Contentment

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 Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Third: Community. Rick is very, very serious about people living together, eating together, and playing together. He encourages young single people to get houses and live with each other. Rick doesn’t like it when people are lonely. We have home communities that meet all over town, and we consider this to be the heart of our church. Almost every church I have ever been to already does a great job at this. Fourth: Authenticity. This is something of a buzzword, I know, but Imago actually lives this. I speak from the pulpit at Imago from time to time, and I am completely comfortable saying anything I like. I don’t have to pretend to be godly in order for people to listen. Authenticity is an enormous value at Imago. I love this because by being true I am allowing people to get to know the real me, and it feels better to have people love the real me than the me I invented. So one of the things I had to do after God provided a church for me was to let go of any bad attitude I had against the other churches I’d gone to. In the end, I was just different, you know. It wasn’t that they were bad, they just didn’t do it for me. I read through the book of Ephesians four times one night in Eugene Peterson’s The Message, and it seemed to me that Paul did not want Christians to fight with one another. He seemed to care a great deal about this, so, in my mind, I had to tell my heart to love the people at the churches I used to go to, the people who were different from me. This was entirely freeing because when I told my heart to do this, my heart did it, and now I think very fondly of those wacko Republican fundamentalists, and I know that they love me, too, and I know that we will eat together, we will break bread together in heaven, and we will love each other so purely it will hurt because we are a family in Christ. So here is a step-by-step formula for how you, too, can go to church without getting angry: Pray that God will show you a church filled with people who share your interests and values. Go to the church God shows you. Don’t hold grudges against any other churches. God loves those churches almost as much as He loves yours. 13 Romance Meeting Girls Is Easy

