Anxiety

Passages

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

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• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  _He_, meanwhile, whatever he might feel, acted with all the firmness of a collected mind, made every necessary arrangement with the utmost despatch, and calculated with exactness the time in which she might look for his return. Not a moment was lost in delay of any kind. The horses arrived, even before they were expected, and Colonel Brandon only pressing her hand with a look of solemnity, and a few words spoken too low to reach her ear, hurried into the carriage. It was then about twelve o’clock, and she returned to her sister’s apartment to wait for the arrival of the apothecary, and to watch by her the rest of the night. It was a night of almost equal suffering to both. Hour after hour passed away in sleepless pain and delirium on Marianne’s side, and in the most cruel anxiety on Elinor’s, before Mr. Harris appeared. Her apprehensions once raised, paid by their excess for all her former security; and the servant who sat up with her, for she would not allow Mrs. Jennings to be called, only tortured her more, by hints of what her mistress had always thought. Marianne’s ideas were still, at intervals, fixed incoherently on her mother, and whenever she mentioned her name, it gave a pang to the heart of poor Elinor, who, reproaching herself for having trifled with so many days of illness, and wretched for some immediate relief, fancied that all relief might soon be in vain, that every thing had been delayed too long, and pictured to herself her suffering mother arriving too late to see this darling child, or to see her rational. She was on the point of sending again for Mr. Harris, or if _he_ could not come, for some other advice, when the former—but not till after five o’clock—arrived. His opinion, however, made some little amends for his delay, for though acknowledging a very unexpected and unpleasant alteration in his patient, he would not allow the danger to be material, and talked of the relief which a fresh mode of treatment must procure, with a confidence which, in a lesser degree, was communicated to Elinor. He promised to call again in the course of three or four hours, and left both the patient and her anxious attendant more composed than he had found them.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “But with a strange kind of tenderness, if he can leave her with such indifference, such carelessness of the future, as you attribute to him.” “You must remember, my dear mother, that I have never considered this matter as certain. I have had my doubts, I confess; but they are fainter than they were, and they may soon be entirely done away. If we find they correspond, every fear of mine will be removed.” “A mighty concession indeed! If you were to see them at the altar, you would suppose they were going to be married. Ungracious girl! But _I_ require no such proof. Nothing in my opinion has ever passed to justify doubt; no secrecy has been attempted; all has been uniformly open and unreserved. You cannot doubt your sister’s wishes. It must be Willoughby therefore whom you suspect. But why? Is he not a man of honour and feeling? Has there been any inconsistency on his side to create alarm? can he be deceitful?” “I hope not, I believe not,” cried Elinor. “I love Willoughby, sincerely love him; and suspicion of his integrity cannot be more painful to yourself than to me. It has been involuntary, and I will not encourage it. I was startled, I confess, by the alteration in his manners this morning;—he did not speak like himself, and did not return your kindness with any cordiality. But all this may be explained by such a situation of his affairs as you have supposed. He had just parted from my sister, had seen her leave him in the greatest affliction; and if he felt obliged, from a fear of offending Mrs. Smith, to resist the temptation of returning here soon, and yet aware that by declining your invitation, by saying that he was going away for some time, he should seem to act an ungenerous, a suspicious part by our family, he might well be embarrassed and disturbed. In such a case, a plain and open avowal of his difficulties would have been more to his honour I think, as well as more consistent with his general character;—but I will not raise objections against any one’s conduct on so illiberal a foundation, as a difference in judgment from myself, or a deviation from what I may think right and consistent.” “You speak very properly. Willoughby certainly does not deserve to be suspected. Though _we_ have not known him long, he is no stranger in this part of the world; and who has ever spoken to his disadvantage? Had he been in a situation to act independently and marry immediately, it might have been odd that he should leave us without acknowledging everything to me at once: but this is not the case. It is an engagement in some respects not prosperously begun, for their marriage must be at a very uncertain distance; and even secrecy, as far as it can be observed, may now be very advisable.