Guilt

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 Another Country (1962)

  She still could not quite get it through her head, even though she knew that it was true and although she knew that precious seconds were passing, and that she must soon begin to fight for herself. “How do you know?” “Because Steve told me! He’s got a real thing about her, he’s going out of his mind.” Now, she did begin to calculate—desperately, cursing Ida for not having given her warning. But how could she have? She said, coldly, “Ellis at the mercy of a great passion—? don’t make me laugh.” “Oh, I know you think we’re made of the coarsest of coarse clay, and are insensitive to all the higher vibrations. I don’t care. You can’t have been seeing much of Ida—that I know. Have you been seeing much of Vivaldo? Answer me, Cass.” She said, wonderingly—for it was this she could not get through her head: “And Vivaldo doesn’t know——” “And you don’t, either? You’re the only two in town who don’t. What mighty distractions have you two found?” She winced and looked up at him. She saw that he was controlling himself with a great and terrible effort; that he both wanted to know the truth, and feared to know it. She could not bear the anguish in his eyes, and she looked away. How could she ever have doubted that he loved her! “Have you been seeing a lot of Vivaldo? Tell me.” She rose and walked to the window. She felt sick—her stomach seemed to have shrunk to the size of a small, hard, rubber ball. “Leave me alone. You’ve always been jealous of Vivaldo, and we both know why, though you won’t admit it. Sometimes I saw Vivaldo, sometimes I saw Vivaldo with Ida, sometimes I just walked around, sometimes I went to the movies.” “Till two o’clock in the morning?” “Sometimes I’ve come in at midnight, sometimes I’ve come in at four! Leave me alone! Why is it so important to you now? I’ve lived in this house like a ghost for months, half the time you haven’t known I was here—what does it matter now?” His face was wet and white and ugly. “I have lived here like a ghost, not you. I’ve known you were here, how could I not know it?” He took one step toward her. He dropped his voice. “Do you know how you made your presence known? By the way you look at me, by the contempt in your eyes when you look at me. What have I done to deserve your contempt? What have I done, Cass? You loved me once, you loved me, and everything I’ve done I’ve done for you.” She heard her voice saying coldly, “Are you sure? For me?” “Who else? who else? You are my life. Why have you gone away from me?” She sat down. “Let’s talk about this in the morning.” “No. We’ll talk about it now.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  “Yes.” Her hood obscured her face; it was hot in the museum; she threw the hood back. Her hair was disheveled on the brow and trailing at the neck: she looked weary and old. “At first, it was awful because I hadn’t realized how much I’d hurt him. He can suffer, after all,” and she looked at Eric quickly, and looked away. They moved away from the yellow painting and faced another one, of a street with canals, somewhere in Europe. “And—no matter what has happened since, I did love him very much, he was my whole life, and he’ll always be very important to me.” She paused. “I suppose he made me feel terribly guilty. I didn’t know that would happen. I didn’t think it could—but—it did.” She paused again, her shoulders sagging with a weary and proud defeat. Then she touched his hand. “I hate to tell you that—but I must try to tell you all of it. He frightened me, too, he frightened me because I was suddenly terribly afraid of losing the children and I cannot live without them.” She moved one hand over her brow, uselessly pushing up her hair. “I didn’t have to tell him; he didn’t really know, he didn’t suspect you at all, of course; he thought it was Vivaldo. I told him because I thought he had a right to know, that if we were going to—continue—together, we could begin again on a new basis, with everything clear between us. But I was wrong. Some things cannot be clear.” The boy and girl were coming to their side of the room. Cass and Eric crossed over, to stand beneath the red painting. “Or perhaps some things are clear, only one won’t face those things. I don’t know.… Anyway—I didn’t think he’d threaten me, I didn’t think he’d try to frighten me. If he were leaving me, if he were being unfaithful to me—unfaithful, what a word!—I don’t think I’d try to hold him that way. I don’t think I’d try to punish him. After all—he doesn’t belong to me, nobody belongs to anybody.”

