Disappointment

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 Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  It is in this same way that we must conceive the change of intention and of behaviour which characterizes emotion. The impossibility of finding a solution to the problem is apprehended objectively, as a quality of the world. This serves to motivate the new unreflective consciousness which now grasps the world differently, under a new aspect, and imposes a new behaviour — through which that aspect is grasped — and this again serves as hyle for the new intention. But emotional conduct is not on the same plane as other kinds of behaviour; it is not effectual. Its aim is not really to act upon the object as it is, by the interpolation of particular means. Emotional behaviour seeks by itself, and without modifying the structure of the object, to confer another quality upon it, a lesser existence or a lesser presence (or a greater existence, etc.). In a word, during emotion, it is the body which, directed by the consciousness, changes its relationship with the world so that the world should change its qualities. If emotion is playacting, the play is one that we believe in. A simple example will serve to explain this emotive structure: I lift my hand to pluck a bunch of grapes. I cannot do so; they are beyond my reach; so I shrug my shoulders, muttering: 'they are too green', and go on my way. The gestures, words and behaviour are not to be taken at face value. This little comedy that I play under the grapes, thereby conferring this quality of being 'too green' upon them, serves as a substitute for the action I cannot complete. They presented themselves at first as 'ready for gathering'; but this attractive quality soon becomes intolerable when the potentiality cannot be actualized. The disagreeable tension becomes, in its turn, a motive for seeing another quality in those grapes: their being 'too green', which will resolve the conflict and put an end to the tension. Only, I cannot confer this quality upon the grapes chemically. So I seize upon the tartness of grapes that are too green by putting on the behaviour of disrelish. I confer the required quality upon the grapes magically. In this case the comedy is only half sincere. But let the situation be more critical; let the incantatory behaviour be maintained in all seriousness: and there you have emotion.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 88: _i.e._ usury? See post. One of the commentators ridiculously suggests that they were needlemakers, from _ago_, a needle.] They had not long led this manner of life before the treasure left by their father melted away and their revenues alone sufficing not unto their current expenses, they proceeded to sell and mortgage their estates, and selling one to-day and another to-morrow, they found themselves well nigh to nought, without perceiving it, and poverty opened their eyes, which wealth had kept closed. Whereupon Lamberto, one day, calling the other two, reminded them how great had been their father's magnificence and how great their own and setting before them what wealth had been theirs and the poverty to which they were come through their inordinate expenditure, exhorted them, as best he knew, ere their distress should become more apparent, to sell what little was left them and get them gone, together with himself. They did as he counselled them and departing Florence, without leavetaking or ceremony, stayed not till they came to England, where, taking a little house in London and spending very little, they addressed themselves with the utmost diligence to lend money at usance. In this fortune was so favourable to them that in a few years they amassed a vast sum of money, wherewith, returning to Florence, one after another, they bought back great part of their estates and purchased others to boot and took unto themselves wives.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Nearly two thirds of teenagers have intercourse at least once before college—the average age of virginity loss in this country, as I’ve said, is seventeen—and while most do so with a romantic partner, a sizable number of girls cash in what they call their V card with a friend or a guy they’ve only just met. Over half, both in national samples and among my own interviews, were drunk for the occasion. Most say they regret their experience and wish they’d waited—maybe not until marriage, but longer than they did. In some ways, I was surprised that the girls I talked to still considered first intercourse such a milestone. Most of them had already been sexually active for several years at that point, but again, that’s assuming you “count” oral sex (or anything other than intercourse) as “sexually active.” One could argue that in the modern world, “virginity” as a symbol of sexual initiation is an outdated, meaningless concept. It never had actual medical basis anyway (many girls have no hymen or have torn it through exercise, masturbation, or with a tampon), nor even a fully agreed-upon social meaning: in her book The Purity Myth, for instance, Jessica Valenti writes about the notion of “secondary virginity,” the idea that virginity can magically be reinstated even after intercourse if one subsequently commits to abstinence until marriage. While that allows purity advocates to embrace those who have “stumbled,” it also shows how arbitrary the definition of “virginity” can be. I’m not suggesting that first intercourse is psychologically or physically insignificant. Not at all. But why do girls in particular still elevate this single act (which, among other things, is rarely initially pleasurable for them) to a status beyond all others? Why do they imagine this one form of sexual expression will be transformational, the magic line between innocence and experience, naïveté and knowing? How does this notion of “virginity” as a special category shape their sexual experience? How is it affecting their sexual development, their self-understanding, their enjoyment of sex, their physical and emotional communication with a partner? On a mellow fall Sunday morning, I joined Christina again, this time with a group of her friends on the rooftop veranda of the co-op. The other girls listened wide-eyed as Christina talked about her background; they found her stories exotic and a little shocking. “It’s so surprising to me,” said Caitlin, pushing her purple Clark Kent glasses up the bridge of her pierced nose. “At my high school they gave out condoms for free. They handed out lube!” Even Annie, a freckled girl who attended an all-girls Catholic school in Orange County, California, considered her upbringing to be liberal compared to Christina’s. “In high school my teacher unwrapped a peppermint patty and put it on the floor,” Annie recalled. “Then she asked if we would eat it. Of course we were all, ‘Eww, no!’ And she said, ‘Exactly! Once you’re “open,” nobody will want you!’”