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Oh, did not you? But it _was_ said, I know, very well, and by more than one; for Miss Godby told Miss Sparks, that nobody in their senses could expect Mr. Ferrars to give up a woman like Miss Morton, with thirty thousand pounds to her fortune, for Lucy Steele that had nothing at all; and I had it from Miss Sparks myself. And besides that, my cousin Richard said himself, that when it came to the point he was afraid Mr. Ferrars would be off; and when Edward did not come near us for three days, I could not tell what to think myself; and I believe in my heart Lucy gave it up all for lost; for we came away from your brother’s Wednesday, and we saw nothing of him not all Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and did not know what was become of him. Once Lucy thought to write to him, but then her spirits rose against that. However this morning he came just as we came home from church; and then it all came out, how he had been sent for Wednesday to Harley Street, and been talked to by his mother and all of them, and how he had declared before them all that he loved nobody but Lucy, and nobody but Lucy would he have. And how he had been so worried by what passed, that as soon as he had went away from his mother’s house, he had got upon his horse, and rid into the country, some where or other; and how he had stayed about at an inn all Thursday and Friday, on purpose to get the better of it. And after thinking it all over and over again, he said, it seemed to him as if, now he had no fortune, and no nothing at all, it would be quite unkind to keep her on to the engagement, because it must be for her loss, for he had nothing but two thousand pounds, and no hope of any thing else; and if he was to go into orders, as he had some thoughts, he could get nothing but a curacy, and how was they to live upon that?—He could not bear to think of her doing no better, and so he begged, if she had the least mind for it, to put an end to the matter directly, and leave him shift for himself. I heard him say all this as plain as could possibly be. And it was entirely for _her_ sake, and upon _her_ account, that he said a word about being off, and not upon his own. I will take my oath he never dropt a syllable of being tired of her, or of wishing to marry Miss Morton, or any thing like it. But, to be sure, Lucy would not give ear to such kind of talking; so she told him directly (with a great deal about sweet and love, you know, and all that—Oh, la! one can’t repeat such kind of things you know)—she told him directly, she had not the least mind in the world to be off, for she could live with him upon a trifle, and how little so ever he might have, she should be very glad to have it all, you know, or something of the kind. So then he was monstrous happy, and talked on some time about what they should do, and they agreed he should take orders directly, and they must wait to be married till he got a living. And just then I could not hear any more, for my cousin called from below to tell me Mrs. Richardson was come in her coach, and would take one of us to Kensington Gardens; so I was forced to go into the room and interrupt them, to ask Lucy if she would like to go, but she did not care to leave Edward; so I just run up stairs and put on a pair of silk stockings and came off with the Richardsons.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “But I thought it was right, Elinor,” said Marianne, “to be guided wholly by the opinion of other people. I thought our judgments were given us merely to be subservient to those of neighbours. This has always been your doctrine, I am sure.” “No, Marianne, never. My doctrine has never aimed at the subjection of the understanding. All I have ever attempted to influence has been the behaviour. You must not confound my meaning. I am guilty, I confess, of having often wished you to treat our acquaintance in general with greater attention; but when have I advised you to adopt their sentiments or to conform to their judgment in serious matters?” “You have not been able to bring your sister over to your plan of general civility,” said Edward to Elinor, “Do you gain no ground?” “Quite the contrary,” replied Elinor, looking expressively at Marianne. “My judgment,” he returned, “is all on your side of the question; but I am afraid my practice is much more on your sister’s. I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness. I have frequently thought that I must have been intended by nature to be fond of low company, I am so little at my ease among strangers of gentility!” “Marianne has not shyness to excuse any inattention of hers,” said Elinor. “She knows her own worth too well for false shame,” replied Edward. “Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy.” “But you would still be reserved,” said Marianne, “and that is worse.” Edward started—“Reserved! Am I reserved, Marianne?” “Yes, very.” “I do not understand you,” replied he, colouring. “Reserved!—how, in what manner? What am I to tell you? What can you suppose?” Elinor looked surprised at his emotion; but trying to laugh off the subject, she said to him, “Do not you know my sister well enough to understand what she means? Do not you know she calls every one reserved who does not talk as fast, and admire what she admires as rapturously as herself?” Edward made no answer. His gravity and thoughtfulness returned on him in their fullest extent—and he sat for some time silent and dull. CHAPTER XVIII. Elinor saw, with great uneasiness the low spirits of her friend. His visit afforded her but a very partial satisfaction, while his own enjoyment in it appeared so imperfect. It was evident that he was unhappy; she wished it were equally evident that he still distinguished her by the same affection which once she had felt no doubt of inspiring; but hitherto the continuance of his preference seemed very uncertain; and the reservedness of his manner towards her contradicted one moment what a more animated look had intimated the preceding one.