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I don’t like institutionalized anything. I don’t like corporations. I am not saying institutions and corporations are wrong, or bad; I am only saying I don’t like them. Some people don’t like classical music, some people don’t like pizza, I don’t like institutions. My dislike might stem from a number of things, from the nonpersonal feel I get when I walk into a corporate office or the voice-mail system I encounter when I call my bank. It might be the nonengaged look on every fast-food worker’s face or the phone calls I receive in the middle of dinner asking me what long-distance carrier I use. Those people never want to just talk; they always have an agenda. My dislike for institutions is mostly a feeling, though, not something that can be explained. There are upsides to institutions, of course. Tradition, for example. The corridors at Harvard, rich with history, thick with thought, the availability of good, hot Starbucks coffee at roughly thirty locations within five miles of my home. And what about all those jobs? Without the corporate machine, where would people work? I suppose we need them. The institutions. The corporations. But mostly I don’t like them. I don’t have to like them either. It’s my right. I don’t like church, either, for the same reason. Or I should say I didn’t like church. I like attending a Catholic service every once in a while, but I think that is because it feels different to me. I grew up Baptist. I like watching religious television every once in a while. It’s better than Comedy Central. I want to study psychology so I can sit in front of religious television and figure out these people’s problems. For a while I was very fascinated with televangelists. I couldn’t afford a television ministry but I had a computer, so I would go into Christian chat rooms and try to heal people. It was funny at first, but it got boring. Some of my friends have left their churches and gone Greek Orthodox. I think that sounds cool. Greek Orthodox. Unless you are Greek. Then it sounds like that is where you are supposed to go, as though you are a conformist. If I were Greek, I would never go to a Greek Orthodox church. If I were Greek, I would go to a Baptist church. Everybody there would think I was exotic and cool. [image "9780785263708_0143_004" file=Image00046.jpg] I go to a church now that I love. I never thought I would say that about a church. I never thought I could love a church. But I love this one. It is called Imago-Dei, which means “Image of God” in Latin. Latin is exotic and cool. In the churches I used to go to, I felt like I didn’t fit in. I always felt like the adopted kid, as if there was “room at the table for me.” Do you know what I mean? I was accepted but not understood.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  A beer and a kaas…” But Mr. Dieckmann did not understand that, but began with great fluency: "Anything that's there, Mr. Kunsel ... crayfish, shrimp, various sausages, various cheeses, smoked eel, smoked salmon, smoked sturgeon ..." 'Fine, Dieckmann, you'll do it. And then give us six glasses of milk and a pint of beer, if I'm not mistaken, Herr Permaneder, eh?..." “One beer, six times milk…Sweet milk, buttermilk, thick milk, full milk, Herr Kunsel…” “Half and half, Dieckmann; sweet milk and buttermilk. So in an hour.” And they walked across the square. "First of all, it's up to us to visit the source, Mr. Permaneder," said Thomas. “The source: that means the source of the Au, and the Au is the little river on which Schwartau lies and on which our town was originally located in the gray Middle Ages, until it burned down – it probably wasn’t very durable, you know – and was rebuilt on the Trave. Incidentally, painful memories are linked to the name of the river. As boys we thought it was funny to pinch each other's arms and ask: What's the name of the river near Schwartau? Then, of course, because it hurt, you cried out your name against your will... Da!' he suddenly stopped ten paces from the climb; 'we've been overtaken. Möllendorpfs and Hagenstroms.« Indeed, up there on the third floor of the wooded terrace, the chief members of these two favorably related families sat at two tables drawn close together and ate amid animated conversation. Old Senator Möllendorpf presided, a pale gentleman with white, thin, pointed sideburns; he was diabetic. His wife, née Langhals, fiddled with her long-handled lorgnette, and her gray hair was still untidy about her head. Her son was there, August, a blond young man of well-to-do appearance and Julchen's husband, née Hagenström, who was small, lively, with large, blank, black eyes and almost equally large diamonds on the earlobes, sat between her brothers Hermann and Moritz. Consul Hermann Hagenstrom began to grow very strong, for he lived splendidly and it was said that he would start eating foie gras first thing in the morning. He wore a reddish-blond, cropped beard, and his nose—his mother's nose—was conspicuously flat on his upper lip. Doctor Moritz, with a flat chest and a yellowish complexion, showed his pointed, gapped teeth in lively conversation. Both brothers had their wives with them, for the legal scholar had also been married for several years, to a Fraulein Puttfarken from Hamburg, a lady with butter-colored hair and an excessively dispassionate, apparently Anglicizing, but extraordinarily beautiful and regular facial features, for Doctor Hagenstrom could not have reconciled his reputation as an esthete to marry an ugly girl. Finally, Hermann Hagenstrom's little daughter and Moritz Hagenstrom's little son were also present, two children dressed in white who were already as good as engaged to each other, because the Huneus-Hagenstrom fortune was not to be wasted. – Everyone ate scrambled eggs with ham.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Fifth Chapter A year and two months later, on a snowy, hazy January morning in 1850, Herr and Madame Grünlich were sitting with their little three-year-old daughter in the light-brown one Wood paneled dining room on chairs, each of which had cost 25 Kurantmarks, at first breakfast. The panes of the windows were almost opaque with fog; bare trees and bushes were blurred behind them. Red embers crackled in the green-glazed low stove, which stood in a corner near the open door that led into the "Pensee Room," where leafy plants could be seen, and filled the room with a gentle, faintly fragrant warmth. On the opposite side, half-returned green cloth portieres gave a view of the brown silk salon and a high glass door, the cracks of which were stuffed with padded rolls, behind which a small terrace was lost in the white-grey, opaque fog. A third exit led to the corridor. The snow-white knitted damask on the round table was traversed by a green embroidered table runner and covered with gold-rimmed porcelain so transparent that it shimmered here and there like mother-of-pearl. A tea machine hummed. Rounds and slices of milk biscuits lay in a thin silver flat breadbasket, shaped like a large, jagged, slightly rolled leaf. Small, rippled balls of butter piled up under a crystal bell, under another different types of cheese, yellow, green marbled and white, were visible. There was no lack of a bottle of red wine, which stood in front of the master of the house, because Mr. Grünlich had a warm breakfast. With his favorites freshly coiffed and a face that seemed particularly rosy at this hour of the morning, he sat with his back to the drawing room, fully dressed in a black coat and light-colored, large-checked trousers, and ate a lightly fried cutlet, in English fashion. His wife found this noble, but also so disgusting that she could never bring herself to exchange her usual breakfast of bread and eggs for it. Tony was in his dressing gown; she adored dressing gowns. Nothing seemed more elegant to her than an elegant negligee, and since she had not been allowed to succumb to this passion at home, she indulged now that she is a married woman all the more eagerly. She owned three of those supple and delicate garments that can be made with more taste, refinement and imagination than a ballroom dress. But to-day she wore the dark red dressing-gown, the color of which matched exactly the tone of the wallpaper over the wood paneling, and whose large-flowered fabric, softer than cotton, was interwoven all over with a sprinkling of minute glass beads of the same tint... A straight and dense row of red velvet bows ran down from the neckline to the hem. Her thick ash-blond hair, adorned with a dark red velvet bow, was curled over her forehead.