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 An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Graduate school was not only relative freedom for me from my illness, but it was also freedom from the highly structured existence of undergraduate studies. Although I skipped more than half of my formal lectures, it didn’t really matter; as long as one ultimately performed, the erratic ways that one took to get there were considerably less important. I was married, too, by this point, to a French artist who not only was a talented painter but an exceedingly kind and gentle person. He and I had met in the early seventies, at a brunch given by mutual friends. It was a time of long hair, social unrest, graduate school deferments, and Vietnam War protests, and I was relieved to find someone who was, for a switch, essentially apolitical, highly intelligent but unintellectual, and deeply committed to the arts. We were very different, but we liked one another immediately; we found out quickly that we shared a passionate love for painting, music, and the natural world. I was, at the time, painfully intense, rail thin, and, when not moribund, filled to the brim with a desire for an exciting life, a high-voltage academic career, and a pack of children. Photographs from that time show a tall, extraordinarily handsome, dark-haired, gentle, and brown-eyed man who, while consistent in his own appearance, is accompanied by a wildly variable woman in her midtwenties: in one picture laughing, in a floppy hat, with long hair flying; in another pensive, brooding, looking infinitely older, far more soberly and boringly dressed. My hair, like my moods, went up and down: long for a time, until an I-look-like-a-toad mood would sweep over me; thinking a radical change might help, I then would have it cut to a bob. The moods, the hair, the clothes all changed from week to week, month to month. My husband, on the other hand, was steady, and in most ways we ended up complementing one another’s temperaments. Within months of our meeting we were living together in a small apartment near the ocean. It was a quiet, normal sort of existence, filled with movies, friends, and trips to Big Sur, San Francisco, and Yosemite. The safety of our marriage, the closeness of good friends, and the intellectual latitude provided by graduate school were very powerful in providing a reasonably quiet and harbored world.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  One of life’s greatest glories is to be an encourager of those who are near to despair and a strengthener of those whose strength is failing. To help these people, we have, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, ‘to make their paths straight’. Christians have a double duty; they have a duty to God and a duty to other people. The Testament of Simeon (5:2–3) has an illuminating description of the duty of those who would strive for goodness. ‘Make your heart good in the sight of the Lord; and make your ways straight in the sight of men; so you will find favour in the sight of the Lord and of men.’ To God, individuals must present a clean heart; to others, they must present an upright life. To show others the right way to walk, by personal example to keep them on the right road, to remove from the path something that would make them stumble, to make the journey easier for faltering and lagging feet, is a Christian duty. Christians must offer their hearts to God and their service and example to their neighbours. (2) The writer to the Hebrews turns to the aims which must always guide Christians. (a) They must aim at peace. In Jewish thought and language, peace was not a negative thing; it was intensely positive. It was not simply freedom from trouble; it was two things. First, it was everything which makes for a person’s highest good. As the Jews saw it, that highest good was to be found in obedience to God. In the Authorized Version, Proverbs says: ‘My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments: for length of days and long life and peace shall they add unto thee’ (3:1–2). Christians must aim at that complete obedience to God in which life finds its highest happiness, its greatest good, its perfect consummation, its peace. Second, peace meant right relationships between individuals. It meant a state when hatred was banished and people sought nothing but the good of their neighbours. The writer to the Hebrews says: ‘Seek to live together as Christian men and women ought to live, in the real unity which comes from living in Christ.’ The peace to be sought is that coming from obedience to God’s will, which raises life to its highest fulfilment and enables us to live in and to produce right relationships with one another. One thing remains to be noted: that kind of peace is to be pursued. It requires an effort; it is not something which just happens. It is the product of mental and spiritual toil and sweat. In ‘The Glory of the Garden’, Rudyard Kipling wrote: Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made By singing:– ‘Oh, how beautiful!’ and sitting in the shade, While better men than we go out and start their working-lives At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  You are like my Fanny.” In other respects it has been a fine day for Moldorf. A letter arrived from America. Moe is getting A’s in everything. Murray is learning to ride the bicycle. The victrola was repaired. You can see from the expression on his face that there were other things in the letter besides report cards and velocipedes. You can be sure of it because this afternoon he bought 325 francs worth of jewelry for his Fanny. In addition he wrote her a twenty-page letter. The garçon brought him page after page, filled his fountain pen, served his coffee and cigars, fanned him a little when he perspired, brushed the crumbs from the table, lit his cigar when it went out, bought stamps for him, danced on him, pirouetted, salaamed… broke his spine damned near. The tip was fat. Bigger and fatter than a Corona Corona. Moldorf probably mentioned it in his diary. It was for