Grief

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 Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  Leroy Worthington, a lifetime member ostracized for expressing dissenting views, told the press, “I know there is a cult in this church.” Terry Gustafson, the Clackamas County district attorney, described the mentality of the group. He said, “They think the world is out to destroy the church…This is what Walter [White] predicted.”355 Together, the Followers of Christ and the General Assembly Church of the First Born are responsible for more minor children dying due to medical neglect in recent history than any other similar groups in the United States.356 Historically, though, within the United States there have been other religious groups responsible for many needless deaths, notably Faith Assembly in Indiana, led by Hobart E. Freeman. Faith Assembly, which once included approximately as many as two thousand members, was deemed responsible for ninety deaths in eight states. These deaths included mostly children and women in childbirth.357 In 1984 Freeman was criminally indicted on conspiracy charges for encouraging parents to deny their children medical care. He died of congestive heart failure and bronchial pneumonia before the case went to trial.358 Without Freeman, Faith Assembly, which was often called a “cult,”359 disintegrated and faded away. Another purported cult historically linked to the issue of medical neglect is Meade Ministries, also known as End Times Ministries led by Charles Meade. Meade was once closely associated with Hobart Freeman, who influenced his faith healing beliefs. But the two preachers parted ways in 1984.360 Much like the other dominating leaders discussed, Meade had a long list of prohibited evils including TV, chewing gum, earrings, and Dr. Seuss books. Most notably he preached that sickness was “the work of the devil” to be healed by faith rather than by doctors.361 Joni Cutler, a former member of Meade Ministries, delivered her daughters at home according to Meade’s teachings. But due to complications and the ministry directive against doctors, one of Cutler’s babies died.362 It was a breach birth, and the infant struggled for two days. “Libby quit breathing again and turned blue…We needed help, but I could hardly get out of bed,” Cutler recounted in a press interview. Her mother-in-law suggested medical help, and she agreed but was overruled. “They told me if you think like that, that’s what could kill her,” Cutler said. The autopsy report stated that the cause of death was “pneumonia.” Her daughter would have had a 99 percent chance of survival if she had been brought to a hospital.363 Cutler later divorced her husband and left Meade Ministries in Florida. She moved with her four remaining daughters back to South Dakota, where she completed law school and was later elected a state senator. Joni Cutler received an award in 1990 for helping her state become the first to eliminate religious immunity laws concerning medical neglect.364 Cutler recalled in an interview, “For 10 years I did everything they told me to do…I lost the ability to think critically for myself.

• From The City of God

  100 Books That Matter: The City of God our moral expectations of the world, and what the world provides. Augustine addresses this issue in terms of this specific event—of the sack—and also more fundamentally as well, asking why, on Christian terms, does suffering happen? Then Augustine asks a second question. What ought humans to do when such sufferings are inflicted upon them? Never let anyone tell you that Augustine doesn’t take on big things in The City. So: suffering. Everyone suffers. In Augustine’s world, suffering and death were ever-present realities, much more than they are in ours. Many infants died soon after being born, many women died soon after giving birth, and at any age an infection on Friday could lead to the grave by Monday. Furthermore, suffering was inescapable. Not only was it an age without aspirin, without Novocain, without anesthesia; it was also an age without refrigeration, where the scent of rot, the smell of decay, was ever-present on the streets and in the houses. Feelings of pain, cries of suffering, the sight of grief, the scent of death, gave everyone a taste of the inevitable fate that awaits us all. This is all common to our human condition. But it’s at least unclear why people suffer to the degree that they do, and it may well be clear that people do not suffer in fair ways—that is, that some good people suffer a great deal, and some nasty people get off scot-free. What can we say about suffering? This is not a question Augustine could hide from, and he doesn’t. In Book 1, Chapter 9, he puts himself the question directly. Why do good and bad people both suffer? And he answers straightforwardly, that it is because we all, good and bad alike, improperly love the world. As he says, good and bad are chastised together because both alike, though not in the same degree, love this temporal life. No one is righteous, no one properly appreciates the world as it should be appreciated, and because of this, all find suffering in their interactions with the world.

• From An Anomalous Jew: Paul Among Jews, Greeks, and Romans (2016)