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Even Gerda, and in a kind of mute and rigid nervousness, now began to revive, and when, after an accelerated way back, one arrived in front of the inn again and sat down on the second step of the forest terrace at an overabundantly occupied table, it was she who did it in amiable phrases, regretted that Herr Permaneder's departure was so imminent: now that we had gotten to know each other a little, for example, when it was easy to see that on both sides there were ever fewer misunderstandings or non-understandings because of the dialect ... She could confirm the assertion argued that her friend and sister-in-law Tony said "Gosh!" with virtuosity two or three times... Herr Permaneder refrained from giving any affirmative answer to the word "departure," but for the time being devoted himself to the delicacies that the table was brimming with, and which he didn't get across the Danube every day. They ate the good things at leisure, and little Erika was almost happiest about the tissue paper serviettes, which seemed to her incomparably nicer than the big linen ones at home, and which, with the waiter's permission, she even put a few in her pocket as a souvenir stuck and then, while Herr Permaneder smoked several deep black cigars with his beer and the Consul smoked his cigarettes, the family and their guest sat together for a long time and chatted; – but it was remarkable that no one remembered Mr. Permaneder's departure and that the future was left completely untouched. Instead, they exchanged memories, discussed the political events of the last few years, and after telling some forty-eight anecdotes, Mr. Permaneder reported which the consul retold to her deceased husband, who shook with laughter, about the revolution in Munich and about Lola Montez, for whom Frau Grünlich was immensely interested. But then, when the first hour after noon was gradually over, when Erika, all hot and laden with daisies, cuckoo flower and grass, returned from a foray with Ida and reminded me of the pepper nuts, that were still to be bought, they set out on a walk down to the village … not before the consul, whose guests were all today, had settled the bill with a not insignificant piece of gold. Orders were given in front of the inn that the carriage should be ready in an hour, because they wanted to be able to rest a little in the city before dinner; and then they walked slowly, for the sun beat down on the dust, the low houses of the spot. Immediately after the Au bridge, the order was arranged naturally and automatically, which was then halted along the way: Mamsell Jungmann was in front, because of her long strides, next to Erika, who was tirelessly jumping and hunting for cabbage whites, followed by the consul, Thomas and Gerda and finally, at some distance, Frau Grünlich with Herr Permaneder.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Over there, on the breakfast table, the sun rested blindingly on the white linen, here and there sprinkled with crumbs, and played in small, sparkling twists and leaps on the gilding of the mortar-shaped cups... Both wings of the bedroom door were open, and from there one could hear the voice of Johann Buddenbrooks, who was humming very softly to himself an old funny melody: "A good man, a good man, A man of complaisance; He cooks the soup and weighs the child And smells like bitter oranges.” He sat to one side of the little cradle with green silk curtains that stood by the Consul's high four-poster bed, and held it up with one hand in a steady wave. The consul and her husband had settled down here for a while for the sake of easier service, while her father and Madame Antoinette, who, wearing an apron over her striped dress and a lace cap on her thick white curls, sat down at the table at the back flannel and linen, used the third room on the mezzanine to sleep. Consul Buddenbrook scarcely glanced into the next room, so busy was he with his work. His face wore a serious expression, almost suffering from devotion. His mouth was slightly open, his chin drooped a little, and his eyes clouded now and then. He wrote: »Today, i. On April 14, 1838, at 6 o'clock in the morning, my dear wife Elisabeth, née Kröger, was happily delivered of a little daughter with God's gracious help. Baptize the nameKlarashould receive. Yes, the Lord helped her so graciously, although according to Doctor Grabow the birth came a little too early and before that everything was not going well and Bethsy was in a lot of pain. Oh, where is there such a God as you are, you Lord of hosts, who helps you in all troubles and dangers and teaches us to recognize your will correctly, so that we fear you and may be found faithful to your will and commandments! Oh, Lord, lead and lead us all as long as we live on earth…” – The pen hurried on, smoothly, nimbly, and executing here and there a flourish of mercantile flourishes, and line by line it spoke to God. Two pages later it said: »I wrote out a policy for my youngest daughter for 150 Kuranttaler. Lead her, oh Lord! on your ways and give her a pure heart, so that one day she will enter the dwellings of eternal peace.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  However, if Christian Buddenbrook, his cousin Jürgen Kröger, or his friend Andreas Giesecke, son of the fire chief, were in charge of this, they threw the coal bin down the stairs instead of making the gentle echo and had to go to Herr Stengel's apartment at four o'clock in the afternoon detention. It was pretty comfortable here. Herr Stengel had forgotten everything and ordered his housekeeper to give the students Buddenbrook, Kröger and Giesecke "each" a cup of coffee, after which he dismissed the young gentlemen again ... Indeed, the excellent scholars who ministered under the friendly rule of a humane, tobacco-sniffing old headmaster in the vaults of the old school—a former convent school—were harmless and good-natured people, united in the belief that science and merriment not mutually exclusive, and striving to work with benevolence and ease. There was in the middle classes a former preacher who taught Latin, a certain Pastor Hirte, a tall gentleman with brown whiskers and bright eyes, whose happiness in life consisted in this correspondence of his name with his title, and who did not often enough Vocabulary pastor could be translated. His favorite phrase was "limitlessly narrow-minded!" and it has never been clarified whether this was a deliberate joke. But when he intended to completely astound his students, he commanded the art of putting his lips in his mouth and flicking them out again in a way that made it pop like a popping champagne stopper. He loved to walk about the classroom with long strides, and to tell individual students their whole future life with tremendous vivacity, with the express purpose of stimulating their imaginations a little. But then he went seriously to work, that is, he ignored the verses he said about genus rules - he said "Rules of Pleasure" - and had composed with real skill all sorts of difficult constructions, verses which Pastor Hirte produced with unspeakably triumphant emphasis on rhythm and rhyme... Tom and Christian's adolescence...nothing significant to report. In those days there was sunshine in the Buddenbrook house, where business was going so well in the offices. And sometimes there was a thunderstorm, a little misfortune like this: Herr Stuht in Glockengiesserstraße, a master tailor whose wife bought old clothes and was therefore a part of the first circles, Herr Stuht, whose stomach was covered in a woolen shirt and fell down over his trousers in an amazing curve... Herr Stuht had young Buddenbrook two made suits that cost a total of seventy marks; only at the request of the two of them had he been found willing to put eighty on the bill and hand them the rest in cash. It was a small deal... not a particularly neat one, I suppose, but not at all unusual.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Then, while the pine scent was already penetrating through the cracks in the high, white double doors, When the consul slowly read the Christmas chapter from the old family Bible with the monstrous letters, and if a song had faded away outside, "O Christmas tree" was sung, while the ceremonial procession made its way through the columned hall into the hall, the wide hall with it the statues in the wallpaper, where the tree adorned with white lilies rose to the ceiling shimmering, luminous and fragrant, and the plaque of gifts stretched from the windows to the door. But outside, on the hard-frozen snow of the streets, the Italian barrel-organ men played music, and the hustle and bustle of the Christmas market echoed across from the market square. In addition to little Klara, the children also shared in the late supper in the portico, at which carp and stuffed turkey were plentiful... and when a song had faded away outside, they began to sing "O Christmas tree" while they went in a solemn procession through the columned hall into the hall, the wide hall with the statues in the wallpaper, where the tree decorated with white lilies shimmered, bright and fragrant towered to the ceiling and the gift board reached from the windows to the door. But outside, on the hard-frozen snow of the streets, the Italian barrel-organ men played music, and the hustle and bustle of the Christmas market echoed across from the market square. In addition to little Klara, the children also shared in the late supper in the portico, at which carp and stuffed turkey were plentiful... and when a song had faded away outside, they began to sing "O Christmas tree" while they went in a solemn procession through the columned hall into the hall, the wide hall with the statues in the wallpaper, where the tree decorated with white lilies shimmered, bright and fragrant towered to the ceiling and the gift board reached from the windows to the door. But outside, on the hard-frozen snow of the streets, the Italian barrel-organ men played music, and the hustle and bustle of the Christmas market echoed across from the market square. In addition to little Klara, the children also shared in the late supper in the portico, at which carp and stuffed turkey were plentiful... the wide hall with the statues in the wallpaper, where the tree adorned with white lilies rose to the ceiling, shimmering, luminous and fragrant, and the gift board stretched from the windows to the door. But outside, on the hard-frozen snow of the streets, the Italian barrel-organ men played music, and the hustle and bustle of the Christmas market echoed across from the market square. In addition to little Klara, the children also shared in the late supper in the portico, at which carp and stuffed turkey were plentiful...

