Joy

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.

Page 211 of 299 · 20 per page

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

  "I do not know that yet; but he must have great wealth... Oh, how I look forward to it, children! I'll get up at five o'clock and do some housekeeping…” She pulled the covers over her and dreamily looked up at the ceiling. "There are five hundred cows in her mind's eye," said Gerda, looking at her friend in the mirror. Tony wasn't done yet; but she let her head sink in advance on the pillow, clasped her hands behind her neck and, for her part, gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Of course I shall marry a merchant," she said. 'He must have quite a lot of money so that we can set things up elegantly; I owe it to my family and the company,' she added earnestly. "Yes, you should see, I'll do that." Gerda had finished her sleeping hairstyle and was brushing her broad, white teeth, using her ivory hand mirror. "I'm probably not going to get married," she said, with a little difficulty because the peppermint powder was holding her back. 'I don't see why. I don't want to. I'll go to Amsterdam and play duos with dad and later live with my married sister..." "What a pity!" Tony exclaimed briskly. 'No, what a pity, Gerda! You should marry here and stay here always... Listen, you should marry one of my brothers, for example..." "The one with the big nose?" asked Gerda and yawned with a small, dainty and careless sigh, holding the hand mirror to her mouth. “Or the others, it doesn't matter … God, how you would organize yourselves! Jakobs would have to do it, Jakobs upholsterer in Fischstrasse, he has excellent taste. I would visit every day..." But then Mlle. Popinet's voice rang out: » Ah! voyons, mesdames! to bed, s'il vous plaît ! You will not marry tonight!' But Tony spent Sundays and vacations on Mengstrasse or outside with his grandparents. How lucky if the weather was good on Easter Sunday and you could look for the eggs and marzipan bunnies in the enormous Kröger Garden! What a summer holiday by the sea, when you lived in the Kurhaus, ate at the table d'hote, bathed and rode donkeys! Also, in some years, when the consul was doing business, trips were made by undertaken on a larger scale. But what Christmas, above all, with three gifts: at home, with the grandparents and at Sesemi's, where the bishop flowed in streams that evening ... But the most glorious was Christmas Eve at home, because the consul insisted that the holy Christmas was celebrated with consecration, splendor and atmosphere. When you were gathered in deep solemnity in the landscape room, while the servants and all sorts of old and poor people, whose blue-red hands were pressed by the consul, crowded into the columned hall, then outside there rang out four-part singing performed by the choirboys of St. Mary's Church, and you got heart palpitations it was so festive.

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

  You are leaving for Riga tomorrow, alive and well, Seventh Chapter Amsterdam, July 20, 56. Hotel »Het Haasje« My dear mother! Having just received your substantial letter, I hasten to thank you most sincerely for the attention that lies in the fact that you collect my consent in the matter in question; Of course, I not only grant them, but also add my most joyful congratulations, completely convinced that you, you and Klara, made a good choice will have met. I know the beautiful name of Tiburtius, and I am sure that papa had business dealings with the old man. In any case, Klara will find herself in pleasant circumstances, and the position as pastor will appeal to her temperament. So Tiburtius left for Riga and will he visit his bride again in August? Well, things will really be lively then in Mengstrasse - even more lively than you all foresee, because you don't know the strange reasons why I am so extremely happy and amazed about Mademoiselle Klara's engagement and what the loveliest meeting it is about . Yes, my excellent Mrs. Mama, if today I deign to send my solemn consensus on Klara's earthly happiness from the Amstel to the Baltic Sea, I do so quite simply on the condition that I send a letter from your pen regarding a similar consensus receive back a similar matter! I would give three hard guilders if I could see your face, but especially that of our brave Tony, My small, clean hotel is in the middle of the city, with a pretty view of the canal, not far from the stock exchange and the shops for which I came here (it was about making a new, valuable connection: you know, I do things like this preferably personally), developed in the desired way from day one. But well known in the city from my apprenticeship, I was immediately very busy socially, although many families are in the seaside resorts. I've attended smaller evening parties at Van Henkdoms and Moelens, and on the third day of my stay I had to dress up to attend a dinner at my former principal Mr. van der Kellen's, which he held out of season, apparently in honor of me arranged. But at table I led … would you like to guess? Miss Arnoldsen, Gerda Arnoldsen, Tony's former pensioner, her father, the big businessman, and almost even greater violin virtuosos, as well as his married daughter and her husband were also present. I remember very well that Gerda – allow me to use only her first name – even as a very young girl, when she was still going to school with Mademoiselle Weichbrodt at the Mühlenbrink, made a strong and never completely erased impression on me. But now I saw her again: taller, more developed, more beautiful, more witty...