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  1. There first had to be an expression of the request. The sinner who solicited penance would confide to the bishop or presbyter both his desire to become a penitent and the reasons he had for becoming one. A detailed statement? We have seen, in regard to the apostasies and the practice of the examinatio, that this sometimes must have been the case. The sinner could even make use of testimonies and all sorts of inquiries: it’s to this approach that the juridical type of expression one finds in Saint Cyprian applies: exposita causa apud episcopum.48 But, except for these particular situations, the penance request must have been much more discreet. Did it involve only an oral confession expressed in general terms—perhaps simply by means of the recitation of a repentance psalm?49 One imagines that a succinct exposition was necessary to indicate the nature of the sin, allow its gravity to be assessed, and perhaps set the time, the justum tempus, that needed to elapse before the reconciliation could be envisaged.50 It was then no doubt that it was decided whether the sin merited the recourse to penance, or whether forgiveness could be obtained in other, less rigorous ways. Apparently, Cyprian is referring to this practice in De lapsis when he distinguishes those who must “do penance” because they have sacrificed or signed the certificates from those who did nothing more than entertain that idea: the latter group should “confess this to the priests of God simply and contritely.”51 It’s of this practice as well that Saint Ambrose’s biographer is thinking when he praises his subject for the indulgence with which he listened to sinners: often, instead of playing the part of public accuser, he chose to weep with the guilty one over his transgressions “without saying a word to anyone” and to intercede with God so that he might grant his pardon.52 Between the sinner and the one who granted the penance there was room, therefore, for a private interview—which doesn’t mean that it took place every time and necessarily. Here it is certain that we approach, up to a certain point, the form of the confessio oris as it will be found later at the heart of the penitential rite and as one of its essential components. But there is this fundamental difference: the verbal confession is here a simple preliminary to confession, and one that is not even absolutely necessary. It doesn’t constitute an integral or essential part of the practice. —

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  But this doesn’t involve the interiorization of a catalogue of prohibitions, replacing prohibition of the act with prohibition of the intention. It’s a matter of opening up a domain (whose importance was already underscored by Gregory of Nyssa or especially Basil of Ancyra) which is that of thought, with its irregular and spontaneous flow, its images, its memories, its perceptions, with its impulses and impressions that are communicated from the body to the soul and from the soul to the body. What is involved, then, is not a code of permitted and forbidden acts, but a whole technique for monitoring, analyzing, and diagnosing thought, its origins, its qualities, its dangers, its powers of seduction, and all the dark forces that may hide beneath the appearance it presents. And if the objective, finally, is indeed to expel all that is impure or an inducer of impurity, it can be attained only by a vigilance that never disarms, a suspicion that must be directed everywhere and at every moment against oneself. The question must always be raised in a manner that will ferret out all the secret forms of “fornication” that may be hiding in the deepest recesses of the soul. In this asceticism of chastity one can recognize a process of “subjectification” that pushes a sexual ethic centered on acts far into the background. But two things need to be emphasized straightaway. This subjectification is inseparable from a knowledge process that makes the obligation to tell the truth about oneself a necessary and permanent condition of this ethic. If there is a subjectification, it implies an indefinite objectification of oneself by oneself—indefinite in the sense that, never acquired once and for all, it has no end in time; and in the sense that one must always push one’s examination of thoughts as far as possible, however tenuous and innocent they may appear. Further, this subjectification in the form of a quest for the truth about oneself is carried out through complex relations with others. And in several ways: because it’s a matter of ridding oneself of the power of the Other, of the Enemy that hides beneath the appearances of oneself; because it’s a matter of waging against this Other a ceaseless battle which can’t be won without the help of the Almighty, who is more powerful than he; and because the testimony of others, submission to their counsel, and permanent obedience to the directors are indispensable to this combat. The subjectification of the sexual ethic, the indefinite production of the truth about oneself, the construction of relations of combat and dependence with the other are parts of a whole. These elements were gradually formulated in the Christianity of the first centuries, but they were bound together, transformed, and systematized by the technologies of the self that were developed in monastic life. Skip Notes *1 Manuscript: “virginity” *2 Manuscript: “approcher du,” corrected in 1982 (“Le combat de la chasteté”) to “participer au.”

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  How to Disengage Again, in theory disengaging from an unhealthy relationship is easy and straightforward. You may tell them directly you want to cut off contact, you may slowly disconnect from them over time, or you might even cut them off entirely with no explanation. In practice, though, there are a number of barriers to such disengagements. For some, those barriers are practical aspects related to how the person fits into their life (a parent, a sibling, a co-worker), but for others the barriers might be more personal. Some people may experience guilt over ending the relationship. Others may be in a situation where the relationship serves an important emotional purpose in their life and ending it might lead to some emptiness, especially at first. Figure Out What the Barriers Are The first step to ending a toxic relationship is to figure out what’s been stopping you until now. Some people will say it was a lack of awareness. They didn’t realize the relationship was unhealthy for them before but now they do. For others, the barrier is their own emotions about ending it. They feel guilty about cutting off the contact, scared of how the person may react, or even sad about the relationship ending. Other people identify some practical barriers to leaving. They may live with the person or share other friends with the person, making cutting off contact more challenging. Finally, some identify real discomfort with the conflict that might come from ending the relationship. It feels easier for them to stay in the relationship because disengaging will be uncomfortable. Whatever the barrier has been, it’s important to identify it so you can work through it and find solutions. ANGER FACT Approximately one in five women and one in seven men have experienced severe physical violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime. 71