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  The Consul, however, said with a mixture of accommodating smile and reproach in his voice: "But father, you are once again making fun of the holiest!..." They sat in the "landscape room" on the first floor of the spacious old house on Mengstrasse, which the Johann Buddenbrook firm had bought some time ago and which the family had not lived in for long. The strong and resilient wallpaper, separated from the walls by an empty space, showed extensive landscapes, delicately colored like the thin carpet that covered the floor, idyll in eighteenth-century taste, with cheerful winegrowers, industrious peasants, neatly ribboned shepherdesses , who held clean lambs in their laps at the edge of the reflecting water or kissed tender shepherds... A yellowish sunset mostly dominated these pictures, with which the yellow covering of the white lacquered furniture and the yellow silk curtains in front of the two windows corresponded. In relation to the size of the room, the furniture was not numerous. The round table with the thin, straight legs, lightly decorated with gold, did not stand in front of the sofa, but on the opposite wall, opposite the small harmonium, on the lid of which lay a flute case. Apart from the stiff armchairs that were regularly distributed along the walls, there was only a small sewing table by the window and, opposite the sofa, a fragile, luxurious writing desk covered with knick-knacks. Through a glass door opposite the windows one looked out into the semidarkness of a columned hall, while to the left of the enterer was the high, white double door to the dining room. But on the other wall, in a semicircular niche and behind an elaborately openwork door of bare wrought iron, the stove crackled. Because it had gotten cold early. Outside, on the other side of the street, around the middle of October, the leaves of the small linden trees that surrounded the Marienkirchhof had already yellowed, the wind howled around the mighty Gothic nooks and crannies of the church, and a fine, cold rain fell. For the sake of Madame Buddenbrook, the elder, the double windows had already been put in place. It was Thursday, the day on which the family got together regularly every other week; Today, however, in addition to the members of the family living in the city, a few good friends of the house had also been asked for a very simple lunch, and now, around four o'clock in the afternoon, we were sitting in the sinking twilight and awaiting the guests... Little Antonie hadn't let her grandfather disturb her on her sleigh ride, but had just pushed her upper lip, which was always a little protruding, further over her lower lip, pouting. Now she had arrived at the foot of the "Jerusalem Mountain"; but unable to stop the slippery ride suddenly, she overshot the mark a little... "Amen," she said, "I know what, grandfather!" » Tiens!

