accounting department, by lying about my book-keeping skills. But that didn’t matter too much because they had lied about what I was supposed to do. I was not to be a bookkeeper at all, but girl-friday-step-n-fetch-it for the head of the accounting department. Mrs. Goodrich was an overbearing and awe-inspiring woman, who was the first woman ever to head the accounting department of a major hospital in the state. She had fought hard to achieve her position and the wars had left her with a harsh cold manner and little tact. In my spare time, when I wasn’t delivering her messages or buying her coffee or sharpening her pencils, I sat at a separate desk near the door of the typists’ pool, and typed insurance company letters while I waited to be buzzed for another errand. I answered Mrs. Goodrich’s telephone when her secretary was at lunch, and she ranted and raved at me until I learned to remember those people to whom she would speak and those to whom she would not. Mrs. Goodrich was a tartar, a woman who had fought long and hard to make herself a place in a world hostile to her as a woman accountant. She had won by the same terms as the men whom she had fought. Now she was wedded to those terms, particularly in dealing with other women. For some unstated reason, we took immediate and deep exception to each other. Whatever the recognition was that passed between us, it did not serve to make us allies. Yet our positions were clearly unequal. As my boss, she had the power, and I would not retreat. It was much more complex than simple aversion. I was outraged by her attitude towards me, and despite the fact that she found me clearly unsatisfactory, Mrs. Goodrich would not release me to the clerical pool, nor would she leave me alone. Mrs. Goodrich told me I walked like a lumberjack, and made too much noise in the halls. I was too uppity for my own good and would never get ahead. I would have to learn to be prompt, even though my “people” were never on time. Anyway, I didn’t belong in the hospital, and should quit work and go back to school. In one of our few civil conversations, I told her I couldn’t afford to. “Well, then, you’d better straighten out around here or you’ll be out on the street in short order.”

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  My parents did not approve of sunglasses, nor of their expense. I spent the afternoon squinting up at monuments to freedom and past presidencies and democracy, and wondering why the light and heat were both so much stronger in Washington, D. C. than back home in New York City. Even the pavement on the streets was a shade lighter in color than back home. Late that Washington afternoon my family and I walked back down Pennsylvania Avenue. We were a proper caravan, mother bright and father brown, the three of us girls step-standards in-between. Moved by our historical surroundings and the heat of the early evening, my father decreed yet another treat. He had a great sense of history, a flair for the quietly dramatic and the sense of specialness of an occasion and a trip. “Shall we stop and have a little something to cool off, Lin?” Two blocks away from our hotel, the family stopped for a dish of vanilla ice cream at a Breyer’s ice cream and soda fountain. Indoors, the soda fountain was dim and fan-cooled, deliciously relieving to my scorched eyes. Corded and crisp and pinafored, the five of us seated ourselves one by one at the counter. There was I between my mother and father, and my two sisters on the other side of my mother. We settled ourselves along the white mottled marble counter, and when the waitress spoke at first no one understood what she was saying, and so the five of us just sat there. The waitress moved along the line of us closer to my father and spoke again. “I said I kin give you to take out, but you can’t eat here. Sorry.” Then she dropped her eyes looking very embarrassed, and suddenly we heard what it was she was saying all at the same time, loud and clear. Straight-backed and indignant, one by one, my family and I got down from the counter stools and turned around and marched out of the store, quiet and outraged, as if we had never been Black before. No one would answer my emphatic questions with anything other than a guilty silence. “But we hadn’t done anything!” This wasn’t right or fair! Hadn’t I written poems about Bataan and freedom and democracy for all? My parents wouldn’t speak of this injustice, not because they had contributed to it, but because they felt they should have anticipated it and avoided it. This made me even angrier. My fury was not going to be acknowledged by a like fury. Even my two sisters copied my parents’ pretense that nothing unusual and anti-american had occurred.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  And these are the tidings we now must bear to all the nations: another son of David has hung from a tree, and he who knows not the meaning of that tumult shall be damned forever in Hell! Brother, sister, you may run, but the day is coming when the King will ask: ‘What are the tidings that you bear?’ And what will you say on that great day if you know not of the death of His Son? ‘Is there a soul here to-night’—tears were on his face and he stood above them with arms outstretched—‘who knows not the meaning of that tumult? Is there a soul here to-night who wants to talk to Jesus? Who wants to wait before the Lord, amen, until He speaks? Until He makes to ring in your soul, amen, the glad tidings of salvation? Oh, brothers and sisters’—and still she did not rise; but only watched him from far away—‘the time is running out. One day He’s coming back to judge the nations, to take His children, hallelujah, to their rest. They tell me, bless God, that two shall be working in the fields, and one shall be taken and the other left. Two shall be lying, amen, in bed, and one shall be taken and the other left. He’s coming, beloved, like a thief in the night, and no man knows the hour of His coming. It’s going to be too late then to cry: “Lord, have mercy.” Now is the time to make yourself ready, now, amen, to-night, before His altar. Won’t somebody come to-night? Won’t somebody say No to Satan and give their life to the Lord?’ But she did not rise, only looked at him and looked about her with a bright, pleased interest, as though she were at a theatre and were waiting to see what improbable delights would next be offered her. He somehow knew that she would never rise and walk that long aisle to the mercy seat. And this filled him for a moment with a holy rage—that she stood, so brazen, in the congregation of the righteous and refused to how her head. He said amen, and blessed them, and turned away, and immediately the congregation began to sing. Now, again, he felt drained and sick; he was soaking wet and he smelled the odour of his own body. Deborah, singing and beating her tambourine in the front of the congregation, watched him. He felt suddenly like a helpless child. He wanted to hide himself for ever and never cease from crying. Esther and her mother left during the singing—they had come, then, only to hear him preach. He could not imagine what they were saying or thinking now. And he thought of to-morrow, when he would have to see her again. ‘Ain’t that the little girl what works at the same place with you?’ Deborah asked him on the way home. ‘Yes,’ he said. Now he did not feel like talking.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  And when in genuine bewilderment he stared at her, head to one side, the faintest of smiles on his face, something began to yield in her, something she fought, standing up and snarling at him in a lowered voice so that the visitor might not hear: ‘I wish you’d tell me just how you think we’s going to live all week on a turkey and five pounds of coffee?’ ‘Honey, I ain’t bought nothing we didn’t need! ’ She sighed in helpless fury, and felt tears springing to her eyes. ‘I done told you time and again to give me the money when you get paid, and let me do the shopping—’cause you ain’t got the sense that you was born with.’ ‘Baby, I wasn’t doing a thing in the world but trying to help you out. I thought maybe you wanted to go somewhere to-night and you didn’t want to be bothered with no shopping.’ ‘Next time you want to do me a favour, you tell me first, you hear? And how you expect me to go to a show when you done brought this bird home for me to clean?’ ‘Honey, I’ll clean it. It don’t take no time at all.’ He moved to the table where the turkey lay and looked at it critically, as though he were seeing it for the first time. Then he looked at her and grinned. ‘That ain’t nothing to get mad about.’ She began to cry. ‘I declare I don’t know what gets into you. Every week the Lord sends you go out and do some more foolishness. How do you expect us to get enough money to get away from here if you all the time going to be spending your money on foolishness?’ When she cried, he tried to comfort her, putting his great hand on her shoulder and kissing her where the tears fell. ‘Baby, I’m sorry. I thought it’d be a nice surprise.’ ‘The only surprise I want from you is to learn some sense! That’d be a surprise! You think I want to stay around here the rest of my life with these dirty niggers you all the time bring home?’ ‘Where you expect us to live, honey, where we ain’t going to be with niggers?’ Then she turned away, looking out of the kitchen window. It faced an elevated train that passed so close she always felt that she might spit in the faces of the flying, staring people. ‘I just don’t like all that ragtag… looks like you think so much of.’ Then there was silence.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  He wanted to get home and take his wet clothes off and sleep. ‘She mighty pretty,’ said Deborah. ‘I ain’t never seen her in church before.’ He said nothing. ‘Was it you invited her to come out to-night?’ she asked, after a bit. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think the Word of God could do her no harm.’ Deborah laughed. ‘Don’t look like it, does it? She walked out just as cool and sinful as she come in—she and that mother of her’n. And you preached a mighty fine sermon. Look like she just ain’t thinking about the Lord.’ ‘Folks ain’t got no time for the Lord,’ he said, ‘one day He ain’t going to have no time for them. ’ When they got home she offered to make him a hot cup of tea, but he refused. He undressed in silence—which she again respected—and got into bed. At length, she lay beside him like a burden laid down at evening which must be picked up once more in the morning. The next morning Esther said to him, coming into the yard while he was chopping wood for the woodpile: ‘Good morning, Reverend. I sure didn’t look to see you to-day. I reckoned you’d be all wore out after that sermon—does you always preach as hard as that?’ He paused briefly with the axe in the air; then he turned again, bringing the axe down. ‘I preach the way the Lord leads me, sister,’ he said. She retreated a little in the face of his hostility. ‘Well,’ she said in a different tone, ‘it was a mighty fine sermon. Me and Mama was mighty glad we come out.’ He left the axe buried in the wood, for splinters flew and he was afraid one might strike her. ‘You and your ma—you don’t get out to service much?’ ‘Lord, Reverend,’ she wailed, ‘look like we just ain’t got the time. Mama work so hard all week she just want to lie up in bed on Sunday. And she like me,’ she added quickly, after a pause, ‘to keep her company.’ Then he looked directly at her. ‘Does you really mean to say, sister, that you ain’t got no time for the Lord? No time at all?’ ‘Reverend,’ she said, looking at him with the daring defiance of a threatened child, ‘I does my best. I really does. Ain’t everybody got to have the same spirit.’ And he laughed shortly. ‘Ain’t but one spirit you got to have—and that’s the spirit of the Lord.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that spirit ain’t got to work in everybody the same, seems to me.’ Then they were silent, each quite vividly aware that they had reached an impasse. After a moment he turned and picked up the axe again. ‘Well, you go along, sister.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Now that she had said it, she was angry with herself for not having said it the night before, so that they would have had time to be finished with their weeping and their arguments. She had not trusted herself to withstand the night before; but now there was almost no time left. The centre of her mind was filled with the image of the great, white clock at the railway station, on which the hands did not cease to move. ‘You going where?’ her mother asked sharply. But she knew that her mother had understood, had indeed long before this moment known that this time would come. The astonishment with which she stared at Florence’s bag was not altogether astonishment, but a startled, wary attention. A danger imagined had become present and real, and her mother was already searching for a way to break Florence’s will. All this Florence knew in a moment, and it made her stronger. She watched her mother, waiting. But at the tone of his mother’s voice Gabriel, who had scarcely heard Florence’s announcement, so grateful had he been that something had occurred to distract from him his mother’s attention, dropped his eyes and saw Florence’s travelling-bag. And he repeated his mother’s question in a stunned, angry voice, understanding it only as the words hit the air: ‘Yes, girl. Where you think you going?’ ‘I’m going,’ she said, ‘to New York. I got my ticket.’ And her mother watched her. For a moment no one said a word. Then, Gabriel, in a changed and frightened voice, asked: ‘And when you done decide that?’ She did not look at him, nor answer his question. She continued to watch her mother. ‘I got my ticket,’ she repeated. ‘I’m going on the morning train.’ ‘Girl,’ asked her mother, quietly, ‘is you sure you know what you’s doing?’ She stiffened, seeing in her mother’s eyes a mocking pity. ‘I’m a woman grown,’ she said. ‘I know what I’m doing.’ ‘And you going,’ cried Gabriel, ‘this morning—just like that? And you going to walk off and leave your mother—just like that?’ ‘You hush,’ she said, turning to him for the first time, ‘she got you, ain’t she?’ This was indeed, she realized as he dropped his eyes, the bitter, troubling point. He could not endure the thought of being left alone with his mother, with nothing whatever to put between himself and his guilty love. With Florence gone, time would have swallowed up all his mother’s children, except himself; and be , then, must make amends for all the pain that she had borne, and sweeten her last moments with all his proofs of love. And his mother required of him one proof only, that he tarry no longer in sin. With Florence gone, his stammering time, his playing time, contracted with a bound to the sparest interrogative second, when he must stiffen himself, and answer to his mother, and all the host of Heaven, yes or no.