Fanny’s sake. The bracelet and the earrings, they were worth every sou he spent. Better to spend it on Fanny than waste it on little strumpets like Germaine and Odette. Yes, he told Tania so. He showed her his trunk. It is crammed with gifts—for Fanny, and for Moe and Murray. “My Fanny is the most intelligent woman in the world. I have been searching and searching to find a flaw in her—but there’s not one. “She’s perfect. I’ll tell you what Fanny can do. She plays bridge like a shark; she’s interested in Zionism; you give her an old hat, for instance, and see what she can do with it. A little twist here, a ribbon there, and voilà quelque chose de beau! Do you know what is perfect bliss? To sit beside Fanny, when Moe and Murray have gone to bed, and listen to the radio. She sits there so peacefully. I am rewarded for all my struggles and heartaches in just watching her. She listens intelligently. When I think of your stinking Montparnasse and then of my evenings in Bay Ridge with Fanny after a big meal, I tell you there is no comparison. A simple thing like food, the children, the soft lamps, and Fanny sitting there, a little tired, but cheerful, contented, heavy with bread… we just sit there for hours without saying a word. That’s bliss! “Today she writes me a letter—not one of those dull stock-report letters. She writes me from the heart, in language that even my little Murray could understand. She’s delicate about everything, Fanny. She says that the children must continue their education but the expense worries her. It will cost a thousand bucks to send little Murray to school. Moe, of course, will get a scholarship. But little Murray, that little genius, Murray, what are we going to do about him? I wrote Fanny not to worry. Send Murray to school, I said. What’s another thousand dollars? I’ll make more money this year than ever before.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Not a single object seems to possess a practical use. The antechamber itself seems useless, a sort of vestibule to a barn. It is exactly the same sort of sensation which I get when I enter the Comédie-Française or the Palais-Royal Theatre; it is a world of bric-a-brac, of trap doors, of arms and busts and waxed floors, of candelabras and men in armor, of statues without eyes and love letters lying in glass cases. Something is going on, but it makes no sense; it’s like finishing the half-empty bottle of Calvados because there’s no room in the valise. Climbing up the stairs, as I said a moment ago, he had mentioned the fact that Maupassant used to live here. The coincidence seems to have made an impression upon him. He would like to believe that it was in this very room that Maupassant gave birth to some of those gruesome tales on which his reputation rests. “They lived like pigs, those poor bastards,” he says. We are sitting at the round table in a pair of comfortable old armchairs that have been trussed up with thongs and braces; the bed is right beside us, so close indeed that we can put our feet on it. The armoire stands in a corner behind us, also conveniently within reach. Van Norden has emptied his dirty wash on the table; we sit there with our feet buried in his dirty socks and shirts and smoke contentedly. The sordid-ness of the place seems to have worked a spell on him: he is content here. When I get up to switch on the light he suggests that we play a game of cards before going out to eat. And so we sit there by the window, with the dirty wash strewn over the floor and the Sandow exerciser hanging from the chandelier, and we play a few rounds of two-handed pinochle. Van Norden has put away his pipe and packed a wad of snuff on the underside of his lower lip. Now and then he spits out of the window, big healthy gobs of brown juice which resound with a smack on the pavement below. He seems content now. “In America,” he says, “you wouldn’t dream of living in a joint like this. Even when I was on the bum I slept in better rooms than this. But here it seems natural—it’s like the books you read. If I ever go back there I’ll forget all about this life, just like you forget a bad dream. I’ll probably take up the old life again just where I left off... if I ever get back.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Passing the Rond-Point I thought I’d go downstairs and take a leak. No telling what might happen down there. I told the driver to wait. It was the first time in my life I had let a cab wait while I took a leak. How much can you waste that way? Not very much. With what I had in my pocket I could afford to have two taxis waiting for me. I took a good look around but I didn’t see anything worth while. What I wanted was something fresh and unused—something from Alaska or the Virgin Islands. A clean fresh pelt with a natural fragrance to it. Needless to say, there wasn’t anything like that walking about. I wasn’t terribly disappointed. I didn’t give a fuck whether I found anything or not. The thing is, never to be too anxious. Everything comes in due time. We drove on past the Arc de Triomphe. A few sightseers were loitering around the remains of the Unknown Soldier. Going through the Bois I looked at all the rich cunts promenading in their limousines. They were whizzing by as if they had some destination. Do that, no doubt, to look important—to show the world how smooth run their Rolls Royces and their Hispano Suizas. Inside me things were running smoother than any Rolls Royce ever ran. It was just like velvet inside. Velvet cortex and velvet vertebrae. And velvet axle grease, what! It’s a wonderful thing, for half an hour, to have money in your pocket and piss it away like a drunken sailor. You feel as though the world is yours. And the best part of it is, you don’t know what to do with it. You can sit back and let the meter run wild, you can let the wind blow through your hair, you can stop and have a drink, you can give a big tip, and you can swagger off as though it were an everyday occurrence. But you can’t create a revolution. You can’t wash all the dirt out of your belly. When we got to the Porte d’Auteuil I made him head for the Seine. At the Pont de Sèvres I got out and started walking along the river, toward the Auteuil Viaduct. It’s about the size of a creek along here and the trees come right down to the river’s bank. The water was green and glassy, especially near the other side. Now and then a scow chugged by. Bathers in tights were standing in the grass sunning themselves. Everything was close and palpitant, and vibrant with the strong light. Passing a beer garden I saw a group of cyclists sitting at a table. I took a seat nearby and ordered a demi . Hearing them jabber away I thought for a moment of Ginette.