• From The Hours (1998)

  He says, “Angie got so excited about the nest she forgot to sing her hymn.” Vanessa says, “Should we be denied any tea at all, for coming so early?” “No,” Virginia answers. “I’m fully equipped to make tea without assistance from Nelly.” “Well, then,” Vanessa says, and she and Julian turn and walk back to the house, Julian’s hand slipped into the crook of his mother’s elbow. Before following them, Virginia lingers another moment beside the dead bird in its circle of roses. It could be a kind of hat. It could be the missing link between millinery and death. She would like to lie down in its place. No denying it, she would like that. Vanessa and Julian can go on about their business, their tea and travels, while she, Virginia, a bird-sized Virginia, lets herself metamorphose from an angular, difficult woman into an ornament on a hat; a foolish, uncaring thing. Clarissa, she thinks, is not the bride of death after all. Clarissa is the bed in which the bride is laid. Mrs. Woolf She sits in the kitchen with Vanessa, drinking her tea. “There was a lovely coat for Angelica at Harrods,” Vanessa says. “But then nothing for the boys, and it seemed so unfair. I suppose I shall give her the coat for her birthday, but then of course she’ll be cross because she believes coats ought to come to her anyway, as a matter of course, and not be presented as gifts.” Virginia nods. At the moment, she can’t seem to speak. There is so much in the world. There are coats at Harrods; there are children who will be angry and disappointed no matter what one does. There is Vanessa’s plump hand on her cup and there is the thrush outside, so beautiful on its pyre; so like millinery. There is this hour, now, in the kitchen. Clarissa will not die, not by her own hand. How could she bear to leave all this? Virginia prepares to offer some wisdom about children. She has scant idea what she’ll say, but she will say something. She would like to say, It is enough. The teacups and the thrush outside, the question of children’s coats. It is enough. Someone else will die. It should be a greater mind than Clarissa’s; it should be someone with sorrow and genius enough to turn away from the seductions of the world, its cups and its coats. “Perhaps Angelica—” Virginia says.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  But her son and his wife had already had their first dinner, a dinner in the dining and living room had been set, a dinner with a cook, servants and Kistenmakers wines, a midday party which started at five o'clock and whose smells and noises were still pervasive at eleven o'clock, at which all the Langhals, Hagenstroms, Huneus, Kistenmakers, Överdiecks and Möllendorpfs had been present, merchants and scholars, married couples and suitiers, who closed with whist and a few ears full of music, and who was talked about in the most praiseful terms at the stock exchange for eight days. Truly, it had been shown that the young woman knew how to represent the consul... That evening, the consul had stayed alone with her in the rooms lit by the candles that had burned down, among the jumbled furniture, in the dense, sweet and heavy haze of fine food, perfumes, crying, coffee, Cigars and the flowers of the toilets and centerpieces, pressed her hands and said: "Very good, Gerda! We didn't need to be ashamed. That sort of thing is very important...I don't want to mess around with balls a lot and let the young people jump around here; there is not enough space for that. But the settled people must like it here with us. A dinner like that costs a little more...but that's not a bad investment." "You're right," she had replied, arranging the spikes through which her chest shimmered like marble. “I, too, definitely prefer the dinners to the balls. Dinner is so extraordinarily soothing...I had been playing music this afternoon and felt a little odd...Now my brain is so dead that lightning could strike here without turning pale or red." * When the Consul sat down next to his mother at the breakfast table at half past eleven today, she read him the following letter: Munich, April 2, 1857. At Marienplatz No. 5. my dear mom, I beg your pardon, for it is a pity that I have not written while I have been here for eight days; I've become too engrossed in all there is to see here—but of that later. First of all I would like to ask if you, dear ones, are doing well, you and Tom and Gerda and Erika and Christian and Thilda and Ida and everyone; that's the most important. Ah, what have I not seen in these days! There is the Pinakothek and the Glyptothek and the Hofbräuhaus and the Hoftheater and the churches and many other things. I have to tell you about it in person, otherwise I'll write myself dead. We've already taken a carriage ride in the Isar valley, and a trip to the Würmsee is planned for tomorrow. It goes on and on; Eva is very nice to me, and Herr Niederpaur, the brewery manager, is a good-natured man.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Green screens spread the light over the three columns of two-seater lecterns of pale wood, which were dark, didactic, and reserved, with a blackboard at their heads facing the lectern. A yellow panel of wood covered the lower part of the walls, and above the bare chalky surfaces were adorned with a few maps. A second panel leaned on an easel at the side of the lectern. Hanno went to his place, which was roughly in the middle of the room, put the folder in the drawer, sank down on the hard seat, laid his arms on the sloping board and laid his head on it. An unspeakable feeling of well-being trickled through him. This bare, hard room was ugly and hateful, and the whole threatening morning weighed on his heart with a thousand dangers. But for now he was safe, physically safe and able to let things get to him. The first, the religion lesson with Herr Ballerstedt, was also of a fairly harmless nature... You could tell from the vibrating of the paper tongue up there in front of the circular opening in the wall how the warm air streamed in, and the gas flames also heated the room. Oh, you could stretch and let your stiff, damp limbs slowly loosen and thaw. Suddenly he heard a noise behind him that made him wince and turn around abruptly... Lo and behold, the torso of Kai, Count Mölln, appeared behind the back bench. He crawled out, the young gentleman, he worked his way out, got to his feet, clapped his hands together lightly and quickly to wipe the dust off, and walked towards Hanno Buddenbrook with a beaming face. "Oh, it's you, Hanno!" he said. "And I retired there because I thought you were a piece of faculty when you came in!" His voice broke as he spoke, noticeably changing, which was not the case with his friend. He had grown to the same extent as this one, but otherwise he had remained completely the same. He was still wearing a suit of an indefinite color, missing a button here and there, and a large patch on the buttocks. His hands were still not entirely clean, but they were slender and extraordinarily noble, with long, slender fingers and pointed nails. And still his reddish-yellow hair, briefly parted in the middle, fell into an alabaster-white and flawless forehead, under which, deep and sharp at the same time, the light blue Eyes gleamed... The contrast between his badly neglected toilet and the racial purity of this delicate-boned face with the very slightly curved nose and the slightly pursed upper lip was even more obvious than before. "No, Kai," said Hanno with a twisted mouth and moving his hand around his heart, "how can you frighten me like that! Why are you up here? why were you hiding Were you late too?” "Save," answered Kai. 'I've been here for a long time...