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  193 Life Together “in Christ” pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you have received, let that one be accursed! (1:6–9) Soon thereafter he calls them “foolish Galatians” and wonders if they have become possessed: “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” (3:1). Near the end of the letter, his passion surfaces again: Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. . . . I am confi dent about you in the Lord that you will not think otherwise. But whoever it is that is confusing you will pay the penalty. (5:2, 10) He concludes the section with sarcasm (whose etymology is “a gashing of flesh”): “I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves!” (5:12). Why this passion about circumcision? Because requiring cir- cumcision for gentile male converts countered Paul’s most foun- dational sense of his mission as well as his vision of what “in Christ” meant. His vocation was to be an apostle to the Gen- tiles—and for him that did not mean first converting Gentiles to Jews through circumcision so that they could then be baptized into Christ. For him to have accepted that notion would have meant a betrayal of his calling. And it would have countered his vision of what life “in Christ” in “the new creation” was like. Paul’s counterarguments (note the plural) are not really ad- dressed to his opponents. We assume he was aware that he didn’t have much chance of changing their minds. Rather, he sought to persuade those in the community who were wavering, uncertain

• From The City of God

  328 The Two Cities and the Two Loves (Book 14) I f everyone, saint and sinner alike, shares the same ailments, how can we learn to tell the good from the bad, or at least the less bad from the worse? In a way, book 14 is the most all-encompassing of the books in The City of God, for it attempts to describe the human condition in all its essentials after the Fall. It talks about it in terms of the human’s core psychological dynamics, their emotional instability and “immaturity,” especially as exhibited in our propensity toward anger and lust, and how these are all paradigmatically exhibited in human sexual relations. The Two Cities „Augustine needs to distinguish the citizens of the two cities for two reasons. ›He wishes to resist those who believe deeply that the world is clearly divided between the righteous and the reprobate. For Augustine, the most voluble representatives were the Donatists. ›He must account for what we can call the obscurity of vice— the fact that sin, because it is disguised inside the self, is not obviously and reliably trackable in incontestable ways. „Augustine roots the key to human behavior in psychology. In the Fall, human nature was changed, and Augustine thinks we can begin to differentiate the two cities by way of humans’ divergent attitudes toward that change. „In principle, as belief informs behavior so the inner psychology should be manifest in the outer behavior. But its hiddenness and Lecture 16

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  I cringed secretly as she bawled me out for typing errors, in front of the whole typing pool, then called me across the hall into her private office to pick up a pencil she’d dropped. I dreamed of stepping on her face with an ice pick between my toes. I felt trapped and furious. I had gotten the job a week before Thanksgiving, and the last weeks of the year were agony for me. Mrs. Goodrich became the symbol of a job which I hated (I had never really learned to type) and I came to hate her with the same passion. I was hungry for the sun in my days. I walked west through Union Square and up through Stuyvesant Park to work. Coming across 14th Street, some mornings I could catch a glimpse of it over near the river, but the sun was never really up past the buildings before I went into the grey stone building. It had gone down by the time I left work. We were given free lunch in the hospital cafeteria, so I couldn’t go out at noon. It was a recurring sadness to me as I walked home in the winter evenings, cars’ rear lights along Second Avenue flickering like those on a Christmas tree. I thought if I had to spend the rest of my life working in places like Keystone Electronics and Manhattan Hospital I would surely go mad. I couldn’t figure it out, but I knew there had to be some other way. At work, my only weapon was retreat, and I used it with the indiscriminateness of any adolescent rebel. I fell asleep at my desk at every opportunity, and upon the slightest provocation, usually in the middle of typing Mrs. Goodrich’s letters. In these mini-sleeps, I would type snatches of poems or nonsense phrases into the middle of straight formal sentences. I never bothered to proofread my letters, but only checked them as a work of art, brushing my eye over the paper for correct margins and no strike-overs. Letters would arrive upon Mrs. Goodrich’s desk for her signature neatly and correctly typed, but with appalling sentences tucked into them. Dear Sir: Claim forms may be obtained strange gods worship the evening hours by writing the Main Office at… I had nightmares of the sound of Mrs. Goodrich’s buzzer, followed by her deep bellow from across the hall, summoning me into her office. In the meantime, Muriel and I corresponded. To be more exact, Muriel wrote long and beautiful letters and I read and cherished them in silence. Muriel’s lyrical and revealing letters held a hunger and an isolation that matched my own, and a precious unfolding of her humorous and prismatic vision. I came to marvel and delight in the new view she afforded me of simple and unexpected things. Re-seeing the world through her unique scrutinies was like re-seeing the world through my first pair of glasses when I was a child.