• From The Hours (1998)

  She must have been spectacular twenty-five years ago; men must have died happy in her arms. Willie Bass is proud of his ability to discern the history of a face; to understand that those who are now old were once young. The light changes and he walks on. Clarissa crosses Eighth Street. She loves, helplessly, the dead television set abandoned on the curb alongside a single white patent-leather pump. She loves the vendor’s cart piled with broccoli and peaches and mangoes, each labeled with an index card that offers a price amid abundances of punctuation: “$1.49!!” “3 for ONE Dollar!?!” “50 Cents EA.!!!!!” Ahead, under the Arch, an old woman in a dark, neatly tailored dress appears to be singing, stationed precisely between the twin statues of George Washington, as warrior and politician, both faces destroyed by weather. It’s the city’s crush and heave that move you; its intricacy; its endless life. You know the story about Manhattan as a wilderness purchased for strings of beads but you find it impossible not to believe that it has always been a city; that if you dug beneath it you would find the ruins of another, older city, and then another and another. Under the cement and grass of the park (she has crossed into the park now, where the old woman throws back her head and sings) lay the bones of those buried in the potter’s field that was simply paved over, a hundred years ago, to make Washington Square. Clarissa walks over the bodies of the dead as men whisper offers of drugs (not to her) and three black girls whiz past on roller skates and the old woman sings, tunelessly, iiiiiii. Clarissa is skittish and jubilant about her luck, her good shoes (on sale at Barney’s, but still); here after all is the sturdy squalor of the park, visible even under its coat of grass and flowers; here are the drug dealers (would they kill you if it came to that?) and the lunatics, the stunned and baffled, the people whose luck, if they ever had any, has run out. Still, she loves the world for being rude and indestructible, and she knows other people must love it too, poor as well as rich, though no one speaks specifically of the reasons. Why else do we struggle to go on living, no matter how compromised, no matter how harmed? Even if we’re further gone than Richard; even if we’re fleshless, blazing with lesions, shitting in the sheets; still, we want desperately to live. It has to do with all this, she thinks.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  So she asked me if I wanted to read through the book of Matthew with her, and in fact I did. I wanted to see if this whole Jesus thing was real. I still had serious issues with Jesus, though, only because I associated Him with Christianity, and there was no way I would ever call myself a Christian. But I figured I should see for myself. So I told her yes.” “So then you started reading the Bible?” I asked. “Yes. We would eat chocolates and smoke cigarettes and read the Bible, which is the only way to do it, if you ask me. Don, the Bible is so good with chocolate. I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn’t. It is a chocolate thing. We started reading through Matthew, and I thought it was all very interesting, you know. And I found Jesus very disturbing, very straightforward. He wasn’t diplomatic, and yet I felt like if I met Him, He would really like me. Don, I can’t explain how freeing that was, to realize that if I met Jesus, He would like me. I never felt like that about some of the Christians on the radio. I always thought if I met those people they would yell at me. But it wasn’t like that with Jesus. There were people He loved and people He got really mad at, and I kept identifying with the people He loved, which was really good, because they were all the broken people, you know, the kind of people who are tired of life and want to be done with it, or they are desperate people, people who are outcasts or pagans. There were others, regular people, but He didn’t play favorites at all, which is miraculous in itself. That fact alone may have been the most supernatural thing He did. He didn’t show partiality, which every human does.” “I never thought of it that way,” I told her. “He didn’t show partiality at all, Don, and neither should we. But listen, this is the best part. We got to the part of the book where Jesus started talking about soil.” “Soil?” “Yeah. There is a part in Matthew where Jesus talks about soil, and He is going to throw some seed on the soil and some of the seed is going to grow because the soil is good, and some of the seed isn’t because it fell on rock or the soil that wasn’t as good. And when I heard that, Don, everything in me leaped up, and I wanted so bad to be the good soil. That is all I wanted, to be the good soil! I was like, Jesus, please let me be the good soil!” “So that is when you became a Christian!” “No. That was later.” “So what happened next?” I asked.