  Conclusion: The Making of Paulinism In sum, the “incident at Antioch” seems to have transpired as follows: The Antiochene church—with Peter, Barnabas, and Paul—included Jewish and Gentile Christ-believers worshiping together and eating kosher meals together, while still within the orbit, or at least on the fringes, of the Antiochene Jewish community. However, a surge in Judean zealotry led James in Jerusalem to dispatch a delegation to Antioch to urge Peter to separate from Gentiles on account of their inherent impurity unless the Gentiles judaized and become circumcised proselytes. This played right into the hands of the “circumcision” party in Antioch, local Jews and a small faction of Christ-believing Jewish sympathizers, who were affronted by Peter and Paul's blatant fraternizing with Gentiles. This faction applied pressure on Peter to comply with the Jacobean embassy’s request, which Peter reluctantly did. Paul saw this pragmatic move as a betrayal of the truth of the gospel that God accepts Gentiles as Gentiles on the basis of faith. He publicly called Peter to account, but it seems that the majority sided with Peter. On the significance of this event, according to Hengel, the “account of the catastrophe in Gal 2:11 shows a deep hurt which was not fully healed even years afterwards.”’°’ I want to suggest that Gal 2:11-14 signifies a “parting in the ways’ between Paul and the Jerusalem church. If Paul had won the argument at Antioch, that is, had he won the support of the majority of Jewish Christ- believers there, he presumably would have said so to the Galatians.'** Instead, he became an outsider to the very assemblies that he had helped to establish, grow, and defend. He had to seek another base of mission operations and was left with only the support of Gentile-majority churches in Galatia and Cili- cia. As time passed, even his foothold there proved to be tenuous, and some ground may have been lost in Galatia, even while Paul succeeded in his letter 102. Betz, Galatians, 112. 103. Hengel and Schwemer, Paul between Damascus and Antioch, 215. 104. Bruce, Galatians, 134; Holtz, “Der Antiochenische Zwischenfall,’ 124; Longenecker, Galatians, 79; Hill, Hellenists and Hebrews, 126; Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles, 56; Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem, 489-94. 201 AN ANOMALOUS JEW to the Galatians in preventing a wholesale defection to the nomistic gospel of the intruding proselytizers.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “I would by no means speak disrespectfully of any relation of yours, madam. Miss Lucy Steele is, I dare say, a very deserving young woman, but in the present case you know, the connection must be impossible. And to have entered into a secret engagement with a young man under her uncle’s care, the son of a woman especially of such very large fortune as Mrs. Ferrars, is perhaps, altogether a little extraordinary. In short, I do not mean to reflect upon the behaviour of any person whom you have a regard for, Mrs. Jennings. We all wish her extremely happy; and Mrs. Ferrars’s conduct throughout the whole, has been such as every conscientious, good mother, in like circumstances, would adopt. It has been dignified and liberal. Edward has drawn his own lot, and I fear it will be a bad one.” Marianne sighed out her similar apprehension; and Elinor’s heart wrung for the feelings of Edward, while braving his mother’s threats, for a woman who could not reward him. “Well, sir,” said Mrs. Jennings, “and how did it end?” “I am sorry to say, ma’am, in a most unhappy rupture:—Edward is dismissed for ever from his mother’s notice. He left her house yesterday, but where he is gone, or whether he is still in town, I do not know; for _we_ of course can make no inquiry.” “Poor young man!—and what is to become of him?” “What, indeed, ma’am! It is a melancholy consideration. Born to the prospect of such affluence! I cannot conceive a situation more deplorable. The interest of two thousand pounds—how can a man live on it?—and when to that is added the recollection, that he might, but for his own folly, within three months have been in the receipt of two thousand, five hundred a-year (for Miss Morton has thirty thousand pounds,) I cannot picture to myself a more wretched condition. We must all feel for him; and the more so, because it is totally out of our power to assist him.” “Poor young man!” cried Mrs. Jennings, “I am sure he should be very welcome to bed and board at my house; and so I would tell him if I could see him. It is not fit that he should be living about at his own charge now, at lodgings and taverns.” Elinor’s heart thanked her for such kindness towards Edward, though she could not forbear smiling at the form of it.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Elinor, though never less disposed to speak than at that moment, obliged herself to answer such an attack as this, and, therefore, trying to smile, replied, “And have you really, Ma’am, talked yourself into a persuasion of my sister’s being engaged to Mr. Willoughby? I thought it had been only a joke, but so serious a question seems to imply more; and I must beg, therefore, that you will not deceive yourself any longer. I do assure you that nothing would surprise me more than to hear of their being going to be married.” “For shame, for shame, Miss Dashwood! how can you talk so? Don’t we all know that it must be a match, that they were over head and ears in love with each other from the first moment they met? Did not I see them together in Devonshire every day, and all day long; and did not I know that your sister came to town with me on purpose to buy wedding clothes? Come, come, this won’t do. Because you are so sly about it yourself, you think nobody else has any senses; but it is no such thing, I can tell you, for it has been known all over town this ever so long. I tell every body of it and so does Charlotte.” “Indeed, Ma’am,” said Elinor, very seriously, “you are mistaken. Indeed, you are doing a very unkind thing in spreading the report, and you will find that you have though you will not believe me now.” Mrs. Jennings laughed again, but Elinor had not spirits to say more, and eager at all events to know what Willoughby had written, hurried away to their room, where, on opening the door, she saw Marianne stretched on the bed, almost choked by grief, one letter in her hand, and two or three others lying by her. Elinor drew near, but without saying a word; and seating herself on the bed, took her hand, kissed her affectionately several times, and then gave way to a burst of tears, which at first was scarcely less violent than Marianne’s. The latter, though unable to speak, seemed to feel all the tenderness of this behaviour, and after some time thus spent in joint affliction, she put all the letters into Elinor’s hands; and then covering her face with her handkerchief, almost screamed with agony. Elinor, who knew that such grief, shocking as it was to witness it, must have its course, watched by her till this excess of suffering had somewhat spent itself, and then turning eagerly to Willoughby’s letter, read as follows: “Bond Street, January.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  They were interrupted by the entrance of Margaret; and Elinor was then at liberty to think over the representations of her mother, to acknowledge the probability of many, and hope for the justice of all. They saw nothing of Marianne till dinner time, when she entered the room and took her place at the table without saying a word. Her eyes were red and swollen; and it seemed as if her tears were even then restrained with difficulty. She avoided the looks of them all, could neither eat nor speak, and after some time, on her mother’s silently pressing her hand with tender compassion, her small degree of fortitude was quite overcome, she burst into tears and left the room. This violent oppression of spirits continued the whole evening. She was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself. The slightest mention of anything relative to Willoughby overpowered her in an instant; and though her family were most anxiously attentive to her comfort, it was impossible for them, if they spoke at all, to keep clear of every subject which her feelings connected with him. CHAPTER XVI. Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby. She would have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than when she lay down in it. But the feelings which made such composure a disgrace, left her in no danger of incurring it. She was awake the whole night, and she wept the greatest part of it. She got up with a headache, was unable to talk, and unwilling to take any nourishment; giving pain every moment to her mother and sisters, and forbidding all attempt at consolation from either. Her sensibility was potent enough! When breakfast was over she walked out by herself, and wandered about the village of Allenham, indulging the recollection of past enjoyment and crying over the present reverse for the chief of the morning. The evening passed off in the equal indulgence of feeling. She played over every favourite song that she had been used to play to Willoughby, every air in which their voices had been oftenest joined, and sat at the instrument gazing on every line of music that he had written out for her, till her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness could be gained; and this nourishment of grief was every day applied. She spent whole hours at the pianoforte alternately singing and crying; her voice often totally suspended by her tears. In books too, as well as in music, she courted the misery which a contrast between the past and present was certain of giving. She read nothing but what they had been used to read together.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “You have probably entirely forgotten a conversation—(it is not to be supposed that it could make any impression on you)—a conversation between us one evening at Barton Park—it was the evening of a dance—in which I alluded to a lady I had once known, as resembling, in some measure, your sister Marianne.” “Indeed,” answered Elinor, “I have _not_ forgotten it.” He looked pleased by this remembrance, and added, “If I am not deceived by the uncertainty, the partiality of tender recollection, there is a very strong resemblance between them, as well in mind as person. The same warmth of heart, the same eagerness of fancy and spirits. This lady was one of my nearest relations, an orphan from her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father. Our ages were nearly the same, and from our earliest years we were playfellows and friends. I cannot remember the time when I did not love Eliza; and my affection for her, as we grew up, was such, as perhaps, judging from my present forlorn and cheerless gravity, you might think me incapable of having ever felt. Hers, for me, was, I believe, fervent as the attachment of your sister to Mr. Willoughby and it was, though from a different cause, no less unfortunate. At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian. My brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her. I had hoped that her regard for me would support her under any difficulty, and for some time it did; but at last the misery of her situation, for she experienced great unkindness, overcame all her resolution, and though she had promised me that nothing—but how blindly I relate! I have never told you how this was brought on. We were within a few hours of eloping together for Scotland. The treachery, or the folly, of my cousin’s maid betrayed us. I was banished to the house of a relation far distant, and she was allowed no liberty, no society, no amusement, till my father’s point was gained. I had depended on her fortitude too far, and the blow was a severe one—but had her marriage been happy, so young as I then was, a few months must have reconciled me to it, or at least I should not have now to lament it. This however was not the case. My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced as Mrs. Brandon’s, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my regiment in the East Indies) she should fall? Had I remained in England, perhaps—but I meant to promote the happiness of both by removing from her for years, and for that purpose had procured my exchange. The shock which her marriage had given me,” he continued, in a voice of great agitation, “was of trifling weight—was nothing to what I felt when I heard, about two years afterwards, of her divorce. It was _that_ which threw this gloom,—even now the recollection of what I suffered—”

