Fear

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 The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  So it was ordered, that after the pleadings of both sides was ended, they thought best to try and boult out the verity by witnesses, all presumptions and likelihood set apart, and to call in the servant, who onely was reported to know all the matter: by and by the servant came in, who nothing abashed, at the feare of so great a judgment, or at the presence of the Judges, or at his owne guilty conscience, which hee so finely fained, but with a bold countenance presented himselfe before the justices and confirmed the accusation against the young man, saying: O yee judges, on a day when this young man loathed and hated his stepmother, hee called mee, desiring mee to poyson his brother, whereby hee might revenge himselfe, and if I would doe it and keepe the matter secret, hee promised to give me a good reward for my paines: but when the young man perceived that I would not accord to his will, he threatned to slay mee, whereupon hee went himselfe and bought poyson, and after tempered it with wine, and then gave it me to give the child, which when I refused he offered it to his brother with his own hands. When the varlet with a trembling countenance had ended these words which seemed a likelihood of truth, the judgement was ended: neither was there found any judge or counsellor, so mercifull to the young man accused, as would not judge him culpable, but that he should be put and sowne in a skin, with a dogge, a Cocke, a Snake, and an Ape, according to the law against parricides: wherefore they wanted nothing but (as the ancient custome was) to put white stones and black into a pot, and to take them out againe, to see whether the young-man accused should be acquitted by judgment or condemned, which was a thing irrevocable.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xxviii. 5) They gave Him advice to pursue glory, and not allow Himself to remain in concealment and obscurity; appealing altogether to worldly and secular motives. But our Lord was laying down another road to that very exaltation, viz. humility: My time, He says, i. e. the time of My glory, when I shall come to judge on high, is not yet come; but your time, i. e. the glory of the world, is always ready. And let us, who are the Lord’s body, when insulted by the lovers of this world, say, Your time is ready: ours is not yet come. Our country is a lofty one, the way to it is low. Whoso rejecteth the way, why seeketh he the country? CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xlviii. 2) Or there seems to be another meaning concealed in the words; perhaps they intended to betray Him to the Jews; and therefore He says, My time is not yet come, i. e. the time of My cross and death: but your time is always ready; for though you are always with the Jews, they will not kill you, because you are of the same mind with them: The world cannot hate you; but Me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil: as if He said, How can the world hate them who have the same wishes and aims with itself? It hateth Me, because I reprove it. I seek not then glory from men; inasmuch as I hesitate not to reprove them, though I know that I am hated in consequence, and that My life is aimed at. Here we see that the hatred of the Jews was owing to His reproofs, not to His breaking the sabbath. THEOPHYLACT. Our Lord brings two arguments in answer to their two charges. To the charge of fear He answers, that He reproves the deeds of the world, i. e. of those who love worldly things; which He would not do, if He were under the influence of fear; and He replies to the charge of vain glory, by sending them to the feast, Go ye up unto this feast. Had He been possessed at all with the desire for glory, He would have kept them with Him: for the vain glorious like to have many followers. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xlviii. 2) This is to shew too, that, while He does not wish to humour them, He still allows them to observe the Jewish ordinances. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xxviii. 5. 8) Or He seems to say, Go ye up to this feast, and seek for human glory, and enlarge your carnal pleasures, and forget heavenly things. I go not up unto this feast; CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xlviii. 2) i. e. not with you, for My time is not yet full come. It was at the next passover that He was to be crucified.

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

  This same phrase removes a certain obstacle that may stand in the way of our prayer. Some people act as though human affairs were subjected to a deterministic fatalism imposed by the stars, contrary to what is commanded in Jeremiah 10:2: “Be not afraid of the signs of heaven, which the heathens fear.” If this error had its way, it would rob us of the fruit of prayer. For if our lives were subjected to a necessity decreed by the stars, nothing in our course could be changed. In vain we should plead in our prayer for the granting of some good or for deliverance from evil. To prevent this error from undermining confidence in prayer, we say: “who art in heaven,” thus acknowledging that God moves and regulates the heavens. Accordingly the assistance we hope to obtain from God cannot be obstructed by the power of heavenly bodies. In order that prayer may be efficacious at the court of God, man must ask for those benefits which he may worthily expect from God. Of old some petitioners were rebuked: “You ask and receive not, because you ask amiss” (James 4:3). Anything suggested by earthly wisdom rather than by heavenly wisdom, is asked for in the wrong spirit. And so Chrysostom assures us that the words, “who art in heaven,” do not imply that God is confined to that locality, but rather indicate that the mind of him who prays is raised up from the earth and comes to rest in that celestial region [In Matthaeum, hom. XIX, 4]. There is another obstacle to prayer or confidence in God that would deter one from praying. This is the notion that human life is far removed from divine providence. The thought is given expression, in the person of the wicked, in Job 22:14: “The clouds are His cover; He does not consider our things, and He walks about the poles of heaven”; also in Ezekiel 8: 12: “The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the earth.”