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  3. But truth be told, these two models—of medicine and of the tribunal, which will later become so important for organizing the penitential confession and giving it its form—seem to play only an accessory role as part of the required exomologesis. The penitent’s obligation to manifest himself in the truth of his sinful condition is more deeply grounded in martyrdom. There are two reasons for this. First, the martyr is promised forgiveness of his sins: the blood he sheds washes them away. And if he professes his Christian belief, which he has affirmed a first time in baptism, a second time under torture, the ordeal will constitute a second baptism, with the same effects of remission of sins.87 Moreover, the benefits of penance—that “second baptism”—were granted, not without serious discussions, to those who had fallen away, those who chose to deny their faith rather than undergo the torture: for them, penance was a way of inflicting martyrdom on themselves to reaffirm their faith—the martyrdom they had tried, out of weakness, to escape. This theme, which appears in the wake of the great persecutions, remains in use later. Penance appears then as the substitute for martyrdom for the generation that no longer finds in this peril the occasion for proving its faith. “The martyrs have been killed,” says Saint Augustine, and asks, “Who are the children of those that were killed, if not ourselves? And how are we freed, if not by saying to the Lord: you have broken my chains, I will offer you a victim’s sacrifice in the form of praise?”88

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Posting pictures of yourself—even lots and lots of pictures of yourself—while eating cereal or shopping for a prom dress or hanging with your besties is one thing. What really worries parents is the selfie’s evil cousin: the sext. Do not, we tell our daughters, absolutely do not send anyone sexually explicit messages or, God forbid, a nude or seminude photo. The Internet is forever, we say. Snapchat doesn’t prevent screenshots that can be redistributed in an instant and used as weapons (witness the rise of “revenge porn”: explicit images posted online without the victim’s consent, often following a breakup). In truth, it’s hard to know exactly how common “sexting” is among teens. In surveys, between 15 and 48 percent (depending on the age of the children asked and how “sexting” is defined) say they have sent or received an explicit text or photo. What is clear, though, is that the practice is not gender neutral. While equal numbers of boys and girls may sext voluntarily, girls are twice as likely to be among those who were pressured, coerced, blackmailed, or threatened into it—fully half of teen sexting in one large-scale survey fell into those categories. That’s particularly disturbing, since coercion into sexting appears to cause more long-term anxiety, depression, and trauma than coercion into real-life sex. Among the girls I met, the badgering to send nude photos could be incessant, beginning in middle school. One girl described how, in eighth grade, a male classmate threatened (in a text) to commit suicide if she didn’t send him a picture of her breasts. She told her parents, while a friend of hers he also targeted complied. Sometimes the pressure was mixed with girls’ own desire to please, to provoke, or to be affirmed as hot. They sexted photos to boyfriends to prove their trust, or to boys whose interest they hoped to attract. (Boys did this, too, but girls typically considered it aggressive and “gross.”) One girl told me that there had been an “epidemic” of classmates at her private Jewish middle school who flashed their breasts at boys while video chatting. The boys began taking screenshots and posting them online. “Did the girls want that to happen?” I asked. “No,” she said. “But it did.” By high school, the girls had “grown out of it,” but the boys had not. “I would video chat with boys, and they’d be like, ‘Come on! Flash me! Flash me!’ I wouldn’t do it, but they’d be very persistent. They’d say, ‘Just do it. I promise I won’t take a picture.’ And if you really like the guy, you think maybe he’ll like you back. . . . There were boys who had whole folders of pictures. Like trophies.”

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  “insensitive” or “careless.” She simply communicated that she didn’t like that I had done that. I bring it up for two reasons. First, I felt terrible. I hadn’t intended to upset her. Frankly, I was completely unaware that she would be troubled by my having forwarded it on. She didn’t want the email read by other people and I hadn’t realized that. I don’t think of myself as a careless person, but that was a careless error. Second, it forced me to think about whether this was a broader issue for me. Had I done this to others who hadn’t brought it up to me? Was I regularly careless this way? I don’t necessarily know the answers to those questions, but I do know that I pay more attention to it now than I used to. My friend letting me know that I upset her that one time led to a broader change in behavior for me going forward. TIP Focusing on a specific thing the person did or said instead of on a broader pattern can help the person hear the concern. It feels less like an attack. Wait for a Less Emotional Time and Plan Ahead The other way to address those broader patterns is to wait until you are no longer in the heat of an emotional moment to discuss it. As you well know by now, when people are angry they aren’t always thinking clearly and rationally. Using this as the time to talk with them about a personality characteristic that bothers you probably won’t be productive. It will lead to defensiveness and feel to them like it’s a way for you to turn the problem back on them instead of taking responsibility. Having that Difficult Conversation Let’s imagine, for instance, you want to talk with the angry co-worker, not just about this email, but about the broader problem of their anger at work and