• From The City of God

  34 Books That Matter: The City of God from a neighbor’s orchard with friends; running wild in the streets—he was no real party animal. He was a driven young man on the go. He had a lover, a long-time common-law wife, whose name he never reveals. She gave him a son, Adeodatus. Significantly, the name means God-given, so Augustine was thinking of God before becoming a Christian. It’s also significant that Adeodatus was born in about 371 or 372, that same period when Patricius, his father, died, when Augustine was about 18. Augustine sent his wife and Adeodatus’s mother away from them soon before his conversion as part of his mother’s plan to get him to marry into a noble Roman family. We know nothing more of this woman, and Adeodatus himself would die at age 17, in 390, soon after he and his father were baptized. It is one of the silent mysteries of Augustine, one of the influences we’ll never be able to measure, that everything we have that he wrote was the product of the mind of a father of a dead, much beloved son, and a onetime husband who had sent his wife painfully away from him. From his training as a teacher of rhetoric, he learned above all a certain picture of moral formation, of what it means to become a fully civilized man. And, by the way, man it was; Augustine’s world was deeply sexist. And while Augustine would come in his own ways to challenge that patriarchy on its edges, insisting on women’s full capacities as reasoners and as bearers of the image of God—guided by the respect he always held for his mother, Monnica—he basically agreed that women were to be regarded as weaker versions of men, but in no way qualitatively different from them. Rhetoric was not simply one disciple among others in Roman education; it was the basis of education. The aim of education was not simply the delivery of data or information to a student, but formation—to become a certain kind of agent. To be thus educated meant to be civilized, and this forming required rhetoric. Augustine learned that the model rhetor gave speeches which oriented his