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

  How attachment went with our Family of Origin (FOO) is integral to understanding how we were shaped for love relationships. In my own life, my mother could be warm and nurturing and available at times. Other times she was distant and unavailable. I later learned those were the times my father was either drinking heavily or acting out in some way. I formed a more anxious style of attaching because I was uncertain if I could count on my parents. Sometimes they were available, other times my father was stressed and highly reactive and downright frightening, and my mother was caught up in his behavior. My husband came from a family of seven children, a daycare in his home, and foster children in and out. He was in the middle and learned to be more avoidant. Together, we have worked on our attachment styles to form a more solid, secure attachment. It hasn’t happened easily or without tears, but every ounce of effort we have applied to learn how to turn toward each other instead of becoming either anxious or avoidant has been worth the secure love relationship we now share. At times, we still have some bumpy moments, but overall our attachment has grown strong and secure and is a great source of joy. Sexuality is a significant part of our story, and our parents play a role in how we feel about our sexuality and what we do with it. If our parents had a healthy view of sexuality and were comfortable talking about sex, that shaped us in a positive way. If they were unhealthy and sex was a taboo topic in the house you grew up in, sex can be a really difficult topic. If sex was treated without respect such as when porn was readily available, or off-handed sexual innuendos were tossed around, or parents were sexually unfaithful to one another, sexuality can seem dirty. If Mom and Dad modeled warmth, affection, and playful attraction, we learned our sexuality is something good. If our parents argued about sex, if one was cold and the other pouting because sex wasn’t frequent enough, we learn sex is a power struggle. Either way, our parents are wiring our brain for future sexual relationships. You may feel discouraged by this. Ron and I were at first as well. Neither set of our parents modeled healthy sexuality. There were lots of dark secrets to be sorted through. With God’s help and the help of others, we can honestly say no sexual problem, no shameful secret, nothing you are hiding from is too impossible for God to heal. THE FIRST TIME Our first sexual encounter also forms our feelings and beliefs about sexuality. For some their first sexual encounter is loving, happy, and satisfying. Sadly, for too many, their first sexual encounter may not have been a positive experience. Yet, they are lasting experiences, and sometimes we find ourselves stuck in the memories, feelings, sensations, and images of those experiences.

