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 Elements of Fiction Writing - Scene & Structure (1993)

  In terms of the scope of the result of the scene to be written, a writer can err in two possible ways: She can select a goal so small or insignificant that the scope of the result cannot possibly be broad enough to affect the course of the story, or she can select a goal so gigantic and all-encompassing that the scope of the scene result will be earth-shattering – probably ending the story right then and there, or possibly changing the course of the rest of the story so drastically that the main character may never again have a realistic chance. Fred Redux How could you err by giving Fred, the mountain climber, a scene goal too insignificant to have measurable results in terms of a later disaster? Suppose you decide that he chooses as his first scene goal the procurement of a good pair of climbing boots. (Scene question: Will Fred get good boots?) Leaving aside the obvious fact that few readers in their right mind will be willing to worry much about such a petty matter, suppose you develop a scene around this goal anyway. How much meaningful scope can possibly come at the end of such a scene? Maybe Fred learns that there simply aren’t any boots made that are as good as the ones he has envisioned (a “No!” disaster). Or maybe Fred learns that the kind of boot he really wants is so expensive that he’ll have to borrow a few hundred dollars – or work overtime a few nights – to be able to afford them (a “Yes, but!” disaster). Maybe he even learns that they don’t make boots to fit his oddly shaped foot, and sprains his big toe trying to fit himself into an ill-fitting pair that happens to be available (a “No, and furthermore!” disaster). Big deal! So what? Who cares? How has such a “disastrous” result really made things significantly tougher for Fred? The goal was too small, the scope of the result too narrow. The story has bogged down to a virtual standstill. Now imagine trying to start over with a terrifically more important scene goal. Is it possible to select a goal that’s too vast in scope? Oh, yes. Imagine that we let out all the stops and decide that Fred’s first step, on his way to the mountain of his dreams, is to go on a local television talk show and convince the interviewer – a notorious cynic – that local people should contribute money to his climbing expedition for the sake of civic pride; his goal is to get his needed financial backing through this TV appearance, or else.

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

  LECTIO FOURTEEN§ 199. Having reviewed and criticised earlier opinions on the soul the Philosopher proceeds now to put certain questions of his own; which at ‘Some say’ he begins to answer. But first we have to realise that the activities, of the soul, such as sensation, understanding, desire, movement in space, and growth, can be considered in two distinct ways. We can consider the mode of these activities; and from this point of view we can distinguish, underlying these activities, three powers of the soul: the vegetative, the sensitive and the intellectual. § 200. And these powers differ. For whilst the vegetative or nutritive power acts through active and passive qualities of matter, such as heat and cold and the like, the sensitive power requires no such sensible qualities for its sentient activity, though it does depend on corporeal organs; while the intellectual power acts through neither sensible qualities nor a corporeal organ, for it functions in an entirely incorporeal way. § 201. But if we consider the kinds of activities within the soul’s range, then we distinguish five powers with five corresponding activities: the nutritive, sensitive, locomotive, appetitive and intellectual powers. § 202. Having then discussed and criticised earlier opinions on the soul in general, Aristotle begins now an enquiry into the parts and particular activities of the soul. And he proposes two problems. The first is whether activities like sensing, rational judgement, desiring, deliberating, and also appetition (which he related to special parts of the soul in a more general way than these, placing the irascible urge in both the sensitive and the rational parts), together with local motion and rest, growth and decline, whether all these pertain to the whole soul in such a way that each one occurs in every part of the soul, so that with each part we both understand and sense and move and desire and assimilate food; or whether the truth is not rather that each activity has its own special part, that is to Say, that with one part we understand, with another we sense, and so on § 203. The second problem is this. Granted that each activity has its special part of the soul, is this true of the activity of simply being alive? Is this activity proper to any one of these parts? Or to many? Or to all at once? Or does it perhaps belong to some other part? § 204. Then at ‘Some say’ he answers these questions in order. As to the first one, he states and then rejects a view of certain philosophers that the activities in question spring severally from the soul’s parts, ilot from the soul in general; that the soul is so divided into parts that it understands with one and desires with another, just as some people hold that the sensitive power is in the brain and the vital power in the heart, and so on.

• From The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival (1903)