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  So it was. Upon the old crooked burgess streets hordes of oldish, blackened miners' dwellings crowded, lining the roads out. And immediately after these came the newer, pinker rows of rather larger houses, plastering the valley: the homes of more modern workmen. And beyond that again, in the wide rolling regions of the castles, smoke waved against steam, and patch after patch of raw reddish brick showed the newer mining settlements, sometimes in the hollows, sometimes gruesomely ugly along the skyline of the slopes. And between, in between, were the tattered remnants of the old coaching and cottage England, even the England of Robin Hood, where the miners prowled with the dismalness of suppressed sporting instincts, when they were not at work. England my England! but which is _my_ England? The stately homes of England make good photographs, and create the illusion of a connection with the Elizabethans. The handsome old halls are there, from the days of Good Queen Anne and Tom Jones. But smuts fall and blacken on the drab stucco, that has long ceased to be golden. And one by one, like the stately homes, they are abandoned. Now they are being pulled down. As for the cottages of England--there they are--great plasterings of brick dwellings on the hopeless countryside. Now they are pulling down the stately homes, the Georgian halls are going. Fritchley, a perfect old Georgian mansion, was even now, as Connie passed in the car, being demolished. It was in perfect repair: till the war the Weatherleys had lived in style there. But now it was too big, too expensive, and the country had become too uncongenial. The gentry were departing to pleasanter places, where they could spend their money without having to see how it was made. This is history. One England blots out another. The mines had made the halls wealthy. Now they were blotting them out, as they had already blotted out the cottages. The industrial England blots out the agricultural England. One meaning blots out another. The new England blots out the old England. And the continuity is not organic, but mechanical. Connie, belonging to the leisured classes, had clung to the remnants of the old England. It had taken her years to realise that it was really blotted out by this terrifying new and gruesome England, and that the blotting out would go on till it was complete. Fritchley was gone, Eastwood was gone, Shipley was going: Squire Winter's beloved Shipley. Connie called for a moment at Shipley. The park gates at the back, opened just near the level crossing of the colliery railway; the Shipley colliery itself stood just beyond the trees. The gates stood open, because through the park was a right-of-way that the colliers used. They hung around the park.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  He roused in the woman a wild sort of compassion and yearning, and a wild, craving physical desire. The physical desire he did not satisfy in her; he was always come and finished so quickly, then shrinking down on her breast, and recovering somewhat his effrontery while she lay dazed, disappointed, lost. But then she soon learnt to hold him, to keep him there inside her when his crisis was over. And there he was generous and curiously potent; he stayed firm inside her, given to her, while she was active ... wildly, passionately active, coming to her own crisis. And as he felt the frenzy of her achieving her own orgasmic satisfaction from his hard, erect passivity, he had a curious sense of pride and satisfaction. "Ah, how good!" she whispered tremulously, and she became quite still, clinging to him. And he lay there in his own isolation, but somehow proud. He stayed that time only the three days, and to Clifford was exactly the same as on the first evening; to Connie also. There was no breaking down his external man. He wrote to Connie with the same plaintive melancholy note as ever, sometimes witty, and touched with a queer, sexless affection. A kind of hopeless affection he seemed to feel for her, and the essential remoteness remained the same. He was hopeless at the very core of him, and he wanted to be hopeless. He rather hated hope. "_Une immense espérance a traversé la terre_" he read somewhere, and his comment was: "--and it's darned-well drowned everything worth having." Connie never really understood him, but, in her way, she loved him. And all the time she felt the reflection of his hopelessness in her. She couldn't quite, quite love in hopelessness. And he, being hopeless, couldn't ever quite love at all. So they went on for quite a time, writing, and meeting occasionally in London. She still wanted the physical, sexual thrill she could get with him by her own activity, his little orgasm being over. And he still wanted to give it her. Which was enough to keep them connected. And enough to give her a subtle sort of self-assurance, something blind and a little arrogant. It was an almost mechanical confidence in her own powers, and went with a great cheerfulness. She was terrifically cheerful at Wragby. And she used all her aroused cheerfulness and satisfaction to stimulate Clifford, so that he wrote his best at this time, and was almost happy in his strange blind way. He really reaped the fruits of the sensual satisfaction she got out of Michaelis' male passivity erect inside her. But of course he never knew it, and if he had, he wouldn't have said thank you! Yet when those days of her grand joyful cheerfulness and stimulus were gone, quite gone, and she was depressed and irritable, how Clifford longed for them again! Perhaps if he'd known he might have wished to get her and Michaelis together again.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  18 For uttering arrogant words of vanity [pompous words disguised to sound scholarly or profound, but meaning nothing and containing no spiritual truth], they beguile and lure using lustful desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error. 19 They promise them liberty, when they themselves are the slaves of depravity—for by whatever anyone is defeated and overcome, to that [person, thing, philosophy, or concept] he is continually enslaved. 20 For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world by [personal] knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, their last condition has become worse for them than the first. 