• From The City of God

  66 Books That Matter: The City of God catalyzing force that crystallized a whole constellation of their concerns. For some of them, their concerns were framed in a pagan idiom, for others in a Christian one. But whatever the language, they were already anxious; and yet also for these reasons, they were pretty well unprepared for it. When the shock came, it synthesized a number of different forces and arguments running under the surface of the late imperial world. I said earlier that this time, in this sack, there would be no Aeneas— no one would be left with enough fortitude and intelligent will to carry the weight of tradition on their shoulders out of the burning rubble of the past. And many felt that at the time. But in fact there was someone not unlike Aeneas, although also very different. This was Augustine. How he came to understand the task he had accepted as, in some sense, a civilization-saving undertaking is the subject of our next lecture. 67 Augustine’s Pagan and Christian Audience “W hat has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” This line, uttered by the third-century North African theologian Tertullian, has echoed down the centuries in Christian thought. Tertullian meant to contrast Christian faith to Greek rationalist philosophy. For him, the questions and attitudes popular among skeptical philosophical types were anathema to the absolute truths of Christian dogma. He asserted that the two approaches were utterly opposed and insisted on affirming Christianity without regard for human reason. The question of conflict between reason and faith has remained alive ever since to haunt Christian theologians and as ammunition to non-Christians. The Problem of Civic Morality „In the context of the writing of The City of God, Augustine knew that his audience, Christian and pagan alike, was asking a slightly different version of Tertullian’s question: What has Rome to do with Jerusalem? Augustine shaped his book to answer that question. In no other of his works was his audience as richly diverse. „The first sentence of the book is an answer to a request from one Marcellinus, a Christian tribune and notary under the western emperor Honorius. He was a major Roman player and a friend to Augustine, who dedicated The City of God to him. Many years later, Augustine recalled Marcellinus’s prompt: In the last paragraph of Book 22, 15 years after Marcellinus’s death, Augustine describes the completion of the work as recompense for a debt he had accepted long ago. Lecture 4

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Much as she had suffered from her first conversation with Lucy on the subject, she soon felt an earnest wish of renewing it; and this for more reasons than one. She wanted to hear many particulars of their engagement repeated again, she wanted more clearly to understand what Lucy really felt for Edward, whether there were any sincerity in her declaration of tender regard for him, and she particularly wanted to convince Lucy, by her readiness to enter on the matter again, and her calmness in conversing on it, that she was no otherwise interested in it than as a friend, which she very much feared her involuntary agitation, in their morning discourse, must have left at least doubtful. That Lucy was disposed to be jealous of her appeared very probable: it was plain that Edward had always spoken highly in her praise, not merely from Lucy’s assertion, but from her venturing to trust her on so short a personal acquaintance, with a secret so confessedly and evidently important. And even Sir John’s joking intelligence must have had some weight. But indeed, while Elinor remained so well assured within herself of being really beloved by Edward, it required no other consideration of probabilities to make it natural that Lucy should be jealous; and that she was so, her very confidence was a proof. What other reason for the disclosure of the affair could there be, but that Elinor might be informed by it of Lucy’s superior claims on Edward, and be taught to avoid him in future? She had little difficulty in understanding thus much of her rival’s intentions, and while she was firmly resolved to act by her as every principle of honour and honesty directed, to combat her own affection for Edward and to see him as little as possible; she could not deny herself the comfort of endeavouring to convince Lucy that her heart was unwounded. And as she could now have nothing more painful to hear on the subject than had already been told, she did not mistrust her own ability of going through a repetition of particulars with composure. But it was not immediately that an opportunity of doing so could be commanded, though Lucy was as well disposed as herself to take advantage of any that occurred; for the weather was not often fine enough to allow of their joining in a walk, where they might most easily separate themselves from the others; and though they met at least every other evening either at the park or cottage, and chiefly at the former, they could not be supposed to meet for the sake of conversation. Such a thought would never enter either Sir John or Lady Middleton’s head; and therefore very little leisure was ever given for a general chat, and none at all for particular discourse. They met for the sake of eating, drinking, and laughing together, playing at cards, or consequences, or any other game that was sufficiently noisy.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  He could not then avoid it, but her touch seemed painful to him, and he held her hand only for a moment. During all this time he was evidently struggling for composure. Elinor watched his countenance and saw its expression becoming more tranquil. After a moment’s pause, he spoke with calmness. “I did myself the honour of calling in Berkeley Street last Tuesday, and very much regretted that I was not fortunate enough to find yourselves and Mrs. Jennings at home. My card was not lost, I hope.” “But have you not received my notes?” cried Marianne in the wildest anxiety. “Here is some mistake I am sure—some dreadful mistake. What can be the meaning of it? Tell me, Willoughby; for heaven’s sake tell me, what is the matter?” He made no reply; his complexion changed and all his embarrassment returned; but as if, on catching the eye of the young lady with whom he had been previously talking, he felt the necessity of instant exertion, he recovered himself again, and after saying, “Yes, I had the pleasure of receiving the information of your arrival in town, which you were so good as to send me,” turned hastily away with a slight bow and joined his friend. Marianne, now looking dreadfully white, and unable to stand, sunk into her chair, and Elinor, expecting every moment to see her faint, tried to screen her from the observation of others, while reviving her with lavender water. “Go to him, Elinor,” she cried, as soon as she could speak, “and force him to come to me. Tell him I must see him again—must speak to him instantly.—I cannot rest—I shall not have a moment’s peace till this is explained—some dreadful misapprehension or other. Oh, go to him this moment.” “How can that be done? No, my dearest Marianne, you must wait. This is not the place for explanations. Wait only till tomorrow.” With difficulty however could she prevent her from following him herself; and to persuade her to check her agitation, to wait, at least, with the appearance of composure, till she might speak to him with more privacy and more effect, was impossible; for Marianne continued incessantly to give way in a low voice to the misery of her feelings, by exclamations of wretchedness. In a short time Elinor saw Willoughby quit the room by the door towards the staircase, and telling Marianne that he was gone, urged the impossibility of speaking to him again that evening, as a fresh argument for her to be calm. She instantly begged her sister would entreat Lady Middleton to take them home, as she was too miserable to stay a minute longer.