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  There is nothing in which these slick guys upstairs do not put their fingers: no joy, no misery passes unnoticed. They live among the hard facts of life, reality, as it is called. It is the reality of a swamp and they are the frogs who have nothing better to do than to croak. The more they croak the more real life becomes. Lawyer, priest, doctor, politician, newspaperman—these are the quacks who have their fingers on the pulse of the world. A constant atmosphere of calamity. It’s marvelous. It’s as if the barometer never changed, as if the flag were always at half-mast. One can see now how the idea of heaven takes hold of men’s consciousness, how it gains ground even when all the props have been knocked from under it. There must be another world beside this swamp in which everything is dumped pell-mell. It’s hard to imagine what it can be like, this heaven that men dream about. A frog’s heaven, no doubt. Miasma, scum, pond lilies, stagnant water. Sit on a lily pad unmolested and croak all day. Something like that, I imagine. They have a wonderful therapeutic effect upon me, these catastrophes which I proofread. Imagine a state of perfect immunity, a charmed existence, a life of absolute security in the midst of poison bacilli. Nothing touches me, neither earthquakes nor explosions nor riots nor famine nor collisions nor wars nor revolutions. I am inoculated against every disease, every calamity, every sorrow and misery. It’s the culmination of a life of fortitude. Seated at my little niche all the poisons which the world gives off each day pass through my hands. Not even a fingernail gets stained. I am absolutely immune. I am even better off than a laboratory attendant, because there are no bad odors here, just the smell of lead burning. The world can blow up—I’ll be here just the same to put in a comma or a semicolon. I may even touch a little overtime, for with an event like that there’s bound to be a final extra. When the world blows up and the final edition has gone to press the proofreaders will quietly gather up all commas, semicolons, hyphens, asterisks, brackets, parentheses, periods, exclamation marks, etc. and put them in a little box over the editorial chair. Comme ça tout est réglé. … None of my companions seem to understand why I appear so contented. They grumble all the time, they have ambitions, they want to show their pride and spleen. A good proofreader has no ambitions, no pride, no spleen. A good proofreader is a little like God Almighty, he’s in the world but not of it. He’s for Sundays only. Sunday is his night off. On Sundays he steps down from his pedestal and shows his ass to the faithful. Once a week he listens in on all the private grief and misery of the world; it’s enough to last him for the rest of the week.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I wonder, as I look up at this softly enameled sky, so faintly tinted, which does not bulge today with heavy rain clouds but smiles like a piece of old china, I wonder what goes on in the mind of this man who translated the four thick volumes of the History of Art when he takes in this blissful cosmos with his drooping eye. Along the Champs-Elysées, ideas pouring from me like sweat. I ought to be rich enough to have a secretary to whom I could dictate as I walk, because my best thoughts always come when I am away from the machine. Walking along the Champs-Elysées I keep thinking of my really superb health. When I say “health” I mean optimism, to be truthful. Incurably optimistic! Still have one foot in the nineteenth century. I’m a bit retarded, like most Americans. Carl finds it disgusting, this optimism. “I have only to talk about a meal,” he say, “and you’re radiant!” It’s a fact. The mere thought of a meal—another meal—rejuvenates me. A meal! That means something to go on—a few solid hours of work, an erection possibly. I don’t deny it. I have health, good solid, animal health. The only thing that stands between me and a future is a meal, another meal. As for Carl, he’s not himself these days. He’s upset, his nerves are jangled. He says he’s ill, and I believe him, but I don’t feel badly about it. I can’t . In fact, it makes me laugh. And that offends him, of course. Everything wounds him—my laughter, my hunger, my persistence, my insouciance, everything . One day he wants to blow his brains out because he can’t stand this lousy hole of a Europe any more; the next day he talks of going to Arizona “where they look you square in the eye.” “Do it!” I say. “Do one thing or the other, you bastard, but don’t try to cloud my healthy eye with your melancholy breath!” But that’s just it! In Europe one gets used to doing nothing. You sit on your ass and whine all day. You get contaminated. You rot. Fundamentally Carl is a snob, an aristocratic little prick who lives in a dementia praecox kingdom all his own. “I hate Paris!” he whines. “All these stupid people playing cards all day… look at them! And the writing! What’s the use of putting words together? I can be a writer without writing, can’t I? What does it prove if I write a book? What do we want with books anyway? There are too many books already. …” My eye, but I’ve been all over that ground—years and years ago. I’ve lived out my melancholy youth. I don’t give a fuck any more what’s behind me, or what’s ahead of me. I’m healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today! Le bel aujourd’hui!