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

  I am senior member of the Bergenfahrer College, and I was successively elected civil deputy for the Finance Department, the Commerce College, the Auditing Deputation and the St. Annen Almshouse. Your mother, Klara and Klothilde greet you warmly. Several gentlemen have also sent greetings to me: Senators Möllendorpf and Doctor Överdieck, Consul Kistenmaker, the broker Gosch, C. F. Köppen, as well as Herr Marcus in the office and Captains Kloot and Klötermann. God bless you my son! Work, pray and save! With caring love your father . October 8, 1846. Dear and dear parents! The undersigned sees himself in the pleasant position of being able to inform you of the happy delivery of your daughter, my dearly beloved wife Antonie, half an hour ago. It's a girl by God's will, and I can't find words to say how joyfully moved I am. The condition of the dear mother and the child is excellent, and Doctor Klaassen was completely satisfied with the course of the matter. Ms. Großgeorgis, the midwife, also says it's nothing been. – The excitement forces me to put down the pen. I commend myself to the most worthy parents with respectful tenderness. B. Greenish . If it were a boy I would have a very pretty name. Now I want to call them Meta, but Gr. is for Erika. T Second chapter "What's wrong with you, Bethsy?" said the Consul, coming to the table and raising the plate that had covered his soup. "Are you unwell? What do you have? I think you look ailing?" The round table in the spacious dining room had become very small. Apart from the parents, only Mamsell Jungmann, ten-year-old Klara and the gaunt, humble Klothilde, who ate quietly, sat there every day. The Consul looked around… all faces were long and troubled. What happened? He himself was nervous and worried, because the stock market was in turmoil over this tricky Schleswig-Holstein affair... And there was another unrest in the air: later, when Anton had gone out to get the meat dish, the Consul found out what had happened in the house. Trina the Cook Trina, a girl who had hitherto displayed nothing but fidelity and tameness, had suddenly shifted to open indignation. To the Consul's great annoyance, they had been friends for some time, a kind of spiritual alliance with a butcher's journeyman, and this perpetually bloody man must have influenced the development of their political views in the most detrimental way. When the consul reprimanded her for a bad chalote sauce, she put her bare arms on her hips and said: "Just wait a minute, madam consul, it won't be long now, because another one is coming." order in de Saak; Because I 'm sitting on the sofa in Sieden Kleed, and you're welcome to me...' Of course, she was fired immediately. The Consul shook his head. He himself had had to feel all sorts of worrying things lately.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Lots of people started coming to church after that. I don’t know why, honestly, except that we all agreed we would love people and be nice to them and listen and make friends. As we grew, we had to move into another building and then another one after that and then to another one until we started renting this big, super-old, beautiful church with stained glass windows and a domed ceiling. Shortly after we moved in there we had to go to two services. All of this happened in a couple of years, and now Imago has about five hundred people coming and lots of them look like rock stars, but they are all brilliant and spiritual. I love the community so much it’s hard to describe. I have never felt such a feeling of family in all my life. I felt like I had nothing in terms of community and God brought a community up out of the ground, out of pure nothing like a magic trick. Like I said before, I never thought I would love church. But here is what I love about Imago-Dei. First: It is spiritual. What I mean is the people at Imago pray and fast about things. It took me a while to understand that the answer to problems was not marketing or program but rather spirituality. If we needed to reach youth, we wouldn’t do a pizza feed and a game night, we would get together and pray and fast and ask God what to do. God led some guys to start a homeless teen outreach downtown, and now they feed about one hundred homeless teenagers every week. It is the nuttiest youth group you will ever see, but that is what God said to do. I love that sort of thing because rather than the church serving itself, the church is serving the lost and lonely. It gives me chills when I think about it because it is that beautiful of a thing. Second: Art. Imago supports the arts. Rick isn’t much of an artist, but he turned things over to a guy named Peter Jenkins, who created the drawings for this book. Peter started an “artistery” where artists live and create art, teach art, and encourage people to be creative. Peter recently held a gallery opening in a local coffeehouse, and all the art was created by people who attend Imago. Artists feel at home at Imago. I even led a short-story group where we wrote short stories and then had a reading under Christmas lights and candles over at the artistery. I think there are artists at a lot of churches who don’t have an outlet, and by creating an outlet, the church gives artists a chance to express themselves and in return the church gets free stuff to put on their walls. Creating an arts group at a church is a great idea.