• From The City of God

  47 The Sack of Rome, 410 A.D. I f the end of the world has a beginning, we could do far worse than date it to August 24–26, 410 A.D., when Alaric and the Visigoths entered the city of Rome. Almost as soon as it occurred, the Sack of Rome left the space of history and entered the realm of myth. It is in a very real way foundational for the apocalyptic imagination of the west. When we try to depict the end of life as we know it, the outcome turns out to be remarkably like what we imagine the sack of Rome to have been. The Thrilling Myth „Imagine that you live in an empire that has lasted 1,000 years. In that time, almost all other civilizations have been incorporated into it. Its people are prosperous, its cities magnificent, its lands secure. You know of no people, no kingdom, that equals it in greatness—indeed there is little beyond its boundaries to compare. It seems that human society and the empire are bound up in one another. „Now imagine that in your lifetime, that empire is invaded from the outside by barbarians—people in some sense uncivilized, not quite lawless, but rather operating on a very primitive set of laws that could never suffice to govern a society as sophisticated as yours. They ravage your countryside, besiege and sack your towns and cities, and finally reach the capital of your empire—the greatest city ever known, the center of the world—and overrun it. „Such was the situation facing the Roman world when Augustine began to write The City of God. Augustine writes in the wake of chaos, attempting to accept what has happened and to learn Lecture 3