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  I was left to write my angry letter to the president of the united states all by myself, although my father did promise I could type it out on the office typewriter next week, after I showed it to him in my copybook diary. The waitress was white, and the counter was white, and the ice cream I never ate in Washington, D. C. that summer I left childhood was white, and the white heat and the white pavement and the white stone monuments of my first Washington summer made me sick to my stomach for the whole rest of that trip and it wasn’t much of a graduation present after all. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography 11 When I was growing up in my mother’s house, there were spices you grated and spices you pounded, and whenever you pounded spice and garlic or other herbs, you used a mortar. Every West Indian woman worth her salt had her own mortar. Now if you lost or broke your mortar, you could, of course, buy another one in the market over on Park Avenue, under the bridge, but those were usually Puerto Rican mortars, and even though they were made out of wood and worked exactly the same way, somehow they were never really as good as West Indian mortars. Now where the best mortars came from I was never really sure, but I knew it must be in the vicinity of that amorphous and mystically perfect place called “home.” And whatever came from “home” was bound to be special. My mother’s mortar was an elaborate affair, quite at variance with most of her other possessions, and certainly with her projected public view of herself. It stood, solid and elegant, on a shelf in the kitchen cabinet for as long as I can remember, and I loved it dearly. The mortar was of a foreign fragrant wood, too dark for cherry and too red for walnut. To my child eyes, the outside was carved in an intricate and most enticing manner. There were rounded plums and oval indeterminate fruit, some long and fluted like a banana, others ovular and end-swollen like a ripe alligator pear. In between these were smaller rounded shapes like cherries, lying in batches against and around each other. I loved to finger the hard roundness of the carved fruit, and the always surprising termination of the shapes as the carvings stopped at the rim and the bowl sloped abruptly downward, smoothly oval but suddenly businesslike. The heavy sturdiness of this useful wooden object always made me feel secure and somehow full; as if it conjured up from all the many different flavors pounded into the inside wall, visions of delicious feasts both once enjoyed and still to come.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  But he stared at their boisterous, laughing faces, and felt that they would have much to answer for on the day of judgment, for they were stumbling-stones in the path of the true believer. Now the sandy-haired man, struck by Gabriel’s bitter, astounded face, bit his laughter off, and said: ‘What’s the matter, son? I hope I ain’t said nothing to offend you?’ ‘She read the Bible for you the night you preached, didn’t she?’ asked another of the elders, in a conciliatory tone. ‘That woman,’ said Gabriel, feeling a roaring in his head, ‘is my sister in the Lord.’ ‘Well, Elder Peters here, he just didn’t know that,’ said someone else. ‘He sure didn’t mean no harm.’ ‘Now, you ain’t going to get mad?’ asked Elder Peters, kindly—yet there remained, to Gabriel’s fixed attention, something mocking in his face and voice. ‘You ain’t going to spoil our little dinner?’ ‘I don’t think it’s right,’ said Gabriel, ‘to talk evil about no body. The Word tell me it ain’t right to hold nobody up to scorn.’ ‘Now you just remember,’ Elder Peters said, as kindly as before, ‘you’s talking to your elders. ’ ‘Then it seem to me,’ he said, astonished at his boldness, ‘that if I got to look to you for a example, you ought to be a example.’ ‘Now, you know,’ said someone else, jovially, ‘you ain’t fixing to make that woman your wife or nothing like that—so ain’t no need to get all worked up and spoil our little gathering. Elder Peters didn’t mean no harm. If you don’t never say nothing worse than that, you can count yourself already up there in the Kingdom with the chosen.’ And at this a small flurry of laughter swept over the table; they went back to their eating and drinking, as though the matter were finished. Yet Gabriel felt that he had surprised them; he had found them out and they were a little ashamed and confounded before his purity. And he understood suddenly the words of Christ, where it was written: ‘Many are called but few are chosen.’ Yes, and he looked around the table, already jovial again, but rather watchful now, too, of him—and he wondered who, of all these, would sit in glory at the right hand of the Father? And then, as he sat there, remembering again Elder Peters’s boisterous, idle remark, this remark shook together in him all those shadowy doubts and fears, those hesitations and tendernesses, which were his in relation to Deborah, and the sum of which he now realized was his certainty that there was in that relationship something fore-ordained. It came to him that, as the Lord had given him Deborah, to help him to stand, so the Lord had sent him to her, to raise her up, to release her from that dishonour which was hers in the eyes of men.