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

  This blasphemous flattery was too much even for the vain emperor, and he exhorted the bishop rather to pray God that he might be worthy to be one of his servants in this world and the next.231 Even the church historian and bishop Eusebius, who elsewhere knew well enough how to value the higher blessings, and lamented the indescribable hypocrisy of the sham Christianity around the emperor,232 suffered himself to be so far blinded by the splendor of the imperial favor, as to see in a banquet, which Constantine gave in his palace to the bishops at the close of the council of Nice, in honor of his twenty years’ reign (the vicennalia), an emblem of the glorious reign of Christ upon the earth!233 And these were bishops, of whom many still bore in their body the marks of the Diocletian persecution. So rapidly had changed the spirit of the age. While, on the other hand, the well-known firmness of Ambrose with Theodosius, and the life of Chrysostom, afford delightful proof that there were not wanting, even in this age, bishops of Christian earnestness and courage to rebuke the sins of crowned heads. § 25. Intrusion of Politics into Religion. With the union of the church and the state begins the long and tedious history of their collisions and their mutual struggles for the mastery: the state seeking to subject the church to the empire, the church to subject the state to the hierarchy, and both very often transgressing the limits prescribed to their power in that word of the Lord: "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s." From the time of Constantine, therefore, the history of the church and that of the world in Europe are so closely interwoven, that neither can be understood without the other. On the one hand, the political rulers, as the highest members and the patrons of the church, claimed a right to a share in her government, and interfered in various ways in her external and internal affairs, either to her profit or to her prejudice. On the other hand, the bishops and patriarchs, as the highest dignitaries and officers of the state religion, became involved in all sorts of secular matters and in the intrigues of the Byzantine court. This mutual intermixture, on the whole, was of more injury than benefit to the church and to religion, and fettered her free and natural development. Of a separation of religion and politics, of the spiritual power from the temporal, heathen antiquity knew nothing, because it regarded religion itself only from a natural point of view, and subjected it to the purposes of the all-ruling state, the highest known form of human society. The Egyptian kings, as Plutarch tells us, were at the same time priests, or were received into the priesthood at their election.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  My daughter gave me this word-a-day calendar for Christmas.” He tapped the little block of paper attached to a plastic easel on his desk, turned it toward them. Today’s word was avuncular . “Yeah, he’s a big oenophile .” He chuckled. “Sounds dirty, right? My point is, he’s not about to starve if she gives away that art. He didn’t even know about it till five or six years ago.” Yale said, “That was his wife, at the house today? With kids?” “One day she’ll wake up and realize she’s married to an old man. She’s what, half his age? Beautiful lady, though. Phoebe. An aerobics instructor .” He waggled his eyebrows. Bill said, “What are the odds of his contesting the will?” “Decent. But winning is another matter. And I’m on your side in this. I want whatever Nora wants, and Nora wants to work with you.” Yale said, “If she could donate while she’s alive, we wouldn’t be worrying about a will.” Bill said, “You can’t contest a donation from a living person, can you?” “Well,” Stanley said. “It’s been done . You know, let’s say an old woman with dementia suddenly announces she’s giving her entire fortune to her nurse. But you’re right, in this case it would make things a hell of a lot easier. My advice, regardless, is to have your own counsel present. I’m there, your counsel’s there, it’s pretty airtight.” “Is Nora amenable to donating right now?” Stanley half smiled, bobbed his head from side to side. Yale had a ridiculous vision of the three of them walking back through the doors of the Brigg tomorrow with armloads of art, of Cecily seeing these Modiglianis—and Chuck Donovan’s two-million-dollar check, his little piano donations, falling away like gnats. The secretary, the one who’d shown them in, rapped on Stanley’s half-open door with one knuckle. She said, “We have a call for your visitors.” Roman’s voice was ecstatic, breathless: “She called. She wants to see us. She said bring the lawyer.” —And so an hour later there were eight of them seated around Nora’s dining table, an awkward board meeting. Nora sat at the head of the table in a wheelchair—“Not my first time in the chair, but it never lasts long,” she said—the sun setting behind her head. Yale took a seat between Frank and his daughter Debra, so that Bill, Roman, and Frank’s wife were mixed together on the table’s other side. Less adversarial this way. Stanley sat at the other end, opposite Nora. Frank’s children—a boy and girl who probably should have been in school, but maybe it was still Christmas break after all—had been sent to the basement to watch TV. Yale had called Northwestern’s general counsel, who’d promised to drive up as soon as he could get out of the office. It was unlikely he’d arrive before eight p.m., but even if that was after Nora needed them out of the house, they could get everything done in the morning.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  In 1668 Charles II gave Barbara, Lady Castlemaine, the lovely Berkshire House. The gift had a dual purpose—to silence her clamoring for money for a while and to remove her termagant presence from Whitehall Palace. Soon the French ambassador reported, “She is busying herself getting her gift valued and having the house furnished.”8 Realizing the value of the land, Lady Castlemaine demolished the venerable mansion, then sold the timber and all the land except a small corner of the property, where she built a new brick house. She pocketed a great deal of cash in the transaction. In the early 1700s Augustus, elector of Saxony and king of Poland, built a palace for his mistress Madame Cosel. Her two summer apartments were lined with cool marble; her two winter apartments were inlaid with fine wood and adorned with porcelain and brocade hangings. In addition, he filled the palace with silver plates, crystal tables, and beds of exquisitely embroidered brocade. Over her nineteen-year tenure as Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour owned seventeen estates, in addition to numerous houses that she bought as investments. She devoted the equivalent of millions of dollars to improving and decorating these estates—mainly for the king’s convenience. Linens alone cost her a fortune—one item in the inventory of her estate listed 112 pairs of sheets, 160 tablecloths, 1,600 napkins, and 388 kitchen aprons. Firewood, candles, and food would have cost her additional large sums. But her estate expenses were not as frivolous as they might seem; the properties yielded rents from tenants and income from the sale of wine and crops. Many estates she sold at a profit. But properties, unlike jewels, could not be hidden in a bodice and spirited away. In the late 1690s Peter the Great gave his mistress Anna Mons 295 farms and a mansion near Moscow. Anna was stripped of all these when Peter learned of her infidelity. Even a tenure of twenty years could not protect Wilhelmine Rietz from losing her home. In 1775 Frederick the Great was worried about the expensive dissipations in Berlin of his nephew and heir, Prince Frederick William. Hoping to save money in the long run, the king gave his nephew twenty thousand thalers to buy a country estate outside Berlin for himself and his mistress. But in 1797, after King Frederick William’s death, Wilhelmine was kicked off the estate by the new king, who grabbed it for himself. TitlesOne of the greatest privileges for a royal mistress was to be raised into the rarefied air of the nobility, to be created a countess, marquise, or duchess with a stroke of the royal pen. There were various reasons for a king to upgrade the status of his mistress. In 1450 Charles VII made Agnes Sorel a duchess, but only after her death so she could receive a splendid ducal burial.