21 For it would have been better for them not to have [personally] known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to have turned back from the holy commandment [verbally] handed on to them. 22 The thing spoken of in the true proverb has happened to them, “THE DOG RETURNS TO HIS OWN VOMIT ,” and, “A sow is washed only to wallow [again] in the mire.” [Prov 26:11 ] 2 Peter 3 Purpose of This Letter 1 B ELOVED, I am now writing you this second letter. In this [as in the first one], I am stirring up your untainted mind to remind you, 2 that you should remember the words spoken in the past [about the future] by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior given by your apostles [His personally chosen representatives]. The Coming Day of the Lord 3 First of all, know [without any doubt] that mockers will come in the last days with their mocking, following after their own human desires 4 and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming [what has become of it]? For ever since the fathers fell asleep [in death], all things have continued [exactly] as they did from the beginning of creation.” 5 For they willingly forget [the fact] that the heavens existed long ago by the word of God, and the earth was formed a out of water and by water, 6 through which the world at that time was destroyed by being flooded with water. [Gen 1:6–8 ; 7:11 ] 7 But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly people. 8 Nevertheless, do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day. [Ps 90:4 ] 9 The Lord does not delay [as though He were unable to act] and is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is [extraordinarily] patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  It was just dismal, and one had to put up with it. It was quite true, men had no real glamour for a woman: if you could fool yourself into thinking they had, even as she had fooled herself over Michaelis, that was the best you could do. Meanwhile you just lived on and there was nothing to it. She understood perfectly well why people had cocktail parties, and jazzed, and Charlestoned till they were ready to drop. You had to take it out some way or other, your youth, or it ate you up. But what a ghastly thing, this youth! you felt as old as Methuselah, and yet the thing fizzed somehow, and didn't let you be comfortable. A mean sort of life! And no prospect! She almost wished she had gone off with Mick, and made her life one long cocktail party, and jazz evening. Anyhow that was better than just mooning yourself into the grave. On one of her bad days she went out alone to walk in the wood, ponderously, heeding nothing, not even noticing where she was. The report of a gun not far off startled and angered her. Then, as she went, she heard voices, and recoiled. People! She didn't want people. But her quick ear caught another sound, and she roused; it was a child sobbing. At once she attended; someone was ill-treating a child. She strode swinging down the wet drive, her sullen resentment uppermost. She felt just prepared to make a scene. Turning the corner, she saw two figures in the drive beyond her: the keeper, and a little girl in a purple coat and moleskin cap, crying. "Ah, shut it up, tha false little bitch!" came the man's angry voice, and the child sobbed louder. Constance strode nearer, with blazing eyes. The man turned and looked at her, saluting coolly, but he was pale with anger. "What's the matter? Why is she crying?" demanded Constance, peremptory but a little breathless. A faint smile like a sneer came on the man's face. "Nay, yo' mun ax 'er," he replied callously, in broad vernacular. Connie felt as if he had hit her in the face, and she changed colour. Then she gathered her defiance, and looked at him, her dark-blue eyes blazing rather vaguely. "I asked _you_," she panted. He gave a queer little bow, lifting his hat. "You did, your Ladyship," he said; then, with a return to the vernacular: "but I canna tell yer." And he became a soldier, inscrutable, only pale with annoyance. Connie turned to the child, a ruddy, black-haired thing of nine or ten. "What is it, dear? Tell me why you're crying!" she said, with the conventionalised sweetness suitable. More violent sobs, self-conscious. Still more sweetness on Connie's part. "There, there, don't you cry! Tell me what they've done to you!" ... and intense tenderness of tone. At the same time she felt in the pocket of her knitted jacket, and luckily found a sixpence.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  leCtUre 23 | eCClesiastes and the “vanity of vanities” 139 Solomon couldn’t have written this book. Solomon lived in the 9th century BCE. This is a very late book in the Old Testament collection. It was probably written somewhere between 275 and 250 BCE. That’s the Hellenistic period, when Greek rule and Greek culture infiltrated Judea and Jewish society. This raises a question: Why has the author chosen to put Solomon at the beginning of this book? In ancient Israel, the name Solomon meant “wisdom.” He was thought of as an overarching genius. This book is ascribed to Solomon. The book of Proverbs is ascribed to Solomon. An even later book in the Apocrypha is called Wisdom of Solomon. By putting Solomon into verse 1, the book is telling you the book contains practical advice on how to go through life and live happily. Perceived Hopelessness The second verse of the book sets out the argument: “vanity of vanities, says Qohelet; vanity of vanities—all things are vanity.” The term vanity here doesn’t mean obsession over one’s looks; instead it’s referring to futility—that is, doing something in vain. And “vanity of vanities” would be a superlative meaning “complete, utter futility.” Everything is arbitrary. Death cancels everything out. This idea is present in many places throughout Ecclesiastes. This is why many readers find the book hopeless. A Repeating Structure The book has a hidden structure. The pattern begins to emerge in chapter 3, using the phrase “I saw.” In verse 16, there is an experience that challenges Qohelet’s traditional views: “And still under the sun in the judgment place, I saw wickedness, wickedness also in the seat of justice.” He points out something that he has experienced; he saw wickedness in the courtroom, where one would expect there to be justice.