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 Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  When for motives of honor and conscience I brave the condemnation of my own family, club, and 'set'; when, as a protestant, I turn catholic; as a catholic, freethinker; as a 'regular practitioner,' homoeopath, or what not, I am always inwardly strengthened in my course and steeled against the loss of my actual social self by the thought of other and better possible social judges than those whose verdict goes against me now. The ideal social self which I thus seek in appealing to their decision may be very remote: it may be represented as barely possible. I may not hope for its realization during my lifetime; I may even expect the future generations, which would approve me if they knew me, to know nothing about me when I am dead and gone. Yet still the emotion that beckons me on is indubitably the pursuit of an ideal social self, of a self that is at least worthy of approving recognition by the highest possible judging companion, if such companion there be. [266] This self is the true, the intimate, the ultimate, the permanent Me which I seek. This judge is God, the Absolute Mind, the 'Great Companion.' We hear, in these days of scientific enlightenment, a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of prayer; and many reasons are given us why we should not pray, whilst others are given us why we should. But in all this very little is said of the reason why we do pray, which is simply that we cannot help praying. It seems probable that, in spite of all that 'science' may do to the contrary, men will continue to pray to the end of time, unless their mental nature changes in a manner which nothing we know should lead us to expect. The impulse to pray is a necessary consequence of the fact that whilst the innermost of the empirical selves of a man is a Self of the social sort, it yet can find its only adequate Socius in an ideal world. All progress in the social Self is the substitution of higher tribunals for lower; this ideal tribunal is the highest; and most men, either continually or occasionally, carry a reference to it in their breast. The humblest outcast on this earth can feel himself to be real and valid by means of this higher recognition. And, on the other hand, for most of us, a world with no such inner refuge when the outer social self failed and dropped from us would be the abyss of horror.

• From The Hours (1998)

  She rises from her bed and goes into the bathroom. Leonard is already up; he may already be at work. In the bathroom, she washes her face. She does not look directly into the oval mirror that hangs above the basin. She is aware of her reflected movements in the glass but does not permit herself to look. The mirror is dangerous; it sometimes shows her the dark manifestation of air that matches her body, takes her form, but stands behind, watching her, with porcine eyes and wet, hushed breathing. She washes her face and does not look, certainly not this morning, not when the work is waiting for her and she is anxious to join it the way she might join a party that had already started downstairs, a party full of wit and beauty certainly but full, too, of something finer than wit or beauty; something mysterious and golden; a spark of profound celebration, of life itself, as silks rustle across polished floors and secrets are whispered under the music. She, Virginia, could be a girl in a new dress, about to go down to a party, about to appear on the stairs, fresh and full of hope. No, she will not look in the mirror. She finishes washing her face. When she is finished in the bathroom she descends into the dusky morning quiet of the hall. She wears her pale blue housecoat. Night still resides here. Hogarth House is always nocturnal, even with its chaos of papers and books, its bright hassocks and Persian rugs. It is not dark in itself but it seems to be illuminated against darkness, even as the wan, early sun shines between the curtains and cars and carriages rumble by on Paradise Road. Virginia pours herself a cup of coffee in the dining room, walks quietly downstairs, but does not go to Nelly in the kitchen. This morning, she wants to get straight to work without risking exposure to Nelly’s bargainings and grievances. It could be a good day; it needs to be treated carefully. Balancing the cup on its saucer, she goes into the printing room. Leonard is sitting at his desk, reading page proofs. It is too early yet for Ralph or Marjorie.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  131IN 1919, by way of the Crimea and Greece, a flock of Nabokovs—three families in fact—fled from Russia to western Europe. It was arranged that my brother and I would go up to Cambridge, on a scholarship awarded more in atonement for political tribulations than in acknowledgement of intellectual merit. The rest of my family expected to stay for a while in London. Living expenses were to be paid by the handful of jewels which Natasha, a farsighted old chambermaid, just before my mother’s departure from St. Petersburg in November 1917, had swept off a dresser into a nécessaire and which for a brief spell had undergone interment or perhaps some kind of mysterious maturation in a Crimean garden. We had left our northern home for what we thought would be a brief wait, a prudent perching pause on the southern ledge of Russia; but the fury of the new regime had refused to blow over. In Greece, during two spring months, braving the constant resentment of intolerant shepherd dogs, I searched in vain for Gruner’s Orange-tip, Heldreich’s Sulphur, Krueper’s White: I was in the wrong part of the country. On the Cunard liner Pannonia which left Greece on May 18, 1919 (twenty-one years too soon as far as I was concerned) for New York, but let us off at Marseilles, I learned to foxtrot. France rattled by in the coal-black night. The pale Channel was still oscillating inside us, when the Dover-London train quietly came to a stop. Repetitive pictures of gray pears on the grimy walls of Victoria Station advertised the bath soap English governesses had used upon me in my childhood. A week later I was already shuffling cheek-to-cheek at a charity ball with my first English sweetheart, a wayward willowy girl five years my senior. My father had visited London before—the last time in February 1916, when, with five other prominent representatives of the Russian press, he had been invited by the British Government to take a look at England’s war effort (which, it was hinted, did not meet with sufficient appreciation on the part of Russia’s public opinion). On the way there, being challenged by my father and Korney Chukovski to rhyme on Afrika, the poet and novelist Aleksey Tolstoy (no relation to Count Lyov Nikolaevich) had supplied, though seasick, the charming couplet Vizhu pal’mu i Kafrika. Eto—Afrika. (I see a palm and a little Kaffir. That’s Afrika.)