• From The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory (2008)

  industrialization, utilitarian individualism and the nation-state provided the general conditions for the rise of the division between the public and the private world. The important feature of this division in modern society is that the private space is characterized by the intimacy and emotionalism of the household which exists specifically for the servicing of the body, namely the production of children, socialization and the servicing of the labour force. There is thus a sharp contrast between the formality, impersonalism, neutrality and universalism of work in public space, and the informality, particularism and affectivity of the private home. In the social division of society, there is also a sexual division by which certain activities (‘mothering’ and ‘working’) become gender specific. In addition we can suggest that there is a spatial division between passions (private sphere) and reasons (public sphere). Table 2.1 This is illustrated in Table 2.1. In making this distinction between private/public, it would probably be more accurate to refer to private spaces in the plural. The modern home is opened to the world by an architectural emphasis on light and space. At the same time the home remains a castle cut off from other private spaces. The transition from the Renaissance to the modern world thus involves a transition from the ‘open’ body linked to the public world through ritual and carnival to the ‘closed’ body of individualized consumer society (Bakhtin, 1968). Desires are now inscribed in private bodies separated from the hygienic space of the public world. Sociology of the Body To write a sociology of the body is thus not to write a treatise on society and physiology. It involves the historical analysis of the spatial organization of bodies and desire in relation to society and reason. The principal contours of such a study may be stated as the following. (1)For the individual and the group, the body is simultaneously an environment (part of nature) and a medium of the self (part of culture). The body is crucially at the conjuncture of human labour on nature through the medium of writing, language and religion and thus critically at the conjuncture of the human species between the natural order of the world and the cultural ordering of the world. The transaction between nature and society can thus be seen in terms of the body as physiology (that is, an internal environment). To take one obvious example, the body has physiological needs, in particular food, liquid and sleep. The nature, content and timing of these activities of eating, drinking and sleeping are subject to symbolic interpretations and to massive social regulation. We can thus think of the body as an outer surface of interpretations and representations and an internal environment of structures and determinations. (2)Corresponding to the internal/external division, it is important to make a distinction between, following Michel Foucault, the body of populations and the body of individuals.

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

  This book is the whole truth which every Christian should study.604 It is the measure and standard of all logic. Logic, as in Oxford, changes very frequently, yea, every twenty years, but the Scriptures are yea, yea and nay, nay. They never change. They stand to eternity.605 All logic, all law, all philosophy and all ethic are in them. As for the philosophy of the pagan world, whatever it offers that is in accord with the Scriptures is true. The religious philosophy which the Christian learns from Aristotle he learns because it was taught by the authors of Scripture.606 The Greek thinker made mistakes, as when he asserted that creation is eternal. In several places Wyclif confesses that he himself had at one time been led astray by logic and the desire to win fame, but was thankful to God that he had been converted to the full acceptance of the Scriptures as they are and to find in them all logic. All through this treatise, and in other works, Wyclif contends against those who pronounced the sacred writings irrational or blasphemous or abounding in errors and plain falsehoods. Such detractors he labelled modern or recent doctors—moderni novelli doctores. Charges such as these would seem well-nigh incredible, if Wyclif did not repeat them over and over again. They remind us of the words of the priest who told Tyndale, 150 years later, "It were better to be without God’s laws than to be without the pope’s." What could be more shocking,—horribilius,—exclaimed Wyclif, than to assert that God’s words are false.607 The supreme authority of the Scriptures appears from their contents, the beneficent aim they have in view, and from the witness borne to them by Christ. God speaks in all the books. They are one great Word of God. Every syllable of the two Testaments is true, and the authors were nothing more than scribes or heralds.608 If any error seem to be found in them, the error is due to human ignorance and perverseness. Nothing is to be believed that is not founded upon this book, and to its teachings nothing is to be added.609 Wyclif devotes much time to the principles of biblical exposition and brushes away the false principles of the Fath-ers and Schoolmen by pronouncing the "literal verbal sense" the true one. On occasion, in his sermons, he himself used the other senses, but his sound judgment led him again and again to lay emphasis upon the etymological meaning of words as final. The tropological, anagogical and allegorical meanings, if drawn at all, must be based upon the literal meaning. Wyclif confessed his former mistake of striving to distinguish them with strict precision. There is, in fact, only one sense of Scripture, the one God himself has placed in it as the book of life for the wayfaring man.610 Heresy is the contradiction of Scripture. As for himself, Wyclif said, he was ready to follow its teachings, even unto martyrdom, if necessary.611

