Hope

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The City of God

  174 Books That Matter: The City of God future generations will be without pain and suffering, terror and anger, pride and jealousy. So the issue must be the right attitude to take to worldly affairs in order to achieve the kind of happiness truly suitable for humans. And here at the end of Book 5, Augustine reminds us, his readers, that this has been the primary topic of these first five books all along. If complete and unsettled happiness is unattainable in this world, should we, Augustine asks, despair? No—there’s another kind of happiness, though to the pagans it may be hard to see why we would want to call it happiness at all. This is the happiness that true Christians find in their worldly engagement, and it has the advantage of being the kind of happiness that understands its origins and its end to lie elsewhere than in the transitory flux of this epoch. He details this happiness by sketching its presence in his model of the ideal political actor, namely the good Christian emperor. Surely the emperor, above all people, has all the conditions of life to make for happiness in this condition, in this world. Surely if anyone in the world would be happy, it would be he. And Augustine has an example of such an emperor in Theodosius, emperor from 379 to 395, the last emperor to rule over East and West, and perhaps the last great emperor the Romans ever had. Ironically, many readers take his exposition of the great faith and godliness of Theodosius as an act of a sycophant, as if anyone in the imperial hierarchy in 430 would reward Augustine for being such a vigorous brownnoser of an emperor 30 years dead. But that totally misses the point of his discussion of Theodosius’s virtues. The chilling point for Augustine of this discussion is that those virtues were largely irrelevant to his own happiness; that in fact, if anything, they made his life harder and more unpleasant; that the praise is a positive thing only in retrospect, from the perspective of a whole life lived out. “Call no one happy until they are dead,” goes the ancient Greek’s adage, reportedly first said by Solon. Something like that is

• From The City of God

  161 Lecture 8—Splendid Vices and Happiness in Hope (Book 5) the hope that future generations will be without pain and suffering. The issue must be the right attitude to take to worldly affairs in order to achieve the kind of happiness truly suitable for humans. „There is another kind of happiness—the happiness that true Christians find in their worldly engagement, and it has the advantage of being the kind of happiness that understands its roots and its end to lie elsewhere. Augustine sketching this happiness in his model of the ideal political actor, the good Christian Emperor Theodosius. ›In fact, the true happiness of Christian rulers lies not in power, or their own magnificence, or any of the temporal splendors of this life. Worldly happiness evades them as well as the rest of us. They are instead, happy in hope. ›“We say [Christian rulers] are happy, if they rule justly; if... they are not inflated with pride, but remember that they are but men...if they do all this not for a burning desire for empty glory, but for the love of eternal blessedness; and if they do not fail to offer to their true God, as a sacrifice for their sins, the oblation of humility, compassion, and prayer...we call them then happy in hope.” Questions to Consider 1. What does Augustine say about the Roman’s desire for glory? How did it serve a useful function for them? What sort of rewards did they receive from it? 2. For Augustine, do Christians pursue glory? Should they, do you think? What does Augustine say is the true happiness of Christian rulers? Can they be happy in this life? What does their happiness look like? Do they rule for glory?

• From The City of God

  207 Who or What Is God? (Books 8 –9) L et’s recap where we are. What Augustine does in books 1–10 is challenge the pagans on their own ground about a topic that they and Augustine both hold significant: the nature of happiness and the plausible human routes to achieving it. Now, happiness is a particular culturally concrete word—our word—where we try to signify, imperfectly, what we take to be a human universal. We all want to be happy. It’s not that every human through history would self-consciously recognize this as their main aspiration, but we would all at least find that description of our lives intelligible once it was explained to us. It certainly was the case for pretty much everyone in Augustine’s world. If he had wanted this to be a book simply about worldly success, he could have stopped at Book 5. But he goes on. Why does he go on? Because there’s another kind of happiness than this-worldly happiness, and this is philosophical, otherworldly, contemplative happiness. And while this-worldly happiness is a reasonably straightforward topic, when Augustine engages religious and philosophical thinkers, the nonmaterial and theological dimensions of the debate really come into their own. Books 6 and 7, as we saw, are about Roman public religion, the religion of Rome. Augustine thinks this kind of religiosity is terribly instrumentalist, smugly transactional, and ends in idolatrous demon worship, which leads to happiness to nobody, while the Roman intellectuals who might have helped it are confused about the divine and cowardly before the populace, and so they fail to announce what they very well know; namely, that the Romans, in being this way religious, are worshipping delusions. Lecture 10 Transcript