• From Real Life (2020)

  La confusion qui suit, le recul maladroit et les excuses sans conviction pour lui avoir proposé du vin, de la bière ou du gin – comme l’hiver dernier, quand Henrik lui a proposé du gin à la soirée de Simone avant les fêtes. Wallace a répondu timidement : Non, pas pour moi , mais Henrik a répliqué : Tu as passé tes examens préliminaires, tu es adulte, maintenant . Wallace a finalement dit : Je ne bois pas . À voir les yeux gris d’Henrik, le délicat tremblement de sa lèvre inférieure, comme s’il venait prendre un coup de journal roulé, Wallace s’est senti coupable – tellement coupable qu’il a failli accepter le verre – mais Henrik s’est raidi et a remporté le gin. Si Wallace avait su à l’époque que ce serait la dernière chose que lui dirait Henrik, la dernière chose que lui proposerait Henrik, il aurait pris le verre et il l’aurait vidé. Il n’y connaît rien en alcool, il ne sait pas le goût que c’est censé avoir. Pour lui, ils ont tous le même goût, sauf que certains brûlent quand on avale. Ses parents, eux, buvaient. Tout le temps. Sa mère, une femme large, massive, avec des yeux bienveillants et une tendance à la cruauté, buvait de la bière peu alcoolisée parce qu’elle était diabétique. C’était ce qu’elle racontait : C’est à cause de mon taux de sucre. Et elle buvait bière sur bière dans son fauteuil, qu’elle abaissait pour regarder par la fenêtre, rideaux ouverts – examiner le monde en quête de quoi, Wallace l’ignorait. Ils habitaient sur un chemin de terre à cette époque, dans un trailer, entourés de membres de la famille dont les maisons avaient été construites avec des matériaux bas de gamme, avec des fondations en brique. Il n’y avait rien à voir pour elle, dans ce monde, ce coin perdu et sombre, peuplé de membres de la famille et de sapins, rien à regarder à part le roulis du vent et le passage des nuages. Mais elle s’installait dans son fauteuil et regardait, tous les jours, et c’est comme ça qu’il la trouva, alors qu’il rentrait de la fac pour l’été. Pour transpirer dans son ancienne chambre, passer le temps comme ils le faisaient tous, attendre que la chaleur de la journée retombe, en allant se terrer dans le premier coin frais qu’on pouvait trouver. Il l’a trouvée dans son fauteuil, les yeux ouverts, le corps raidi, tout dur. Le médecin a déclaré qu’elle avait eu un AVC. Foudroyant. Sa mère avait travaillé sur le green d’un hôtel pendant dix ans. Mais depuis quelque temps, elle s’était mise à trembler et à partir de là, il y avait eu de longues périodes où elle se bloquait, incapable de bouger.

• From Every Woman's Battle: Discovering God's Plan for Sexual and Emotional Fulfillment (2003)

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. WATERBROOK and its deer design logo are registered trademarks of WaterBrook Press, a division of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ethridge, Shannon. Every woman’s battle : discovering God’s plan for sexual and emotional fulfillment / Shannon Ethridge.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. eISBN: 978-0-307-44615-2 1. Sex—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Love—Religious aspects—Christianity. 3. Women—Religious life. I. Title. BT708.E84 2003 241'.66—dc21 2003005867 www.waterbrookpress.com v1.0