• From The City of God

  213 Lecture 10 Transcript—Who or What Is God? (Books 8–9) never be the kind of host for divine presence. They underestimated the love of God and the lovability of creation. Everything about their imagination of the way the world works encouraged them to think this way. It was, that is, not just a failure of metaphysical imagination, but of social and cultural imagination as well, both about what let people associate, and about what kept people apart. First: association. Understand that the ancient world, in heaven as on earth, was all about connections. The Greeks and the Romans were great believers in networks, in who you knew, what network you were a part of, who your patron was, who your underlings were, what team you were on. In the ancient world, your very identity depended very much on what networks you were a part of. From this, a basic ethics emerged: you should help your friends and harm your enemies. And please don’t think these important questions are of no interest to us now. Just consider the rise of political partisanship in America over the past few decades. Thus, these networks organized your whole life, and so it was no surprise that potential pagan converts, when they thought about converting to Christianity, were deeply worried about what would happen to their network access when they converted. One large question always was: will this action cut me off from my sources of patronage and social legitimacy? In its own way, this is a very political question. Second: segregation. In the ancient world, different classes of people didn’t mix, and especially those higher up do not concern themselves with those who scuttle along far below them. So the Platonists’ vision of transcendence was trapped, in a way, in their snobbishness. The gates at the entry to the palace of the Divine, the One, would not open for just any illiterate peasant who knocked; nor could any sparrow, or any grain of sand, occupy the interest or concern of Divinity for even the slightest instant.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Their claims to the notice of Mrs. John Dashwood, as the nieces of the gentleman who for many years had had the care of her brother, might not have done much, however, towards procuring them seats at her table; but as Lady Middleton’s guests they must be welcome; and Lucy, who had long wanted to be personally known to the family, to have a nearer view of their characters and her own difficulties, and to have an opportunity of endeavouring to please them, had seldom been happier in her life, than she was on receiving Mrs. John Dashwood’s card. On Elinor its effect was very different. She began immediately to determine, that Edward who lived with his mother, must be asked as his mother was, to a party given by his sister; and to see him for the first time, after all that passed, in the company of Lucy!—she hardly knew how she could bear it! These apprehensions, perhaps, were not founded entirely on reason, and certainly not at all on truth. They were relieved however, not by her own recollection, but by the good will of Lucy, who believed herself to be inflicting a severe disappointment when she told her that Edward certainly would not be in Harley Street on Tuesday, and even hoped to be carrying the pain still farther by persuading her that he was kept away by the extreme affection for herself, which he could not conceal when they were together. The important Tuesday came that was to introduce the two young ladies to this formidable mother-in-law. “Pity me, dear Miss Dashwood!” said Lucy, as they walked up the stairs together—for the Middletons arrived so directly after Mrs. Jennings, that they all followed the servant at the same time:—“there is nobody here but you, that can feel for me. I declare I can hardly stand. Good gracious! In a moment I shall see the person that all my happiness depends on—that is to be my mother!” Elinor could have given her immediate relief by suggesting the possibility of its being Miss Morton’s mother, rather than her own, whom they were about to behold; but instead of doing that, she assured her, and with great sincerity, that she did pity her—to the utter amazement of Lucy, who, though really uncomfortable herself, hoped at least to be an object of irrepressible envy to Elinor.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Of Edward, or at least of some of his concerns, she now received intelligence from Colonel Brandon, who had been into Dorsetshire lately; and who, treating her at once as the disinterested friend of Mr. Ferrars, and the kind confidante of himself, talked to her a great deal of the parsonage at Delaford, described its deficiencies, and told her what he meant to do himself towards removing them.—His behaviour to her in this, as well as in every other particular, his open pleasure in meeting her after an absence of only ten days, his readiness to converse with her, and his deference for her opinion, might very well justify Mrs. Jennings’s persuasion of his attachment, and would have been enough, perhaps, had not Elinor still, as from the first, believed Marianne his real favourite, to make her suspect it herself. But as it was, such a notion had scarcely ever entered her head, except by Mrs. Jennings’s suggestion; and she could not help believing herself the nicest observer of the two;—she watched his eyes, while Mrs. Jennings thought only of his behaviour;—and while his looks of anxious solicitude on Marianne’s feeling, in her head and throat, the beginning of a heavy cold, because unexpressed by words, entirely escaped the latter lady’s observation;—_she_ could discover in them the quick feelings, and needless alarm of a lover. Two delightful twilight walks on the third and fourth evenings of her being there, not merely on the dry gravel of the shrubbery, but all over the grounds, and especially in the most distant parts of them, where there was something more of wildness than in the rest, where the trees were the oldest, and the grass was the longest and wettest, had—assisted by the still greater imprudence of sitting in her wet shoes and stockings—given Marianne a cold so violent as, though for a day or two trifled with or denied, would force itself by increasing ailments on the concern of every body, and the notice of herself. Prescriptions poured in from all quarters, and as usual, were all declined. Though heavy and feverish, with a pain in her limbs, and a cough, and a sore throat, a good night’s rest was to cure her entirely; and it was with difficulty that Elinor prevailed on her, when she went to bed, to try one or two of the simplest of the remedies. CHAPTER XLIII.

• From The City of God

  59 Lecture 3 Transcript—The Sack of Rome, 410 A.D. Palestine, Saint Jerome’s rather campy panic is exemplary, and this is what he said: For days and nights I could think of nothing but the universal safety; when my friends were captured, I could only imagine myself a captive too. When the brightest light of the world was extinguished, when the very head of the Roman Empire was severed, the entire world perished in a single city. Now some of this has to be Jerome’s fantastic rhetoric. But there’s no doubt that the entire Roman world suffered a severe shock. The belief that the Roman Empire had entered a glorious new era with the imperial conversions to Christianity in the 4 th century—the dramatic conversion, of a sort, of Constantine; then the treachery of Julian the Apostate who had turned against Christianity and restored the old gods; the recovery of Christian Rome under Jovinian, Valens, Valentinian, and Gratian—had secured for many people two narratives. One, for Christians, was the story of the triumph of Christianity in Rome, classically told by Eusebius, in his great Ecclesiastical History. The other, for pagans, was the aging and decline of Roman power, murdered at the hands of the Christian. But as much as the latter narrative did not approve of the course the empire was taking, it could not really imagine the empire would ever end, or that its sacred precincts would be violated. As ever, imagination is far more constricted than the concrete accidents of reality itself. Why did the sack have this effect? To understand, you have to know at least a little bit about how the Romans saw the world, and in particular how they saw the spaces outside their imperium, as well as how they saw their imperium itself. People in what we condescend to call late antiquity did not understand that they were living in late antiquity. They still believed, as had the Christian thinker Eusebius almost a century before, that after the 3 rd -century turbulence and crisis of the empire—bloody civil wars—and with the conversion of