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I saw his hat on the rack. I wondered if his clothes would fit me. He had a raglan that I particularly liked. Well, by now he was on his way. In a little while the boat would be rocking under him. English! He wanted to hear English spoken. What an idea! Suddenly it occurred to me that if I wanted I could go to America myself. It was the first time the opportunity had ever presented itself. I asked myself—“do you want to go?” There was no answer. My thoughts drifted out, toward the sea, toward the other side where, taking a last look back, I had seen the skyscrapers fading out in a flurry of snowflakes. I saw them looming up again, in that same ghostly way as when I left. Saw the lights creeping through their ribs. I saw the whole city spread out, from Harlem to the Battery, the streets choked with ants, the elevated rushing by, the theaters emptying. I wondered in a vague way what had ever happened to my wife. After everything had quietly sifted through my head a great peace came over me. Here, where the river gently winds through the girdle of hills, lies a soil so saturated with the past that however far back the mind roams one can never detach it from its human background. Christ, before my eyes there shimmered such a golden peace that only a neurotic could dream of turning his head away. So quietly flows the Seine that one hardly notices its presence. It is always there, quiet and unobtrusive, like a great artery running through the human body. In the wonderful peace that fell over me it seemed as if I had climbed to the top of a high mountain; for a little while I would be able to look around me, to take in the meaning of the landscape. Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space—space even more than time. The sun is setting. I feel this river flowing through me—its past, its ancient soil, the changing climate. The hills gently girdle it about: its course is fixed. * Copyright © 1960 by Karl Shapiro; reprinted by permission of the author and Random House. This essay first appeared in Two Cities, Paris, France.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  They must be content with what they have; and why should they not be, for they possess the continual presence of God? Hebrews quotes two great Old Testament passages – Joshua 1:5 and Psalm 118:6 – to show that those who belong to God need nothing more because they always have the presence and the help of God with them. Nothing that the world can give them can improve on that. THE LEADERS AND THE LEADER Hebrews 13:7–8 Remember your leaders, the men who spoke the word of God to you. Look back on how they made their exit from this life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. IMPLICIT in this passage is a description of the real leader. (1) The real leaders of the Church preach Christ and thereby bring others to him. The British Methodist pastor and broadcaster Leslie Weatherhead tells of a public schoolboy who decided to enter the ministry. He was asked when he had come to that decision, and said it was after hearing a certain sermon in his school chapel. He was asked the name of the preacher, and his answer was that he had no memory of the preacher’s name. All he knew was that he had shown him Jesus. The duty of real preachers is to obliterate self and show to those listening nothing but Christ. (2) The real leaders of the Church live in the faith and thereby bring Christ to others. A saint has been defined as ‘someone in whom Christ lives again’. The duty of real preachers is not so much to talk to men and women about Christ as to show them Christ in their own lives. People listen not so much to what they are saying as to what they are. (3) The real leaders, if need be, die in loyalty. They show others how to live and are prepared to show them how to die. As the Gospel of John says, Jesus, having loved his own, loved them to the end (13:1); and real leaders, having loved Jesus, love him to the end. Their loyalty never stops halfway. (4) As a result, real leaders leave two things to those who come after – an example and an inspiration. Quintilian, the Roman master of oratory, said: ‘It is a good thing to know, and always to keep turning over in the mind, the things which were illustriously done of old.’ Epicurus advised his disciples continuously to remember those who in the past had lived with virtue. If there is one thing more than any other that the world and the Church need in every generation, it is leadership like that. Then the writer to the Hebrews moves on to another great thought. It is in the nature of things that all earthly leaders must come and go. They have their part in the drama of life, and then the curtain comes down.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  Christians must offer their hearts to God and their service and example to their neighbours. (2) The writer to the Hebrews turns to the aims which must always guide Christians. (a) They must aim at peace. In Jewish thought and language, peace was not a negative thing; it was intensely positive. It was not simply freedom from trouble; it was two things. First, it was everything which makes for a person’s highest good. As the Jews saw it, that highest good was to be found in obedience to God. In the Authorized Version, Proverbs says: ‘My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments: for length of days and long life and peace shall they add unto thee’ (3:1–2). Christians must aim at that complete obedience to God in which life finds its highest happiness, its greatest good, its perfect consummation, its peace. Second, peace meant right relationships between individuals. It meant a state when hatred was banished and people sought nothing but the good of their neighbours. The writer to the Hebrews says: ‘Seek to live together as Christian men and women ought to live, in the real unity which comes from living in Christ.’ The peace to be sought is that coming from obedience to God’s will, which raises life to its highest fulfilment and enables us to live in and to produce right relationships with one another. One thing remains to be noted: that kind of peace is to be pursued. It requires an effort; it is not something which just happens. It is the product of mental and spiritual toil and sweat. In ‘The Glory of the Garden’, Rudyard Kipling wrote: Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made By singing:– ‘Oh, how beautiful!’ and sitting in the shade, While better men than we go out and start their working-lives At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives. The gifts of God are given, but they are not given away; they have to be won, for they can be received only on God’s conditions – and the supreme condition is obedience to himself. (b) They must aim at holiness (hagiasmos). Hagiasmos has in it the same root as the adjective hagios, which is usually translated as holy. The root meaning is always difference and separation. Although living in the world, the person who is hagios must always in one sense be different from it and separate from it. The standards of such people are not the world’s standards, nor is their conduct the world’s conduct. Their aim is not to be in good standing with others but to be in good standing with God. Hagiasmos, as B. F. Westcott put it, is ‘the preparation for the presence of God’. The Christian life is dominated by the constant memory that its greatest aim is to enter into the presence of God.