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  For more than a year my checking account had hovered or dipped just over or just under zero, and suddenly I had money to spare. I decided I would open a savings account in case some day I would get married and have a family, and with each bit of money that came in I would give 10 percent to the church and 10 percent to the savings account. I was actually budgeting money. I had never done that before. But that is not the best part. The best part is what tithing has done for my relationship with God. Before, I felt like I was always going to God with my fingers crossed, the way a child feels around his father when he knows he has told terrible lies. God knew where I was, He didn’t love me any different when I was holding out on Him, it’s just that I didn’t feel clean around Him, and you know how that can affect things. I also learned that I needed to give to the poor. My church gives money to the poor, but it was also important for me to give directly to the poor. I would go downtown sometimes and buy a homeless person lunch. I hated it at first because I always stumbled across the guys with terrible table manners, but after a while I began to like their drunken ramblings. Even though they weren’t making any sense, they thought they were, and that has to count for something. [image "9780785263708_0211_003" file=Image00081.jpg] We don’t need as much money as we have. Hardly any of us need as much money as we have. It’s true what they say about the best things in life being free. For a little while, a long time ago, I was a minimalist. I wasn’t a minimalist on purpose, it’s just that my friend Paul and I had been traveling around the country living in a van, like I mentioned earlier. We eventually ran out of money, so we sold the van and lived in the woods. We lived in the Cascade Mountains for a month. We walked through the woods into a resort every day where I scrubbed toilets in condos and Paul worked as a lifeguard. I ate the food people would leave in the refrigerator after they had checked out. Mostly perishables. Ice cream. Fruit. Cheese. I only tell you this because when we were living in the woods, we didn’t worry about anything, especially about money. After about a week I stopped wondering if food was going to show. I learned that people throw tons of food away, and there will always be plenty. I didn’t think about rent because I didn’t pay rent; the forest is free, it turns out, great property all over. There I was, living in one of the most beautiful territories in all of America, eating free food and sleeping under the stars.

• From The Hours (1998)

  After a pause, she offers her cheek for a kiss. “Hello,” Clarissa says. Her lips touch Barbara’s skin and the moment is suddenly, unexpectedly perfect. She stands in the dim, deliciously cool little shop that is like a temple, solemn in its abundance, its bunches of dried flowers hanging from the ceiling and its rack of ribbons trailing against the back wall. There was that branch tapping the windowpane and there was another, though she’d been older, five or six, in her own bedroom, this branch covered with red leaves, and she can remember thinking back reverently, even then, to that earlier branch, the one that had seemed to excite the music downstairs; she remembers loving the autumn branch for reminding her of the earlier branch, tapping against the window of a house to which she would never return, which she could not otherwise remember in any of its particulars. Now she is here, in the flower shop, where poppies drift white and apricot on long, hairy stems. Her mother, who kept a tin of snowy French mints in her purse, pursed her lips and called Clarissa crazy, a crazy girl, in a tone of flirtatious admiration. “How are you?” Barbara asks. “Fine, just fine,” she says. “We’re having a little party tonight, for a friend who’s just won this big-deal literary award.” “The Pulitzer?” “No. It’s called the Carrouthers Prize.” Barbara offers a blank expression that Clarissa understands is meant as a smile. Barbara is forty or so, a pale, ample woman who came to New York to sing opera. Something about her face—the square jaw or the stern, inexpressive eyes—reminds you that people looked essentially the same a hundred years ago. “We’re a little low right now,” she says. “There’ve been about fifty weddings this week.” “I don’t need much,” Clarissa says. “Just a few bunches of something or other.” Clarissa feels inexplicably guilty about not being a better friend to Barbara, though they know each other only as customer and saleswoman. Clarissa buys all her flowers from Barbara, and sent her a card a year ago, when she heard of her breast-cancer scare. Barbara’s career has not gone as planned; she lives somehow on her hourly wages (a tenement, probably, with the bathtub in the kitchen) and she has escaped cancer, this time. For a moment Mary Krull hovers over the lilies and roses, preparing to be appalled at what Clarissa will spend. “We’ve got some beautiful hydrangeas,” Barbara says. “Let’s see.” Clarissa goes to the cooler and chooses flowers, which Barbara pulls from their containers and holds, dripping, in her arms.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Christian came from Hamburg, very elegantly dressed and a little shaky but funny-looking, said that his deal with Burmeester was "tip-top", explained that Klothilde and he would probably only marry "up there" - "that is : Everyone for themselves!...« and came to church much too late because he had paid a visit to the club. Uncle Justus was very touched and showed himself to be as accommodating as ever by presenting the newlyweds with an extraordinarily beautiful, heavy silver centerpiece... He and his wife almost went hungry at home, because the weak mother paid Jakob, long since disinherited and rejected, who, as reported, who was currently staying in Paris, still owed her household money. - The Buddenbrook ladies from Breitestrasse remarked: "Well, hopefully it will hold up this time.good kend!' Seventh Chapter At eight o'clock in the morning, as soon as he got out of bed, descended the spiral staircase behind the small gate to the basement, had a bath and put on his dressing gown again, Consul Buddenbrook began to occupy himself with public affairs. Then, with his red hands and his intelligent face, Herr Wenzel, barber and member of the city council, appeared in the bathroom with a pot of warm water he had fetched from the kitchen and the other utensils, while the Consul himself , head bent back, sat down in a large armchair and Herr Wenzel began to foam, almost always relaxed Conversation that, starting with a night's rest and the weather, soon turned to events in the big world, then dealt with intimate urban affairs and usually ended with very closely related business and family matters... All this made the procedure very long, as always , when the consul spoke, Herr Wenzel had to remove the knife from his face. "Did you please, Herr Consul?" "Thank you, Wenzel. Good weather today?' 'Frost and a bit of snow mist, Herr Consul. In front of the Jacobi Church the boys have another Schleisterbahn, ten meters long, so that I almost fell over when I came from the mayor. Duel will take them..." "Have you seen the newspapers?" “The ads and the Hamburg news, yes. Nothing but Orsini bombs... Terrible. On the way to the opera… Nice company over there…” 'Well, it doesn't mean anything, I guess. It has nothing to do with the people and the effect now is just that the police and the pressure on the press and all that is doubled. He's on his guard... Yes, it's a perpetual unrest, that must be true, because he's always dependent on activities to keep himself going. But he has my respect – it doesn't matter. At least you can't be a dujack with the traditions, as Mamsell Jungmann says, and that with the bakery register and the cheap bread prices, for example, really impressed me. He's doing a lot for the people, no doubt..." 'Yes, that's what sir saidcrate makerbefore." "Stephan?