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  Understanding the old testament 64 Gideon uses one means after another to verify beyond question that God will assist him and provide him with the necessary power to overcome oppressors. Gideon forms an army and leads it off to face the enemy. God spends most of chapter 7 whittling down the army Gideon has just assembled, so that by the time he reaches the enemy, he is left with a very small force. This is to show that any victory will be God’s doing, not based on human power. Once again, Gideon wants reassurance. He sneaks with an assistant into the enemy camp in the second half of chapter 7. Only after hearing a dream related by one of the enemy soldiers does he seem to grasp and accept God’s power behind him. However, God more or less disappears from Gideon’s story at this point. Having been reticent and rather cowardly so far, Gideon is now a gung-ho commander. With God in the background, he initiates a series of far-f lung, mopping-up operations. When all of this is finished, the Israelites say to Gideon: “Rule over us, you, your son, and your son sons, for you saved us from the power of Midian,” giving no credit to God. Gideon answers that God must rule. Gideon goes on to ask for a large amount of gold. We are then told: “Gideon made an ephod out of the gold and placed it in his city Ophrah.” Here, the ephod is some idolatrous object of worship. The rest of the verse states, “and all Israel prostituted themselves there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his household.” At the start of his career, Gideon turned the people away from idolatry, demolishing their Baal shrine. At its end, he turned them to a new sort of idolatry, leading them to worship the gold ephod he’d made—pretty much the exact opposite of what a judge is supposed to do. Abimelech In chapter 9, the story leads to Gideon’s son, Abimelech. His name means “my father is king,” and that must be important, because the name is repeated 31 times in the text. Abimelech makes himself king.

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

  Zwingli was clear-headed, self-possessed, jejune, and sober (even in his radical departures from Rome), and farther removed from fanaticism than Luther himself. He was a pupil of the classical and humanistic school of Erasmus; he had never been so deeply rooted in the mediaeval faith, and it cost him much less trouble than Luther to break off from the old church; he was a man of reflection rather than of intuition, and had no mystic vein, but we may say a rationalistic bent. Nevertheless, he was as loyal to Christ, and believed in the Word of God and the supernatural as firmly, as Luther; and the Reformed churches to this day are as pure, faithful, devoted, and active in Christian works as any, and less affected by rationalism than the Lutheran, in part for the very reason that they allow reason its legitimate influence in dogmatic questions. If Zwingli believed in the salvation of the pious heathen and unbaptized infants, it was not because he doubted the absolute necessity of the saving grace of Christ, which he very strongly asserted, but simply because he extended this grace beyond the boundaries of the visible church, and the ordinary means of grace; and on this point, as on others, he anticipated modern ideas. He was inferior to Luther in genius, and depth of mind and heart, but his superior in tolerance, liberality, and courtesy; and in these qualities also he was in advance of his age, and has the sympathies of the best modern culture. Making every allowance for Luther’s profound religious conviction, and for the misunderstanding of his opponent, nothing can justify the spirit and style of Luther’s polemics, especially his last book against the sacramentarians. He drew his inspiration for it from the imprecatory Psalms, not from the Sermon on the Mount. He spoke the truth in hatred and wrath, not in love. This betrays an organic defect in his reformation; namely, the over-estimate of dogmatics over ethics, and a want of discipline and self-government. In the same year in which he wrote his fiercest book against the Sacramentarians, he seriously contemplated leaving Wittenberg as a veritable Sodom: so bad was the state of morals, according to his own testimony, in the very centre of his influence.916 It required a second reformation, and such men as Arnd, Andreae, Spener. and Franke, to supplement the one-sided Lutheran orthodoxy by practical piety. Calvin, on the other hand, left at his death the church of Geneva in such a flourishing condition that John Knox pronounced it the best school of Christ since the days of the Apostles, and that sixty years later John Valentin Andreae, one of the noblest and purest Lutheran divines of the seventeenth century, from personal observation held it up to the Lutheran Church as a model for imitation.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  He dropped his other hand from the wall where it had been resting and took hold of his balls very firmly, while he continued to maul, press and squeeze his penis. It did not get very hard. He was experiencing pleasure, but he could not reach a climax. He was disappointed. He had tried every motion of finger and hand. Now he held his limp penis wistfully. He weighed it, puzzled over it and then covered it within his pants, buttoned his shirt and left the place. Pierre was wide awake now. The memory of the drowned woman haunted him again, mingled now with the picture of the young boy playing with himself. He was lying there, tossing, when a light again appeared from the water closet. Pierre could not keep from looking. Sitting there was a woman of about fifty, enormous, solid, with a heavy face and gluttonous mouth and eyes. She had only sat for a moment when someone tried the door. Instead of sending him away, she opened it. And there appeared the boy who had been there earlier. He was amazed that the door had opened. The old woman did not move from the seat but drew him in with a smile and closed the door. “What a lovely boy you are,” she said. “Surely you must have a little friend already, no? Surely you must already have had a little pleasure with women?” “No,” said the boy timidly. She talked to him easily, as if they had met in the street. He had been taken by surprise and stared at her. All he could see was her full-lipped mouth smiling and her insinuating eyes. “Never had any pleasure at all, my boy, you can’t tell me that?” “No,” said the boy. “Don’t you know how?” asked the woman. “Haven’t your friends in school told you how?” “Yes,” said the boy, “I have seen them do it, with their right hand they do it. I tried, but nothing happened.” The woman laughed. “But there is another way. Never learned another way, really? No one told you anything? You mean you only know how to do it with your own hand? Why, there’s another way that always works.” The boy eyed her with suspicion. But her smile was wide, generous, reassuring. The caresses he had given himself must have left a certain disturbance in him, because he made a step towards the woman. “What’s the way you know?” he said with curiosity. She laughed. “You really want to know, eh? And what happens if you enjoy it? If you really enjoy it, will you promise to come and see me again?” “I promise,” said the boy. “Well, then, climb on my lap, this way, just kneel on me, don’t be afraid. Now.”