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

  Whether Servile Fear is Good1. It seems that servile fear is not good. If the use of a thing is evil, the thing itself is evil. Now the use of servile fear is evil, since “ he who does something out of fear does not do well, even though that which is done be good, ” as the gloss says on Rom. ch. 8. It follows that servile fear is not good. 2. Again, that which has its origin in a root of sin is not good. Servile fear has its origin in a root of sin. For on Job 3:11, “ Why died I not from the womb? ” Gregory says: “ when one fears the present punishment for one ’ s sin, and has no love for the countenance of God which one has lost, one ’ s fear is born of pride, not of humility. ” Hence servile fear is evil. 3. Again, servile fear seems to be opposed to chaste fear, just as mercenary love is opposed to the love of charity. Now mercenary love is always evil. Hence servile fear is likewise always evil. On the other hand: nothing which is evil is of the Holy Spirit. But servile fear is of the Holy Spirit. For on Rom. 8:15, “ For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear . . . , ” the gloss (ord. August. Tract. 9 in Joan.) says: “ It is the same Spirit which inspires both fears, ” that is, servile fear and chaste fear. Hence servile fear is not evil.

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

  24:48, 49, “But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken, the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Of the second, S. Luke 12:47, “And that servant which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.” Of the third, S. Matt. 25:30, “And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” There are three things which the Lord requires in His servants—the first, that they should be cleansed from every defilement of sin; the second, that they should be ornamented with every virtue; the third, that they should be decorated with honesty of maners. Of the first, Ps. 101:6, “He that walketh in a perfect way he shall serve Me.” 1 Tim. 3:10 (Vulg.), “Let them minister having no crime.” Of the second, 2 Cor. 6:4, “In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God.” Of the third, 1 Peter 2:12, “Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles.” Of these three things, Exo. 40:12, 13, “And thou shalt bring Aaron and his sons unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation and wash them with water;” (40:15), “and thou shalt anoint them as thou didst anoint their father,” &c. 2 Cor. 2:15, “We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ.” But the Lord requires that we should serve Him in three ways—first, by imitating Him; second, by delighting in His service; thirdly, by fearing Him. Of the first, S. John 12:26, “If any man serve Me, let him follow Me.” Of the second, Ps. 100:2, “Serve the Lord with gladness.” Of the third, Ps. 2:11, “Serve the Lord with fear.” The first makes the service acceptable to the Lord; the second makes us ready in serving; the third preserves us in His service. But the Lord promises three rewards to His servants, viz., happiness, dignity, and eternity. Of the first reward, 1 Tim. 3:13, “For they that have used the office of a deacon well purchase to themselves a good degree.” Of the second reward, S. Matt. 25:23, “Well done, good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few things,” &c. Of the third reward, Rev. 7:15, “And serve Him day and night in His Temple;” and afterwards He “shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters.” Eternity is a fountain of life. As Dionysius says, “Eternity is endless, and at the same time the whole and perfect possession of life.” Of these three attributes, S.

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

  III. On the third head it is to be noted, that the future judgment is to be feared for three reasons—(1) On account of the equity of the Judge: Ps. 7:12, Vulg., “God is a just Judge, strong and patient: is He angry every day?” (2) Because of the severity of the Judge: Judith 16:20, 21, “In the Day of Judgment He will visit them, for He will give fire and worms into their flesh.” (3) Because of the irrevocability of the sentence: S. Matt. 25:41, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels.” It is called “everlasting fire” because it has no end; from which may we be delivered, &c. HOMILY XI THE GOVERNMENT OF THE TONGUE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER.—(FROM THE EPISTLE)“If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.”—S. Jas. 1:26. S. JAMES in these words exhorts us to the bridling; of the tongue, and there are three reasons which move us so to do. Firstly, because he who does not bridle his tongue, falls into many sins. Secondly, because he incurs many bad punishments. Thirdly, because he who bridles his tongue, acquires many good things. Of the first: Prov. 10:19, “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin.” Of the second: Ecclus. 20:8, “He that useth many words shall hurt his own soul.” Of the third: Prov. 18:13, “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.”