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

  But this caused such a storm of horror on the part of Frau Permaneder that she had to abandon the plan for the time being. As was to be expected, Ms. Permaneder's protests also extended to the sale of the house her brother had built. She wailed aloud at the ill impression this might produce, and complained that it would mean a new loss of prestige to the family name. But she had to admit that it would have been impractical to continue to occupy and maintain the sprawling and splendid house that had been Thomas Buddenbrook's expensive hobby, and that Gerda's desire for a comfortable little villa, at the gate, in the countryside, had its justification... A glorious day dawned on Herr Gosch, the broker Sigismund Gosch. An experience transfigured his old age, which even stopped his limbs from shaking for several hours. It so happened that he was allowed to see himself in Gerda Buddenbrook's salon, opposite her in an armchair, face to face with her negotiating the price of her house. His snow-white hair swept over his face from all sides, he stared up at her face from below with his chin horribly thrust forward, and reached to look completely hunchbacked. His voice hissed, but he spoke coldly and businesslike, and nothing betrayed the turmoil in his soul. He promised to take over the house, stretched out his hand and offered eighty-five thousand marks with a malicious smile. This was acceptable, for a loss was inevitable in this sale. Only Herr Kistenmaker's opinion had to be heard, Gerda Buddenbrook had to dismiss Herr Gosch without having finished with him, and it turned out that Herr Kistenmaker had no intention of allowing any interference in his work. He disregarded Herr Gosch's offer, he laughed at it and swore that they would get much more. And he kept swearing by this until he got around to it at alla To put an end to it, felt compelled to sell the house for seventy-five thousand marks to an aging bachelor who, returning from long journeys, intended to settle down in the city... Mr. Kistenmaker also took care of the purchase of the new house, a pleasant little villa, which was perhaps bought a little too expensively, but which, situated in front of the castle gate on an old avenue of chestnut trees and surrounded by a pretty ornamental garden and vegetable garden, corresponded to Gerda Buddenbrooks wishes... Thither the senator moved in the autumn of 1976 with her son, her servants, and part of her household effects, while another part of it had to be left behind under the lamentations of Frau Permaneder and become the property of the aging bachelor. Not enough of the changes! Mamsell Jungmann, Ida Jungmann, who had been in the Buddenbrooks' house for forty years, resigned from the family service and returned to her West Prussian homeland to spend the end of her life with relatives. Truth be told, she was fired by the senator.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  Her misfortune is that, in spite of all her bad faith, she is aware of this nothingness. There cannot be a real relationship between an individual and his double, because this double does not exist. The woman narcissist suffers a radical failure. She cannot grasp herself as a totality, as plenitude; she cannot maintain the illusion of being in itself—for itself. Her solitude, like that of every human being, is felt as contingence and abandonment. And this is why—unless there is a conversion—she is condemned to hide relentlessly from herself in crowds, noise, and others. It would be a grave error to believe that in choosing herself as the supreme end, she escapes dependence: on the contrary, she dooms herself to the most severe slavery; she does not make the most of her freedom, she makes herself an endangered object in the world and in foreign consciousnesses. Not only are her body and face vulnerable flesh worn by time, but from a practical point of view it is a costly enterprise to adorn the idol, to put her on a pedestal, to erect a temple to her: we have seen that to preserve her form in immortal marble, Marie Bashkirtseff had to consent to marry for money. Masculine fortunes paid for the gold, incense, and myrrh that Isadora Duncan and Cécile Sorel laid at the foot of their thrones. As it is man who incarnates destiny for woman, women usually gauge their success by the number and quality of men subjected to their power. But reciprocity comes into play again here; the “praying mantis,” attempting to make the male her instrument, does not free herself from him like this, because to catch him, she must please him. The American woman, trying to be an idol, makes herself the slave of her admirers, does not dress, live, or breathe other than through the man and for him. In fact, the narcissist is as dependent as the hetaera. If she escapes an individual man’s domination, it is by accepting the tyranny of public opinion. This link that rivets her to others does not imply reciprocity; if she sought recognition by others’ freedom while also recognizing that freedom as an end through activity, she would cease to be narcissistic. The paradox of her attitude is that she demands to be valued by a world to which she denies all value, since she alone counts in her own eyes. Outside approbation is an inhuman, mysterious, and capricious force that must be tapped magically. In spite of her superficial arrogance, the narcissistic woman knows she is threatened; it is why she is uneasy, susceptible, irritable, and constantly suspicious; her vanity is never satisfied; the older she grows, the more anxiously she seeks praise and success, the more she suspects plots around her; lost and obsessed, she sinks into the darkness of bad faith and often ends up by building a paranoid delirium around herself. The words “Whosoever shall save his life will lose it” apply specifically to her.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  There are many degrees between the common prostitute and the grand hetaera. The main difference is that the former trades in her pure generality, so that competition keeps her at a miserable level of living, while the latter tries to be recognized in her singularity: if she succeeds, she can aspire to a lofty future. Beauty, charm, and sex appeal are necessary for this, but they are not sufficient: the woman must be considered distinguished. Her value will often be revealed through a man’s desire: but she will be “launched” only when the man declares her price to the eyes of the world. In the last century, it was the town house, carriage and pair, and pearls that proved the influence of the cocotte on her protector and that raised her to the rank of demimondaine; her worth was confirmed as long as men continued to ruin themselves for her. Social and economic changes abolished the Blanche d’Antigny types. There is no longer a demimonde in which a reputation can be established. An ambitious woman has to try to attain fame in other ways. The most recent incarnation of the hetaera is the movie star. Flanked by her husband or serious male friend—rigorously required by Hollywood—she is no less related to Phryne, Imperia, or Casque d’Or. She delivers Woman to the dreams of men who give her fortune and glory in exchange.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 5 (451 – 1800) (2009)