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  You may be thinking about what you want to say next instead of listening to what they are saying to you. If it’s an email or a text, you may delay reading it or even stop reading midway through. Finally, you might find yourself using some “yeah, but” logic in how you respond by saying things like, “I know I shouldn’t have done that, but…” or “I hear what you’re saying, but….” Often, that sort of logic might illustrate a tendency to try and deflect. TIP Pay attention to when you are trying to refocus away from what you did to what the other person did. That is often a pretty good indicator of defensiveness. Obviously, chronic defensiveness can bring with it some significant consequences; some to you and some to those around you. For you, it can eventually lead to feelings of guilt and shame. In the moment, deflecting can help you feel better about an emotional situation, but the long-term impact might be that you end up feeling guilty, embarrassed, or even sad about how you acted. It can also lead to significant relationship problems. Interpersonal situations become more hostile and emotional than they otherwise would have. People start to see you as unreasonable or someone they can’t trust. Potentially the biggest problem, though, is that it prevents you from solving problems effectively and coming to a reasonable resolution. If defensiveness is preventing you from effectively working through emotional situations, here are some strategies to overcome it. Some of these require effort in the moment but others are things you can work on right now. Explore Your Identity If defensiveness emerges when your identity is challenged, then it makes sense to spend some time exploring your identity. When are the times when you feel especially defensive and what aspects of your identity are challenged in those moments? To take it a step further, are there ways you can think about your identity differently that might lead to less defensiveness? For instance, can you shift from “I need to be right” to “I like to learn things.” Such a shift means that when you get something wrong, you see it as an opportunity for growth instead of a challenge to your intellect. In that above paper by Adelman and Dasgupta, there was a particularly fascinating outcome that could shed some additional light on how to address defensiveness as it relates to your identity. In one of the studies they ran, they tried an intervention to decrease defensiveness where they reminded people of a “core national value.” They had half of the participants read a statement about the value of free speech before participating in the study (the same procedure as above). They found that this framing device increased participants’ receptiveness to the criticism regardless of the presence of a threat or the source of the criticism.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  If you find yourself feeling guilty, try to assess whether that guilt is rooted in real responsibilities you are neglecting or unreasonable expectations you are putting on yourself. It is also possible that the guilt isn’t coming from your expectations but from what the other person has put on you. They consistently send the message that you should be there for them and you’ve internalized those expectations. The guilt you feel is the result of the unreasonable expectations they have of you to help manage their emotions. TIP It is hard to tell when you’re being gaslit, as that’s the entire nature of gaslighting. It’s a complex manipulation tactic, but if you have concerns about it, you should seek help from a professional. A Skill that Requires Practice and Thoughtfulness The nine strategies, including the current one, that I’ve described for you so far don’t happen on their own. In most circumstances, you can’t expect to do just one thing and hope it resolves the situation. The experiences and interactions we have with angry people are emotionally and socially complicated. Navigating them means putting a variety of strategies together in nuanced ways. It means staying calm while you think about your goals, reflecting on the other person’s anger and your response to it, dealing with people who don’t necessarily want to deal with you, and more. Being successful at dealing with angry people is a skill that requires practice and thoughtfulness. Most importantly, it requires a desire to work through these situations in a healthy and positive way. In the next chapter, we’ll discuss how to do build that desire and implement strategies together. CHAPTER 15 STRATEGY TEN: USE THESE STRATEGIES TOGETHER Cultivating an Identity I want to end here by revisiting some of the things we started with. Dealing with angry people isn’t just about having the tools available to you. It isn’t just about knowing how to use those tools. It’s about embracing an identity as someone who wants to interact with angry people productively and effectively. It’s about having good, healthy, clear outcomes in mind when you interact with people. It’s about trying to stick to those goals even when the other person gets angry. Not everyone does that. In fact, if I had to guess, I would estimate that most people don’t operate that way when they interact with angry people. They might embrace less useful goals of trying to get revenge or trying to prove they are in the right. They don’t consider the situation from the other person’s perspective. They don’t try to come to a resolution and they fail to recognize some of the less obvious factors that might be influencing the other person’s anger (including those things they themselves are bringing to the interaction).

• From Every Woman's Battle: Discovering God's Plan for Sexual and Emotional Fulfillment (2003)

  I wish I could say that I did the right thing that night. I didn’t. I lived that whole weekend just like a scene in a movie, but the ending wasn’t near as happily ever after as most movies I’ve watched. After the weekend was over, Mike and I parted ways. He knew I felt guilty and respected my desire for him not to contact me again. I know I was lucky—I’ve heard horror stories of women being stalked by men that they met over the Internet. I didn’t tell my husband for almost three years, but I felt like the secret was going to rot my insides if I didn’t spill it. I never made it through a single day without beating myself up over it, and I had to pretend to enjoy sex with Kevin. All I could think about was, Would he still love me if he knew my secret? I felt like I was acting in a play, even with my kids. My secret was keeping me from feeling real at all. Finally I took Kevin on a weekend vacation without the kids so I could clear my conscience. I told him on the way to the hotel, offering to get separate rooms if he needed some time away from me to think about what he wanted to do. I would have understood completely if he had decided to divorce me. But his response was nothing like I had expected. He said, “Jean, why did you do it?” I explained in tears that I had no good reason to do what I did and that I had regretted that monumental mistake since that weekend. Then he asked, “Knowing that you could get away with it, why have you never done it again since then?” That question caught me off guard. “Because that’s not who I am, Kevin!” I cried, confused and somewhat offended. “I already knew that, Jean. I just wanted to make sure you know it, too!” Kevin said compassionately as he wrapped his arms around me and cried, “I’m glad you are still here. I’m glad I didn’t lose you forever. We’ll get through this.” Kevin’s forgiveness wasn’t immediate. That took time and several months of marital counseling. But his love and commitment never wavered. I won’t say that I am glad I did what I did, but I will say that through this trial our marriage has become more intimate, our communication more open and honest, and we’ve grown stronger as individuals and as a couple.