• From The Hours (1998)

  She does not look directly into the oval mirror that hangs above the basin. She is aware of her reflected movements in the glass but does not permit herself to look. The mirror is dangerous; it sometimes shows her the dark manifestation of air that matches her body, takes her form, but stands behind, watching her, with porcine eyes and wet, hushed breathing. She washes her face and does not look, certainly not this morning, not when the work is waiting for her and she is anxious to join it the way she might join a party that had already started downstairs, a party full of wit and beauty certainly but full, too, of something finer than wit or beauty; something mysterious and golden; a spark of profound celebration, of life itself, as silks rustle across polished floors and secrets are whispered under the music. She, Virginia, could be a girl in a new dress, about to go down to a party, about to appear on the stairs, fresh and full of hope. No, she will not look in the mirror. She finishes washing her face. When she is finished in the bathroom she descends into the dusky morning quiet of the hall. She wears her pale blue housecoat. Night still resides here. Hogarth House is always nocturnal, even with its chaos of papers and books, its bright hassocks and Persian rugs. It is not dark in itself but it seems to be illuminated against darkness, even as the wan, early sun shines between the curtains and cars and carriages rumble by on Paradise Road. Virginia pours herself a cup of coffee in the dining room, walks quietly downstairs, but does not go to Nelly in the kitchen. This morning, she wants to get straight to work without risking exposure to Nelly’s bargainings and grievances. It could be a good day; it needs to be treated carefully. Balancing the cup on its saucer, she goes into the printing room. Leonard is sitting at his desk, reading page proofs. It is too early yet for Ralph or Marjorie. Leonard looks up at her, still wearing, for a moment, the scowl he has brought to the proofs. It is an expression she trusts and fears, his eyes blazing and impenetrably dark under his heavy brows, the corners of his mouth turned down in an expression of judgment that is severe but not in any way petulant or trivial—the frown of a deity, all-seeing and weary, hoping for the best from humankind, knowing just how much to expect.

• From The Hours (1998)

  Clarissa buzzes him in. Of course it’s Louis. No one else, certainly no New Yorker, would just ring the bell without calling first. No one does that. She opens the door and goes out into the hall with a great and almost dizzying sense of anticipation, a feeling so strong and so peculiar, so unknown under any other circumstances, that she decided some time ago to simply name it after Louis. It’s that Louis feeling, and through it run traces of devotion and guilt, attraction, a distinct element of stage fright, and a pure untarnished hope, as if every time Louis appears he might, finally, be bringing a piece of news so good it’s impossible to anticipate its extent or even its precise nature. Then, a moment later, coming around the bend in the hallway, is Louis himself. It has been, what, over five years now, but he’s exactly the same. Same electric bristle of white hair, same avid and quirky walk, same careless clothes that somehow look right. His old beauty, his heft and leonine poise, vanished with such surprising suddenness almost two decades ago, and this Louis—white-haired, sinewy, full of furtive, chastened emotions—emerged in much the way a small, unimposing man might jump from the turret of a tank to announce that it was he, not the machine, who flattened your village. Louis, the old object of desire, has always, as it turns out, been this: a drama teacher, a harmless person. “Well, now,” he says. He and Clarissa embrace. When Clarissa pulls back she sees that Louis’s myopic gray eyes are moist. He has always been prone to tears. Clarissa, the more sentimental one, the more indignant, never seems to cry at all, though she often wants to. “When did you get into town?” she asks. “Day before yesterday. I was out walking, and I realized I was on your street.” “I’m so happy to see you.” “I’m happy to see you, too,” Louis says, and his eyes fill again. “Your timing is incredible. We’re having a party for Richard tonight.” “Really? What’s the occasion?” “He won the Carrouthers. Didn’t you hear?” “The what?” “It’s a prize for poets. It’s a very big deal. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.” “Well. Congratulations Richard.” “I hope you’ll come. He’d be thrilled to see you.” “Would he?” “Yes. Of course. Why are we standing here, practically in the hallway? Come in.”