• From The City of God

  156 Books That Matter: The City of God and we use them to overcome adversity, capitalize on opportunity, and achieve our dreams. Yet we face a profound challenge: Our confidence in our agency is radically and utterly challenged by chance. ›When we look around the world we see that blessings and curses are distributed apparently at random. The problem of theodicy is not just the problem of unjust evil, but also, as Augustine himself knew, of unjust goodness. The converse is that moral virtue seems randomly distributed, as well. ›Furthermore, our ability to exercise whatever virtues we do possess depends on situations and conditions where those virtues become relevant. You do not know if you have courage if you are never put in danger. Thus, who we come to be is actually the product of a negotiation between our latent potentialities and the situations in which we find ourselves. ›We come to know even the seeds of our virtues by being shown them, or awakened to their potentiality in ourselves, by others. If others are so ingredient to our lives, how is who I am so exclusively a matter of what I do? The Problem of Fatalism „Most Romans thought that some kind of fatalism was the wisest attitude to adopt. Things will happen as they will. We cannot know what will happen, so we must understand our acting on terms quite different from what we typically assume. „Yet Augustine, despite the rumors that he denies human free will, rejects fatalism; indeed he goes out of his way to systematically reject it. He believes that its crucial error is the metaphysical substructure of our world. Fatalists go wrong in identifying what forces that are not under the will’s immediate control oversee the world and how they oversee it. The problem is a failure to

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Elinor could not find herself in the carriage with Mrs. Jennings, and beginning a journey to London under her protection, and as her guest, without wondering at her own situation, so short had their acquaintance with that lady been, so wholly unsuited were they in age and disposition, and so many had been her objections against such a measure only a few days before! But these objections had all, with that happy ardour of youth which Marianne and her mother equally shared, been overcome or overlooked; and Elinor, in spite of every occasional doubt of Willoughby’s constancy, could not witness the rapture of delightful expectation which filled the whole soul and beamed in the eyes of Marianne, without feeling how blank was her own prospect, how cheerless her own state of mind in the comparison, and how gladly she would engage in the solicitude of Marianne’s situation to have the same animating object in view, the same possibility of hope. A short, a very short time however must now decide what Willoughby’s intentions were; in all probability he was already in town. Marianne’s eagerness to be gone declared her dependence on finding him there; and Elinor was resolved not only upon gaining every new light as to his character which her own observation or the intelligence of others could give her, but likewise upon watching his behaviour to her sister with such zealous attention, as to ascertain what he was and what he meant, before many meetings had taken place. Should the result of her observations be unfavourable, she was determined at all events to open the eyes of her sister; should it be otherwise, her exertions would be of a different nature—she must then learn to avoid every selfish comparison, and banish every regret which might lessen her satisfaction in the happiness of Marianne.

• From The City of God

  81 Lecture 4 Transcript—Augustine’s Pagan and Christian Audience Furthermore, there was no golden age of Rome. We should reconsider Roman rule and the empire it has gained. For him, empire was a fact about the world, and in truth it was as much a theological as a political fact. He was by no means unqualifiedly horrified by empire. After all, he believed, God wills that there would be empires: the Bible says this about Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Babylon. There’s every reason to think that Rome fits this mold as well. And all empires are eventually held accountable under God’s sovereignty, for every empire eventually believes its own PR, and falls into the idolatry of self-worship. Empire gives people a taste for ruling, and the taste easily becomes addictive, so that empire begins to be the motive for nothing but more empire. This theological interpretation of empire gives Augustine tremendous critical leverage, because now the argument between pagan Rome and Christians is not between belief and unbelief but between rival forms of believing, rival frames of the absolute. The problem with Rome was its fusion, its confusion, of this-worldly political order with ultimate transcendent meaning. But that politics can be misused doesn’t mean that it can’t be rightly used, so the sermon reframes how and why Christians should care for the world as a whole, too. And this last point is going to be crucial for The City of God. After all, the pagans’ challenge to the Christians went far beyond the sack of Rome. The pagans effectively doubted the Christians could care for the world at all—not just politically, but more broadly still. The Christians, they thought, were always seeking to look beyond this world to another one, and thus devaluing it. Augustine returns to this concern so often in The City that I suspect he thought this was their most profound and most interesting challenge. For it was, from one perspective, not entirely incorrect; but from another, it was the thing about Christianity that the pagans got most disastrously wrong. The title of the work, The City of God, is meant to bring all that to the fore, to suggest a kind of complicated relationship between Creator and Creation, eternal and temporal.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Of _one_ thing, my dear sister,” kindly taking her hand, and speaking in an awful whisper, “I may assure you;—and I _will_ do it, because I know it must gratify you. I have good reason to think—indeed I have it from the best authority, or I should not repeat it, for otherwise it would be very wrong to say any thing about it,—but I have it from the very best authority,—not that I ever precisely heard Mrs. Ferrars say it herself—but her daughter _did_, and I have it from her,—that in short, whatever objections there might be against a certain—a certain connection, you understand me,—it would have been far preferable to her,—it would not have given her half the vexation that _this_ does. I was exceedingly pleased to hear that Mrs. Ferrars considered it in that light; a very gratifying circumstance you know to us all. ‘It would have been beyond comparison,’ she said, ‘the least evil of the two, and she would be glad to compound _now_ for nothing worse.’ But however, all that is quite out of the question,—not to be thought of or mentioned—as to any attachment you know, it never could be: all that is gone by. But I thought I would just tell you of this, because I knew how much it must please you. Not that you have any reason to regret, my dear Elinor. There is no doubt of your doing exceedingly well,—quite as well, or better, perhaps, all things considered. Has Colonel Brandon been with you lately?” Elinor had heard enough, if not to gratify her vanity, and raise her self-importance, to agitate her nerves and fill her mind;—and she was therefore glad to be spared from the necessity of saying much in reply herself, and from the danger of hearing any thing more from her brother, by the entrance of Mr. Robert Ferrars. After a few moments’ chat, John Dashwood, recollecting that Fanny was yet uninformed of her sister’s being there, quitted the room in quest of her; and Elinor was left to improve her acquaintance with Robert, who, by the gay unconcern, the happy self-complacency of his manner while enjoying so unfair a division of his mother’s love and liberality, to the prejudice of his banished brother, earned only by his own dissipated course of life, and that brother’s integrity, was confirming her most unfavourable opinion of his head and heart.