• From Every Woman's Battle: Discovering God's Plan for Sexual and Emotional Fulfillment (2003)

  Masturbation hurts Denise. It serves only to fuel her sexual fire, not quench it. It’s likely that she even imagined herself being sexually involved with the man she was going out with. When we think about doing something and play it out in our thoughts, it makes it that much easier to engage in the behavior. If a woman cannot control herself while alone, what hope does she have when some smooth-talking hunk of a man starts whispering sweet nothings in her ear? Also, no lust can ever be satisfied; once you begin feeding baby monsters, their appetites grow bigger and they require more! You are better off never feeding those monsters in the first place. As my friend says, “If sin doesn’t know you, it won’t call your name!” Once the sin of masturbation does know you by name, it will call. And call…and call…and call. Heather e-mails: When I was in sixth grade, I had a friend spend the night and we bathed together. She showed me how to masturbate, and I’ve been habitually masturbating ever since. I feel like I cannot control myself, and it brings so much guilt. I struggle with sexual thoughts, allowing myself to become aroused just by thinking about masturbating. I have taken this before the Lord so many times. What can I do? This has been something that makes me feel so dirty and inferior, but even knowing this doesn’t seem to be enough to make me stop. The only way to kill a bad habit is to starve it to death. Starving a bad habit can be painful, but not as painful as letting it rule over you. This is why Peter warned, “Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11).

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  The girls in her program worried that a direct rejection would hurt boys’ feelings; they felt guilty and uncomfortable saying no. “Girls have all this modeling for being nice and polite and caring and compassionate about others’ feelings,” Simpson Rowe explained. “These are wonderful things—good characteristics. But because they’re so ingrained, a lot of women think this is how they’re supposed to be when faced with an unsafe situation, and they’re afraid of being seen as rude. The word that comes up a lot is bitchy. So, it’s kind of an ‘aha’ moment when they realize a guy who is pressuring and persuading and not stopping when you say you don’t want to do something is not respecting you or your boundaries—and at that point, you don’t have to worry about hurting his feelings. We emphasize how early the coercive process begins and help them respond to it before it ever gets to violence.” Preliminary data showed that three months after completing the ninety-minute training, participants had experienced half the rate of sexual victimization than a control group. Another risk-reduction program piloted among more than four hundred fifty Canadian college freshmen had similar results: a year later, rates of rape among participants were half that of girls who had only received a brochure. “We want to send the message that no one has the right to push or pressure you into what you don’t want to do,” Simpson Rowe said. “You have the right to stand up for yourself as loudly and physically as you want to and can.”

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  56 Similarly one who feared that he might have left some leaven in his home at Passover time, and who was on his way to attend another religious duty, need not be guilty about the leaven, since he could annul it in his heart. 57 Such instances are numerous, but these are perhaps sufficient for the moment. We shall later see the ground which enabled the Rabbis to avoid excessive feelings of guilt in a religion which emphasized obedience. 58 It is an interesting question, though one which need not be resolved here, whether the Rabbis felt ritual contamination or only felt guilt if they transgressed a commandment which forbade ritual contamination. Was there a real feeling of uncleanness, of contagion or miasma? 59 Scholars seem mostly to believe that the laws of uncleanness were obeyed because they were commanded, and that consequently the feeling of transgressing them would be guilt, not uncleanness as such. 60 This is likely to be correct, and yet how does one account for such statements as that Israel was 'enslaved in the power of the uncircumcised and unclean' 61 in Egypt? Do they point to a feeling of revulsion towards those who were not ritually clean? Certainly sin was very often characterized by terms indicating impurity and defile- ment. The feeling, however, seems to have been of moral impurity. Put another way, the feeling of 'impurity' was the feeling, not of ritual contamina- tion, but of moral guilt. The vocabulary of defilement and pollution was employed to show the heinousness of transgression. 62 56 Sifre Zula to Num. 6.7 (p. 242): "'Neither for his father nor for his mother, nor for brother or sister, if they die, shall he make himself unclean". -To the exclusion of one who touches a [tent] peg.' And on touching the tent peg, see Oholoth 1.3. Even the 'tent' of the corpse confers a lesser degree of uncleanness in the case of the Nazir than touching the corpse: Nazir 7.3. 57 Pesahim 3.7. 58 There are examples of what might be considered excessive guilt feelings in the Rabbinic literature: Moore cites the case of a man who brought a conditional guilt-offering every day of the year except after the Day of Atonement, when he was not permitted to do so. See Judaism I, p. 499. For a fuller description of this type of piety, see Buchler, Types, pp. 73ff.; 114. But Kerithoth 6.3 makes it clear that over- scrupulousness was discouraged by the Rabbis. 59 On the infectious character of miasma in the archaic Greek world, see Dodds, op cit., pp. 36f., 55. 60 The principal text is Num. Rab. 19.8 (ET, p. 758), where R. Johan;m b. Zakkai says: 'It is not the dead that defiles nor the water that purifies!