  552–4) and when Islam pressed ever closer. For their part, the Ottomans were well disposed to a movement which encouraged their new Christian subjects to introspection and political passivity. A theology which asserted that it was possible for Taborite divine light to be seen with bodily eyes appealed to a Church which had fought so fiercely to defend icons; icons had become precisely the vehicle for contemplation of divine light. Moreover, when Palamas and the Hesychasts discounted the place of reason in theology, they echoed prominent themes in the writings of Symeon the New Theologian, now widely respected in monastic circles. Barlaam by contrast presented no more than many honest and clearminded theologians have offered across centuries when confronted by populist movements in Christianity: an openness to alternative Christian points of view, qualification, critique and nuance. He could be caricatured as pro-Western, and his ultimate decision in frustration and desperation to submit to the pope lent plausibility to that accusation. Once his efforts to accommodate East and West and his accusations against Palamas were swept aside, the way was open for Hesychasm to become embedded in Orthodox tradition, and it is certainly the case that its techniques of meditation and prayer, particularly the Jesus Prayer at its heart, have nourished countless Christians in travail and in tranquillity ever since. HOPES DESTROYED: CHURCH UNION, OTTOMAN CONQUEST (1400-1700) Now ‘the City’ was shrunken and full of ruins, fields stretching between what had become villages sheltering within its ancient defences – though over all still loomed the Great Church and the ancient monuments of the New Rome. The last emperors of Constantinople survived as long as they did because of the strength of their city walls, and because between repeated Ottoman sieges, from the end of the fourteenth century, they had agreed to become vassals of the Ottoman sultan. They seemed to have little choice in this humiliation: their efforts to enlist the West produced repeated failures, fiascos and rebuffs. One emperor, John V Palaeologos, whose mother was an Italian princess, had in desperation actually made a personal submission to the Roman Church in 1355, but he had done nothing to enforce the change on his Church. Then the fact that from the Great Papal Schism of 1378 there were first two, then three claimants for the papacy (see p. 560) for the time being ruined any credibility that reunion schemes might have possessed in the East.

• From When Breath Becomes Air (2016)