• From The Girls (2016)

  glad for her company. “I don’t like the drive, anyway,” Sasha said, gamely adapting to the situation. “I get sick on those small roads. He drives so crazy, too. Super fast.” She leaned up against the counter, yawning. “Tired?” I said. She told me that she had been trying polyphasic sleep but had to quit. “It was too weird,” she said. Her nipples were apparent through her shirt. “Polyphasic sleep?” I said, pulling my own robe tight in a prudish surge. “Thomas Jefferson did it. You sleep in hour bursts, like, six times a day.” “And you’re awake the rest of the time?” Sasha nodded. “It’s kind of great, the first couple of days. But I crashed hard. It seemed like I’d never sleep normal again.” I couldn’t link the girl I’d overheard the night before to the girl in front of me, talking about sleep experiments. “There’s enough hot water in the kettle if you want some,” I said, but Sasha shook her head. “I don’t eat in the mornings, like a ballerina.” She glanced at the window, the sea a pewter sheet. “Do you ever swim?” “It’s really cold.” I had only seen the occasional surfer venture into the waves, their bodies sheathed in neoprene, hoods over their heads. “So you’ve gone in?” she asked. “No.” Sasha’s face moved with sympathy. Like I was missing out on some obvious pleasure. But no one swam, I thought, feeling protective of my life in this borrowed house, the local orbits of my days. “There are sharks out there, too,” I added. “They don’t really attack humans,” Sasha said, shrugging. She was pretty, like a consumptive, eaten by an internal heat. I tried to spot some pornographic residue of the night before, but there was nothing. Her face as pale and blameless as a lesser moon. —

• From The Girls (2016)

  My eyes were closed as I floated, and I only opened them when I heard thrashing beyond the tree line. A deer, maybe. I tensed, stirring uneasily in the water. I didn’t think that it could be a person: we didn’t worry about those kinds of things. Not until later. And it was a dalmatian anyway, the creature that came trotting out of the trees and right up to the pool’s edge. He regarded me soberly, then started to bark. The dog was strange looking, speckled and spotted, and it barked with high, human alarm. I knew it belonged to the neighbors on our left, the Dutton family. The father had written some movie theme song, and at parties I had heard the mother hum it, mockingly, to a gathered group. Their son was younger than me—he often shot his BB gun in the yard, the dog yelping in agitated chorus. I couldn’t remember the dog’s name. “Get,” I said, splashing halfheartedly. I didn’t want to have to haul myself out of the water. “Go on.” The dog kept barking. “Go,” I tried again, but the dog just barked louder. — My cutoffs were damp from my swimsuit by the time I made it to the Dutton house. I’d put on my cork sandals, grimed with the ghost of my feet, and taken the dog by the collar, the ends of my hair dripping. Teddy Dutton answered the door. He was eleven or twelve, his legs studded with scabs and scrapes. He’d broken his arm last year falling from a tree, and my mother had been the one to drive him to the hospital: she’d muttered darkly that his parents left him alone too much. I had never spent much time with Teddy, beyond the familiarity of being young at neighborhood parties, anyone under age eighteen herded together in a forced march to friendship. Sometimes I’d see him riding his bike along the fire road with a boy in glasses: he’d once let me pet a barn kitten they’d found, holding the tiny thing under his shirt. The kitten’s eyes were leaky with pus, but Teddy had been gentle with it, like a little mother. That was the last time I’d spoken to him. “Hey,” I said when Teddy opened the door. “Your dog.” Teddy was gaping at me like we hadn’t been neighbors our whole lives. I rolled my eyes a little at his silence.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But unless there’s a God, where do some of us find even the little courage we possess? Martin stared out of the window in silence. 3 Mary was growing gentle again; infinitely gentle she now was at times, for happiness makes for gentleness, and in these days Mary was strangely happy. Reassured by the presence of Martin Hallam, re-established in pride and self-respect, she was able to contemplate the world without her erstwhile sense of isolation, was able for the moment to sheathe her sword, and this respite brought her a sense of well-being. She discovered that at heart she was neither so courageous nor so defiant as she had imagined, that like many another woman before her, she was well content to feel herself protected; and gradually as the weeks went by, she began to forget her bitter resentment . One thing only distressed her, and this was Stephen’s refusal to accompany her when she went to Passy; she could not understand it, so must put it down to the influence of Valérie Seymour who had met and disliked Martin’s aunt at one time, indeed the dislike, it seemed, had been mutual. Thus the vague resentment that Valérie had inspired in the girl, began to grow much less vague, until Stephen realized with a shock of surprise that Mary was jealous of Valérie Seymour. But this seemed so absurd and preposterous a thing, that Stephen decided it could only be passing, nor did it loom very large in these days that were so fully taken up by Martin. For now that his eyesight was quite restored he was talking of going home in the autumn, and every free moment that he could steal from his aunt, he wanted to spend with Stephen and Mary. When he spoke of his departure, Stephen sometimes fancied that a shade of sadness crept into Mary’s face, and her heart misgave her, though she told herself that naturally both of them would miss Martin. Then too, never had Mary been more loyal and devoted, more obviously anxious to prove her love by a thousand little acts of devotion. There would even be times when by contrast her manner would appear abrupt and unfriendly to Martin, when she argued with him over every trifle, backing up her opinion by quoting Stephen—yes, in spite of her newly restored gentleness, there were times when she would not be gentle with Martin. And these sudden and unforeseen changes of mood would leave Stephen feeling uneasy and bewildered, so that one night she spoke rather anxiously: ‘Why were you so beastly to Martin this evening?’ But Mary pretended not to understand her: ‘How was I beastly? I was just as usual.’ And when Stephen persisted, Mary kissed her scar: ‘Darling, don’t start working now, it’s so late, and besides . . .’