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

  While their conceptualizations are salient and insightful, what I would add is a consideration of the ways in which gender (and, to an extent, temporality and geography), in addition to race, compound to further complicate the very dynamics of community. As black feminist scholars have long argued, community is mediated by gender, geography and geographical locations, class, and other apparatuses within particular historical moments. "[G]eographic processes important to black women are not just about limitations, captivities, and erasures; they are also about everyday contestation," as Katherine McKittrick posits, "and the possibilities the production of space can engender for subaltern subjects."3 Furthermore, "transcendent community" is often the ideal rather than the reality or the "norm," as black feminist scholar joy James avers, since in some "states and societies, black women are subordinated Others. They exist as outsiders within not only American culture but also [...] African American cultures." Much like James, Johnnetta Cole and Beverly Guy-Sheftall, in Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women's Equality in African American Communities, illumine the extent to which "gender dynamics are embedded in the very structure of Black society," as well as the "complex manifestations and consequences of sexism within African American communities."' They explicate the ways race and gender especially collide and have historically been largely ignored in the name of racial and communal solidarity. Such racial/communal dynamics, or the elisions of intraracial gender issues, embrace neither "uniqueness" nor individuality and thereby essentialize community and the role of its members at the expense of "others": namely women. Such issues surrounding community and individuality, and the deliberate or inadvertent communal suppressions they often engender, especially where women are concerned, are what I find particularly intriguing, as they have larger implications. At the heart of this matter is the very nature of community, with its largely nationalist or nation-like undercurrents, that demands unconditional or ineffable loyalty and solidarity as requisites for belonging. For community, like "nation," is, as Benedict Anderson contends, "imagined"; and, "regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail," it is "always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship."6 What happens when individuals, particularly black women, transgress such communal "bonds," parameters, or solidarity? And, importantly, how might a politics of antiracism exist without discounting intraracial differences, or compromising antisexist and gender progressive politics, that constitute community?' It is precisely these communal/cultural questions and predicaments, a largely though not exclusively postmodern condition, that this chapter engages.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  4 “As for you, if you walk (live your life) before Me, as David your father walked, in integrity of heart and in uprightness, acting in accordance with everything that I have commanded you, and will keep My statutes and My precepts, 5 then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, just as I promised your father David, saying, ‘You shall not be without a man (descendant) on the throne of Israel.’ 6 “But if you or your sons turn away from following Me, and do not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, 7 then I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them, and I will cast out of My sight the house which I have consecrated for My Name and Presence. Then Israel will become a proverb (a saying) and a byword (object of ridicule) among all the peoples. 8 “This house (temple) will become a heap of ruins; everyone who passes by will be appalled and b sneer and say, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this house?’ 9 “And they [who know] will say, ‘Because they abandoned the LORD their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and they have chosen other gods and have worshiped and served them; that is the reason the LORD has brought on them all this adversity.’ ” Cities Given to Hiram 10 Now at the end of twenty years, in which Solomon had built the two houses, the temple of the LORD and the palace of the king 11 (Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with as much cedar and cypress timber [from Lebanon] and gold as he desired), at that time King Solomon gave Hiram c twenty cities in the land of Galilee (northern Israel). 12 So Hiram came from Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him, and they d did not please him. 13 He said, “What are these cities [good for] which you have given me, my brother?” So they have been called the land of Cabul (like nothing, unproductive) to this day. 14 And Hiram sent to the king 120 talents of gold. 15 Now this is the account of the forced labor which King Solomon conscripted to build the house of the LORD , his own house, the e Millo (fortification), the wall of Jerusalem, [and the fortress cities of] Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. 