• From The City of God

  6 Books That Matter: The City of God Challenging Assumptions „A common feature of Augustine’s books is that their titles lead us to expect one thing, but their arguments show us that to understand that thing, we must understand something else entirely. ›So the Confessions, known as his autobiography, is actually about how rightly to know God; On the Trinity turns out to be about how we can understand the nature of God as triune only if we know what it means to be human. Similarly, The City of God turns out to be less about the Heavenly City at rest than about humanity’s peregrinations in this fallen world. ›The lesson here about Augustine’s thought is that to answer the question we are asking, we are always advised to step back and examine the assumptions that led us to ask the question in the first place. Only by naming and challenging these assumptions can we really get at the deepest level of our convictions, and only there can the arduous work of change begin. „For Augustine, this is a conversionist project, not a replacement project; that is, pagans’ visions of how the world hangs together are still rattling around in our heads. Thus, in engaging and exorcising them, we are helping to convert ourselves from the thought-world of the fallen worldly city to the true new meanings of the City of God. This book is not meant to show people that they are wrong, but how they can begin to become right. „Although The City of God is a rhetorical masterwork, there is a deeply pedagogical aim to this book: It is a kind of beginner’s manual for Christian life in this world. To imagine how to criticize a culture’s basic terms of self-understanding and to suggest to its members a radical revision of those terms is difficult. You must show how the new is within them waiting to be born. You must not change them, but show them how they are already changing.

• From The City of God

  45 Lecture 2 Transcript—Who Was Augustine of Hippo? The less well-known sense is different and more surprising, since it might seem the opposite of the above. For if, in one way, Christendom is over, finished, in another way we have reached its end since so much of Christendom has been accomplished. Don’t look now, but we are living in the midst of a huge moral revolution lasting the past several centuries. Slavery is now illegal. Equality is a watchword. We feel obliged to people far away who we have no immediate contact with. And this moral revolution is one deeply oriented and driven by Christian history. So many contemporary so-called secular practices, categories, and judgments are in fact Christian practices, categories, and judgments with the Christian language removed but the deep Christian structure retained. Consider the universalism of our moral ideals, the concept of the individual, the tension between our public and our private lives. What does it mean to find ultimate value present in the immanent? What does it mean that the contingencies of our flesh could host the infinite value of the spirit? These are questions intelligible to us only since, for almost 2,000 years, Western intellectual thought was tempered under the pressure of Christian doctrines such as the Incarnation, God’s universal sovereignty and care, and the idea that the human was made in the image of God. In so very many ways we live in a world deeply Christian in shape and detail, even as it has lost the surface appearance of being Christian. Even the most secular among us would be unintelligible to a pagan of Augustine’s day, while a member of his church would find much common ground with a modern atheist. Even in our very worldliness, then, we are worldly in a Christian way today. I don’t say this out of any kind of smug Christian triumphalism by the way. In fact, the greatest explorers of this truth have been non-Christian thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Weber. So, for Christians in the audience, Augustine’s work has clues about how to be authentically Christian in an age where Christian categories have become second nature and can be absorbed secondhand. And

• From The City of God

  77 Lecture 4 Transcript—Augustine’s Pagan and Christian Audience for the earthly city. It does so also to win everlasting security for the heavenly and divine commonwealth of a people that will live forever. Faith, hope, and charity make us adopted citizens of this city, so that as long as we are on our pilgrimage, if we are unable to reform them, we should tolerate those who want the commonwealth to remain with its vices unpunished. Ultimately, then, Augustine argued the theological virtues—faith, hope, and charity—do not disable civic virtue, but in fact they properly enable it. So Christians are not just acceptable citizens; they are the best citizens. This passage succinctly expresses how Augustine imagined morality to relate to politics, an idea developed much more fully in The City of God. What’s more, this letter reveals a deep strategy of the whole work. Christianity rightly understands the true goods that the pagan Romans and all other interlocutors blindly seek. Hence, Christians are best able rightly to inhabit this world, and be exemplary citizens, because they know how to value it properly. So, Christianity does not ruin the Romans’ hopes, but transfigures and fulfills them, though the Romans may not recognize that. We will see this argumentative strategy deployed again and again by Augustine throughout The City. This is a fantastic, remarkable moment in Augustine’s letters. Here, in this exchange between him and Marcellinus, you hear, as if through the door into another room, a snatch of real conversation between flesh and blood humans 1,600 years ago. My historian friends get so excited about moments like this that it’s almost unseemly. Yeah, but we don’t get out much, so that’s OK. This exchange with Marcellinus, and through him Volusianus, is but one example of the diverse kinds of audience that Augustine had in mind in writing The City of God, and I should say something about them here. Augustine was always lucky in his enemies, the various challenges they brought to him, all of which forced him to articulate