  Another stable scan six months after diagnosis passed, and I reopened my job search. With my cancer under control, I might have several years left. It seemed the career I had worked for years to attain, which had disappeared amid disease, was now back in reach. I could almost hear trumpets sounding a victory fanfare. — During my next visit with Emma, we talked about life and where it was taking me. I recalled Henry Adams trying to compare the scientific force of the combustion engine and the existential force of the Virgin Mary. The scientific questions were settled for now, allowing the existential ones full play, yet both were in the doctor’s purview. I had recently learned that the surgeon-scientist position at Stanford—the job for which I had been heir apparent—had been filled while I was out sick. I was crushed, and told her so. “Well,” she said, “this doctor-professor thing can be a real grind. But you know that already. I’m sorry.” “Yeah, I guess the science that excited me was about twenty-year projects. Without that kind of time frame, I’m not sure I’m all that interested in being a scientist.” I tried to console myself. “You can’t get much done in a couple of years.” “Right. And just remember, you’re doing great. You’re working again. You’ve got a baby on the way. You’re finding your values, and that’s not easy.” Later that day one of the younger professors, a former resident and close friend, stopped me in the hallway. “Hey,” she said. “There’s been a lot of discussion in faculty meetings about what to do with you.” “What to do with me, how?” “I think some professors are concerned about you graduating.” Graduation from residency required two things: meeting a set of national and local requirements, which I’d already done, and the blessing of the faculty. “What?” I said. “I don’t mean to sound cocky, but I’m a good surgeon, just as good as—” “I know. I think they probably just want to see you performing the full load of a chief. It’s because they like you. Seriously.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Do come now,” said he—“pray come—you must come—I declare you shall come—You can’t think how you will like them. Lucy is monstrous pretty, and so good humoured and agreeable! The children are all hanging about her already, as if she was an old acquaintance. And they both long to see you of all things, for they have heard at Exeter that you are the most beautiful creatures in the world; and I have told them it is all very true, and a great deal more. You will be delighted with them I am sure. They have brought the whole coach full of playthings for the children. How can you be so cross as not to come? Why they are your cousins, you know, after a fashion. _You_ are my cousins, and they are my wife’s, so you must be related.” But Sir John could not prevail. He could only obtain a promise of their calling at the Park within a day or two, and then left them in amazement at their indifference, to walk home and boast anew of their attractions to the Miss Steeles, as he had been already boasting of the Miss Steeles to them.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  3) Dead-eyed waiters, sitting in empty booths, looking bored, unhappy, and defeated. This alone is reason to flee. The waiter knows, better than anybody, how bad things are. At my meal, as soon as my journalist pal and I sat down and a photographer took a picture of us from outside, our waiter inquired of our affiliations—and the purpose of the photographer—then immediately made a covert, whispered phone call. (A guilty conscience, and a procedure in place for dealing with too much interest, can never be a good thing.) Accompanying the waiter were a busboy (who apparently doubles as bartender), a dishwasher, and one cook. Now, how can one cook make all the food on an absurdly, even dangerously, huge menu, one might well ask oneself. And how long has that Duck a l'Orange been kicking around that quiet kitchen, waiting for me to come along? 4) Signs of quiet scaling back and cost cutting. A forlorn dessert cart, half-filled with hardy, not-too-perishable fruit variations (nothing that will oxidize or get too ugly too quickly—probably because it will be used again tomorrow and the next day) sits right by the front door, subtly blocking access to what might once have been an upstairs dining room. What don't they want us to see? Clearly a sign saying "Section Closed" is not enough. It has been deemed necessary to seal off the stairs, preventing even the casual drunken tourist, hunting for the restroom, from stumbling upon whatever hidden horror lurks above. 5) The trick menu. Wow! It sure looks big! But, wait! There may be ten or twelve appetizers—but half of them seem to contain prawns! This strategy allows the lone cook to quickly whip up a variety of no-doubt once-frozen delights from a single box of thawed prawns. And there sure seem to be a lot of deep-fried nuggety, breaded thingies . . . I regard the chicken "Cordon Bleu" with the same suspicion I cast on the prawn nuggets; they very likely originated in the same far-away blast freezer. 6) The telltale "DING!" of the microwave. Is it a coincidence that I heard its woeful tolling just before my limp, watery, gray, and completely uncaramelized duck arrived? I think not. 7) The table tent display offering festive party drinks with umbrellas in them. I don't know about you, but when I sit down in an empty steakhouse—whether in London or anywhere else in the world—a pina colada, a grasshopper, or a Singapore sling are not the cocktails that leap immediately to mind. Their presence is evidence of a disturbed mind, as if some cargo cult of South Seas natives had found the menu of a fifties-era American diner and after hitting the lottery and moving to the UK, decided to re-create it from memory. "Oh yes! Americans love drinks that look like fabric softener—as long as they have cherries and umbrellas in them!"