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Do people of our day and age really behave in this “vile” manner or are these actions merely the product of a “diseased” mind? (Does one refer to such authors as Petronius, Rabelais, Rousseau, Sade, to mention but a few, as “diseased minds”?) Surely some of you must have friends or neighbors, in good standing too, who have indulged in this questionable behavior, or worse. As a man of the world, I know only too well that the appanage of a priest’s frock, a judicial robe, a teacher’s uniform provides no guarantee of immunity to the temptations of the flesh. We are all in the same pot, we are all guilty, or innocent, depending on whether we take the frog’s view or the Olympian view. For the nonce I shall refrain from pretending to measure or apportion guilt, to say, for example, that a criminal is more guilty, or less, than a hypocrite. We do not have crime, we do not have war, revolution, crusades, inquisitions, persecution and intolerance because some among us are wicked, mean-spirited, or murderers at heart; we have this malignant condition of human affairs because all of us, the righteous as well as the ignorant and the malicious, lack true forbearance, true compassion, true knowledge and understanding of human nature. To put it as succinctly and simply as possible, here is my basic attitude towards life, my prayer, in other words: “Let us stop thwarting one another, stop judging and condemning, stop slaughtering one another.” I do not implore you to suspend or withhold judgment of me or my work. Neither I nor my work is that important. (One cometh, another goeth.) What concerns me is the harm you are doing to yourselves. I mean by perpetuating this talk of guilt and punishment, of banning and proscribing, of whitewashing and blackballing, of closing your eyes when convenient, of making scapegoats when there is no other way out. I ask you point blank—does the pursuance of your limited role enable you to get the most out of life? When you write me off the books, so to speak, will you find your food and wine more palatable, will you sleep better, will you be a better man, a better husband, a better father than before? These are the things that matter—what happens to you , not what you do to me . I know that the man in the dock is not supposed to ask questions, he is there to answer. But I am unable to regard myself as a culprit. I am simply “out of line.” Yet I am in the tradition, so to say. A list of my precursors would make an impressive roster. This trial has been going on since the days of Prometheus.

• From Real Life (2020)

  Wallace les chassa d’un geste. « Tu n’étais pas obligé de venir, dit Cole. Tu aurais pu rester à la maison. — Ce sont mes amis aussi. — Ah oui, bien sûr. Maintenant, c’est tes amis. — Qu’est-ce que tu viens de me dire ? » Wallace jeta un coup d’œil à Yngve, qui avait l’air terrifié, et à Miller, qui demeurait impassible, comme s’il était assis à une autre table. Wallace fit un signe de tête en direction de Cole et Vincent, mais Miller se contenta de hausser les épaules. Pas étonnant. En fait, même Wallace savait qu’il valait mieux éviter de s’impliquer dans ce genre d’escarmouche, il n’empêche qu’il s’en voulait, comme si c’était sa faute. Yngve donna un petit coup de coude à Miller, mais son apathie suprême refusait de se laisser perturber. Vincent respirait vite et bruyamment. L’eau clapotait contre la coque des bateaux arrimés près de la rive. « Personne n’abandonne. Personne ne s’en va. On s’éclate, en fait, dit Wallace. — Ouais, c’est ça », commenta Vincent, mais Cole esquissa un sourire. « Allez, arrête de chialer comme ça. — Mais non. Personne chiale », répliqua Cole, s’essuyant les yeux du bas de la main. « Pauvre petit bébé », fit Yngve en tendant la main pour la passer dans les cheveux de Cole. « Tu vas survivre ? — Lâche l’affaire », fit Cole. Il semblait incroyablement petit. Il riait, mais il pleurait aussi. Ils firent tous un effort surhumain pour ne pas le voir, pour faire comme si l’humidité dans ses yeux provenait d’autre chose. Pauvre Cole, se dit Wallace, toujours tellement à fleur de peau. Le voir essuyer ses larmes lui fit monter une boule chaude dans la gorge. « Allez, on dirait qu’il va s’en sortir », fit Wallace. C’étaient ses amis, les gens qui le connaissaient le mieux et l’aimaient le plus en ce monde. Une fois de plus, ils observaient ce silence pesant, atroce, sauf que cette fois Wallace était sûr que c’était sa faute. C’était lui qui avait provoqué la dispute, avec sa grande gueule. Mais le plus drôle, ce qui faisait tout le sel de la chose, c’était qu’il commençait seulement à comprendre qu’il n’avait dit qu’une partie de la vérité. Oui, il pensait à partir, et oui, ça lui arrivait de détester cet endroit. Mais à travers cette sensation perçait un autre élément, tel un os dur, déterminé : ce n’était pas tellement qu’il avait envie de quitter la fac, c’était qu’il avait envie de quitter sa vie. La vérité de ce sentiment se rangeait sous sa peau comme une nouvelle identité inconfortable, et il ne put s’en défaire une fois qu’il l’eut reconnue.