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ὀλο-φλυκτίς, δος, ἡ, a large pimple, Hipp. 673. 37, Erotian. :—éAo- φυκτίς, a pimple on the tongue, Myrtil. Tv. 3, ubi v. Meineke. ὀλοφυγδών, dvos, ἧ. -- ὀλοφλυκτίς, Theocr. 9. 30. r ὀλοφυδνός, ἡ, dv, lamenting, ἔπος δ᾽ ὀλοφυδνὸν ἔειμεν Il. 5. 683., 23. 102, Od. 19. 362 :---ὀλοφυδνά, as Adv., in Anth. P. 7. 486. ddo-hurs, és, grown as a whole, consisting all of one piece, Arist. P. A. 4. 12,123 cf. οὐλοφυής. ὁλό-φῦλος, ov, = ὁλόκληρος, Suid. ὀλοφυρμός, οὔ, ὃ, Lamentation, Ar. Vesp. 390, Thuc. 3. 67., 7. 71, Plat. ὀλοφύρομαι [0], Dep. used mostly in pres.; but a fut. ὀλοφυροῦμαι occurs in Lys. 181. 353 aor. ὠλοφυράμην Id. 194.11; Ep. (without augm.) ὀλοφύραο, ὀλοφύρατο Od. 11. 417, 1]. 8. 2455 and a part. aor. pass. ὀλοφυρθείς in same sense, Thuc. 6. 78 :—an Aecol. form ὀλοφύρρω cited by Hdn. π. μον. λέξ. 43. 17 :—cf. ἀν-ολοφύρομαι. I. intr. to lament, wail, moan, weep, esp. in part. pres., Il. 5. 871 ; mostly with an Ady., πόλλ᾽ ὀλοφυρόμενοι 24. 328; οἴκτρ᾽ ὀλοφυρομένους Od. το. 409; aiv’ OA. 22. 447; so in Hdt. 2.141; 6A. τινὶ at a thing, Thue. 6. 78, Plat. Rep. 329 A. 2. to lament or mourn for the ills of others, hence to feel pity, ὀλοφύρεται ἦτορ 1]. 16. 450; θυμῷ oA, Od. 11. 418: c. gen. fo have pity upon one, Δαναῶν, ᾿Αργείων 1]. 8. 33, 202, etc. ; “Extopos 22. 169. 3. to beg with tears and lamentations, καί pot δὸς τὴν χεῖρ᾽, ὀλοφύρομαι 1]. 23. 75. 4. ς. inf., πῶς ὀλοφύρεαι ἄλκιμος εἶναι; why lament that thou must be brave? Od. 22. 232: ὁ. part., OA. τριηραρχοῦντες Lys. 181. 35. II. c. acc. to lament over, bewail, Od. 19. 522, Soph. El. 145, Eur. Rhes. 896, Thuc. 2. 443 τὸν μὲν... ὀλόφυρονται, ὅσα μιν δεῖ... ἀναπλῆσαι κακά for all the miseries which he must go through, Hdt. 5. 4. 2. to pity, Twa Il. 8. 245, Od. 4. 364., το. 158.—Ep. Verb, rare in Trag., but used here and there in Att. Prose, cf. dAopuppds, ὀλόφυρσις. (Origin uncertain.) ὀλόφυρσις, ἡ, -- ὀλοφυρμός, Thuc. 1.143; τὰς ὀλοφύρσεις τῶν ἀπογι- γνομένων lamentations for .., Id. 2. 51. ὀλοφυρτικός, 4, όν, inclined to lamentation, querulous, Arist. Eth. N. 4. 3, 32. Adv. -κῶς, Joseph. B. J. 6. 5, 3. ὀλοφώιος, ov, Ep. Adj. destructive, deadly, Hom., only in Od. and in neut. pl, 6A. δήνεα pernicious arts or plots, 10. 289; ὀλοφώια εἰδώς versed in pernicious arts, 4. 460, εἴς. ; πάντα δέ τοι ἐρέω ὀλοφώια τοῖο γέροντος 4. 410; in later Ep., λυκῶν ὀλοφώιον ἔρνος Theocr. 25. 185; aA. ἰός Nic. Th. 327. (From 4/OA, ὄλλυμι: the term. -φώιος has not been explained.) ὁλό-φωνος, ov, full-voiced, or, ὀλόφωνος, with fatal voice, of the cock, Cratin. ‘Op. 1. δὁλό-φωτος, ov, in full light, Eumath. 11. 11.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  They were interrupted by the entrance of Margaret; and Elinor was then at liberty to think over the representations of her mother, to acknowledge the probability of many, and hope for the justice of all. They saw nothing of Marianne till dinner time, when she entered the room and took her place at the table without saying a word. Her eyes were red and swollen; and it seemed as if her tears were even then restrained with difficulty. She avoided the looks of them all, could neither eat nor speak, and after some time, on her mother’s silently pressing her hand with tender compassion, her small degree of fortitude was quite overcome, she burst into tears and left the room. This violent oppression of spirits continued the whole evening. She was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself. The slightest mention of anything relative to Willoughby overpowered her in an instant; and though her family were most anxiously attentive to her comfort, it was impossible for them, if they spoke at all, to keep clear of every subject which her feelings connected with him. CHAPTER XVI. Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby. She would have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than when she lay down in it. But the feelings which made such composure a disgrace, left her in no danger of incurring it. She was awake the whole night, and she wept the greatest part of it. She got up with a headache, was unable to talk, and unwilling to take any nourishment; giving pain every moment to her mother and sisters, and forbidding all attempt at consolation from either. Her sensibility was potent enough! When breakfast was over she walked out by herself, and wandered about the village of Allenham, indulging the recollection of past enjoyment and crying over the present reverse for the chief of the morning. The evening passed off in the equal indulgence of feeling. She played over every favourite song that she had been used to play to Willoughby, every air in which their voices had been oftenest joined, and sat at the instrument gazing on every line of music that he had written out for her, till her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness could be gained; and this nourishment of grief was every day applied. She spent whole hours at the pianoforte alternately singing and crying; her voice often totally suspended by her tears. In books too, as well as in music, she courted the misery which a contrast between the past and present was certain of giving. She read nothing but what they had been used to read together.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Many were the tears shed by them in their last adieus to a place so much beloved. “Dear, dear Norland!” said Marianne, as she wandered alone before the house, on the last evening of their being there; “when shall I cease to regret you!—when learn to feel a home elsewhere!—Oh! happy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view you no more!—And you, ye well-known trees!—but you will continue the same.—No leaf will decay because we are removed, nor any branch become motionless although we can observe you no longer!—No; you will continue the same; unconscious of the pleasure or the regret you occasion, and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade!—But who will remain to enjoy you?” CHAPTER VI. The first part of their journey was performed in too melancholy a disposition to be otherwise than tedious and unpleasant. But as they drew towards the end of it, their interest in the appearance of a country which they were to inhabit overcame their dejection, and a view of Barton Valley as they entered it gave them cheerfulness. It was a pleasant fertile spot, well wooded, and rich in pasture. After winding along it for more than a mile, they reached their own house. A small green court was the whole of its demesne in front; and a neat wicket gate admitted them into it. As a house, Barton Cottage, though small, was comfortable and compact; but as a cottage it was defective, for the building was regular, the roof was tiled, the window shutters were not painted green, nor were the walls covered with honeysuckles. A narrow passage led directly through the house into the garden behind. On each side of the entrance was a sitting room, about sixteen feet square; and beyond them were the offices and the stairs. Four bed-rooms and two garrets formed the rest of the house. It had not been built many years and was in good repair. In comparison of Norland, it was poor and small indeed!—but the tears which recollection called forth as they entered the house were soon dried away. They were cheered by the joy of the servants on their arrival, and each for the sake of the others resolved to appear happy. It was very early in September; the season was fine, and from first seeing the place under the advantage of good weather, they received an impression in its favour which was of material service in recommending it to their lasting approbation.