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  When one considers the lengths to which the South has gone to prevent the Negro from ever becoming, or even feeling like, an equal, it is clear that the Southern states could not have used schools in any other way. This is one of the reasons, deliberate or not, that facilities were never equal. The demoralizing Southern school system also says a great deal about the indifference and irresponsibility of the North. The Negro presidents, principals and teachers would not be nearly so frightened of losing their jobs if the possibility of working in Northern schools were not almost totally closed to them. Richard Haley found a room for me in town and introduced THEY CAN ' T TURN BACK 62 7 me to the Tallahassee Inter-Civic Council, an organization that makes no secret of its intention to remain in business exa ctly as long as segregation does. It was called into existence by a bus boycott in 195 6. The Tallahassee boycott began five months after the boycott in Montgomery, and in a similar way, with the arrest of two Negro coeds who refused in a crowded bus to surrender their seats to whites on the motor man's order. The boycott ran the same course, from cross burning, fury and intransigence on the part of the city and bus officials, along with almost total and unex pected unanim ity among the Negroes, to reprisal, intimidation and near bankruptcy of the bus company, which took its buses otr the streets for a month. The Reverend C. K. Steele, president of the IC C, remem bers that "those were rough days. Every time I drove my car into the garage, I expected a bullet to come whizzing by my head." He was not being fanciful: there are still bullet holes in his living room window. The Reverend Daniel Speed, a heavy, rough-looking man who might be completely terrifYing if he did not love to laugh and who owns a grocery store in Tallahassee, organized the boycott motor pool, with the result that all the windows were blown out of his store. The Speed and Steele children are among the state's troublesome stu dents. And Speed and Steele, along with Haley, are the people whom the students most trust. Speed's support of the students is particularly surprising in view of his extreme vulnerabil ity as a Negro businessman. "There has been," he told me, "m uch reprisal," but he preferred that I remain silent about the details. Haley drove me to the hotel that he had found for me in one of the two Negro sections of Tallahassee. This section seems to be the more disreputable of the two, judging at least from its long, unpaved streets, the gangs of loud, shabby men and women, boys and girls, in front of the barbershops, the poolroom, the Co ffee House, the El Dorado Caf e and the Chicken Shack.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Many of these thirty-somethings have been through the hard knock school of relationships. Some have had brief first marriages that ended in failure or they lived with another person or a series of other persons through their twenties. Others had a long run of one-night stands. A few were heartbroken by a lover’s rejection and for years felt too discouraged to try again. But then, in tentative but courageous steps, each of these children of divorce found someone whom they could love, trust, and cherish. It’s too soon, of course, to say how many of these good, later marriages will last. Most have only been in place for a few years and, like all marriages, they are not immune from strife. A few were shaky, and some had already come apart. But in the twenty-five-year interviews, I saw many happy, loving couples who were devoted to each other and who had clearly vanquished the fears that beset them in the early days of their relationships. One of the reasons I selected Karen as a main character for this book is that her story illustrates the troubled path that many follow before achieving a splendid marriage. Her mixed feelings of triumph and disbelief are emblematic of many in her generation. What distinguished these happily married people? After years of trial-and-error, they finally acquired the judgment to choose a mate carefully and wisely. And then they mustered the courage to pursue that person for a long-term commitment. This was a major achievement that reflected their greater maturity and increased self-esteem. As these same men and women entered their twenties, most were terrified of being alone—a feeling directly related to their fear of being abandoned or lost during the turmoil of their parents’ breakup and divorce. But as every young adult needs to learn, the only way to reject an unsuitable lover is to be able to face being alone. This is a hard lesson for everyone, but it’s especially difficult for children of divorce. Several of the women in the study told me candidly about their first breakthrough in therapy: they were finally able to go to a party and return home alone, without panicking. In another milestone, they also managed to loosen their ties to their parents. Instead of running home to help their moms and dads deal with every minor crisis in life, they were at last able to separate emotionally. Only then could they give up the expectation that they were doomed to share their parents’ fate. Only by separating were they free to look forward to a better marriage than their parents had achieved. Of course, it helped that many of these young adults were doing well in their careers and in other areas of their lives.