• From The City of God

  2 Books That Matter: The City of God world of classical antiquity: Virgil, Cicero, Seneca, Plato, Aristotle, and many others appear in its pages. This course will explore the history of the ancient world, and how Augustine thought about and taught others to think about that world’s grandeur and tragedy. Finally, the work remains a treasure trove of political, philosophical, and religious insight for our own day, informing the thinking of academics, religious leaders, and statespeople even into the 21 st century. This course tackles the book in its full depth and breadth, helping you grasp both the architectonics and the detail of The City of God. The course’s goals: to deepen your understanding of the thought of Augustine; to enrich your understanding of the classical world in which he lived; and to grapple with the fundamental questions that drive the book forward. 3 Your Passport to The City of God T he metaphor of travel can helpfully illuminate what must happen with a book like The City of God—or De Civitate Dei, as it’s called in Latin. The City of God is the way by which we go to the land of Augustinian Christianity, definitely a foreign country, no matter what your previous education or philosophical or theological training has been. And yet it has had a fundamental, if very ancient, impact on each of us here—who we are, how we think of ourselves, how we think of time and history and the meaning of life. Structure and Origin „The scale and structural complexity of The City of God make it unique. At more than 1,000 pages in Latin, it is the longest single work to have survived from the ancient world that has a coherent theme and an intact argumentative architecture. Twenty-two “books,” or longish chapters, each comprising twenty to thirty subsections, are divided into two parts, corresponding to two large tasks. ›Books 1 through 10 defend Christians using the technique of immanent critique—that is, a critique that uses interlocutors’ own sources and possibly their own words to reveal contradictions and other flaws in their account. ›Books 11 through 22 offer a constructive account of the Christian view of how to inhabit the world and to be a good Roman. This shift perhaps signals a fundamental change of mood in Christian thought, from polemic with enemies, foreign or domestic, to pedagogy for believers. Lecture 1

• From The City of God

  Chapter 21. --Of the New Spiritual Body into Which the Flesh of the Saints Shall Be Transformed. Whatever, therefore, has been taken from the body, either during life or after death shall be restored to it, and, in conjunction with what has remained in the grave, shall rise again, transformed from the oldness of the animal body into the newness of the spiritual body, and clothed in incorruption and immortality. But even though the body has been all quite ground to powder by some severe accident, or by the ruthlessness of enemies, and though it has been so diligently scattered to the winds, or into the water, that there is no trace of it left, yet it shall not be beyond the omnipotence of the Creator,--no, not a hair of its head shall perish. The flesh shall then be spiritual, and subject to the spirit, but still flesh, not spirit, as the spirit itself, when subject to the flesh, was fleshly, but still spirit and not flesh. And of this we have experimental proof in the deformity of our penal condition. For those persons were carnal, not in a fleshly, but in a spiritual way, to whom the apostle said, "I could not speak to you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. " [1650]And a man is in this life spiritual in such a way, that he is yet carnal with respect to his body, and sees another law in his members warring against the law of his mind; but even in his body he will be spiritual when the same flesh shall have had that resurrection of which these words speak, "It is sown an animal body, it shall rise a spiritual body. " [1651] But what this spiritual body shall be and how great its grace, I fear it were but rash to pronounce, seeing that we have as yet no experience of it. Nevertheless, since it is fit that the joyfulness of our hope should utter itself, and so show forth God's praise, and since it was from the profoundest sentiment of ardent and holy love that the Psalmist cried, "O Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy house," [1652] we may, with God's help, speak of the gifts He lavishes on men, good and bad alike, in this most wretched life, and may do our best to conjecture the great glory of that state which we cannot worthily speak of, because we have not yet experienced it. For I say nothing of the time when God made man upright; I say nothing of the happy life of "the man and his wife" in the fruitful garden, since it was so short that none of their children experienced it:I speak only of this life which we know, and in which we now are, from the temptations of which we cannot escape so long as we are in it, no matter what progress we make, for it is all temptation, and I ask, Who can describe the tokens of God's goodness that are extended to the human race even in this life?

• From The City of God

  Let no man then so understand the words of the Psalmist, "Shall God forget to be gracious? shall He shut up in His anger His tender mercies" [1550] as if the sentence of God were true of good men, false of bad men, or true of good men and wicked angels, but false of bad men. For the Psalmist's words refer to the vessels of mercy and the children of the promise, of whom the prophet himself was one; for when he had said, "Shall God forget to be gracious? shall He shut up in His anger His tender mercies? " and then immediately subjoins, "And I said, Now I begin:this is the change wrought by the right hand of the Most High," [1551] he manifestly explained what he meant by the words, "Shall he shut up in His anger His tender mercies? "For God's anger is this mortal life, in which man is made like to vanity, and his days pass as a shadow. [1552]Yet in this anger God does not forget to be gracious, causing His sun to shine and His rain to descend on the just and the unjust; [1553] and thus He does not in His anger cut short His tender mercies, and especially in what the Psalmist speaks of in the words, "Now I begin:this change is from the right hand of the Most High;" for He changes for the better the vessels of mercy, even while they are still in this most wretched life, which is God's anger, and even while His anger is manifesting itself in this miserable corruption; for "in His anger He does not shut up His tender mercies. " And since the truth of this divine canticle is quite satisfied by this application of it, there is no need to give it a reference to that place in which those who do not belong to the city of God are punished in eternal fire. But if any persist in extending its application to the torments of the wicked, let them at least understand it so that the anger of God, which has threatened the wicked with eternal punishment, shall abide, but shall be mixed with mercy to the extent of alleviating the torments which might justly be inflicted; so that the wicked shall neither wholly escape, nor only for a time endure these threatened pains, but that they shall be less severe and more endurable than they deserve. Thus the anger of God shall continue, and at the same time He will not in this anger shut up His tender mercies. But even this hypothesis I am not to be supposed to affirm because I do not positively oppose it. [1554]