• From The City of God

  75 Lecture 4 Transcript—Augustine’s Pagan and Christian Audience mind and in his world—helps us to understand aspects of the book that we would otherwise not notice. Consider that the book, in its first sentence, is written in answer to a request from one Marcellinus. Who was he? Flavius Marcellinus was a Christian, and a tribune and notary under the Western emperor Honorius. He was the emperor’s personal envoy and direct agent, sent to Africa to oversee the great Council of Carthage in 411 to adjudicate Donatist-Catholic debates in North Africa. He was a major Roman player and a friend to Augustine. Augustine dedicated The City of God to Marcellinus. He looked to be the kind of Christian political actor that Augustine had in mind. But then, in 413, after Augustine had finished and published Books 1–3 of The City, Marcellinus was caught up in a great tumult. Roman North Africa was thrown into chaos by what became known as the Revolt of Heraclian, the Count of Africa, who tried to invade Italy and seize control of the Western Empire. In the aftermath, Marcellinus was arrested, accused of being one of Heraclian’s allies, and despite the pleas of many, not least Augustine, he, together with his brother Apringius, was executed in public, in disgrace, through decapitation by the sword on September 13, 413. Within a year of his death it became clear that he had been innocent, and that the authorities had acted in anxious haste, killing a good man and a loyal servant of the imperium. Augustine never swerved from his loyalty to his friend. Many years later, when the imperium Marcellinus had served seemed shattered beyond repair, Augustine recalled Marcellinus’s prompt for the book. In the very last paragraph of Book 22, 15 years on after Marcellinus’s death, Augustine describes the completion of the work as recompense for a debt he had accepted long ago. We can trace the origins of that debt pretty clearly, in fact. In the winter of 411–412, after the Council of Carthage was over, Marcellinus