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Up on the flat roof an old foreman made a speech, at the end of which he tossed a bottle of champagne over his shoulder, while between the flags the mighty topping-out crown of roses, green foliage, and variegated leaves swayed heavily in the wind. But then in a nearby inn all the workers were given a feast of beer, sandwiches and cigars at long tables, and with his wife and his little son, whom Madame Decho was carrying in her arms, Senator Buddenbrook walked in the low room between the rows of diners, and gratefully accepted the cheers that were offered to him. Outside, Hanno was put back in his carriage, and Thomas crossed the road with Gerda to have a look at the red facade with the white caryatids. Over there, in front of the little flower shop with the narrow door and the shabby shop window, in which a few pots of bulbous plants paraded side by side on a green pane of glass, Iwersen, the owner of the shop, a blond, gigantic man, in a woolen jacket, was standing next to his wife , who was much slighter and showed a dark southern type of face. She was holding a boy of four or five by the one hand, and with the other hand was slowly pushing a little carriage in which a smaller child was sleeping, and was evidently in good hope. Iwersen bowed as deeply as she was awkwardly, while his wife, who kept rolling the baby carriage back and forth, looked calmly and attentively out of her long, black eyes at the senator, who came towards them on her husband's arm. Thomas stopped and pointed to the topping-out crown with his cane. "You did well, Iwersen!" “Not my place, senator. Dat's min Fru eer Saak.« "Ah!" said the senator curtly, lifting his head with a little jerk and looking brightly, steadily, and kindly into Frau Iwersen's face for a second. And without adding a word, he said goodbye with an obliging wave of the hand. Sixth Chapter One Sunday, at the beginning of July - Senator Buddenbrook had moved into his new house about four weeks ago - Frau Permaneder appeared at her brother's house towards evening. She crossed the cool, stone corridor, which was decorated with reliefs after Thorwaldsen and from which a door led to the office on the right, rang the bell at the vestibule door, which could be opened from the kitchen by pressing a rubber ball, and found out the spacious forecourt, where, at the foot of the main staircase, stood the bear, Tiburtius' present, from Anton the servant, that the senator was still at work.

• From The Hours (1998)

  He thinks with distracted affection of himself, the young Louis Waters, who spent his youth trying to live with Richard, who was variously flattered and enraged by Richard’s indefatigable worship of his arms and his ass, and who left Richard finally, forever, after a fight in the train station in Rome (had it been specifically about the letter Richard received from Clarissa, or about Louis’s more general sense of exhausted interest in being the more blessed, less brilliant member?). That Louis, only twenty-eight but convinced of his advanced age and missed opportunities, had walked away from Richard and gotten on a train that turned out to be going to Madrid. It had seemed, at the time, a dramatic but temporary gesture, and as the train steamed along (the conductor had informed him, indignantly, where he was headed) he’d been strangely, almost preternaturally content. He’d been free. Now he scarcely remembers his aimless days in Madrid; he does not even remember with great clarity the Italian boy (could his name actually have been Franco?) who convinced him to finally abandon the long, doomed project of loving Richard, in favor of simpler passions. What he remembers with perfect clarity is sitting on a train headed for Madrid, feeling the sort of happiness he imagined spirits might feel, freed of their earthly bodies but still possessed of their essential selves. He walks east toward University (seventy-seven steps to the corner). He waits to cross. Mrs. Dalloway “More coffee?” Oliver says to Sally. “Thanks.” Sally hands her coffee cup to Oliver’s assistant, a surprisingly plain young man, white-blond, hollow-cheeked, who, although presented as an assistant, seems to be in charge of pouring coffee. Sally had expected an impeccable young stud, all jaw and biceps. This weedy, eager boy would look right at home behind the perfume counter in a department store. “So what do you think?” Oliver says. Sally watches her coffee being poured, to avoid looking at Oliver. When the cup has been set in front of her she glances at Walter Hardy, who betrays nothing. Walter has a talent, remarkable in its way, for looking utterly attentive and entirely blank, like a lizard that has crawled onto a sunny rock. “Interesting,” Sally says. “Yes,” Oliver answers. Sally nods judiciously, sips her coffee. “I wonder,” she says, “if it could actually get made.” “I think it’s time,” Oliver answers. “I think people are ready.” “Do you, really?” Sally appeals, silently, to Walter.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  And when we ask, 'What proves that all this is more than a mere conception of the possible?' it is not easy to get a sufficient reply. If we start from the frog's spinal cord and reason by continuity, saying, as that acts so intelligently, though unconscious , so the higher centres, though conscious , may have the intelligence they show quite as mechanically based; we are immediately met by the exact counter-argument from continuity, an argument actually urged by such writers as Pflüger and Lewes, which starts from the acts of the hemispheres, and says: "As these owe their intelligence to the consciousness which we know to be there, so the intelligence of the spinal cord's acts must really be due to the invisible presence of a consciousness lower in degree." All arguments from continuity work in two ways, you can either level up or level down by their means; and it is clear that such arguments as these can eat each other up to all eternity. There remains a sort of philosophic faith, bred like most faiths from an aesthetic demand. Mental and physical events are, on all hands, admitted to present the strongest contrast in the entire field of being. The chasm which yawns between them is less easily bridged over by the mind than any interval we know. Why, then, not call it an absolute chasm, and say not only that the two worlds are different, but that they are independent? This gives us the comfort of all simple and absolute formulas, and it makes each chain homogeneous to our consideration. When talking of nervous tremors and bodily actions, we may feel secure against intrusion from an irrelevant mental world. When, on the other hand, we speak of feelings, we may with equal consistency use terms always of one denomination, and never be annoyed by what Aristotle calls 'slipping into another kind.' The desire on the part of men educated in laboratories not to have their physical reasonings mixed up with such incommensurable factors as feelings is certainly very strong. I have heard a most intelligent biologist say: "It is high time for scientific men to protest against the recognition of any such thing as consciousness in a scientific investigation."