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  About noon, however, she began—but with a caution—a dread of disappointment which for some time kept her silent, even to her friend—to fancy, to hope she could perceive a slight amendment in her sister’s pulse;—she waited, watched, and examined it again and again;—and at last, with an agitation more difficult to bury under exterior calmness, than all her foregoing distress, ventured to communicate her hopes. Mrs. Jennings, though forced, on examination, to acknowledge a temporary revival, tried to keep her young friend from indulging a thought of its continuance;—and Elinor, conning over every injunction of distrust, told herself likewise not to hope. But it was too late. Hope had already entered; and feeling all its anxious flutter, she bent over her sister to watch—she hardly knew for what. Half an hour passed away, and the favourable symptom yet blessed her. Others even arose to confirm it. Her breath, her skin, her lips, all flattered Elinor with signs of amendment; and Marianne fixed her eyes on her with a rational, though languid, gaze. Anxiety and hope now oppressed her in equal degrees, and left her no moment of tranquillity till the arrival of Mr. Harris at four o’clock;—when his assurances, his felicitations on a recovery in her sister even surpassing his expectation, gave her confidence, comfort, and tears of joy. Marianne was in every respect materially better, and he declared her entirely out of danger. Mrs. Jennings, perhaps satisfied with the partial justification of her forebodings which had been found in their late alarm, allowed herself to trust in his judgment, and admitted, with unfeigned joy, and soon with unequivocal cheerfulness, the probability of an entire recovery. Elinor could not be cheerful. Her joy was of a different kind, and led to any thing rather than to gaiety. Marianne restored to life, health, friends, and to her doting mother, was an idea to fill her heart with sensations of exquisite comfort, and expand it in fervent gratitude;—but it led to no outward demonstrations of joy, no words, no smiles. All within Elinor’s breast was satisfaction, silent and strong. She continued by the side of her sister, with little intermission the whole afternoon, calming every fear, satisfying every inquiry of her enfeebled spirits, supplying every succour, and watching almost every look and every breath. The possibility of a relapse would of course, in some moments, occur to remind her of what anxiety was—but when she saw, on her frequent and minute examination, that every symptom of recovery continued, and saw Marianne at six o’clock sink into a quiet, steady, and to all appearance comfortable, sleep, she silenced every doubt. The time was now drawing on, when Colonel Brandon might be expected back. At ten o’clock, she trusted, or at least not much later her mother would be relieved from the dreadful suspense in which she must now be travelling towards them. The Colonel, too!—perhaps scarcely less an object of pity!—Oh!—how slow was the progress of time which yet kept them in ignorance!