• From The City of God

  25 Lecture 2—Who Was Augustine of Hippo? Adeodatus died at age 17, soon after he and his father were baptized. ›It is one of the mysteries of Augustine—an influence we can never measure—that everything we have that he wrote came from the mind of the father of a dead, much beloved, son and a husband who had sent his wife away. „From his training as a teacher of rhetoric, Augustine learned a certain idea of moral formation, of what it means to become a fully civilized man. Rhetoric was not simply one discipline among others in Roman education; it was the basis of education, the aim of which was to become a certain kind of agent. To be thus educated meant to be civilized. Involvement with Manicheism „Throughout his youth, Augustine was involved with Manicheism, which shared a deep resonance with Neoplatonist beliefs about the lesser nature of material reality and the idea that the truth lies deeply inside us, in the most spiritual part of our beings. ›From his time with the Manicheans and with Neoplatonism he learned an appreciation of contemplation and a deep suspicion of noise and turbulence. ›He also acquired the idea that “behind” this world there is another, truer, deeper one; so we must resist the idea that our sensory experience is exhaustive of all reality. „Augustine’s time with the Manicheans and his Platonism more broadly receive the blame for his perceived dualism; that is, his putative belief that people are souls embedded in bodies that are strictly speaking accidental to their being and his hostility to the idea that the material world is worth much. 26 Books That Matter: The City of God „Ultimately Augustine was unsatisfied by Manicheism. In Milan he met Ambrose, its Neoplatonist Christian bishop, and found a congenial way of being Christian. He converted and was baptized in 387. St. Ambrose and Saint Augustine