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

  Above all towards her older brother, who had been showing so little hope of late, Tony longed for some proof that the family's fortunes were not yet exhausted, that they were by no means at the end... Her second dowry, the 17,000 thalers, which Mr. Permaneder had given back with such goodwill, were ready for Erika, and Frau Antonie, sharp-eyed and experienced, had hardly noticed the delicate connection He did it. He appeared on the first floor, was received by the three ladies, grandmother, daughter and granddaughter, and chatted for ten minutes and promised to come back sometime in the afternoon around coffee time for casual conversation. That also happened, and we got to know each other. The director was born in Silesia, where his elderly father still lived; his family, however, seemed out of the question, and Hugo Weinschenk rather a self-made manto be. He had the uninnate, not entirely sure, somewhat exaggerated, and somewhat suspicious self-confidence of such a man, his forms were not exactly perfect, and his conversation was unskilled at heart. Incidentally, his frock coat, which was cut in a somewhat bourgeois manner, showed a few bare spots, his cuffs with the large jet buttons were not quite fresh and clean, and the nail on the middle finger of his left hand was completely withered and coal-black as a result of some accident ... a rather unpleasant sight, but not a hindrance that Hugo Weinschenk was a respectable, hard-working, energetic person with an annual income of 12,000 Kurantmarks and, in Erika Grünlich's eyes, even a handsome man. Mrs. Permaneder quickly surveyed and assessed the situation. She spoke openly to the consul and the senator about it. It was clear that the interests met and complemented each other. Director Weinschenk, like Erika, was without any social connections; the two were downright dependent on one another and evidently destined for one another by God. If the director, who was approaching forty and whose hair was beginning to streak, wanted to set up a household, which suited his position and his circumstances, the connection with Erika Grünlich enabled him to enter one of the top families in the city and was suitable to promote him in his profession, to secure him in his position. But as far as Erika's welfare was concerned, Mrs. Permaneder could say to herself, that at least their own fates are excluded in this case. Hugo Weinschenk did not bear the slightest resemblance to Herr Permaneder, and he differed from Bendix Grünlich in his quality as a solidly situated civil servant with a fixed salary, which did not rule out a further career. In a word: there was a lot of goodwill on both sides, Director Weinschenk's afternoon visits were repeated in quick succession, and in January - January of the year 1867 - he allowed himself a few short, manly and straight words on Erika Grünlich's hand to ask.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  The grid system resembled rows of garden plots, something that would have made sense to his fellow naturalist J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, author of Letters from an American Farmer (1782). A French-born migrant who spent years in New York’s Hudson Valley, and a devotee of Buffon, Crèvecoeur celebrated an “intermediary space,” which created a “separate and distinct class.” “Men are like plants,” he believed, and the seeds of classes could be planted and cultivated. The typical class of cultivators whom he imagined filling this middle zone owned a 371-acre farm; they were not tenants or squatters, nor were they overseas merchants importing English manufactured goods. Crèvecoeur’s perfect farmer turned the fields into a classroom, placing his son on the plough, having him feel the up-and-down rhythm as it moved through the soil. 25 Jefferson, too, wanted Americans tied to the land, with deep roots to their offspring, to future generations. Agrarian perfection would germinate: a love of the soil, no less than a love of one’s heirs, instilled amor patriae, a love of country. He was not promoting a freewheeling society or the rapid commercial accumulation of wealth; nor was he advocating a class system marked by untethered social mobility. Jefferson’s husbandmen were of a new kind of birthright station, passed from parents to children. They were not to be an ambitious class of men on the make. 26 Jefferson’s idealized farmers were not rustics either. They sold their produce in the marketplace, albeit on a smaller scale. There was room enough for an elite gentry class, and gentleman farmers like himself. Using the latest husbandry methods, improving the soil, the wealthier farmers could instruct others, the less skilled beneath them. Education and emulation were necessary to instill virtue. American farmers required an apprenticeship of a sort, which was only possible if they were planted in the right kind of engineered environment. The Northwest Territory served that purpose, as a free-labor zone that cultivated middling aspirations and was safely decontaminated of any noxious influences. The relics of noble titles were gone, slavery was prohibited, and commercial impulses were subdued. In one of his most ambitious plans for reform, sketched out in 1789, Jefferson thought of importing German immigrants, who were known to be superior laborers, and to place them on adjacent fifty-acre plots opposite slaves, who would be “brought up, as others, in the habits of foresight and property.” At the same time, he contemplated the recruitment of Germans just to improve the caliber of Virginia’s poor white farmers. The Anglo-Virginians were supposed to intermingle with and learn from the better German farmers around them. 27 Of course, Jefferson was not always honest about the class system that surrounded him. He preferred to project an America of “tranquil permanent felicity” than confront the unpleasant reality that persisted.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  As Jefferson argued in 1785, in a letter to the Marquis de Chastellux, who had visited Monticello three years earlier, Native Americans were not feeble. Over time they had developed muscles to make them fleet of foot for warfare. Euro-Americans were equally adaptable to the congenial American environment. They drew upon an inbred strength passed down from generations of ancestors who had labored in the fields. Cultivation was in their blood, Jefferson was saying, and they were already engaged in transforming the land and making it their own. 22 Jefferson’s ideas of topography went beyond the natural environment. He was equally concerned with human chorography—the way humans adapted to the land, exploited its fertility, and built social institutions. Husbandry itself was a crucial stage that elevated human societies beyond the rudiments of savagery and barbarism. The American cultivator needed some safeguards. Degeneracy was certainly possible, Jefferson admitted, but not on Buffon’s scale. Dangers lurked for Americans who were too close to the wilderness, or for those too enamored with the commercial luxuries of the Old World. In one of his dreamier moments in 1785, he wrote of the hope that America would be like China, completely cut off from European commerce and manufacturing and other entanglements: “We should thus avoid all wars, and all our citizens would be husbandmen.” He wished for a middle zone, between the two extremes. 23 Jefferson was not above social engineering, believing that manners could be cultivated. His scheme for the Northwest Territory built upon his reforms for Virginia. As the chair of two congressional committees, he assumed a leading role in shaping how the land would be distributed and governed. In his report on the Land Ordinance of 1784, he devised a grid plan that would have divided the land into perfectly formed rectangles, offering individual lots, the basic unit of the family farm. He wanted the area divided into ten potential states, and gave them names. And not just any names: Sylvania, Cherronesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Pelispia, to name a few. He chose fanciful names, with pseudo- classical or agrarian meanings, suggesting that in this act of state building, Congress was engaged in the regeneration or rebirth of Western civilization. He insisted that no hereditary titles be recognized in the Northwest, and after 1800 slavery and involuntary servitude would be permanently banned there. Following in the footsteps of Oglethorpe, Jefferson envisioned a free-labor zone. 24 What was Jefferson up to? One goal was to forestall the growth of manufacturing, which in Notes he described as a canker on the body politic.