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  They were three days on their journey, and Marianne’s behaviour as they travelled was a happy specimen of what future complaisance and companionableness to Mrs. Jennings might be expected to be. She sat in silence almost all the way, wrapt in her own meditations, and scarcely ever voluntarily speaking, except when any object of picturesque beauty within their view drew from her an exclamation of delight exclusively addressed to her sister. To atone for this conduct therefore, Elinor took immediate possession of the post of civility which she had assigned herself, behaved with the greatest attention to Mrs. Jennings, talked with her, laughed with her, and listened to her whenever she could; and Mrs. Jennings on her side treated them both with all possible kindness, was solicitous on every occasion for their ease and enjoyment, and only disturbed that she could not make them choose their own dinners at the inn, nor extort a confession of their preferring salmon to cod, or boiled fowls to veal cutlets. They reached town by three o’clock the third day, glad to be released, after such a journey, from the confinement of a carriage, and ready to enjoy all the luxury of a good fire. The house was handsome, and handsomely fitted up, and the young ladies were immediately put in possession of a very comfortable apartment. It had formerly been Charlotte’s, and over the mantelpiece still hung a landscape in coloured silks of her performance, in proof of her having spent seven years at a great school in town to some effect. As dinner was not to be ready in less than two hours from their arrival, Elinor determined to employ the interval in writing to her mother, and sat down for that purpose. In a few moments Marianne did the same. “I am writing home, Marianne,” said Elinor; “had not you better defer your letter for a day or two?” “I am not going to write to my mother,” replied Marianne, hastily, and as if wishing to avoid any farther inquiry. Elinor said no more; it immediately struck her that she must then be writing to Willoughby; and the conclusion which as instantly followed was, that, however mysteriously they might wish to conduct the affair, they must be engaged. This conviction, though not entirely satisfactory, gave her pleasure, and she continued her letter with greater alacrity. Marianne’s was finished in a very few minutes; in length it could be no more than a note; it was then folded up, sealed, and directed with eager rapidity. Elinor thought she could distinguish a large W in the direction; and no sooner was it complete than Marianne, ringing the bell, requested the footman who answered it to get that letter conveyed for her to the two-penny post. This decided the matter at once.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “When the weather is settled, and I have recovered my strength,” said she, “we will take long walks together every day. We will walk to the farm at the edge of the down, and see how the children go on; we will walk to Sir John’s new plantations at Barton Cross, and the Abbeyland; and we will often go to the old ruins of the Priory, and try to trace its foundations as far as we are told they once reached. I know we shall be happy. I know the summer will pass happily away. I mean never to be later in rising than six, and from that time till dinner I shall divide every moment between music and reading. I have formed my plan, and am determined to enter on a course of serious study. Our own library is too well known to me, to be resorted to for any thing beyond mere amusement. But there are many works well worth reading at the Park; and there are others of more modern production which I know I can borrow of Colonel Brandon. By reading only six hours a-day, I shall gain in the course of a twelve-month a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want.” Elinor honoured her for a plan which originated so nobly as this; though smiling to see the same eager fancy which had been leading her to the extreme of languid indolence and selfish repining, now at work in introducing excess into a scheme of such rational employment and virtuous self-control. Her smile however changed to a sigh when she remembered that promise to Willoughby was yet unfulfilled, and feared she had that to communicate which might again unsettle the mind of Marianne, and ruin at least for a time this fair prospect of busy tranquillity. Willing therefore to delay the evil hour, she resolved to wait till her sister’s health were more secure, before she appointed it. But the resolution was made only to be broken. Marianne had been two or three days at home, before the weather was fine enough for an invalid like herself to venture out. But at last a soft, genial morning appeared; such as might tempt the daughter’s wishes and the mother’s confidence; and Marianne, leaning on Elinor’s arm, was authorised to walk as long as she could without fatigue, in the lane before the house. The sisters set out at a pace, slow as the feebleness of Marianne in an exercise hitherto untried since her illness required; and they had advanced only so far beyond the house as to admit a full view of the hill, the important hill behind, when pausing with her eyes turned towards it, Marianne calmly said,— “There, exactly there,”—pointing with one hand, “on that projecting mound,—there I fell; and there I first saw Willoughby.” Her voice sunk with the word, but presently reviving she added,

• From The City of God

  106 Books That Matter: The City of God their particular capacities are crucial, and the advice is very tentatively given—they should attempt to see the attack as a further moment in the long and painful process of God’s weaning them away from an excessive attachment to the world. That may seem an unbelievably high bar to ask of a rape victim, and it may seem like it walks right up to a mindset that could be called blaming the victim, but Augustine is clear that he does not want to do that. He’s worried a great deal about masochism and the overvaluing of suffering, as seen in the desire for martyrdom. What he’s trying to do here is something else entirely. He’s trying to help the victim find some way to recover agency and make good come out of the suffering that they have endured. To face suffering and not flinch or try to escape it by suicide is simply to face the destiny that God has granted you. Some suffering you deserve for what you do; some suffering may be a medicine that helps heal you; and some may be offered to you as a chance to glorify God as God’s martyr. Augustine accepts all of these. But he does not enthusiastically endorse suffering as a simple good, though many in his world would have. You do not need to try to think that all suffering is a positive blessing for you, he says. Suffering can be made instrumentally good, but it is not intrinsically so. That is the core of Augustine’s own account of suffering. So, the basic structure of the Christian response is simple: Suffering is meted out by God in ways that seem utterly random and illogical to us, because we don’t share God’s point of view. God’s work has, at its core, what is to us the inscrutable mystery of God’s will. For Augustine, this isn’t a cop-out. What he means is that the living God has a plan, but it’s not visible to God’s people in its details. So Christians should affirm there’s a moral order, but they have to confess—and knowingly confess—that it is obscure to their understanding. This is a weak argument, Augustine admits, but no one else has any stronger. The problem of the ill fit between our moral perceptions