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I know that numbers shouldn’t matter very much, but to be honest I kind of wanted Imago to grow because I wanted my friends at my old church to know we were successful; but we didn’t grow, we stayed at about thirty. We’d meet on Sunday nights and then again on Wednesday nights for prayer. A lot less people showed up for prayer. There were only about ten of us, and it was pretty boring. It felt like an AA meeting gone bad. We’d sit around and talk about the crap in our lives, and then we’d pray for a little while, and then we would go home. One night Rick showed up sort of beaten-looking. He had been to some sort of pastors reception where a guy spoke about how the church has lost touch with people who didn’t know about Jesus. Rick said he was really convicted about this and asked us if we thought we needed to repent and start loving people who were very different from us. We all told him yes, we did, but I don’t think any of us knew what that meant. Rick said he thought it meant we should live missional lives, that we should intentionally befriend people who are different from us. I didn’t like the sound of that, to be honest. I didn’t want to befriend somebody just to trick them into going to my church. Rick said that was not what he was talking about. He said he was talking about loving people just because they exist—homeless people and Gothic people and gays and fruit nuts. And then I liked the sound of it. I liked the idea of loving people just to love them, not to get them to come to church. If the subject of church came up, I could tell them about Imago, but until then, who cared. So we started praying every week that God would teach us to live missional lives, to notice people who needed to be loved. Lots of people started coming to church after that. I don’t know why, honestly, except that we all agreed we would love people and be nice to them and listen and make friends. As we grew, we had to move into another building and then another one after that and then to another one until we started renting this big, super-old, beautiful church with stained glass windows and a domed ceiling. Shortly after we moved in there we had to go to two services. All of this happened in a couple of years, and now Imago has about five hundred people coming and lots of them look like rock stars, but they are all brilliant and spiritual. I love the community so much it’s hard to describe. I have never felt such a feeling of family in all my life.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  He would rebuke me, too, and he would tell me that I have prejudices against very religious people and that I need to deal with that; He would tell me that there are poor people in the world and I need to feed them and that somehow this will make me more happy. I think He would tell me what my gifts are and why I have them, and He would give me ideas on how to use them. I think He would explain to me why my father left, and He would point out very clearly all the ways God has taken care of me through the years, all the stuff God protected me from. [image "9780785263708_0251_003" file=Image00095.jpg] After I got Laura’s e-mail in which she told me she had become a Christian, I just about lost it with excitement. I felt like a South African the day they let Mandela out of prison. I called her and asked her to coffee at Palio. I picked her up in Eliot Circle at Reed, and she was smiling and full of energy. She said we had much to talk about, very much to talk about. At Palio, we sat in the booth at the back, and even though Laura had been my close friend, I felt like I had never met this woman. She squirmed in her seat as she talked with confidence about her love for Jesus. I sat there amazed because it is true. People do come to know Jesus. This crazy thing really happens. It isn’t just me. [image "9780785263708_0252_002" file=Image00096.jpg] I was watching BET one night, and they were interviewing a man about jazz music. He said jazz music was invented by the first generation out of slavery. I thought that was beautiful because, while it is music, it is very hard to put on paper; it is so much more a language of the soul. It is as if the soul is saying something, something about freedom. I think Christian spirituality is like jazz music. I think loving Jesus is something you feel. I think it is something very difficult to get on paper. But it is no less real, no less meaningful, no less beautiful. The first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a music birthed out of freedom. And that is the closest thing I know to Christian spirituality. A music birthed out of freedom. Everybody sings their song the way they feel it, everybody closes their eyes and lifts up their hands. [image "9780785263708_0252_005" file=Image00097.jpg] I want Jesus to happen to you the way He happened to Laura at Reed, the way He happened to Penny in France, the way He happened to me in Texas. I want you to know Jesus too. This book is about the songs my friends and I are singing. This is what God is doing in our lives. But what song will you sing when your soul gets set free?