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  She opened the refrigerator, and although there wasn’t much, it was health food: plain yogurt, bottled green drinks, what seemed to be the French version of Tofurkey. “Expires next spring,” Arnaud said, still looking at the box. “It can’t be so old. That’s good, yeah?” The cereal did reignite some small hope, but she didn’t want to admit it. Arnaud took more photos. Fiona sensed it was for show. What good would a picture of the sink do? As they left, she fought the impulse to leave something deliberately askew, to bump a lamp or scrawl a question mark on the wall. “We were never here,” Arnaud said. He turned the lock and closed the door behind them. “Goodbye, Kurt Pearce’s flat.” —Fiona wandered the Marais a long time, feeling awkwardly American here where there weren’t as many tourists. She showed Claire’s photo, with slightly renewed optimism, to waiters, to shopkeepers. She showed it to a scraggy-haired man waiting on a corner with a long, narrow box. He turned out to be a Brit, and she was fairly sure he was stoned. He looked at the picture a long time, and then he said, “Not everyone wants to be found.” Fiona walked away insulted, and didn’t feel like talking to anyone else. She circled back too close to Kurt’s apartment. Here was the place she’d had the whiskey earlier; she stopped to use the bathroom, feeling she had more right to do so here than elsewhere. When she emerged, she hoped she’d see the fighting couple out on the street. Really, she hoped she’d see just the woman, alone, leaning against a window and crying. Fiona would wrap her up, take her back to Richard’s. She could save one woman, even if it was the wrong woman. But the street was—as she’d known it would be—empty. 1986Sunday was the day. Charlie would be working, even if he’d taken Friday off; Out Loud published on Mondays, which meant the paper was put to bed late Sunday night. Early Sunday morning, Kurt’s father picked him up for hockey practice. He greeted Yale stiffly and whispered something to Cecily. The ex was a big man, big with both fat and muscle, in possession of a remarkably uncharming Irish accent. Yale could see the man in Kurt’s upturned nose, wide mouth. He wondered if it was best, in this situation, to come across gay (as in, not involved with Cecily) or straight (lest the man get deranged ideas about Yale’s interest in the eleven-year-old). He tried to act natural, which was probably on the gay side. He did his laundry in the building’s basement, and then he took the El into the city. His feet, Cecily was right, were slowly dying in those shoes, even with socks. There was slush today on all the sidewalks, and in no time it had soaked through. It was one o’clock.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  I had taken it for granted that the men who had observed strict discipline for full 21 days would without any difficulty be able to remain standing in an orderly manner while the sweets were being distributed, and not make an impatient scramble for them. But when it came to the test, all the methods that were tried for making the distribution failed. Again and again their ranks would break into confusion after distribution had proceeded for a couple of minutes. The leaders of the mill-hands tried their best to restore order, but in vain. The confusion, the crush and the scramble at last became so great that quite an amount of the sweets was spoiled by being trampled under foot, and the attempt to distribute them in the open had finally to be given up. With difficulty we succeeded in taking away the remaining sweets to Sheth Ambalal’s bungalow in Mirzapur. Sweets were distributed comfortably the next day within the compound of that bungalow. The comic side of this incident is obvious, but the pathetic side bears mention. Subsequent inquiry revealed the fact that the beggar population of Ahmedabad, having got scent of the fact that sweets were to be distributed under the #Ek-Tek# tree, had gone there in large numbers, and it was their hungry scramble for the sweets that had created all the confusion and disorder. The grinding poverty and starvation with which our country is afflicted is such that it drives more and more men every year into the ranks of the beggars, whose desperate struggle for bread renders them insensible to all feelings of decency and self-respect. And our philanthropists, instead of providing work for them and insisting on their working for bread, give them alms. 149THE KHEDA SATYAGRAHANo breathing time was, however, in store for me. Hardly was the Ahmedabad mill-hands’ strike over, when I had to plunge into the Kheda Satyagraha struggle. A condition approaching famine had arisen in the Kheda district owing to a widespread failure of crops, and the Patidars of Kheda were considering the question of getting the revenue assessment for the year suspended. Sjt. Amritlal Thakkar had already inquired into and reported on the situation and personally discussed the question with the Commissioner, before I gave definite advice to the cultivators. Sjts. Mohanlal Pandya and Shankarlal Parikh had also thrown themselves into the fight, and had set up an agitation in the Bombay Legislative Council through Sjt. Vithalbhai Patel and the late Sir Gokuldas Kahandas Parekh. More than one deputation had waited upon the Governor in that connection. I was at this President of the Gujarat Sabha. The Sabha sent petitions and telegrams to the Government and even patiently swallowed the insults and threats of the Commissioner. The conduct of the officials on this occasion was so ridiculous and undignified as to be almost incredible now. The cultivators’ demand was as clear as daylight, and so moderate as to make out a strong case for its acceptance.

• From Goddesses in Everywoman

  Education is usually a pastime for such a girl, not an occupational prerequisite. She struggles to get assignments done and papers written, because she is easily diverted and/or lacks confidence. Characteristically, she tries several possible academic majors. If she manages to settle on one, she does so often by default or by following the path of least resistance rather than by active choice. W ORK The Persephone woman may stay a “professional student,” or she may go to work. Whether after high school or after college, she tends to have a series of jobs, rather than a profession or a career, and gravitates to where her friends or family are. She moves from job to job in the hope that one will really interest her. Or she may be fired when she doesn’t meet deadlines or takes too much time off. Persephone women do best at jobs that do not require initiative, persistence, or supervisory skills. She does very well when she has a boss she wants to please, who gives her specific assignments that must be done right away. On long assignments, Persephone procrastinates. She acts as if she expected to be rescued from the task or as if she had all the time in the world. When neither turns out to be true, and it is time to deliver, she is ill prepared. At best, she manages to get the work done in a last-minute, stay-up-all-night effort. Although work is never important to a woman who resembles the Kore, the situation is quite different if she matures into Queen of the Underworld. Then she is likely to enter a creative, psychological, or spiritual field; for example, working as an artist, poet, therapist, or psychic. Whatever she does is usually deeply personal and often unorthodox; she works in a highly individual way, commonly without the “proper” academic degrees. R ELATIONSHIPS WITH W OMEN A young Persephone woman is comfortable with other young women who are like herself. She is often a sorority sister in high school or college and habitually tries out new situations in the company of other girls rather than on her own. If she is pretty, she may attract women friends who do not think of themselves as very feminine, who project their own undeveloped femininity onto her and then treat her as special. If she has been treated as fragile and precious all her life, she’ll take such treatment for granted. Her closest friend often is a girl with a stronger personality. The Persephone evokes maternal responses in peers and older women, who do favors for her and look out for her. R ELATIONSHIPS WITH M EN (W HO P REFER G IRLS ) With men a Persephone woman is a child-woman, unassertive and youthful in attitude. She fits the pattern of Persephone the Kore as the most indistinct and unthreatening of all the goddesses.