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “When the weather is settled, and I have recovered my strength,” said she, “we will take long walks together every day. We will walk to the farm at the edge of the down, and see how the children go on; we will walk to Sir John’s new plantations at Barton Cross, and the Abbeyland; and we will often go to the old ruins of the Priory, and try to trace its foundations as far as we are told they once reached. I know we shall be happy. I know the summer will pass happily away. I mean never to be later in rising than six, and from that time till dinner I shall divide every moment between music and reading. I have formed my plan, and am determined to enter on a course of serious study. Our own library is too well known to me, to be resorted to for any thing beyond mere amusement. But there are many works well worth reading at the Park; and there are others of more modern production which I know I can borrow of Colonel Brandon. By reading only six hours a-day, I shall gain in the course of a twelve-month a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want.” Elinor honoured her for a plan which originated so nobly as this; though smiling to see the same eager fancy which had been leading her to the extreme of languid indolence and selfish repining, now at work in introducing excess into a scheme of such rational employment and virtuous self-control. Her smile however changed to a sigh when she remembered that promise to Willoughby was yet unfulfilled, and feared she had that to communicate which might again unsettle the mind of Marianne, and ruin at least for a time this fair prospect of busy tranquillity. Willing therefore to delay the evil hour, she resolved to wait till her sister’s health were more secure, before she appointed it. But the resolution was made only to be broken. Marianne had been two or three days at home, before the weather was fine enough for an invalid like herself to venture out. But at last a soft, genial morning appeared; such as might tempt the daughter’s wishes and the mother’s confidence; and Marianne, leaning on Elinor’s arm, was authorised to walk as long as she could without fatigue, in the lane before the house. The sisters set out at a pace, slow as the feebleness of Marianne in an exercise hitherto untried since her illness required; and they had advanced only so far beyond the house as to admit a full view of the hill, the important hill behind, when pausing with her eyes turned towards it, Marianne calmly said,— “There, exactly there,”—pointing with one hand, “on that projecting mound,—there I fell; and there I first saw Willoughby.” Her voice sunk with the word, but presently reviving she added,