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

  Reply to Objection 2: The fear which the Apostle inculcates is in accordance with reason, namely that servants should fear lest they be lacking in the service they owe their masters. Reply to Objection 3: Reason dictates that we should shun the evils that we cannot withstand, and the endurance of which profits us nothing. Hence there is no sin in fearing them. Whether the sin of fear is contrary to fortitude?Objection 1: It seems that the sin of fear is not contrary to fortitude: because fortitude is about dangers of death, as stated above ([3317]Q[123], AA[4],5). But the sin of fear is not always connected with dangers of death, for a gloss on Ps. 127:1, “Blessed are all they that fear the Lord,” says that “it is human fear whereby we dread to suffer carnal dangers, or to lose worldly goods.” Again a gloss on Mat. 27:44, “He prayed the third time, saying the selfsame word,” says that “evil fear is threefold, fear of death, fear of pain, and fear of contempt.” Therefore the sin of fear is not contrary to fortitude. Objection 2: Further, the chief reason why a man is commended for fortitude is that he exposes himself to the danger of death. Now sometimes a man exposes himself to death through fear of slavery or shame. Thus Augustine relates (De Civ. Dei i) that Cato, in order not to be Caesar’s slave, gave himself up to death. Therefore the sin of fear bears a certain likeness to fortitude instead of being opposed thereto. Objection 3: Further, all despair arises from fear. But despair is opposed not to fortitude but to hope, as stated above (Q[20], A[1]; [3318]FS, Q[40], A[4]). Neither therefore is the sin of fear opposed to fortitude. On the contrary, The Philosopher (Ethic. ii, 7; iii, 7) states that timidity is opposed to fortitude.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It must have been winter because I remember he had a black overcoat on-because his overcoat was open-and he's stum bling past one of those high, iron railings with spikes on top, and he falls and he bumps his head against one of these rail ings, and blood comes down his face, and there are kids be hind him and they're tormenting him and laughing at him. And that's all I remember and I don't know why. But I only throw him in to dramatize this fact, that however solemn we writers, or myself, I, may sometimes sound, or how pontifical I may sometimes seem to be, on that level from which any genuine work of the imagination springs, I'm really, and we all are, absolutely helpless and ignorant. But this figure is important because he's going to appear in my novel. He can't be kept out of it. He occupies too large a place in my imagination. And then, of course, I remember the church people because I was practically born in the church, and I seem to have spent most of the time that I was helpless sitting on someone's lap in the church and being beaten over the head whenever I fell asleep, which was usually. I was frightened of all those broth ers and sisters of the church because they were all powerful, I thought they were. And I had one ally, my brother, who was a very undependable ally because sometimes I got beaten for things he did and sometimes he got beaten for things I did. But we were united in our hatred for the deacons and the deaconesses and the shouting sisters and of our father. And one of the reasons for this is that we were always hungry and he was always inviting those people over to the house on Sunday for an enormous banquet and we sat next to the ice box in the kitchen watching all those hams, and chickens, and biscuits go down those righteous bellies, which had no bottom. Now so far, in this hypothetical sketch of an unwritten and probably unwritablc novel, so good. From what we've already sketched we can begin to anticipate one of those long, warm, toasty novels. You know, those novels in which the novelist is looking back on himself, absolutely infatuated with himself as a child and everything is in sentimentality. But I think we NOTES FOR A HY POTH ETI CAL NOVEL 225 ought to bring ourselves up short because we don't need an other version of A Tree GroJVs in Brooklyn and we can do without another version of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. This hypothetical book is aiming at something more implacable than that.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I would have to appropriate these white centuries, I would have to make them mine-I would have to accept my special attitude, my special place in this scheme--other wise I would have no place in any scheme. What was the most difficult was the fact that I was fi>rced to admit something I had always hidden from myself, which the American Negro has had to hide from himself as the price of his public progress; that I hated and feared white people. This did not mean that I loved black people; on the contrary, I despised them, possibly because they failed to produce Rembrandt. In effect, I hated and feared the world. And this meant, not only that I thus gave the world an alto gether murderous power over me, but also that in such a self destroying limbo I could never hope to write. One writes out of one thing only-on e's own experience. Everything depends on how relentle ssly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of lif e that order which is art. The difficulty then, tor me, of being a Negro writer was the fact that I was, in effect, prohibited from examining my own experience too closely by the tremendous demands and the very real dangers of my social situation. I don't think the dilemma outlined above is uncommon. I do think, since writers work in the disastrously explicit me dium of language, that it goes a little way towards explaining why, out of the enormous resources of Negro speech and lif e, and despite the example of Negro music, prose written by Negroes has been generally speaking so pallid and so harsh. I have not written about being a Negro at such length because I expect that to be my only subject, but only because it was the gate I had to unlock befi>re I could hope to write about anything else. I don't think that the Negro problem in Amer ica can be even discussed coherently without bearing in mind its context; its context being the history, traditions, customs, the moral assumptions and preoccupations of the country; in short, the general social fabric. Appearances to the contrary, no one in America escapes its effects and everyone in America AUTOBIOGR APH ICAL NOTES 9 bears some responsibility for it. I believe this the more firmly because it is the overwhelming tendency to speak of this problem as though it were a thing apart. But in the work of Faulkner, in the general attitude and certain specific passages in Robert Penn \Varren, and, most significantly, in the advent of Ralph Ellison, one sees the beginnings-at leas t-of a more genuinely penetrating search .