16 For Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and taken Gezer, burned it with fire and killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and he had given it as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  By October 1993, campus antirape activism was so maligned that it became fodder for a notorious Saturday Night Live sketch, a mock game show called “Is It Date Rape?” Ostensibly set at Antioch College, it lampooned that school’s pioneering requirement that partners obtain a clear, verbal “yes” before engaging in sexual activity. Chris Farley, as a frat boy, squared off against Shannen Doherty, as a dowdy “Victimization Studies” major—yes, that’s funny—over categories such as “Halter Top,” “She Was Drunk,” “I Was Drunk,” “Kegger,” “Off-Campus Kegger,” and “Ragin’ Kegger.” Other cast members, wearing “Date Rape Players” T-shirts, acted out permissible interactions involving such stilted requests as “May I elevate the level of sexual intimacy by feeling your buttocks?” and “I sure had a nice time at that ragin’ kegger. May I kiss you on the mouth?” The implication was that the whole date rape thing had gone too far; a bunch of dour, unattractive feminists were trying to shut down the Animal House and ruin heterosexual sex. Days later, the New York Times, citing the sketch, weighed in with a staff editorial, scolding Antioch for inappropriately “legislating kisses.” Although the director of the school’s sexual offense prevention program responded in a letter to the editor that “We are not trying to reduce the romance, passion, or spontaneity of sex; we are trying to reduce the spontaneity of rape,” the damage was done. “Affirmative consent” (along with Antioch College) became little more than a punch line; date rape was quickly downgraded from “epidemic” to “controversy” to “hype,” and further outcry by advocates was essentially quashed. By November of that year, 17.8 million people, mostly teens, tuned in to Beverly Hills 90210 to see an episode in which Steve, the series’ resident goofball, “accidentally” raped a girl who never vocalized the word no. She ended up apologizing to him in front of a crowd at a Take Back the Night rally. The lesson learned? The “misunderstanding” was actually her own fault because, she said, “I didn’t say yes, but I didn’t say no, either.” Love and War Maddie loved Kyle. She did. She’d met him at a party just before her fifteenth birthday; he was a grade ahead of her at a different high school. The two hooked up—nothing serious, just a little kissing. He told her straight out that he liked another girl, though he was willing to be her “friend with benefits.” When she saw him at another party a few weeks later, after they’d both been drinking, they hooked up again. Again, they kissed a bit, but this time he informed her he couldn’t continue unless she gave him a blow job; otherwise he would develop “blue balls.” (Parents, take note: a number of girls I spoke with fell for that chestnut.) Maddie agreed: she had never gone down on a boy, but she already felt she was falling in love with Kyle, and she wanted to make him happy.

• From Vox (1992)

  I don’t get the least thrill from wet T-shirt contests either, because I have to have an answering arousal there in the woman, and cold water is anti-sexual, except if in the case of the wet T-shirt contest I can convince myself that this woman is using the shock of the cold water, the giggliness and the splutteriness of it, to make something possible that otherwise wouldn’t be possible and yet is arousing to her: I mean if she wants to show off her breasts, if she’s proud of them and yet knows she’s not the kind of person who’s going to go off and become a stripper or whatever, and the douse of cold water is distracting enough to keep her sense of its all being in innocent fun in the end, then I can get turned on by shots of a wet T-shirt contest. You know?” “I can see how that works. So you’re looking at the woman in Juggs .” “Yes, and she was looking right at me, so appealingly, with such a lucid joyful amused look and her elbows were really digging into the pillow of the yellow raft, so it looked as if it might burst, and I could almost imagine strumming myself off to this, but then, no, there were too many things wrong—the photographer had put her hair in pigtails, tied with some kind of thick purply pink polyester yarn, and it just seemed so awful somehow, the age-old thing of men wanting to pretend that twenty-eight-year-old women are little girls by forcing this icon of girlishness, pigtails, on them, when really, when was the last time you saw a real little girl wearing pigtails? Not to mention the incidental fact that little girls are a turnoff. Here’s this beautiful, alert, lovely woman, of at least twenty-seven, and all I could see was the dickhead photographer handing her some polyester yarn and saying, ‘Uhright, now tie this purple stuff in your hair.’ And I felt at that moment that I wanted to talk to a real woman, no more images of any kind, no fast forward, no pause, no magazine pictures. And there was the ad.” “But you’ve called these numbers before, haven’t you?” she asked. “A few times, but with no real success. And I don’t think I’ve ever called this very number before—2VOX.” “What do you mean by ‘success’?” “No women with any kind of spark. Or, actually, honestly, few women at all, period, except the ones who are paid by the phone service to make mechanical sexual small talk and moan occasionally. It’s mostly just men saying ‘Hey, any ladies out there?’ But then once in a while a real woman will call. And at least with this, as opposed to pictures, at least there’s the remote possibility of something clicking.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Look you mistake me not, for, for my part, I mind me not ever to have seen you.' Quoth Ricciardo, 'Look what thou sayest; consider me well; an thou wilt but recollect thyself, thou wilt see that I am thine own Ricciardo di Chinzica.' 