• From Another Country (1962)

  “One time,” he said, “we got into a car and drove over to the Village and we picked up this queer, a young guy, and we drove him back to Brooklyn. Poor guy, he was scared green before we got halfway there but he couldn’t jump out of the car. We drove into this garage, there were seven of us, and we made him go down on all of us and then we beat the piss out of him and took all his money and took his clothes and left him lying on that cement floor, and, you know, it was winter.” He looked over at her, looked directly at her for the first time that morning. “Sometimes I still wonder if they found him in time, or if he died, or what.” He put his hands together and looked out of the window. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m still the same person who did those things—so long ago.” No. It was not expressed. She wondered why. Perhaps it was because Vivaldo’s recollections in no sense freed him from the things recalled. He had not gone back into it—that time, that boy; he regarded it with a fascinated, even romantic horror, and he was looking for a way to deny it. Perhaps such secrets, the secrets of everyone, were only expressed when the person laboriously dragged them into the light of the world, imposed them on the world, and made them a part of the world’s experience. Without this effort, the secret place was merely a dungeon in which the person perished; without this effort, indeed, the entire world would be an uninhabitable darkness; and she saw, with a dreadful reluctance, why this effort was so rare. Reluctantly, because she then realized that Richard had bitterly disappointed her by writing a book in which he did not believe. In that moment she knew, and she knew that Richard would never face it, that the book he had written to make money represented the absolute limit of his talent. It had not really been written to make money—if only it had been! It had been written because he was afraid, afraid of things dark, strange, dangerous, difficult, and deep. I don’t care, she told herself, quickly. And: It’s not his fault if he’s not Dostoievski, I don’t care. But whether or not she cared didn’t matter. He cared, cared tremendously, and he was dependent on her faith in him. “Isn’t it strange,” she said, suddenly, “that you should be remembering all these things now!”

• From Another Country (1962)

  Eric watched him, smiling a strange half-smile, with his face full of love and pain. “That’s very hard to do.” “One’s got to try.” “I know.” He said, very carefully, watching Vivaldo, “Otherwise, you just get stopped with whatever it was that ruined you and you make it happen over and over again and your life has—ceased, really—because you can’t move or change or love any more.” Vivaldo let his hand fall. He leaned back. “You’re trying to tell me something. What is it that you’re trying to tell me?” “I was talking about myself.” “Maybe. But I don’t believe you.” “I just hope,” said Eric, suddenly, “that Cass will never hate me.” “Why should she hate you?” “I can’t do her much good. I haven’t done her much good.” “You don’t know that. Cass knew what she was doing. I think she had a much clearer idea than you—because you, you know,” and he grinned, “you aren’t very clear-headed.” “I think I was hoping—perhaps we were hoping—that Richard would never find out and that Yves would get here—before——” “Yes. Well, life isn’t ever that tidy.” “You’re very clear-headed,” Eric said. “Naturally.” He grinned and reached out and pulled Eric to him. “And you must do the same for me, baby, when I’m in trouble. Be clear-headed.” “I’ll do my best,” said Eric, gravely. Vivaldo laughed. “No one could ever hate you. You’re much too funny.” He pulled away. “What time are you meeting Cass?” “At four. At the Museum of Modern Art.” “God. How’s she going to get away? Or is Richard coming along?” Eric hesitated. “She isn’t sure that Richard’s coming back today.” “I see. I think, maybe, we’d better have a cup of coffee—? I’m going to the john.” And he leapt out of bed and slammed the bathroom door behind him. Eric walked into the kitchen, which was only slightly less disordered than he now felt himself to be, and put coffee on the stove. He stood there a moment, watching the blue flame in the gloom of the small room. He took down two coffee cups and found the milk and sugar. He returned to the big room and cleared the night table of books and of urgently scrawled notes—nearly all of which, beneath his eyes, as he wrote them on small scraps of paper, had hardened into irrelevance—and emptied the ashtray. He picked up his clothes, and Vivaldo’s, from the floor, piling them on a chair, and straightened the sheets on the bed. He put the cups and the milk and sugar on the night table, discovered that there were only five cigarettes left, and searched in his pockets for more, but there were none.