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

  And yet, me ca n't give up hope, Tom, that everything can still be made good! I'm still young... Aren't I pretty pretty? Mama can't give me much more, but it's still a reasonable piece of money. If I remarry? Frankly, Tom, it's my dearest wish! With that everything would be all right, the stain would be wiped out... Oh God, if I could play a game worthy of our name, settle down again -! Do you think it's completely out of the question?" 'Save, Tony! Oh, not at all! I never stopped counting on it. But above all, it seems to me that you need to get out a little, cheer yourself up, have a change..." "That's it!" she said eagerly. "Now I have to tell you a story." Thomas leaned back, very pleased with this suggestion. He was already on his second cigarette. Dawn began to advance. 'Well, while you were away I almost got a job, a companionship in Liverpool! Would you have found it outrageous?... But at least somewhat questionable?... Yes, yes, it probably would have been undignified. But I wanted so badly to get away... In short, it was shattered. I sent my photograph to the missis, and she had to give up my services because I was too pretty; there was a grown son in the house. 'You're too pretty,' she wrote... ha, I've never been so amused!' The two laughed heartily. "But now I have something else in mind," Tony went on."Ihave been invited Invited to Munich by Eva Ewers ... yes, by the way, her name is Eva Niederpaur now, and her husband is the director of the brewery. Enough, she has asked me to visit her, and I intend to make use of the request in the near future. Of course, Erika couldn't go with him. I would give her to Sesemi Weichbrodt in pension. She would be in excellent hands there. Do you have anything against that?” "Nothing at all. In any case, it is necessary for you to find yourself in new circumstances again." "Yes, it is!" she said gratefully. 'But now you, Tom! I keep talking about myself, I'm a selfish woman! Now you tell. Oh God, how happy you must be!” "Yes, Tony!" he said emphatically. There was a pause. He breathed the smoke across the table and continued, 'First of all, I'm very glad to be married and have a household of my own. You know me: I wouldn't have done well for a garçon. All bachelorhood smacks of isolation and loafing, and I have some ambition, as you know. I don't think my career is over either in business or, shall we say jokingly, politically... but you only gain the true trust of the world when you are the head of the household and a father. Still, it hung by a hair, Tony... I'm a bit picky. For a long time I didn't think it was possible to find a suitable woman in the world.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  2I have sufficiently spoken of the gloom and the glory of exile in my Russian novels, and especially in the best of them, Dar (recently published in English as The Gift); but a quick recapitulation here may be convenient. With a very few exceptions, all liberal-minded creative forces—poets, novelists, critics, historians, philosophers and so on—had left Lenin’s and Stalin’s Russia. Those who had not were either withering away there or adulterating their gifts by complying with the political demands of the state. What the Tsars had never been able to achieve, namely the complete curbing of minds to the government’s will, was achieved by the Bolsheviks in no time after the main contingent of the intellectuals had escaped abroad or had been destroyed. The lucky group of expatriates could now follow their pursuits with such utter impunity that, in fact, they sometimes asked themselves if the sense of enjoying absolute mental freedom was not due to their working in an absolute void. True, there was among émigrés a sufficient number of good readers to warrant the publication, in Berlin, Paris, and other towns, of Russian books and periodicals on a comparatively large scale; but since none of those writings could circulate within the Soviet Union, the whole thing acquired a certain air of fragile unreality. The number of titles was more impressive than the number of copies any given work sold, and the names of the publishing houses—Orion, Cosmos, Logos, and so forth—had the hectic, unstable and slightly illegal appearance that firms issuing astrological or facts-of-life literature have. In serene retrospect, however, and judged by artistic and scholarly standards alone, the books produced in vacuo by émigré writers seem today, whatever their individual faults, more permanent and more suitable for human consumption than the slavish, singularly provincial and conventional streams of political consciousness that came during those same years from the pens of young Soviet authors whom a fatherly state provided with ink, pipes and pullovers. The editor of the daily Rul’ (and the publisher of my first books), Iosif Vladimirovich Hessen, allowed me with great leniency to fill his poetry section with my unripe rhymes. Blue evenings in Berlin, the corner chestnut in flower, lightheadedness, poverty, love, the tangerine tinge of premature shoplights, and an animal aching yearn for the still fresh reek of Russia—all this was put into meter, copied out in longhand and carted off to the editor’s office, where myopic I. V. would bring the new poem close to his face and after this brief, more or less tactual, act of cognition put it down on his desk. By 1928, my novels were beginning to bring a little money in German translations, and in the spring of 1929, you and I went butterfly hunting in the Pyrenees. But only at the end of the nineteen-thirties did we leave Berlin for good, although long before that I used to take trips to Paris for public readings of my stuff.