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Now, anyone who has ever been compelled to think about it-any one, for example, who has ever been in love-knows that the one face which one can never see is one's own face. One's lover-or one's brother, or one's enemy-sees the f.1.ce you wear, and this face can elicit the most extraordinary re actions. We do the things we do, and feel what we feel, es sentially because we must-we are responsible for our actions, but we rarely understand them. It goes without saying, I be lieve, that if we understood ourselves better, we would dam age ourselves less. But the barrier between oneself and one's knowledge of oneself is high indeed. There are so many things one would rather not know! We become social creatures be cause we cannot live any other way. But in order to become social, there are a great many other things which we must not become, and we are frightened, all of us, of those forces within us which perpetually menace our precarious security. Yet, the forces are there, we cannot will them away. All we can do is learn to live with them. And we cannot learn this unless we are willing to tell the truth about ourselves, and the truth about us is always at variance with what we wish to be. The human effort is to bring these two realities into a relationship resembling reconciliation. The human beings whom we re spect the most, after all-and sometimes fear the most-are those who are most deeply involved in this delicate and stren uous effort: for they have the unsha kable authority which comes only from having looked on and endured and survived the worst. That nation is healthiest which has the least neces sity to distrust or ostracize or victimize these people- whom, as I say, we honor, once they are gone, because, somewhere in our hearts, we know that we cannot live without them. The dangers of being an American artist are not greater than those of being an artist anywhere else in the world, but they are very particular. These dangers are produced by our history. They rest on the fact that in order to conquer this continent, the particular aloneness of which I speak-the aloneness in which one discovers that lif e is tragic, and, thn-e fore, unutterably beautiful-could not be permitted. And that OTH ER ES SAYS this prohibition is typical of all emergent nations will be proven, I have no doubt, in many ways during the next fifty years. This continent now is conquered, but our habits and our fears remain. And, in the same way that to become a social human being one modifies and suppresses and, ultimately, without great courage, lies to oneself about all one's interior, uncharted chaos, so have we, as a nation, modified and sup pressed and lied about all the darker forces in our history.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The very word "institu tions," from my side of the ocean, where, it seemed to me, we suffered so cruelly from the lack of them, had a pleasant ring, as of safety and order and common sense; one had to come into contact with these institutions in order to under stand that they were also outmoded, exasperating, completely impersonal, and very often cruel. Similarly, the personality which had seemed from a distance to be so large and free had to be dealt with bdc:>re one could see that, if it was large, it was also inflexible and, for the foreigner, full of strange, high, EQ UAL IN l'ARIS 10 3 dusty rooms which could not be inhabited. One had, in short, to come into contact with an alien culture in order to under stand that a culture was not a community basket-weaving project, nor yet an act of God; was something neither desir able nor undesirable in itself , being inevitable, being nothing more or less than the recorded and visible effects on a body of people of the vicissitudes with which they had been forced to deal. And their great men are revealed as simply another of these vicissitudes, even if, quite against their will, the brief battle of their great men with them has lef t them richer. When my American friend left his hotel to move to mine, he took with him, out of pique, a bedsheet belonging to the hotel and put it in his suitcase. When he arrived at my hotel I borrowed the sheet, since my own were filthy and the cham bermaid showed no sign of bringing me any clean ones, and put it on my bed. The sheets belonging to my hotel I put out in the hall, congratulating myself on having thus forced on the attention of the Grand Hotel du Bac the unpleasant state of its linen. Thereafter, since, as it turned out, we kept very different hours-1 got up at noon, when, as I gathered by meeting him on the stairs one day, he was only just getting in-my new-f ound friend and I saw very little of each other.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I collapsed, weeping, terrified, and Emile led me out. He walked me up to Herald Square. It was night. He talked to me; he tried to make me sec something-tried to do some thing only a friend can do: and challenged me, thus: Even if what I was preaching was gospel, I had no right to preach it if I no longer believed it. To stay in the church merely because I was afraid of leaving it was unutterably far beneath me, and too despicable a cowardice for him to sup port in any fr iend of his. Therefore, on the coming Sunday, he would buy two tickets to a Broadway matinee and meet me on the steps of the 4 2nd Street Library, at two o'clock in CHAPTER ONE 5 0 3 the afternoon. He knew that I spent all day Sunday in church-the point, precisely, of the challenge. If I were not on the steps of the library (in the bookshelves of which so much of my trouble had begun!) then he would be ashamed of me and never speak to me again, and I would be ashamed of myself. (I cannot resist observing that this still seems to me a quite extraordinary confrontation between two adolescents, one white and one black: but, then, I had never forgotten Bill's quiet statement, when I went down to her house on 12th Street to tell her that I had been "saved" and would not be going to the movies, or the theater anymore-which meant that I would not be seeing her anymore: Fve lost a lot of respect fo r you. Perhaps, in the intervening time, I had lost a lot of respect for myself.) But beneath all this, as under a graveyard pallor, or the noonday sun, lay the fact that the leap demanded that I com mit myself to the clear impossibility of becoming a writer, and attempting to save my family that way. I do not think I said this. I think Emile knew it. I had hoped for a reprieve, hoped, on the marked Sunday, to get away, unnoticed: but I was the "young" Brother Bald win, and I sat in the fr ont row, and the pastor did not begin his sermon until about a quarter past one. Well. At one thirty, 1-tip-toed-out. The further details of my departure do not concern us here: that was how I left the church. I am fairly certain that the matinee, that Sunday, was Native Son (also directed by Orson Welles) at the St. James Theatre. We were in the balcony, and I remember standing up, abruptly and unwisely, when the play ended, and nearly falling headlong fr om the balcony to the pit. I did not know that I had been hit so hard: I will not forget Canada Lee's perfor mance as long as I live.