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  So acutely did Mrs. Dashwood feel this ungracious behaviour, and so earnestly did she despise her daughter-in-law for it, that, on the arrival of the latter, she would have quitted the house for ever, had not the entreaty of her eldest girl induced her first to reflect on the propriety of going, and her own tender love for all her three children determined her afterwards to stay, and for their sakes avoid a breach with their brother. Elinor, this eldest daughter, whose advice was so effectual, possessed a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment, which qualified her, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and enabled her frequently to counteract, to the advantage of them all, that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led to imprudence. She had an excellent heart;—her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them: it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn; and which one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught. Marianne’s abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor’s. She was sensible and clever; but eager in everything: her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting: she was everything but prudent. The resemblance between her and her mother was strikingly great. Elinor saw, with concern, the excess of her sister’s sensibility; but by Mrs. Dashwood it was valued and cherished. They encouraged each other now in the violence of their affliction. The agony of grief which overpowered them at first, was voluntarily renewed, was sought for, was created again and again. They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future. Elinor, too, was deeply afflicted; but still she could struggle, she could exert herself. She could consult with her brother, could receive her sister-in-law on her arrival, and treat her with proper attention; and could strive to rouse her mother to similar exertion, and encourage her to similar forbearance. Margaret, the other sister, was a good-humored, well-disposed girl; but as she had already imbibed a good deal of Marianne’s romance, without having much of her sense, she did not, at thirteen, bid fair to equal her sisters at a more advanced period of life. CHAPTER II. Mrs. John Dashwood now installed herself mistress of Norland; and her mother and sisters-in-law were degraded to the condition of visitors. As such, however, they were treated by her with quiet civility; and by her husband with as much kindness as he could feel towards anybody beyond himself, his wife, and their child. He really pressed them, with some earnestness, to consider Norland as their home; and, as no plan appeared so eligible to Mrs. Dashwood as remaining there till she could accommodate herself with a house in the neighbourhood, his invitation was accepted.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “I could meet him no other way. Eliza had confessed to me, though most reluctantly, the name of her lover; and when he returned to town, which was within a fortnight after myself, we met by appointment, he to defend, I to punish his conduct. We returned unwounded, and the meeting, therefore, never got abroad.” Elinor sighed over the fancied necessity of this; but to a man and a soldier she presumed not to censure it. “Such,” said Colonel Brandon, after a pause, “has been the unhappy resemblance between the fate of mother and daughter! and so imperfectly have I discharged my trust!” “Is she still in town?” “No; as soon as she recovered from her lying-in, for I found her near her delivery, I removed her and her child into the country, and there she remains.” Recollecting, soon afterwards, that he was probably dividing Elinor from her sister, he put an end to his visit, receiving from her again the same grateful acknowledgments, and leaving her full of compassion and esteem for him. CHAPTER XXXII. When the particulars of this conversation were repeated by Miss Dashwood to her sister, as they very soon were, the effect on her was not entirely such as the former had hoped to see. Not that Marianne appeared to distrust the truth of any part of it, for she listened to it all with the most steady and submissive attention, made neither objection nor remark, attempted no vindication of Willoughby, and seemed to show by her tears that she felt it to be impossible. But though this behaviour assured Elinor that the conviction of this guilt was carried home to her mind, though she saw with satisfaction the effect of it, in her no longer avoiding Colonel Brandon when he called, in her speaking to him, even voluntarily speaking, with a kind of compassionate respect, and though she saw her spirits less violently irritated than before, she did not see her less wretched. Her mind did become settled, but it was settled in a gloomy dejection. She felt the loss of Willoughby’s character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart; his seduction and desertion of Miss Williams, the misery of that poor girl, and the doubt of what his designs might once have been on herself, preyed altogether so much on her spirits, that she could not bring herself to speak of what she felt even to Elinor; and, brooding over her sorrows in silence, gave more pain to her sister than could have been communicated by the most open and most frequent confession of them.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  It amused her to observe that all her friends seemed determined to send her to Delaford;—a place, in which, of all others, she would now least chuse to visit, or wish to reside; for not only was it considered as her future home by her brother and Mrs. Jennings, but even Lucy, when they parted, gave her a pressing invitation to visit her there. Very early in April, and tolerably early in the day, the two parties from Hanover Square and Berkeley Street set out from their respective homes, to meet, by appointment, on the road. For the convenience of Charlotte and her child, they were to be more than two days on their journey, and Mr. Palmer, travelling more expeditiously with Colonel Brandon, was to join them at Cleveland soon after their arrival. Marianne, few as had been her hours of comfort in London, and eager as she had long been to quit it, could not, when it came to the point, bid adieu to the house in which she had for the last time enjoyed those hopes, and that confidence, in Willoughby, which were now extinguished for ever, without great pain. Nor could she leave the place in which Willoughby remained, busy in new engagements, and new schemes, in which she could have no share, without shedding many tears. Elinor’s satisfaction, at the moment of removal, was more positive. She had no such object for her lingering thoughts to fix on, she left no creature behind, from whom it would give her a moment’s regret to be divided for ever, she was pleased to be free herself from the persecution of Lucy’s friendship, she was grateful for bringing her sister away unseen by Willoughby since his marriage, and she looked forward with hope to what a few months of tranquility at Barton might do towards restoring Marianne’s peace of mind, and confirming her own. Their journey was safely performed. The second day brought them into the cherished, or the prohibited, county of Somerset, for as such was it dwelt on by turns in Marianne’s imagination; and in the forenoon of the third they drove up to Cleveland. Cleveland was a spacious, modern-built house, situated on a sloping lawn. It had no park, but the pleasure-grounds were tolerably extensive; and like every other place of the same degree of importance, it had its open shrubbery, and closer wood walk, a road of smooth gravel winding round a plantation, led to the front, the lawn was dotted over with timber, the house itself was under the guardianship of the fir, the mountain-ash, and the acacia, and a thick screen of them altogether, interspersed with tall Lombardy poplars, shut out the offices.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  With strong concern, and with many reproaches for not being called to their aid, did Mrs. Jennings hear in the morning of what had passed. Her former apprehensions, now with greater reason restored, left her no doubt of the event; and though trying to speak comfort to Elinor, her conviction of her sister’s danger would not allow her to offer the comfort of hope. Her heart was really grieved. The rapid decay, the early death of a girl so young, so lovely as Marianne, must have struck a less interested person with concern. On Mrs. Jennings’s compassion she had other claims. She had been for three months her companion, was still under her care, and she was known to have been greatly injured, and long unhappy. The distress of her sister too, particularly a favourite, was before her;—and as for their mother, when Mrs. Jennings considered that Marianne might probably be to her what Charlotte was to herself, her sympathy in her sufferings was very sincere. Mr. Harris was punctual in his second visit;—but he came to be disappointed in his hopes of what the last would produce. His medicines had failed;—the fever was unabated; and Marianne only more quiet—not more herself—remained in a heavy stupor. Elinor, catching all, and more than all, his fears in a moment, proposed to call in further advice. But he judged it unnecessary: he had still something more to try, some more fresh application, of whose success he was as confident as the last, and his visit concluded with encouraging assurances which reached the ear, but could not enter the heart of Miss Dashwood. She was calm, except when she thought of her mother; but she was almost hopeless; and in this state she continued till noon, scarcely stirring from her sister’s bed, her thoughts wandering from one image of grief, one suffering friend to another, and her spirits oppressed to the utmost by the conversation of Mrs. Jennings, who scrupled not to attribute the severity and danger of this attack to the many weeks of previous indisposition which Marianne’s disappointment had brought on. Elinor felt all the reasonableness of the idea, and it gave fresh misery to her reflections.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “You have probably entirely forgotten a conversation—(it is not to be supposed that it could make any impression on you)—a conversation between us one evening at Barton Park—it was the evening of a dance—in which I alluded to a lady I had once known, as resembling, in some measure, your sister Marianne.” “Indeed,” answered Elinor, “I have not forgotten it.” He looked pleased by this remembrance, and added, “If I am not deceived by the uncertainty, the partiality of tender recollection, there is a very strong resemblance between them, as well in mind as person. The same warmth of heart, the same eagerness of fancy and spirits. This lady was one of my nearest relations, an orphan from her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father. Our ages were nearly the same, and from our earliest years we were playfellows and friends. I cannot remember the time when I did not love Eliza; and my affection for her, as we grew up, was such, as perhaps, judging from my present forlorn and cheerless gravity, you might think me incapable of having ever felt. Hers, for me, was, I believe, fervent as the attachment of your sister to Mr. Willoughby and it was, though from a different cause, no less unfortunate. At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian. My brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her. I had hoped that her regard for me would support her under any difficulty, and for some time it did; but at last the misery of her situation, for she experienced great unkindness, overcame all her resolution, and though she had promised me that nothing—but how blindly I relate! I have never told you how this was brought on. We were within a few hours of eloping together for Scotland. The treachery, or the folly, of my cousin’s maid betrayed us. I was banished to the house of a relation far distant, and she was allowed no liberty, no society, no amusement, till my father’s point was gained. I had depended on her fortitude too far, and the blow was a severe one—but had her marriage been happy, so young as I then was, a few months must have reconciled me to it, or at least I should not have now to lament it. This however was not the case. My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced as Mrs. Brandon’s, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my regiment in the East Indies) she should fall? Had I remained in England, perhaps—but I meant to promote the happiness of both by removing from her for years, and for that purpose had procured my exchange. The shock which her marriage had given me,” he continued, in a voice of great agitation, “was of trifling weight—was nothing to what I felt when I heard, about two years afterwards, of her divorce. It was that which threw this gloom,—even now the recollection of what I suffered—”