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

  "Tom, father, grandfather and all the others! Where have they gone? You don't see them anymore. Oh, it's so hard and sad!" "I'll see you again," said Friederike Buddenbrook, clasping her hands tightly in her lap, lowering her eyes and poking her nose in the air. »Yes, that's what they say... Oh, there are times, Friederike, when there is no consolation, God punish me, when one confuses justice, kindness... about everything. Life, you know, breaks so many things in us, it puts so many beliefs to shame... A reunion... If it were so..." But then Sesemi Weichbrodt got up at the table as high as she could. She stood on tiptoe, craned her neck, pounded on the plate, and the bonnet trembled on her head. " It is so !" she said with all her strength and looked at everyone defiantly. She stood there, a victor in the good battle she had waged during her lifetime against the challenges of her teacher's sanity, hunchbacked, tiny, and trembling with conviction, a small, punitive, ecstatic prophetess. End

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  “Well, as I started to own my stuff, looking at my own soul, considering my FOO, I realized I have had a big part in the breakdown of this marriage. From our honeymoon, I was guarded and didn’t want to let a man close to me. I shut him out as much as he shut me out. And I’ve hurt him, maybe even more than he hurt me. He wanted sex with me, but I rejected him and had sex with another man. I have to take full responsibility for that. Our children love him and he is a good provider. He never attached to his mother and I’m sure he is just very anxious in his attachment style and it comes across as needy and clingy. With my avoidant style it has only polarized us.” Olivia said, “It sounds like you read the book I recommended about attachment.” “Yes, Dr. Sue Johnson’s book has been life changing for me. I can see my part and realize Dylan and I don’t have to keep hunting the bad guy. We can become aware of our attachment styles and work to connect instead of disconnect,” Angie stated. “Wow, Angie, big growth!” The women noted. “How does that feel?” Olivia asked. “It feels hopeful. If I take responsibility for my part, I am empowered to grow and change. If all I ever do is blame him, I am stuck and feel anything but empowered. We are actually moving toward each other. And I think I know what my next step is,” she stated. Emily asked, “So what’s your next step?” “I have to come clean with him about the affair. I broke it off with the volleyball coach the week after I told you all about it. I admit, it was hard to do though. It was the best, most exciting sex I have ever had, but it was also the most shaming thing I have ever done. I can’t keep living with secrets. This group has taught me my secrets are keeping me sick; and I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. I am ready to live without shame. How do I tell him? What if he leaves me? What about the kids?” Angie wondered aloud. “Tell him like you told us, Angie,” Betty advised. “Tell him you are sad you shut him out from the very start. Tell him you are sad you and he haven’t moved toward each other but moved away emotionally and physically. Then tell him you have broken off this relationship and you want to start over with him if he will have you. Tell him you are deeply sorry for hurting him and for being unfaithful to him. Isn’t that what every spouse wants to hear, when your spouse has been sexually unfaithful?” Betty asked. “Betty, what about you? Where is your relationship with your husband?” Olivia asked.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  The room, the folksinger said, was filthy and dark. The hostages were curled up in a corner, terrified. When the SEALs entered the room, they heard the gasps of the hostages. They stood at the door and called to the prisoners, telling them they were Americans. The SEALs asked the hostages to follow them, but the hostages wouldn’t. They sat there on the floor and hid their eyes in fear. They were not of healthy mind and didn’t believe their rescuers were really Americans. The SEALs stood there, not knowing what to do. They couldn’t possibly carry everybody out. One of the SEALs, the folksinger’s friend, got an idea. He put down his weapon, took off his helmet, and curled up tightly next to the other hostages, getting so close his body was touching some of theirs. He softened the look on his face and put his arms around them. He was trying to show them he was one of them. None of the prison guards would have done this. He stayed there for a little while until some of the hostages started to look at him, finally meeting his eyes. The Navy SEAL whispered that they were Americans and were there to rescue them. Will you follow us? he said. The hero stood to his feet and one of the hostages did the same, then another, until all of them were willing to go. The story ends with all the hostages safe on an American aircraft carrier. I never liked it when the preachers said we had to follow Jesus. Sometimes they would make Him sound angry. But I liked the story the folksinger told. I liked the idea of Jesus becoming man, so that we would be able to trust Him, and I like that He healed people and loved them and cared deeply about how people were feeling. When I understood that the decision to follow Jesus was very much like the decision the hostages had to make to follow their rescuer, I knew then that I needed to decide whether or not I would follow Him. The decision was simple once I asked myself, Is Jesus the Son of God, are we being held captive in a world run by Satan, a world filled with brokenness, and do I believe Jesus can rescue me from this condition? If life had a climax, which it must in order for the element of climax to be mirrored in story, then Christian spirituality was offering a climax. It was offering a decision. The last element of story is resolution. Christian spirituality offered a resolution, the resolution of forgiveness and a home in the afterlife. Again, it all sounded so very witless to me, but by this time I wanted desperately to believe it. It felt as though my soul were designed to live the story Christian spirituality was telling. I felt like my soul wanted to be forgiven. I wanted the resolution God was offering.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Somebody better tell them—they can get better moonshine right there where they is than they likely to here—and cheaper, too.’ ‘But I do hope,’ he said, with a smile, ‘that you ain’t taken to drinking moonshine, sister.’ ‘It wasn’t never me, ’ she said, promptly, ‘had that habit.’ ‘Don’t know,’ he persisted, still smiling, and still looking at Elizabeth, ‘tell me folks do things up North they wouldn’t think about doing down home.’ ‘Folks got their dirt to do,’ said Florence. ‘They going to do it, no matter where they is. Folks do lots of things down home they don’t want nobody to know about.’ ‘Like my aunt used to say,’ Elizabeth said, smiling timidly, ‘she used to say, folks sure better not do in the dark what they’s scared to look at in the light.’ She had meant it as a kind of joke; but the words were not out of her mouth before she longed for the power to call them back. They rang in her own ears like a confession. ‘That’s the Lord’s truth,’ he said, after the briefest pause. ‘Does you really believe that?’ She forced herself to look up at him, and felt at that moment the intensity of the attention that Florence fixed on her, as though she were trying to shout a warning. She knew that it was something in Gabriel’s voice that had caused Florence, suddenly, to be so wary and so tense. But she did not drop her eyes from Gabriel’s eyes. She answered him: ‘Yes. That’s the way I want to live.’ ‘Then the Lord’s going to bless you,’ he said, ‘and open up the windows of Heaven for you—for you, and that boy. He going to pour down blessings on you till you won’t know where to put them. You mark my words.’ ‘Yes,’ said Florence, mildly, ‘you mark his words.’ But neither of them looked at her. It came into Elizabeth’s mind, filling her mind: All things work together for good to them that love the Lord. She tried to obliterate this burning phrase, and what it made her feel. What it made her feel, for the first time since the death of Richard, was hope; his voice had made her feel that she was not altogether cast down, that God might raise her again in honour; his eyes had made her know that she could be—again, this time in honour—a woman. Then, from what seemed to be a great, cloudy distance, he smiled at her—and she smiled.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  “Now, before we move on, I want to encourage you with something. As you are beginning to trust others by sharing your story, I want you to know God is working in your life and on your behalf. He gives His promise to us that He started a good work with us, and He won’t quit until He is done. I want to read you a verse from Philippians 1:6. It says, ‘There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.’” Olivia looked around at the women. “How does it feel to know God is on your side?” One by one, the women responded by nodding and giving soft replies of relief. Vanessa was still rigidly sitting, engulfed in a cloud of discernible pain. Olivia made eye contact with her and asked, “Vanessa, is there anything you would like to say or is there anything stirring inside of you that you would like to share with the group?” “I told you, I don’t want to talk about it! Besides, I am fine,” Vanessa retorted. Olivia knew all too well that “fine” was code for there is so much inside of me, I don’t know where to begin. And that “fine” is a form of resistance, resistance to give language to reality. “What was so hurtful, Vanessa, that you won’t talk about it?” Olivia asked, following her resistance. “I don’t want to go there,” Vanessa answered. “You aren’t ready to go there,” Olivia replied. “No,” everyone could feel her heels digging in. “Okay, let us know when you are ready. We are here to listen to whatever it is you won’t talk about and to care for your heart when you are ready.” Olivia knew to back off. “What are boundaries?” Betty asked “What makes you ask, Betty?” Olivia queried. “I don’t think I have any,” Betty answered. “Yeah, me neither,” Holly interjected. Olivia replied, “Dr. Townsend says it like this. Imagine you have a neighbor who never waters his lawn. Whenever you turn on your sprinkler system, your water only falls on his lawn. Your grass is turning brown and dying, but your neighbors grass looks great. If you would define the property lines a little better, if you would fix the sprinkler system so the water fell on your lawn, and if he didn’t water his lawn, he would have to live with the dirt. He might not like that after a while. As it stands now, he is irresponsible and happy, and you are responsible and miserable. A boundary clarification would do the trick. You need some fences to keep his problems out of your yard and in his, where they belong.” Holly chimed in, “Well, isn’t that a bit cold? You know, to just stop helping?” “Has helping—helped?” Olivia asked.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " Much I care what name men give me," said Enna- suite ; " only let me have God's pardon and my husband's too, there is no reason why I should wish to die." " If this lady loved her husband as she ought," said Dagoucin, " I am surprised she did not die of grief at looking upon the bones of him whom her crime had brought to death." " Why, Dagoucin," said Simontault, " have you yet to learn that women know neither love nor regret ?" 304 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE \Nmet ^x " Yes," he replied, " for I have never ventured to prove their love for fear of finding it less than I should have wished." " You live, then, on faith and hope," said Normerfide, " as the plover lives on wind. You are easily kept," " I content myself with the love I feel in my own heart," he replied, " and with the hope that there is the same in the hearts of ladies. But if I was quite sure that that love corresponded to my hope, I should feel a pleasure so extreme that I could not sustain it and live." " Keep yourself safe from the plague," said Geburon, " for as for the other malady, I warrant you against it. But let us see to whom Madame Oisille will give her voice." " I give it," she said, " to Simontault, who I know will spare no one." " That is as much as to say that I am rather given to evil speaking," said he. " I shall, nevertheless, let you see that people who have been regarded in that same light have yet spoken the truth. I believe, ladies, you are not so simple as to put faith in everything a person tells you, however sanctified an air he may assume, un- less the proof is clear beyond doubt. Many an abuse is committed under the guise of a miracle. Therefore I intend to relate to you a story not less honourable to a religious prince than shameful to a wicked minister ol the church." Fourth iiay.\ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 305 NOVEL XXXIII. Incest of a priest, who got his sister with child under the cloak of sanctity, and how it was punished.