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Because children of divorce don’t know how to negotiate conflict well, many reach for the worst solutions when trouble strikes. For example, some will sit on their feelings, not mentioning complaints or differences until their suppressed anger blows sky-high. Others burst into tears and are immobilized or retreat into themselves or into the next room and close the door. But the most common tendency is to run away at the first serious disagreement and wrestle with unconscious demons. This is because from the perspective of the child of divorce any argument can be the first step in an inevitable chain of conflict that will destroy the marriage. It’s easier to run away. One thirty-two-year-old woman left her marriage when she concluded that her husband gave priority to the wishes of his daughter from a previous marriage. She didn’t try to discuss the situation before bolting. Although she was otherwise content with the marriage and fond of the man, she never stopped to consider that the stepchild was an adolescent and would soon be out of the home. When I asked about it, she shrugged. “I’m used to being pushed around. It’s not worth fighting about. I’ll manage.” Then she confessed to me, “I realized when I packed that I had no place to go.” This kind of behavior totally baffles spouses like Gavin who were raised in intact families. The major and minor battles of their parents’ marriages were unpleasant but not terrifying. Fights do not, in their minds, threaten the marriage. They are storms but not hurricanes. The Gavins of this world do not enjoy conflict, but their anxiety is muted by an understanding that marriages just don’t spring into being. Resolving differences and recovering from anger and hurt simply goes with the territory. They’ve been present at family crises and seen their parents struggle with serious issues and survive. They understand that marriage requires dedication and hard work. They expect high points and lows. And they expect that two people who love each other will deal rationally with conflict and resolve it. When their partner who is a child of divorce panics after a minor quarrel like the one Karen described or threatens to leave, their reaction is utter bewilderment. What should people in this situation do? First, couples need to learn to recognize brewing storms and realize that one partner may be badly frightened. The goal is to maintain the relationship, not win the fight. Gavin’s instincts were exactly on target when he came home, saw Karen in a panic, took her in his arms, and told her how much he loved her. It’s useful at such times to back away from the immediate issue and take time out. As I learned from my research on successful marriages, it’s also useful to have rules for handling differences. One very useful rule is never to go to bed angry with each other. This doesn’t mean that the problem will be solved.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  “There were days when I couldn’t breathe,” Walter recalled later. “I hadn’t ever experienced anything like this before in my life. I was around all these murderers, and yet it felt like sometimes they were the only ones trying to help me. I prayed, I read the Bible, and I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I was scared, terrified just about every day.” Ralph Myers was faring no better. He had also been charged with capital murder in the death of Ronda Morrison, and his refusal to continue cooperating with law enforcement meant that he was sent to death row, too. He was placed on a different tier to prevent contact with McMillian. Whatever advantage Myers thought he could gain by saying he knew something about the Morrison murder was clearly gone now. He was depressed and sinking deeper into an emotional crisis. From the time he was burned as a child, he had always feared fire, heat, and small spaces. As the prisoners talked more and more about the details of the Evans’s execution and Wayne Ritter’s impending execution, Myers became more and more distraught. On the night of the Ritter execution, Myers was in full crisis, sobbing in his cell. There is a tradition on death row in Alabama that, at the time scheduled for the execution, the condemned prisoners bang on their cell doors with cups in protest. At midnight, while all the other prisoners banged away, Myers curled up on the floor in the corner of his cell, hyperventilating and flinching with each clang he heard. When the stench of burned flesh that many on the row claimed they could smell during the execution wafted into his cell, Myers dissolved. He called Tate the next morning and told him that he would say whatever he wanted if he would get him off death row. Tate initially justified keeping Myers and McMillian on death row for safety reasons. But Tate immediately picked Myers up and brought him back to the county jail the day after the Ritter execution. Tate didn’t appear to discuss with anyone the decision to move Myers off death row. Ordinarily, the Alabama Department of Corrections couldn’t just put people on death row or let them off without court orders or legal filings—and certainly no prison warden could do so on his own. But nothing about the prosecution of Walter McMillian was turning out to be ordinary. Once removed from death row and back in Monroe County, Myers affirmed his initial accusations against McMillian. With Myers back as the primary witness and Bill Hooks ready to say that he saw Walter’s truck at the crime scene, the district attorney believed that he could proceed against McMillian. The case was scheduled for trial in February 1988.