• From The City of God

  76 Books That Matter: The City of God wrote to Augustine and reported his difficulties in responding to those Roman refugees still devoted to the old gods. They angrily blamed the sack, and all the imperium’s ills, on the Christians. He reported some questions put to him by one Volusianus, a Roman nobleman who was raised pagan but was considering conversion, but was still now wavering in his consideration. According to Marcellinus, Volusianus worried about Christianity’s negative civic consequences. As Volusianus read the Gospels, Christ’s teachings were incompatible, he said, with the morals of citizenship, of those concerned with public affairs. After all, Marcellinus says, Christ taught us not to return evil for evil, to turn the other cheek, to give our cloak when one asks for a tunic, to go twice the distance with one who asks us. These commands, says Volusianus, are contrary to the morals of citizenship. How might one respond to this? Marcellinus asks Augustine. Augustine wrote back, and in his letter Augustine said that he had heard these arguments as well, put to him from those who charge our faith with hostility to the commonwealth, he said. Augustine suggested that the crucial point to press in response is that a city is but a group of men united by a specific bond of peace, and such a peace was best secured by those with the proper disposition. He allowed that much of the Christian morality was not immediately applicable to public affairs. And then he went on, arguing that Christianity was in fact, however, a better basis for the civic virtues that sustained the city than was paganism, and this is a quote from Augustine: It is in this cesspool of evil characters, where the ancient ethos has been abandoned, that the presence and assistance of heavenly authority is most needed. This exhorts us to voluntary poverty, to restraint, to benevolence, justice and peace, true piety, and other splendid and powerful virtues. It doesn’t do this only for the sake of living this life honorably, or only to provide a peaceful community