• From The Girls (2016)

  college I had never heard of. Who waxed her legs in the bathroom with a complicated device that filled the apartment with the humidity of camphor. Her attendant unguents and hair oils, the fingernails whose lunar surfaces she studied for signs of nutritional deficiencies. At first, she seemed unhappy with my presence. The awkward hug she offered, like she was grimly accepting the task of being my new mother. And I was disappointed, too. She was just a girl, not the exotic woman I’d once imagined—everything I’d thought was special about her was actually just proof of what Russell would call a straight world trip. Tamar did what she was supposed to. Worked for my father, wore her little suit. Aching to be someone’s wife. But then her formality quickly melted away, the veil of adulthood she wore as temporarily as a costume. She let me rummage through the quilted pouch that held her makeup, her blowsy perfume bottles, watching with the pride of a true collector. She pushed a blouse of hers, with bell sleeves and pearl buttons, onto me. “It’s just not my style anymore.” She shrugged, picking at a loose thread. “But it’ll look good on you, I know. Elizabethan.” And it did look good. Tamar knew those things. She knew the calorie count of most foods, which she recited in sarcastic tones, like she was making fun of her own knowledge. She cooked vegetable vindaloo. Pots of lentils coated with a yellow sauce that gave off an unfamiliar brightness. The roll of powdery antacids my father swallowed like candy. Tamar held out her cheek for my father to kiss but swatted him away when he tried to hold her hand. “You’re all sweaty,” she said. When my father saw that I had noticed, he laughed a little but seemed embarrassed. My father was amused at our collusion. But it sometimes shook out so we were laughing at him. Once Tamar and I were talking about Spanky and Our Gang, and he chimed in. Like the Little Rascals, he figured. Tamar and I looked at each other. “It’s a band,” she said. “You know, that rock-and-roll music the kids like.” And my father’s confused, orphaned face set us off again. —

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

  Augustine furnished the chief materials for the mystics of the Middle Ages as he did for the scholastics. It was he who said, "Thou hast made us for thyself and the heart is restless till it rests in Thee." For Aristotle, the mystics substituted Dionysius the Areopagite, the Christian Neo-Platonist, whose works were made accessible in Latin by Scotus Erigena.1420 The mystical element was strong in the greatest of the Schoolmen, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura. The Middle Ages took Rachel and Leah, Mary and Martha as the representatives of the contemplative and the active life, the conventual and the secular life, and also of the mystic and scholastic methods. Through the entire two periods of seven years, says Peter Damiani,1421 Jacob was serving for Rachel. Every convert must endure the fight of temptation, but all look forward to repose and rest in the joy of supreme contemplation; that is, as it were, the embraces of the beautiful Rachel. These two periods stand for the Old and New Testament, the law and the grace of the Gospel. He who keeps the commandments of both at last comes into the embraces of Rachel long desired. Richard of St. Victor devotes a whole treatise to the comparison between Rachel and Leah. Leah was the more fertile, Rachel the more comely. Leah represented the discipline of virtue, Rachel the doctrine of truth. Rachel stands for meditation, contemplation, spiritual apprehension, and insight; Leah for weeping, lamentation, repining, and grief. Rachel died in giving birth to Benjamin. So reason, after the pangs of ratiocination, dies in giving birth to religious devotion and ardor.1422 This comparison was taken from Augustine, who said that Rachel stands for the joyous apprehension of the truth and, for that reason, was said to have a good face and beautiful form.1423 St. Bernard spoke of the fellowship of the active and contemplative life as two members of the same family, dwelling together as did Mary and Martha.1424 The scholastic theology was developed in connection with the school and the university, the mystic in connection with the convent. Clairvaux and St. Victor near Paris were the hearth-stones of mysticism. Within cloistral precincts were written the passionate hymns of the Middle Ages, and the eucharistic hymns of Thomas Aquinas are the utterances of the mystic and not of the Schoolman. The leading mystical divines of this period were Bernard, Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, and Rupert of Deutz. Mystical in their whole tendency were also Joachim of Flore, Hildegard and Elizabeth of Schönau, who belong in a class by themselves. § 104. St. Bernard as a Mystic. For literature, see § 65, also, Ritschl: Lesefrüchte aus d. hl. Bernard, in Studien u. Kritiken, 1879, pp. 317–335.—J. Ries (Rom. Cath.): D. geistliche Leben nach der Lehre d. hl. Bernard, Freib., 1906, p. 327.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  All that did not matter; he was directly and completely under his father’s power as long as his father lived. If ever a people knew what parental discipline was, the Romans did; and when the writer to the Hebrews talked about the way in which a human father disciplined his son, his readers knew very well what he was talking about. So, the writer insists that we must look on all the hardships of life as the discipline of God and as sent to work not for our harm but for our ultimate and highest good. To prove his point, he quotes Proverbs 3:11–12. There are many ways in which people look at the discipline which God sends. (1) They may resign themselves to it and accept it. That is what the Stoics did. They held that nothing in this world happens outside the will of God; therefore, they argued, there is nothing to do but to accept it. To do anything else is simply to batter one’s head against the walls of the universe. That is possibly the acceptance of supreme wisdom; but nonetheless it is the acceptance not of a parent’s love but of a parent’s power. It is not a willing but a defeated acceptance. (2) People may accept discipline with the grim sense of getting it over as soon as possible . A certain famous Roman said: ‘I will let nothing interrupt my life.’ To accept discipline like that is to regard it as something that is inflicted on us which is to be struggled through with defiance and certainly not with gratitude. (3) People may accept discipline with the self-pity which leads in the end to collapse . Some people, when they are caught up in a difficult situation, give the impression that they are the only people in the world whom life ever hurt. They are lost in their self-pity. (4) People may accept discipline as a punishment which they resent . It is strange that, at this time, the Romans saw in national and personal disasters nothing but the vengeance of the gods. Lucan the poet wrote: ‘Happy were Rome indeed, and blessed citizens would she have, if the gods were as much concerned with caring for men as they are with exacting vengeance from them.’ The historian Tacitus held that the disasters of the nation were proof that the interest of the gods lay not in people’s safety but in their punishment. There are still people who regard God as vindictive. When something happens to them or to those whom they love, their question is: ‘What did I do to deserve this?’ And the question is asked in such a tone as to make it clear that they regard the whole matter as an unjust punishment from God.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  It never dawns upon them to ask: ‘What is God trying to teach me and to do with me through this experience?’ (5) So we come to the last attitude. People may accept discipline as coming from a loving father . The fourth-century biblical scholar Jerome said a paradoxical but true thing: ‘The greatest anger of all is when God is no longer angry with us when we sin.’ He meant that the supreme punishment is when God leaves us alone as unteachable. Christians know that ‘a father’s hand will never cause his child a needless tear’ and that everything can be utilized to make us wiser and better men and women. As Robert Browning wrote in ‘Rabbi ben Ezra’: Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth’s smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Be our joy three-parts pain! Strive and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe! For thence – a paradox Which comforts while it mocks – Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail; What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me. A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale. We shall stop feeling self-pity and resentment and end our rebellious complaining if we remember that there is no discipline of God which does not arise out of love and is not aimed at good. THE TERROR OF THE OLD AND THE GLORY OF THE NEW Hebrews 12:18–24 It is not to something that can be touched that you have come, to a flaming fire, to mist and gloom and storm blast, and to the blare of a trumpet, and to a voice which spoke such words that those who heard it begged that not another word should be further spoken unto them, for they could not bear the command: ‘If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.’ So terrifying was the apparition that Moses said: ‘I am in utter fear and trembling.’ But you have come to Mount Sion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to ten thousands of angels gathered in glad assembly, to the assembly of the honoured ones whose names are in the registers of heaven, to that God who is judge of all, to the spirits of just men who have come to that goal for which they were created, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, to the sprinkled blood which has a message greater than the blood of Abel. T HIS passage is a contrast between the old and the new.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She decided to have an Empire study with grey walls and curtains of Empire green, for she loved the great roomy writing tables that had come into being with the first Napoleon. The walls of the salle à manger should be white and the curtains brown, while Puddle’s round sanctum in its turret should have walls and paintwork of yellow, to give the illusion of sunshine. And so absorbed did Stephen become in these things, that she scarcely had time to notice Jonathan Brockett’s abrupt departure for a mountain top in the Austrian Tyrol. Having suddenly come to the end of his finances, he must hasten to write a couple of plays that could be produced in London that winter. He sent her three or four picture postcards of glaciers, after which she heard nothing more from him. At the end of August, when the work was well under way, she and Puddle fared forth in the motor to visit divers villages and towns, in quest of old furniture, and Stephen was surprised to find how much she enjoyed it. She would catch herself whistling as she drove her car, and when they got back to some humble auberge in the evening, she would want to eat a large supper. Every morning she diligently swung her dumb-bells; she was getting into condition for fencing. She had not fenced at all since leaving Morton, having been too much engrossed in her work while in London; but now she was going to fence before Buisson, so she diligently swung her dumb-bells. During these two months of holiday-making she grew fond of the wide-eyed, fruitful French country, even as she had grown fond of Paris. She would never love it as she loved the hills and the stretching valleys surrounding Morton, for that love was somehow a part of her being, but she gave to this France, that would give her a home, a quiet and very sincere affection. Her heart grew more grateful with every mile, for hers was above all a grateful nature. They returned to Paris at the end of October. And now came the selecting of carpets and curtains; of fascinating blankets from the Magasin de Blanc—blankets craftily dyed to match any bedroom; of fine linen, and other expensive things, including the copper batterie de cuisine, which latter, however, was left to Puddle. At last the army of workmen departed, its place being taken by a Breton ménage—brown-faced folk, strong-limbed and capable looking—a mother, father and daughter. Pierre, the butler, had been a fisherman once, but the sea with its hardships had prematurely aged him.