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

  Reply to Objection 3: Hope is opposed to fear on the part of the object, for hope is of good, fear of evil: whereas daring is about the same object, and is opposed to fear by way of approach and withdrawal, as stated above ([3289]FS, Q[45], A[1]). And since fortitude properly regards those temporal evils that withdraw one from virtue, as appears from Tully’s definition quoted in the Second Objection, it follows that fortitude properly is about fear and daring and not about hope, except in so far as it is connected with daring, as stated above ([3290]FS, Q[45], A[2]). Whether fortitude is only about dangers of death?Objection 1: It seems that fortitude is not only about dangers of death. For Augustine says (De Morib. Eccl. xv) that “fortitude is love bearing all things readily for the sake of the object beloved”: and (Music. vi) he says that fortitude is “the love which dreads no hardship, not even death.” Therefore fortitude is not only about danger of death, but also about other afflictions. Objection 2: Further, all the passions of the soul need to be reduced to a mean by some virtue. Now there is no other virtue reducing fears to a mean. Therefore fortitude is not only about fear of death, but also about other fears. Objection 3: Further, no virtue is about extremes. But fear of death is about an extreme, since it is the greatest of fears, as stated in Ethic. iii. Therefore the virtue of fortitude is not about fear of death. On the contrary, Andronicus says that “fortitude is a virtue of the irascible faculty that is not easily deterred by the fear of death.” I answer that, As stated above [3291](A[3]), it belongs to the virtue of fortitude to guard the will against being withdrawn from the good of reason through fear of bodily evil. Now it behooves one to hold firmly the good of reason against every evil whatsoever, since no bodily good is equivalent to the good of the reason. Hence fortitude of soul must be that which binds the will firmly to the good of reason in face of the greatest evils: because he that stands firm against great things, will in consequence stand firm against less things, but not conversely. Moreover it belongs to the notion of virtue that it should regard something extreme: and the most fearful of all bodily evils is death, since it does away all bodily goods. Wherefore Augustine says (De Morib. Eccl. xxii) that “the soul is shaken by its fellow body, with fear of toil and pain, lest the body be stricken and harassed with fear of death lest it be done away and destroyed.” Therefore the virtue of fortitude is about the fear of dangers of death.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Gina, a forty-year-old successful executive in an international company, told me, “I grew up feeling that men are unreliable, just flaky, that like my dad they only really want to play with toys. I know that I’ve gone out with men who seemed reliable and wonderful, but still, putting all my eggs in one basket with one man is totally frightening. I’m better off relying on me.” Growing Up Takes LongerWHEN KAREN CAME to see me in 1994 on the eve of her marriage, she was bursting to tell me everything that had happened since our last visit. I remembered her crying her eyes out, complaining about Nick, and here she was, glowing with happiness and optimism. What happened to her between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four? First, she described her decision to leave Nick, a journey that took her to a new life in Washington, D.C., where she stayed with a close friend from college and examined her options. “I realized that I wanted to help children but that to make a difference I’d need a degree, I’d need some expertise,” she said. Working her contacts, Karen soon heard about a masters of public health program at Johns Hopkins that would allow her to combine her interest in child welfare and community organization. Drawing on student loans and what remained from her grandmother’s inheritance, she applied and was accepted into the three-year program, moved to Baltimore, and worked part-time in a pediatric outreach program while attending school. Karen, at last following her own desires, was an outstanding student who soon caught the attention of senior professors who mentored her as she negotiated career opportunities. “I have the best job,” Karen informed me. “I work with severely handicapped children in five southern states where I run a rural outreach program. We’re based in Chapel Hill. I love my work, Judy. I make it my business to spend a lot of time out in the community working with the children. People ask how I can stand it but I don’t find it depressing because I get a lot of gifts from the children. They open up and share things with me, their hopes, their dreams, the things they want to do, and the many things they fear. I realize from being with them how precious life is and how you only have this day.” “Karen, you’ve been helping other people ever since I met you, when you were ten years old. But now it looks like you decided to take a chance on what you want. Maybe the dice will fall your way.” “That’s right. I decided to take a chance and I discovered what I want. And I finally figured out what I don’t want. I don’t want another edition of my relationships with my mom or dad. I don’t want a man who is dependent on me.” “And you do want?”