• From The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2000)

  This does not describe the human species as I know it. Watch any group of people conversing, and you will see the exact opposite of the behavior predicted by the kinship and reciprocity theories of language. People compete to say things. They strive to be heard. When they appear to be listening, they are often mentally rehearsing their next contribution to the discourse rather than absorbing what was just said by others. Those who fail to yield the floor to their colleagues are considered selfish, not altruistic. Turn-taking rules have emerged to regulate not who gets to listen, but who gets to talk. Scientists compete for the chance to give talks at conferences, not for the chance to listen. For psychotherapists to use the “non-directive” methods advocated by Carl Rogers—in which the therapist says nothing back to the client except paraphrases of what they have heard—requires an almost superhuman inhibition of our will to talk. Nor do the kinship and reciprocity theories predict our anatomy very accurately. If talking were the cost and listening were the benefit of language, then our speaking apparatus, which bears the cost of our information-altruism, should have remained rudimentary and conservative, capable only of grudging whispers and inarticulate mumbling. Our ears, which enjoy the benefits of information-acquisition, should have evolved into enormous ear-trumpets that can be swivelled in any direction to soak up all the valuable intelligence reluctantly offered by our peers. Again, this is the opposite of what we observe. Our hearing apparatus remains evolutionarily conservative, very similar to that of other apes, while our speaking apparatus has been dramatically re-engineered. The burden of adaptation has fallen on speaking rather than listening. Like our conversational behavior, this anatomical evidence suggests that speaking somehow brought greater hidden evolutionary benefits than listening. Verbal CourtshipMuch of human courtship is verbal courtship: “boy meets girl” usually means boy and girl talk. At every stage of courtship, language is displayed, and language is subject to mate choice. Teenagers agonize over the words they will use when they telephone someone to ask for a date. Stuttering, sudden changes in voice pitch, awkward grammar, poor word choice, and uninteresting content are usually considered such fatal errors by their perpetrators that they often hang up in shame, assuming that they will remain sexual failures forever. Things are not so different a little later in life. Adults in singles bars nervously rehearse their pickup lines, and mentally outline their conversational gambits.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Among our merry company was a MERCHANT with a forked beard. He was dressed in an outfit of many colours, just like the players in the Mysteries, and rode on a high saddle from which he looked down at me. He wore a Flemish hat of beaver, in the latest style, and a pair of elegant as well as expensive boots. When he expressed an opinion, he did so carefully and solemnly; he was always trying to weigh the likely profit to be gained from it. He commented, for example, that the sea between Holland and England should be defended at all costs. He was good at exchange dealings, as you would expect, and in fact this worthy gentleman was canny in every respect. He was so dignified in his business, in his buyings and in his sellings, in his barterings and in his tradings, that no one would ever know if he was in debt or not. What a notable man! Funnily enough, I did not discover his name. I never bothered to ask him. A CLERK was there, from Oxford University. He was what you and I would describe as a scholar. He had studied logic for a long time, without progressing any further. He sat upon a withered horse that was almost as thin as its rider; he was grave and gaunt and hollow-cheeked. He had obtained no benefices, and he was too unworldly to seek for any profitable post; as a result his coat was as threadbare as his purse. He would rather have at his bedside twenty books of Aristotle, bound in red or black leather, than any amount of rich clothes or expensive musical instruments. He was a philosopher but he had not yet found the philosopher’s stone; there was precious little gold in his coffers. Any money he could beg or borrow from his friends was immediately spent upon books and learning. He was a bookworm. He went down on his knees to pray for those who had paid for his education, which was not cheap, and he took the demands of scholarship very seriously indeed. He never talked more than was strictly necessary and, when he did speak, it was in careful and measured tones; he was brief and to the point, but full of elevated sentiment. He loved to discourse on problems of moral virtue. Like the lawyers he would begin ‘Put the case that . . .’. But he learned from these debates, too, just as much as he contributed to them. ‘A great friend is Aristotle,’ he said to me, ‘but a greater friend is truth.’