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

  The rapidity with which he twirled the tip of his mustache between his fingers was a strange contrast to the blurred, fixed, and aimless immobility of his gaze. He paid no attention to his sister's laments or to the speculations she made about the future life of her friend Armgard, nor did he notice that Gerda, without turning her head towards him, looked at her close-set brown eyes, with bluish shadows at the corners , held firmly and peering at him. Second chapter Thomas Buddenbrook was never able to look into the future of little Johann with the look of dull displeasure with which he awaited the rest of his own life. His sense of family, that inherited and cultivated, backwards as well as forwards-looking, reverent interest in the intimate history of his house prevented him, and the affectionate or curious expectation with which his friendship and acquaintance in the town, his sister, and even the Buddenbrook ladies looking at his son on Breite Strasse influenced his thoughts. He told himself with satisfaction that no matter how worn out and hopeless he himself felt for himself, he could, in the face of his small successor's ever-enlivening future dreams of efficiency, practical and uninhibited work, success, acquisition, power, What if, in his old age, from a quiet corner he himself could see the beginning of the old days again, the time of Hanno's great-grandfather? Was this hope so utterly impossible? He had found music to be his enemy; but was it really so serious? Admittedly, that the boy's love of free play without notes testified to a not entirely normal disposition - in regular instruction from Mr. Pfühl he was by no means extremely advanced. Music, there was no question, was his mother's influence, and it is no wonder that this influence was predominant during the early years of his childhood. But the time began when a father is given the opportunity to influence his son in turn, to pull him a little on his side and to neutralize the previous female influences with male counter-impressions. And the senator was determined not to let any such opportunity go to waste. Hanno, now eleven years old, had been transferred to Quarta at Easter, just like his friend, little Count Mölln, with exacting difficulties and two re-examinations in arithmetic and geography. It was clear that he should attend the real classes, because it was a matter of course that he would have to become a businessman and take over the company one day, and to his father's questions as to whether he felt a desire for his future profession, he answered yes ... a simple, shy away from something Yes, without any additions, which the senator tried to make a little livelier and more detailed with further pressing questions - and mostly in vain. If Senator Buddenbrook had had two sons, there is no question that he would have let the younger one finish high school and study.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  Olivia smiled. “So let’s talk about what you can expect from me and our group during our times together. Over the course of this year, we will want to address any trauma from your past, such as how attachment went for you as a child, and any tendencies you may have to rescue, fix, control, or take care of others. We will work on you finding your voice and setting healthy boundaries. Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend wrote a classic book several decades ago called Boundaries. It is one of the best books on understanding and learning how to set boundaries in our lives. I love that they teach, ‘Those with good boundaries have more love.’ I’ve experienced that to be so true, and I hope you do as well, as you begin to form new and healthy boundaries. “There will be grief work to do, so we will work on integrating the negative realities of life. For example, your husband may be a wonderful provider, care deeply for his children, love you and love God, and still have a porn addiction or have betrayed you in some way. This is possible because most people cut off the shameful parts of themselves and tuck them away in a hidden compartment. “When we learn how to celebrate the good and grieve the negative, our lives become much more holistic. Negative realities are a fact of life in any and every relationship. Jesus promised we would suffer in this world and experience hard and even bad things. He said bad things happen to good people. You did not deserve the bad things that have happened to you—we live in a fallen and broken world, and evil impacts all of us. This is why we will do grief work, so we can become more integrated and whole.” “I love what God said in Isaiah 61. Let’s take a minute and read this together. Isaiah 61:1–7 reads: The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me because God anointed me. He sent me to preach good news to the poor, heal the heartbroken, Announce freedom to all captives, pardon all prisoners. God sent me to announce the year of his grace—a celebration of God’s destruction of our enemies—and to comfort all who mourn, To care for the needs of all who mourn in Zion, give them bouquets of roses instead of ashes, Messages of joy instead of news of doom, a praising heart instead of a languid spirit. Rename them “Oaks of Righteousness” planted by God to display his glory. They’ll rebuild the old ruins, raise a new city out of the wreckage. They’ll start over on the ruined cities, take the rubble left behind and make it new. You’ll hire outsiders to herd your flocks and foreigners to work your fields, But you’ll have the title “Priests of God,” honored as ministers of our God. You’ll feast on the bounty of nations, you’ll bask in their glory.