• From The City of God

  [1269] Terent. Adelph. v. 4. [1270] Eunuch, i. 1. [1271] In Verrem, ii. 1. 15. [1272] Matt. x. 36. Chapter 6. --Of the Error of Human Judgments When the Truth is Hidden. What shall I say of these judgments which men pronounce on men, and which are necessary in communities, whatever outward peace they enjoy? Melancholy and lamentable judgments they are, since the judges are men who cannot discern the consciences of those at their bar, and are therefore frequently compelled to put innocent witnesses to the torture to ascertain the truth regarding the crimes of other men. What shall I say of torture applied to the accused himself? He is tortured to discover whether he is guilty, so that, though innocent, he suffers most undoubted punishment for crime that is still doubtful, not because it is proved that he committed it, but because it is not ascertained that he did not commit it. Thus the ignorance of the judge frequently involves an innocent person in suffering. And what is still more unendurable--a thing, indeed, to be bewailed, and, if that were possible, watered with fountains of tears--is this, that when the judge puts the accused to the question, that he may not unwittingly put an innocent man to death, the result of this lamentable ignorance is that this very person, whom he tortured that he might not condemn him if innocent, is condemned to death both tortured and innocent. For if he has chosen, in obedience to the philosophical instructions to the wise man, to quit this life rather than endure any longer such tortures, he declares that he has committed the crime which in fact he has not committed. And when he has been condemned and put to death, the judge is still in ignorance whether he has put to death an innocent or a guilty person, though he put the accused to the torture for the very purpose of saving himself from condemning the innocent; and consequently he has both tortured an innocent man to discover his innocence, and has put him to death without discovering it. If such darkness shrouds social life, will a wise judge take his seat on the bench or no? Beyond question he will. For human society, which he thinks it a wickedness to abandon, constrains him and compels him to this duty. And he thinks it no wickedness that innocent witnesses are tortured regarding the crimes of which other men are accused; or that the accused are put to the torture, so that they are often overcome with anguish, and, though innocent, make false confessions regarding themselves, and are punished; or that, though they be not condemned to die, they often die during, or in consequence of, the torture; or that sometimes the accusers, who perhaps have been prompted by a desire to benefit society by bringing criminals to justice, are themselves condemned through the ignorance of the judge, because they are unable to prove the truth of their accusations though they are true, and because the witnesses lie, and the accused endures the torture without being moved to confession. These numerous and important evils he does not consider sins; for the wise judge does these things, not with any intention of doing harm, but because his ignorance compels him, and because human society claims him as a judge. But though we therefore acquit the judge of malice, we must none the less condemn human life as miserable. And if he is compelled to torture and punish the innocent because his office and his ignorance constrain him, is he a happy as well as a guiltless man? Surely it were proof of more profound considerateness and finer feeling were he to recognize the misery of these necessities, and shrink from his own implication in that misery; and had he any piety about him, he would cry to God "From my necessities deliver Thou me. " [1273]

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  The streetlights glowed faintly like distant moons. The streets were empty and eerily quiet, as if the whole world had died, not only my father in that dim oxygenated room on the terminal ward of the Medical Center in New York. During the week after my father’s death, I stayed at my mother’s house. Most of the time she was sedated against her frenzied and awful grief, and Helen and I handled the flow of people passing through the house. Phyllis was married and expecting her second child in two weeks, and could only attend the funeral. She lent me a dark grey coat to wear to the church. During the week, I fought hard to remind myself that I was now a stranger in this house. But it did give me a new perspective on my mother. There had only been one human being whom she had ever entertained upon the earth as her equal; this was my father, and now he was dead. I saw the desolate loneliness that this exclusiveness had won her, and against which she only occasionally closed her hawk-grey eyes. But she looked through me and my sisters as if we were glass. I saw my mother’s pain, and her blindness, and her strength, and for the first time I began to see her as separate from me, and I began to feel free of her. My sister Helen withdrew into her flippant shell for protection, and endlessly played a record which she had just gotten on the phonograph in the parlor. Day and night, over and over, for seven days: I get the blues when we dance I get the blues in advance For I know you’ll be gone and I’ll be here all alone So I get the blues in advance. Some get the blues from a song Some when love has come and gone You don’t know how I cry When you tell me goodbye… Returning to Stamford after the funeral, I realized that I needed to be even further away from New York. I decided to make as much money as I could and go to Mexico as soon as possible. To that end and because Cora invited me, I gave up my room on Mill River Road with its creaky bed, and moved my belongings into the sunporch on Walker Road. The ten dollars a week room and board was less than what I was spending for both before. Cora said the extra cash was a help to her already strained budget, and besides, I was eating her out of house and home anyway. Ginger told me that a new girl, Ada, had been hired to run my machine at the plant.