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Perhaps Mrs. Jennings was in hopes, by this vigorous sketch of their future ennui, to provoke him to make that offer, which might give himself an escape from it; and if so, she had soon afterwards good reason to think her object gained; for, on Elinor’s moving to the window to take more expeditiously the dimensions of a print, which she was going to copy for her friend, he followed her to it with a look of particular meaning, and conversed with her there for several minutes. The effect of his discourse on the lady too, could not escape her observation, for though she was too honorable to listen, and had even changed her seat, on purpose that she might not hear, to one close by the piano forte on which Marianne was playing, she could not keep herself from seeing that Elinor changed colour, attended with agitation, and was too intent on what he said to pursue her employment. Still farther in confirmation of her hopes, in the interval of Marianne’s turning from one lesson to another, some words of the Colonel’s inevitably reached her ear, in which he seemed to be apologising for the badness of his house. This set the matter beyond a doubt. She wondered, indeed, at his thinking it necessary to do so; but supposed it to be the proper etiquette. What Elinor said in reply she could not distinguish, but judged from the motion of her lips, that she did not think that any material objection; and Mrs. Jennings commended her in her heart for being so honest. They then talked on for a few minutes longer without her catching a syllable, when another lucky stop in Marianne’s performance brought her these words in the Colonel’s calm voice,— “I am afraid it cannot take place very soon.” Astonished and shocked at so unlover-like a speech, she was almost ready to cry out, “Lord! what should hinder it?”—but checking her desire, confined herself to this silent ejaculation. “This is very strange!—sure he need not wait to be older.” This delay on the Colonel’s side, however, did not seem to offend or mortify his fair companion in the least, for on their breaking up the conference soon afterwards, and moving different ways, Mrs. Jennings very plainly heard Elinor say, and with a voice which showed her to feel what she said, “I shall always think myself very much obliged to you.” Mrs. Jennings was delighted with her gratitude, and only wondered that after hearing such a sentence, the Colonel should be able to take leave of them, as he immediately did, with the utmost sang-froid, and go away without making her any reply! She had not thought her old friend could have made so indifferent a suitor. What had really passed between them was to this effect.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  When the note was shown to Elinor, as it was within ten minutes after its arrival, it gave her, for the first time, some share in the expectations of Lucy; for such a mark of uncommon kindness, vouchsafed on so short an acquaintance, seemed to declare that the good-will towards her arose from something more than merely malice against herself; and might be brought, by time and address, to do every thing that Lucy wished. Her flattery had already subdued the pride of Lady Middleton, and made an entry into the close heart of Mrs. John Dashwood; and these were effects that laid open the probability of greater. The Miss Steeles removed to Harley Street, and all that reached Elinor of their influence there, strengthened her expectation of the event. Sir John, who called on them more than once, brought home such accounts of the favour they were in, as must be universally striking. Mrs. Dashwood had never been so much pleased with any young women in her life, as she was with them; had given each of them a needle book made by some emigrant; called Lucy by her Christian name; and did not know whether she should ever be able to part with them. END OF THE SECOND VOLUME CHAPTER XXXVII. Mrs. Palmer was so well at the end of a fortnight, that her mother felt it no longer necessary to give up the whole of her time to her; and, contenting herself with visiting her once or twice a day, returned from that period to her own home, and her own habits, in which she found the Miss Dashwoods very ready to resume their former share. About the third or fourth morning after their being thus resettled in Berkeley Street, Mrs. Jennings, on returning from her ordinary visit to Mrs. Palmer, entered the drawing-room, where Elinor was sitting by herself, with an air of such hurrying importance as prepared her to hear something wonderful; and giving her time only to form that idea, began directly to justify it, by saying, “Lord! my dear Miss Dashwood! have you heard the news?” “No, ma’am. What is it?”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  He replied with his accustomary mildness to all her inquiries, but without satisfying her in any. Elinor now began to make the tea, and Marianne was obliged to appear again. After her entrance, Colonel Brandon became more thoughtful and silent than he had been before, and Mrs. Jennings could not prevail on him to stay long. No other visitor appeared that evening, and the ladies were unanimous in agreeing to go early to bed. Marianne rose the next morning with recovered spirits and happy looks. The disappointment of the evening before seemed forgotten in the expectation of what was to happen that day. They had not long finished their breakfast before Mrs. Palmer’s barouche stopped at the door, and in a few minutes she came laughing into the room: so delighted to see them all, that it was hard to say whether she received most pleasure from meeting her mother or the Miss Dashwoods again. So surprised at their coming to town, though it was what she had rather expected all along; so angry at their accepting her mother’s invitation after having declined her own, though at the same time she would never have forgiven them if they had not come! “Mr. Palmer will be so happy to see you,” said she; “What do you think he said when he heard of your coming with Mama? I forget what it was now, but it was something so droll!” After an hour or two spent in what her mother called comfortable chat, or in other words, in every variety of inquiry concerning all their acquaintance on Mrs. Jennings’s side, and in laughter without cause on Mrs. Palmer’s, it was proposed by the latter that they should all accompany her to some shops where she had business that morning, to which Mrs. Jennings and Elinor readily consented, as having likewise some purchases to make themselves; and Marianne, though declining it at first was induced to go likewise. Wherever they went, she was evidently always on the watch. In Bond Street especially, where much of their business lay, her eyes were in constant inquiry; and in whatever shop the party were engaged, her mind was equally abstracted from every thing actually before them, from all that interested and occupied the others. Restless and dissatisfied every where, her sister could never obtain her opinion of any article of purchase, however it might equally concern them both: she received no pleasure from anything; was only impatient to be at home again, and could with difficulty govern her vexation at the tediousness of Mrs. Palmer, whose eye was caught by every thing pretty, expensive, or new; who was wild to buy all, could determine on none, and dawdled away her time in rapture and indecision.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  About noon, however, she began—but with a caution—a dread of disappointment which for some time kept her silent, even to her friend—to fancy, to hope she could perceive a slight amendment in her sister’s pulse;—she waited, watched, and examined it again and again;—and at last, with an agitation more difficult to bury under exterior calmness, than all her foregoing distress, ventured to communicate her hopes. Mrs. Jennings, though forced, on examination, to acknowledge a temporary revival, tried to keep her young friend from indulging a thought of its continuance;—and Elinor, conning over every injunction of distrust, told herself likewise not to hope. But it was too late. Hope had already entered; and feeling all its anxious flutter, she bent over her sister to watch—she hardly knew for what. Half an hour passed away, and the favourable symptom yet blessed her. Others even arose to confirm it. Her breath, her skin, her lips, all flattered Elinor with signs of amendment; and Marianne fixed her eyes on her with a rational, though languid, gaze. Anxiety and hope now oppressed her in equal degrees, and left her no moment of tranquillity till the arrival of Mr. Harris at four o’clock;—when his assurances, his felicitations on a recovery in her sister even surpassing his expectation, gave her confidence, comfort, and tears of joy. Marianne was in every respect materially better, and he declared her entirely out of danger. Mrs. Jennings, perhaps satisfied with the partial justification of her forebodings which had been found in their late alarm, allowed herself to trust in his judgment, and admitted, with unfeigned joy, and soon with unequivocal cheerfulness, the probability of an entire recovery. Elinor could not be cheerful. Her joy was of a different kind, and led to any thing rather than to gaiety. Marianne restored to life, health, friends, and to her doting mother, was an idea to fill her heart with sensations of exquisite comfort, and expand it in fervent gratitude;—but it led to no outward demonstrations of joy, no words, no smiles. All within Elinor’s breast was satisfaction, silent and strong. She continued by the side of her sister, with little intermission the whole afternoon, calming every fear, satisfying every inquiry of her enfeebled spirits, supplying every succour, and watching almost every look and every breath. The possibility of a relapse would of course, in some moments, occur to remind her of what anxiety was—but when she saw, on her frequent and minute examination, that every symptom of recovery continued, and saw Marianne at six o’clock sink into a quiet, steady, and to all appearance comfortable, sleep, she silenced every doubt. The time was now drawing on, when Colonel Brandon might be expected back. At ten o’clock, she trusted, or at least not much later her mother would be relieved from the dreadful suspense in which she must now be travelling towards them. The Colonel, too!—perhaps scarcely less an object of pity!—Oh!—how slow was the progress of time which yet kept them in ignorance!