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  And this caused such a war in her as could scarcely be endured. She felt that everything in existence between them was part of a mighty plan for her humiliation. She did not want his touch, and yet she did: she burned with longing and froze with rage. And she felt that he knew this and inwardly smiled to see how easily, on this part of the battlefield, his victory could be assured. But at the same time she felt that his tenderness, his passion, and his love were real. ‘Let me alone, Frank. I want to go to sleep.’ ‘No you don’t. You don’t want to go to sleep so soon. You want me to talk to you a little. You know how your baby loves to talk. Listen.’ And he brushed her neck lightly with his tongue. ‘You hear that?’ He waited. She was silent. ‘Ain’t you got nothing more to say than that? I better tell you something else.’ And then he covered her face with kisses; her face, neck, arms, and breasts. ‘You stink of whisky. Let me alone.’ ‘Ah. I ain’t the only one got a tongue. What you got to say to this?’ And his hand stroked the inside of her thigh. ‘Stop.’ ‘I ain’t going to stop. This is sweet talk, baby.’ Ten years. Their battle never ended; they never bought a home. He died in France. To-night she remembered details of those years which she thought she had forgotten, and at last she felt the stony ground of her heart break up; and tears, as difficult and slow as blood, began to trickle through her fingers. This the old woman above her somehow divined, and she cried: ‘Yes, honey. You just let go, honey. Let Him bring you low so He can raise you up.’ And was this the way she should have gone? Had she been wrong to fight so hard? Now she was an old woman, and all alone, and she was going to die. And she had nothing for all her battles. It had all come to this: she was on her face before the altar, crying to God for mercy. Behind her she heard Gabriel cry: ‘Bless your name, Jesus!’ and, thinking of him and the high road of holiness he had travelled, her mind swung like a needle, and she thought of Deborah. Deborah had written her, not many times, but in a rhythm that seemed to remark each crisis in her life with Gabriel, and once, during the time she and Frank were still together, she had received from Deborah a letter that she had still: it was locked to-night in her handbag, which lay on the altar. She had always meant to show this letter to Gabriel one day, but she never had. She had talked with Frank about it late one night while he lay in bed whistling some ragtag tune and she sat before the mirror and rubbed bleaching cream into her skin.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  He arrived to take me to the movies the next afternoon. It was Washington’s Birthday, and both of my parents were home. My father answered the door, and would not let Peter into the house because he was white. That immediately catapulted what would have been a passing teenage fancy into a revolutionary cause célèbre. The precipitating factors in my leaving home were some disparaging remarks my father made about Gennie, now dead almost two years, and a fight with my sister Helen. My mother threatened to call the police and I left. I went to work, returned home after my family was asleep, and packed. What I couldn’t carry I dumped into a sheet and dragged down the street and left at the foot of the steps of the police station. I took my clothes, some books, and Gennie’s guitar and went to Iris’s house. The next day I hailed a man on the street with a pickup truck and paid him five dollars to come uptown with me and get my bookcase out of my family’s house. Nobody was home. I left a cryptic note on the kitchen table which read, “I am moving out. Since the causes are obvious, the results are well-known.” I think I meant it the other way around, but I was very excited and very scared. I was seventeen years old. When I moved out of my mother’s house, shaky and determined, I began to fashion some different relationship to this country of our sojourn. I began to seek some more fruitful return than simple bitterness from this place of my mother’s exile, whose streets I came to learn better than my mother had ever learned them. But thanks to what she did know and could teach me, I survived in them better than I could have imagined. I made an adolescent’s wild and powerful commitment to battling in my own full eye, closer to my own strength, which was after all not so very different from my mother’s. And there I found other women who sustained me and from whom I learned other loving. How to cook the foods I had never tasted in my mother’s house. How to drive a stick-shift car. How to loosen up and not be lost. Their shapes join Linda and Gran’Ma Liz and Gran’Aunt Anni in my dreaming, where they dance with swords in their hands, stately forceful steps, to mark the time when they were all warriors . In libation, I wet the ground to my old heads . I spent the summer feeling free and in love, I thought. I was also hurting. No one had even tried to find me.