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (Epist. 119, 11) All that is said by the three Evangelists concerning the Advent of our Lord, if diligently compared together and examined, will perchance be found to belong to His daily coming in His body, that is, the Church, except those places where that last coming is so promised, as if it were approaching; for instance in the last part of the discourse according to Matthew, the coming itself is clearly expressed, where it is said, When the Son of Man shall come in his glory. (Matt. 25:31) For what does he refer to in the words, when ye shall see these things come to pass, but those things which He has mentioned above, amongst which it is said, And then ye shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds. The end therefore shall not be then, but then it shall be near at hand. Or are we to say, that not all those things which are mentioned above are to be taken in, but only some of them, that is, leaving out these words, Then shall ye see the Son of man coming; for that shall be the end itself, and not its approach only. But Matthew has declared that it is to be received without exception, saying, When ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. That which is said above must therefore be taken thus; And he shall send his angels, and gather together the elect from the four winds; that is, He shall collect His elect from the four winds of heaven, which He does in the whole of the last hour, coming in His members as in clouds. BEDE. (ubi sup.) This fruitbearing of the fig tree may also be understood to mean the state of the synagogue, which was condemned to everlasting barrenness, because when the Lord came, it had no fruits of righteousness in those who were then unfaithful. (Rom. 11:25) But the Apostle has said, that when the fulness of the Gentiles is come in, all Israel shall be saved. What means this, but that the tree, which has been long barren, shall then yield the fruit, which it had withheld? When this shall happen, doubt not that a summer of true peace is at hand. PSEUDO-JEROME. Or else, the leaves which come forth are words now spoken, the summer at hand is the day of Judgment, in which every tree shall shew what it had within it, deadness for burning, or greenness to be planted with the tree of life. There follows: Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till these things be done. BEDE. (ubi sup.) By generation He either means the whole race of mankind, or specially the Jews.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  When a man begins to believe in or to seek to propagate Christianity as he would like it to be instead of as God proclaims it is, he cannot do other than preach ‘another gospel’. It is only after we have listened to God that we can speak to men. The danger is that we tell God instead of listening to God telling us. As we study this word euaggelion and as we trace it through the NT we begin to see that it involves and includes certain things. (i) The euaggelion is ‘the good news of truth’ (Gal. 2.5, 14; Col. 1.5). With the coming of Jesus Christ the time of guesses about God is ended and the time of certainty begun. With his coming the time of groping after the meaning and the method of life is closed and the time of certainty is here. Christianity was never meant to present men with a series of problems but with an armoury of certainties. (ii) The euaggelion is ‘the good news of hope’ (Col. 2.23). The man who tries to live life with only the materials which human effort can bring to it cannot do other than despair of himself and despair of the world. John Buchan defined an atheist as ‘a man with no invisible means of support’. When a man realizes what the good news means he is filled with hope for himself and for the world. (iii) The euaggelion is ‘the good news of peace’ (Eph. 6.15). So long as a man tries to live life alone he is inevitably a split personality. As Studdert- Kennedy said, ‘Part of him comes from heaven, and part of him comes from earth.’ The good news tells us that victory comes from surrender, from the death of self and the rising to life of Christ within us. The good news brings to men the possibility of a fully integrated personality where the old unhappy tensions are ended. (iv) The euaggelion is ‘the good news of God’s promise’ (Eph. 3.6). The characteristic of the pagan gods, and even of God as the OT knew him, was that he was a God of threats. Jesus brought the good news which told not of the God of the threat, but the God of the promise. That by no means removes all obligations from life, for a promise brings its obligation just as much as a threat does, but the obligation becomes the obligation to answer to love and not to cower before vengeance. (v) The euaggelion is ‘the good news of immortality’ (II Tim. 1.10). In face of death the pagan sorrowed and feared as one who had no hope (I Thess. 4.13). One of the saddest of papyrus letters is a letter from a mother to a mother and father whose little child has died. ‘Irene to Taonnophris and Philo, good comfort. I was as sorry and wept over the departed one as I wept for Didymus.