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  They would soon, she supposed, be settled at Delaford.—Delaford,—that place in which so much conspired to give her an interest; which she wished to be acquainted with, and yet desired to avoid. She saw them in an instant in their parsonage-house; saw in Lucy, the active, contriving manager, uniting at once a desire of smart appearance with the utmost frugality, and ashamed to be suspected of half her economical practices;—pursuing her own interest in every thought, courting the favour of Colonel Brandon, of Mrs. Jennings, and of every wealthy friend. In Edward—she knew not what she saw, nor what she wished to see;—happy or unhappy,—nothing pleased her; she turned away her head from every sketch of him. Elinor flattered herself that some one of their connections in London would write to them to announce the event, and give farther particulars,—but day after day passed off, and brought no letter, no tidings. Though uncertain that any one were to blame, she found fault with every absent friend. They were all thoughtless or indolent. “When do you write to Colonel Brandon, ma’am?” was an inquiry which sprung from the impatience of her mind to have something going on. “I wrote to him, my love, last week, and rather expect to see, than to hear from him again. I earnestly pressed his coming to us, and should not be surprised to see him walk in today or tomorrow, or any day.” This was gaining something, something to look forward to. Colonel Brandon _must_ have some information to give. Scarcely had she so determined it, when the figure of a man on horseback drew her eyes to the window. He stopt at their gate. It was a gentleman, it was Colonel Brandon himself. Now she could hear more; and she trembled in expectation of it. But it was _not_ Colonel Brandon; neither his air, nor his height. Were it possible, she must say it must be Edward. She looked again. He had just dismounted: she could not be mistaken,—it _was_ Edward. She moved away and sat down. “He comes from Mr. Pratt’s purposely to see us. I _will_ be calm; I _will_ be mistress of myself.” In a moment she perceived that the others were likewise aware of the mistake. She saw her mother and Marianne change colour; saw them look at herself, and whisper a few sentences to each other. She would have given the world to be able to speak—and to make them understand that she hoped no coolness, no slight, would appear in their behaviour to him;—but she had no utterance, and was obliged to leave all to their own discretion. Not a syllable passed aloud. They all waited in silence for the appearance of their visitor. His footsteps were heard along the gravel path; in a moment he was in the passage, and in another he was before them.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  She then left the room; and Elinor dared not follow her to say more, for bound as she was by her promise of secrecy to Lucy, she could give no information that would convince Marianne; and painful as the consequences of her still continuing in an error might be, she was obliged to submit to it. All that she could hope, was that Edward would not often expose her or himself to the distress of hearing Marianne’s mistaken warmth, nor to the repetition of any other part of the pain that had attended their recent meeting—and this she had every reason to expect. CHAPTER XXXVI. Within a few days after this meeting, the newspapers announced to the world, that the lady of Thomas Palmer, Esq. was safely delivered of a son and heir; a very interesting and satisfactory paragraph, at least to all those intimate connections who knew it before. This event, highly important to Mrs. Jennings’s happiness, produced a temporary alteration in the disposal of her time, and influenced, in a like degree, the engagements of her young friends; for as she wished to be as much as possible with Charlotte, she went thither every morning as soon as she was dressed, and did not return till late in the evening; and the Miss Dashwoods, at the particular request of the Middletons, spent the whole of every day in Conduit Street. For their own comfort they would much rather have remained, at least all the morning, in Mrs. Jennings’s house; but it was not a thing to be urged against the wishes of everybody. Their hours were therefore made over to Lady Middleton and the two Miss Steeles, by whom their company, in fact was as little valued, as it was professedly sought. They had too much sense to be desirable companions to the former; and by the latter they were considered with a jealous eye, as intruding on their ground, and sharing the kindness which they wanted to monopolize. Though nothing could be more polite than Lady Middleton’s behaviour to Elinor and Marianne, she did not really like them at all. Because they neither flattered herself nor her children, she could not believe them good-natured; and because they were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical; but that did not signify. It was censure in common use, and easily given.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  As soon as Mrs. Dashwood had recovered herself, to see Marianne was her first desire; and in two minutes she was with her beloved child, rendered dearer to her than ever by absence, unhappiness, and danger. Elinor’s delight, as she saw what each felt in the meeting, was only checked by an apprehension of its robbing Marianne of farther sleep: but Mrs. Dashwood could be calm, could be even prudent, when the life of a child was at stake, and Marianne, satisfied in knowing her mother was near her, and conscious of being too weak for conversation, submitted readily to the silence and quiet prescribed by every nurse around her. Mrs. Dashwood _would_ sit up with her all night; and Elinor, in compliance with her mother’s entreaty, went to bed. But the rest, which one night entirely sleepless, and many hours of the most wearing anxiety seemed to make requisite, was kept off by irritation of spirits. Willoughby, “poor Willoughby,” as she now allowed herself to call him, was constantly in her thoughts; she would not but have heard his vindication for the world, and now blamed, now acquitted herself for having judged him so harshly before. But her promise of relating it to her sister was invariably painful. She dreaded the performance of it, dreaded what its effect on Marianne might be; doubted whether after such an explanation she could ever be happy with another; and for a moment wished Willoughby a widower. Then, remembering Colonel Brandon, reproved herself, felt that to _his_ sufferings and _his_ constancy far more than to his rival’s, the reward of her sister was due, and wished any thing rather than Mrs. Willoughby’s death. The shock of Colonel Brandon’s errand at Barton had been much softened to Mrs. Dashwood by her own previous alarm; for so great was her uneasiness about Marianne, that she had already determined to set out for Cleveland on that very day, without waiting for any further intelligence, and had so far settled her journey before his arrival, that the Careys were then expected every moment to fetch Margaret away, as her mother was unwilling to take her where there might be infection.