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Elinor could not help laughing. “Excuse me,” said she; “and be assured that I meant no offence to you, by speaking, in so quiet a way, of my own feelings. Believe them to be stronger than I have declared; believe them, in short, to be such as his merit, and the suspicion—the hope of his affection for me may warrant, without imprudence or folly. But farther than this you must not believe. I am by no means assured of his regard for me. There are moments when the extent of it seems doubtful; and till his sentiments are fully known, you cannot wonder at my wishing to avoid any encouragement of my own partiality, by believing or calling it more than it is. In my heart I feel little—scarcely any doubt of his preference. But there are other points to be considered besides his inclination. He is very far from being independent. What his mother really is we cannot know; but, from Fanny’s occasional mention of her conduct and opinions, we have never been disposed to think her amiable; and I am very much mistaken if Edward is not himself aware that there would be many difficulties in his way, if he were to wish to marry a woman who had not either a great fortune or high rank.” Marianne was astonished to find how much the imagination of her mother and herself had outstripped the truth. “And you really are not engaged to him!” said she. “Yet it certainly soon will happen. But two advantages will proceed from this delay. I shall not lose you so soon, and Edward will have greater opportunity of improving that natural taste for your favourite pursuit which must be so indispensably necessary to your future felicity. Oh! if he should be so far stimulated by your genius as to learn to draw himself, how delightful it would be!”

• From The City of God

  Chapter 32. --Of the Universal Way of the Soul's Deliverance, Which Porphyry Did Not Find Because He Did Not Rightly Seek It, and Which the Grace of Christ Has Alone Thrown Open. This is the religion which possesses the universal way for delivering the soul; for except by this way, none can be delivered. This is a kind of royal way, which alone leads to a kingdom which does not totter like all temporal dignities, but stands firm on eternal foundations. And when Porphyry says, towards the end of the first book De Regressu Animoe, that no system of doctrine which furnishes the universal way for delivering the soul has as yet been received, either from the truest philosophy, or from the ideas and practices of the Indians, or from the reasoning [437] of the Chaldaeans, or from any source whatever, and that no historical reading had made him acquainted with that way, he manifestly acknowledges that there is such a way, but that as yet he was not acquainted with it. Nothing of all that he had so laboriously learned concerning the deliverance of the soul, nothing of all that he seemed to others, if not to himself, to know and believe, satisfied him. For he perceived that there was still wanting a commanding authority which it might be right to follow in a matter of such importance. And when he says that he had not learned from any truest philosophy a system which possessed the universal way of the soul's deliverance, he shows plainly enough, as it seems to me, either that the philosophy of which he was a disciple was not the truest, or that it did not comprehend such a way. And how can that be the truest philosophy which does not possess this way? For what else is the universal way of the soul's deliverance than that by which all souls universally are delivered, and without which, therefore, no soul is delivered? And when he says, in addition, "or from the ideas and practices of the Indians, or from the reasoning of the Chaldaeans, or from any source whatever," he declares in the most unequivocal language that this universal way of the soul's deliverance was not embraced in what he had learned either from the Indians or the Chaldaeans; and yet he could not forbear stating that it was from the Chaldaeans he had derived these divine oracles of which he makes such frequent mention. What, therefore, does he mean by this universal way of the soul's deliverance, which had not yet been made known by any truest philosophy, or by the doctrinal systems of those nations which were considered to have great insight in things divine, because they indulged more freely in a curious and fanciful science and worship of angels? What is this universal way of which he acknowledges his ignorance, if not a way which does not belong to one nation as its special property, but is common to all, and divinely bestowed? Porphyry, a man of no mediocre abilities, does not question that such a way exists; for he believes that Divine Providence could not have left men destitute of this universal way of delivering the soul. For he does not say that this way does not exist, but that this great boon and assistance has not yet been discovered, and has not come to his knowledge. And no wonder; for Porphyry lived in an age when this universal way of the soul's deliverance,--in other words, the Christian religion,--was exposed to the persecutions of idolaters and demon-worshippers, and earthly rulers, [438] that the number of martyrs or witnesses for the truth might be completed and consecrated, and that by them proof might be given that we must endure all bodily sufferings in the cause of the holy faith, and for the commendation of the truth. Porphyry, being a witness of these persecutions, concluded that this way was destined to a speedy extinction, and that it, therefore, was not the universal way of the soul's deliverance, and did not see that the very thing that thus moved him, and deterred him from becoming a Christian, contributed to the confirmation and more effectual commendation of our religion.