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

  When I go into my house I shall rest with her (the Wisdom of God); for her conversation hath no bitterness nor her company any tediousness, but joy and gladness. Wisd. 8:16. O, taste and see that the Lord is sweet. Ps. 33:9. O, how great is the multitude of Thy sweetness, O Lord, which Thou hast hidden for them that fear Thee. Ps. 30:20. Thy lips, My spouse, are as a dropping honeycomb; honey and milk are under thy tongue. Cantic. 4:11. N. Three evils in the world; a. False sweetness; To the fool she said, Stolen waters are sweeter; and hidden bread more pleasant. He did not know that giants are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell. Prov. 9:17, 18. Let mercy forget him: may worms be his sweetness; let him be remembered no more, but be broken in pieces as an unfruitful tree. Job 24:20. Man knoweth not his own end; but as fishes are taken with the hook, and as birds are caught with the snare, so men are taken in the evil time when it shall suddenly come upon them. Eccles. 9:12. They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment they go down to hell, who have said to God, Depart from us; we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways. Who is the Almighty that we should serve Him? and what doth it profit us if we pray to Him? Job 21:13–15. b. Great bitterness; So is this great sea which stretcheth wide its arms; there are creeping things without number, things little and great. Ps. 103:25. The Lord said, Because they have forsaken My law which I gave them, and have not heard My voice, and have not walked in it, but have gone after the perverseness of their own hearts … therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold I will feed this people with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink. Jerem. 9:13, 14. Man, born of a woman, and living for a short time, is filled with many miseries. He cometh up like a flower, and is cut down and fleeth as a shadow, and continueth not in one state. Job 14:1, 2.

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

  Objection 3: Further, good alone is an object of appetite. But a certain peace is, seemingly, evil, else Our Lord would not have said (Mat. 10:34): “I came not to send peace.” Therefore all things do not desire peace. Objection 4: Further, that which all desire is, seemingly, the sovereign good which is the last end. But this is not true of peace, since it is attainable even by a wayfarer; else Our Lord would vainly command (Mk. 9:49): “Have peace among you.” Therefore all things do not desire peace. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xix, 12,14) that “all things desire peace”: and Dionysius says the same (Div. Nom. xi). I answer that, From the very fact that a man desires a certain thing it follows that he desires to obtain what he desires, and, in consequence, to remove whatever may be an obstacle to his obtaining it. Now a man may be hindered from obtaining the good he desires, by a contrary desire either of his own or of some other, and both are removed by peace, as stated above. Hence it follows of necessity that whoever desires anything desires peace, in so far as he who desires anything, desires to attain, with tranquillity and without hindrance, to that which he desires: and this is what is meant by peace which Augustine defines (De Civ. Dei xix, 13) “the tranquillity of order.” Reply to Objection 1: Peace denotes union not only of the intellective or rational appetite, or of the animal appetite, in both of which consent may be found, but also of the natural appetite. Hence Dionysius says that “peace is the cause of consent and of connaturalness,” where “consent” denotes the union of appetites proceeding from knowledge, and “connaturalness,” the union of natural appetites. Reply to Objection 2: Even those who seek war and dissension, desire nothing but peace, which they deem themselves not to have. For as we stated above, there is no peace when a man concords with another man counter to what he would prefer. Consequently men seek by means of war to break this concord, because it is a defective peace, in order that they may obtain peace, where nothing is contrary to their will. Hence all wars are waged that men may find a more perfect peace than that which they had heretofore.