'Sir,' answered the lady, 'you will pardon me; belike it is not so seemly a thing as you imagine for me to look much on you. Nevertheless I have seen enough of you to know that I never before set eyes on you.' Ricciardo, concluding that she did this for fear of Paganino and chose not to confess to knowing him in the latter's presence, besought him of his favour that he might speak with her in a room alone. Paganino replied that he would well, so but he would not kiss her against her will, and bade the lady go with him into a chamber and there hear what he had to say and answer him as it should please her. Accordingly the lady and Messer Ricciardo went into a room apart and as soon as they were seated, the latter began to say, 'Alack, heart of my body, sweet my soul and my hope, knowest thou not thy Ricciardo, who loveth thee more than himself? How can this be? Am I so changed? Prithee, fair mine eye, do but look on me a little.' The lady began to laugh and without letting him say more, replied, 'You may be assured that I am not so scatterbrained but that I know well enough you are Messer Ricciardo di Chinzica, my husband; but, what time I was with you, you showed that you knew me very ill, for that you should have had the sense to see that I was young and lusty and gamesome and should consequently have known that which behoveth unto young ladies, over and above clothes and meat, albeit for shamefastness they name it not; the which how you performed, you know. If the study of the laws was more agreeable to you than your wife, you should not have taken her, albeit it never appeared to me that you were a judge; nay, you seemed to me rather a common crier of saints' days and sacraments and fasts and vigils, so well you knew them. And I tell you this, that, had you suffered the husbandmen who till your lands keep as many holidays as you allowed him who had the tilling of my poor little field, you would never have reaped the least grain of corn.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  And they brought it and placed it on the [painful] inflammation, and he recovered.” 8 Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “What will be the sign that the LORD will [completely] heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the LORD on the third day?” 9 Isaiah said, “This will be the sign to you from the LORD , that He will do the thing that He has spoken: shall the shadow [indicating the time of day] go forward ten steps, or go backward ten steps?” 10 Hezekiah answered, “It is easy for the shadow to go forward ten steps; no, but let the shadow turn backward ten steps.” 11 So Isaiah the prophet called out to the LORD , and He brought the shadow on the steps ten steps backward by which it had gone down on the a sundial of Ahaz. Hezekiah Shows Babylon His Treasures 12 At that time b Berodach-baladan a son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah, for he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick. [Is 39:1–8 ] 13 Hezekiah listened to and welcomed them and [c foolishly] showed them all his treasure house—the silver and gold and spices and precious oil and his armory and everything that was found in his treasuries. There was nothing in his house (palace) nor in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them. 14 Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah and said to him, “What did these men say [that would cause you to do this for them]? From where have they come to you?” Hezekiah said, “They have come from a far country, from Babylon.” 15 Isaiah said, “What have they seen in your house?” Hezekiah answered, “They have seen everything that is in my house (palace). There is nothing in my treasuries that I have not shown them.” 16 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the LORD . 17 ‘Behold, the time is coming when everything that is in your house, and that your fathers have stored up until this day, will be carried to Babylon; nothing will be left,’ says the LORD . 18 ‘And some of your sons (descendants) who will be born to you will be d taken away [as captives]; and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.’ ” 19 Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the LORD which you have spoken is good.” For he thought, “Is it not good, if [at least] there will be peace and security in my lifetime?” 20 The rest of the acts of Hezekiah and all his might, and how he made the [Siloam] pool and the aqueduct and brought water into the city, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? 21 Hezekiah slept with his fathers [in death], and Manasseh his son became king in his place.

• From Emotional Beats: How to Easily Convert your Writing into Palpable Feelings (2018)

  Her eyelids fluttered shut.A flash of movement caught her eye.Her eyes clouded.He blinked owlishly.She blinked with feigned innocence.Her eyes rolled skyward.Her eyes wandered.Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him.She slammed her eyes shut.She squeezed her eyes shut.Disapproval gleamed in her eyes.She gave him an incredulous look.She treated him with a look of unmitigated disappointment.Her icy gaze stumbled upon him.Rheumy gray eyes picked apart the girl’s dress.His head tossed his gaze this way and that, like he had plenty to say but not enough time to say it. He looked, she lookedI know it’s really easy to say, “he looked at her,” but you may also consider some of the alternatives. After all, there are so many other lovely words, like: gaze,glance,surveyed,glared,raked,searched,watched,scannedinspected,inventoried,probed,watched. How do I look?An easy way to depict an emotion is to describe the look on a character’s face. So, just what kind of looks are there? Here is a selection: Absent : when your character is thinking of something else, or wishes they were elsewhere.Appealing : when your character appeals to another.Beatific : an extremely happy and peaceful expression.Black : used when your character is angry or unhappy.Bleak : a cold and forbidding expression.Bored : like an absent expression, only stronger.Brooding : when your character has something in their mind and is mulling it over.Bug-eyed : a character who’s surprised, or caught unawares.Dark : much like a black expression, this signifies an angry or unhappy character.Deadpan : a character who’s pretending to be serious, when they are, in fact, joking.Doleful : a sad expression.Dreamy : much like an absent look, a dreamy look signifies that your character is thinking of something else; something more pleasant than their current situation.Etched : when a feeling is etched on someone’s face, it is perceived as intense.Expressionless : when your character wishes to hide their feelings.Faint : The opposite of etched ; a feeling that barely registers.Fixed : an expression that does not change or look natural. It can signify brain damage, or simply a lack of empathy.Glazed : it indicates a bored character.Glowering : a furious character.Grave : a solemn expression.