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  the trained gardeners, a certain number of assistants who suffered from disabilities or required to have their minds set at rest by some quiet pursuit. I cannot say, said Austerlitz, why I began to recover in some degree out at Romford in the course of those months, whether it was because of the people in whose company I found myself, who though they all bore the scars of their mental sufferings often seemed carefree and very cheerful, or the constant warm, humid atmosphere in the greenhouses, the mossy, forest-ground fragrance filling the air, the rectilinear patterns presented to the eye, or simply the even tenor of the work itself, the careful pricking out and potting up of seedlings, transplanting them when they had grown larger, looking after the cold frames and watering the trays with a fine hose, which I liked perhaps best of all. At the time when I was working as an assistant gardener in Romford, said Austerlitz, I began to spend my evenings and weekends poring over the heavy tome, running to almost eight hundred close-printed pages, which H. G. Adler, a name previously unknown to me, had written between 1945 and 1947 in the most difficult of circumstances, partly in Prague and partly in London, on the subject of the setting up, development, and internal organization of the Theresienstadt ghetto, and which he had revised several times before it was brought out by a German publishing house in 1955. Reading this book, which line by line gave me an insight into matters I could never have imagined when I myself visited the fortified town, almost entirely ignorant as I was at that time, was a painstaking business because of my poor knowledge of German, and indeed, said Austerlitz, I might well say it was almost as difficult for me as deciphering an Egyptian or Babylonian text in hieroglyphic or cuneiform script. The long compounds, not listed in my dictionary, which were obviously being spawned the whole time by the pseudo- technical jargon governing everything in Theresienstadt had to be unraveled syllable by syllable. When I had finally discovered the meaning of such terms and concepts as Barackenbestandteillager, Zusatzkostenberechnungsschein, Bagatellreparaturwerkstatte, Menagetransportkolonnen, Ktichenbeschwerdeorgane, Reinlichkeitsreihenuntersuchung, and Entwesungstibersiedlung—to my _ surprise, Austerlitz articulated these heterogeneous German compounds unhesitatingly and without the slightest trace of an accent—when I had worked out what they meant, he continued, I had to make just as much of an effort to fit the presumptive sense of my reconstructions into the sentences and the wider context, which kept threatening to elude me, first because it quite often took me until midnight to master a single page, and a good deal was lost in this lengthy process, and second because in its almost futuristic deformation of social life the ghetto system had something incomprehensible and unreal about it, even though Adler describes it down to the last detail in its objective actuality.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  No, instead they must just stand and gape at the tree, as though with its candles and Christ-child and all, it were some strange exotic plant in Kew Gardens. Then Anna called her people by name, and to each one she gave the gifts of that Christmas; and they thanked her, thanked Stephen and thanked Sir Philip; and Sir Philip thanked them for their faithful service, as had always been the good custom at Morton for more years than Sir Philip himself could remember. Thus the day had passed by in accordance with tradition, every one from the highest to the lowest remembered; nor had Anna forgotten her gifts for the village—warm shawls, sacks of coal, cough mixture and sweets. Sir Philip had sent a cheque to the vicar, which would keep him for a long time in cricketing flannels; and Stephen had carried a carrot to Raftery and two lumps of sugar to the fat, aged Collins, who because he was all but blind of one eye, had bitten her hand in place of his sugar. And Puddle had written at great length to a sister who lived down in Cornwall and whom she neglected, except on such memory-jogging occasions as Christmas, when somehow we always remember. And the servants had gorged themselves to repletion, and the hunters had rested in their hay-scented stables; while out in the fields, sea-gulls, come far inland, had feasted in their turn on humbler creatures—grubs and slugs, and other unhappy small fry, much relished by birds and hated by farmers. Night closed down on the house, and out of the darkness came the anxious young voices of village schoolchildren: ‘Noël, Noël—’ piped the anxious young voices, lubricated by sweets from the lady of Morton. Sir Philip stirred the logs in the hall to a blaze, while Anna sank into a deep chair and watched them. Her hands that were wearied by much ministration, lay over the arms of the chair in the firelight, and the firelight sought out the rings on her hands, and it played with the whiter flames in her diamonds. Then Sir Philip stood up, and he gazed at his wife, while she stared at the logs not appearing to notice him; but Stephen, watching in silence from her corner, seemed to see a dark shadow that stole in between them—beyond this her vision was mercifully dim, otherwise she must surely have recognized that shadow. 2 On New Year’s Eve Mrs. Antrim gave a dance in order, or so she said, to please Violet, who was still rather young to attend the hunt balls, but who dearly loved gaiety, especially dancing.