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Any eff ort, from here on out, to keep the Negro in his "place" can only have the most extreme and unl ucky repercussions. This being so, it would seem to me that the most intelligent eff ort we can now make is to give up this doomed endeavor and study how we can most quickly end this division in our house. The Negroes who rioted in the U.N. are but a very small echo of the black discontent now abroad in the world. If we are not able, and quickly, to face and begin to eliminate the sources of this discontent in our own country, we will never be able to do it on the great stage of the world. s. A Fly tn Buttermilk You CAN take the child out of the country," my elders were fond of saying, "but you can't take the country out of the child ." They were speaking of their own antecedents, I supposed; it didn't, anyway, seem possible that they could be warning me; I took myself out of the country and went to Paris. It was there I discovered that the old folks knew what they had been talking about: I found myself , willy-nilly, al chemized into an American the moment I touched French soil. Now, back again after nearly nine years, it was ironical to reflect that if I had not lived in France for so long I would never have found it necessary-o r possibl e-to visit the Amer ican South . The South had always frightened me. How deeply it had frightened me-though I had never seen it-and how soon, was one of the things my dreams revealed to me while I was there. And this made me think of the privacy and mys tery of childh ood all over again, in a new way. I wondered where children got their strength-the strength, in this case, to walk through mobs to get to school . "You've got to remember," said an older Negro friend to me, in Washington, "that no matter what you sec or how it makes you feel, it can't be compared to twenty-five, thirty years ago-you remember those photographs of Negroes hanging from trees?" I looked at him differently. I had seen the photographs-but he might have been one of them. "I remember," he said, "when conductors on streetcars wore pistols and had police powers." And he remembered a great deal more. He remembered, for example, hearing Booker T. Washington speak, and the day-to-day progress of the Scotts boro case, and the rise and bloody fall of Bessie Smith. These had been books and headlines and music for me but it now developed that they were also a part of my identity.

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

  GREGORY. (ubi sup.) Behold when it is said that this God was taken by the Devil into the holy city, pious ears tremble to hear, and yet the Devil is head and chief among the wicked; what wonder that He suffered Himself to be led up a mountain by the wicked one himself, who suffered Himself to be crucified by his members. GLOSS. (ord.) The Devil places us on high places by exalting with pride, that he may dash us to the ground again. REMIGIUS. The pinnacle is the seat of the doctors; for the temple had not a pointed roof like our houses, but was flat on the top after the manner of the country of Palestine, and in the temple were three stories. It should be known, that the pinnacle was on the floor, and in each story was one pinnacle. Whether then he placed Him on the pinnacle in the first story, or that in the second, or the third, he placed Him whence a fall was possible. GLOSS. (ord.) Observe here that all these things were done with bodily sense, and by careful comparison of the context it seems probable that the Devil appeared in human form. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. Perhaps you may say, How could he in the sight of all place Him bodily upon the temple? Perhaps the Devil so took Him as though He were visible to all, while He, without the Devil being aware of it, made Himself invisible. GLOSS. (ap. Anselm.) He set Him on a pinnacle of the temple when he would tempt Him through ambition, because in this seat of the doctors he had before taken many through the same temptation, and therefore thought that when set in the same seat, He might in like manner be puffed up with vain pride. JEROME. In the several temptations the single aim of the Devil is to find if He be the Son of God, but he is so answered as at last to depart in doubt; He says, Cast thyself, because the voice of the Devil, which is always calling men downwards, has power to persuade them, but may not compel them to fall. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. How does he expect to discover by this proposition whether He be the Son of God or not? For to fly through the air is not proper to the Divine nature, for it is not useful to any. If then any were to attempt to fly when challenged to it, he would be acting from ostentation, and would so belong rather to the Devil than to God. If it is enough to a wise man to be what he is, and he has no wish to seem what he is not, how much more should the Son of God hold it not necessary to shew what He is; He of whom none can know so much as He is in Himself?