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  She gazed down at her fingers and shrugged. I considered the decades of argument behind that question: not long ago, the answer, maybe my own answer, would have been a definitive no. So much had changed, and so much had not. “Legally?” Maddie asked. “Yes, I was. Asking for a condom doesn’t imply consent. But the way everyone treated me afterward . . .” She shrugged. “People will say, ‘You had to switch schools because of that? That’s nothing.’ And guys are like, ‘Oh, that’s not rape.’ So, I don’t know.” Maddie fell silent a moment. “Lately, I’ve been writing blog posts and articles on changing ‘rape culture.’ Because I know what it feels like to be told, ‘It’s not rape.’ And I know how horrible it was afterward. If I can prevent that, or worse, from happening to someone else, that’s all I want to do.” Maddie had been careful during our conversation never to use her assailant’s real name. At one point, though, she slipped, and once I was home, it was the work of a moment to find him online. He’d been on the basketball and track teams in his high school, appeared to be a solid student. He’d joined a frat this year, as a college freshman. None of that meant he’d assault someone, though both his history and interests put him at risk: fraternity brothers and athletes are disproportionately represented among repeat offenders. My eyes fell on the name of the large university he attended. I had, at that time, eight nieces who were also college students. It chilled me to realize that he was in school with one of them. CHAPTER 7What If We Told Them the Truth?Charis Denison stood before seventy tenth-graders in the all-purpose room of a Northern California high school. A blond woman in her early fifties, permanently tanned from a former career as a wilderness ranger, she was barefoot, having kicked off her boho-chic wedge sandals, and was wearing her habitual tunic and jeans. A silver chain encircled one ankle, and a beaded mesh bracelet wound up her left arm. On her right hand, above a stack of jangling bangles, she sported a plush, anatomically correct vulva puppet. At the moment, her finger was fondling its clitoris as she commented, “I talk to so many girls where the first person to actually touch their clitoris is somebody else.” There have been times over the past two hours when the students—both boys and girls—who were sprawled across the carpeted floor, were a little squirrelly, a bit inattentive. Now, though, they were rapt. “It’s hard when you’re trying to have a sexual experience with someone and you don’t know what feels good to you,” Denison said. “It’s hard to let someone else have that power to decide. So if someone is choosing to become sexually active with someone else, it’s really good to be sexual with oneself first. It’s good to figure out what you like.”

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

  The cosmopolitan philosophy of Marcus Aurelius had no sympathy with Christianity, and excluded from its embrace the most innocent and most peaceful of his subjects. He makes but one allusion to the Christians, and unjustly traces their readiness for martyrdom to "sheer obstinacy" and a desire for "theatrical display."592 He may have had in view some fanatical enthusiasts who rushed into the fire, like Indian gymnosophists, but possibly such venerable martyrs as Polycarp and those of Southern Gaul in his own reign. Hence the strange phenomenon that the wisest and best of Roman emperors permitted (we cannot say, instigated, or even authorized) some of the most cruel persecutions of Christians, especially in Lugdunum and Vienne. We readily excuse him on the ground of ignorance. He probably never saw the Sermon on the Mount, nor read any of the numerous Apologies addressed to him. But persecution is not the only blot on his reputation. He wasted his affections upon a vicious and worthless son, whom he raised in his fourteenth year to full participation of the imperial power, regardless of the happiness of millions, and upon a beautiful but faithless and wicked wife, whom he hastened after her death to cover with divine honors. His conduct towards Faustina was either hypocritical or unprincipled.593 After her death he preferred a concubine to a second wife and stepmother of his children. His son and successor left the Christians in peace, but was one of the worst emperors that disgraced the throne, and undid all the good which his father had done.594 Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander; Seneca, the teacher of Nero; Marcus Aurelius, the father of Commodus. § 93. Plutarch. Ploutavrcou tou' Cairwnevw" ta; jHqikav. Ed. Tauchnitz Lips. The same with a Latin version and notes in Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia, id est, Opera, exceptis vitis, reliqua. Ed. by Daniel Wyttenbach. Oxon. 1795–1800, 8 vols. (including 2 Index vols.). French ed. by Dübner, in the Didot collection. Plutarch’s Morals. Translated from the Greek by several Hands. London, 1684–’94, 5th ed. 1718. The same as corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin (Harvard University). With an introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boston, 1870, 5 vols. Octave Greard: De la moralité de Plutarque. Paris, 1866. Richard Chenevix Trench (Archbishop of Dublin): Plutarch, his life, his Parallel Lives, and his Morals. London (Macmillan & Co.), 2nd ed. 1874. W. Möller: Ueber die Religion des Plutarch. Kiel, 1881. Julia Wedgwood: Plutarch and the unconscious Christianity of the first two centuries. In the "Contemporary Review" for 1881, pp. 44–60. Equally remarkable, as a representative of "unconscious Christianity" and "seeker after the unknown God" though from a different philosophical standpoint, is the greatest biographer and moralist of classical antiquity.