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

  Now you must let the first emotion work its magic on your empty stomach..." The Consul, Christian, Klothilde, Ida Jungmann, Mrs. Permaneder and Hanno were in the salon, and the latter two, not without effort, held up the family's dedication, a large commemorative plaque... The Consul hugged her elder with deep emotion. "My dear son, this is a beautiful day...a beautiful day..." she repeated. "We must never stop praising God in our hearts for all grace...for all grace..." She wept. The senator felt a weakness in that embrace. It was as if something inside him was loosening and leaving him. His lips trembled. A fading need filled him, to remain in his mother's arms, at her breast, in the delicate perfume that emanated from the soft silk of her dress, with his eyes closed, having to see and say no more... He kissed her and straightened up to offer his hand to his brother, who shook it with that half-absent, half-embarrassed expression he was used to at celebrations. Klothilde said something long and friendly. What Miss As for Jungmann, she confined herself to bowing very low, her hand toying with the silver watch chain that hung from her flat bosom... "Come here, Tom," said Frau Permaneder in a shaky voice; "We can't hold it any longer, Hanno and I." She carried the tablet almost alone, since Hanno's arms couldn't do much, and in her enthusiastic overexertion presented the image of an enraptured martyr. Her eyes were moist, her cheeks flushed, and the tip of her tongue played with her upper lip in an expression half desperate, half mischievous... "Yes, now to you!" said the senator. "What is that? Come on, let go, let's lean it against it.' He set the tablet upright against the wall next to the grand piano and stood in front of it, surrounded by his family. The heavy, carved walnut frame spanned a cardboard box, which showed the portraits of the four owners of the Johann Buddenbrook company under glass; The name and year were printed in gold under each. There was, made from an old oil painting, the picture of Johan Buddenbrooks, the founder, a tall and grave old gentleman, with tightly closed lips looking sternly and resolutely over his jabot; there was the broad and jovial face of Johann Buddenbrook, Jean Jacques Hoffstede's friend; then the Consul Johann Buddenbrook, with his chin tucked into his parricide, his broad and wrinkled mouth and his large, strongly hooked nose, kept his witty eyes, which spoke of religious enthusiasm, fixed on the spectator; and finally there was Thomas Buddenbrook himself, at a slightly younger age... A stylized, A golden ear of corn ran between the pictures, under which the numbers 1768 and 1868, also printed in gold, were prominently displayed next to each other.

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

  What a task God gave to Adam! I believe part of what God was doing here was to help Man develop an awareness of his aloneness. I imagine as Man named the animals, he must have noticed there were two of the same kind—one with male parts and the other with female parts. I also imagine he watched them frolic and mate and wondered where his playmate and partner was. We humans often don’t notice a need until we become aware. God didn’t assign a random task to Adam, but created a life changing event for the dawning of awareness of Man’s desire for a complementary counterpart. God loves to meet our needs, so He proceeds to put Man into a semi-coma. “God put the Man into a deep sleep. As he slept he removed one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh. God then used the rib that he had taken from the Man to make Woman and presented her to the Man” (Gen 2:21–22). I can only imagine Man’s thrill at God’s presentation. As a matter of fact, he exclaims, “Finally! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh! Name her Woman for she was made from Man” (Gen. 2:23–24). Can you hear his joy? At last, finally, he has someone like himself! He then prophesies, “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). He recalls the animals and how they are partnered with one like themselves, but slightly different from each other. He must have envied how they had one another, a companion, a sexual partner who brought not only pleasure, but offspring. Now God has made him one of these. He is delighted and can instantly imagine how this partner will cause him to change his priorities to make room for her in his life. I think he also recognizes her as his sexual partner and must be experiencing sexual arousal for the first time. Then Scripture tells us, “The two of them, the Man and his Wife, were naked, but they felt no shame” (Gen. 2:25).

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Here is something very simple about relationships that Spencer helped me discover: Nobody will listen to you unless they sense that you like them. If a person senses that you do not like them, that you do not approve of their existence, then your religion and your political ideas will all seem wrong to them. If they sense that you like them, then they are open to what you have to say. After I repented, things were different, but the difference wasn’t with my friend, the difference was with me. I was happy. Before, I had all this negative tension flipping around in my gut, all this judgmentalism and pride and loathing of other people. I hated it, and now I was set free. I was free to love. I didn’t have to discipline anybody, I didn’t have to judge anybody, I could treat everybody as though they were my best friend, as though they were rock stars or famous poets, as though they were amazing, and to me they became amazing, especially my new friend. I loved him. After I decided to let go of judging him, I discovered he was very funny. I mean, really hilarious. I kept telling him how funny he was. And he was smart. Quite brilliant, really. I couldn’t believe that I had never seen it before. I felt as though I had lost an enemy and gained a brother. And then he began to change. It didn’t matter to me whether he did or not, but he did. He began to get a little more serious about God. He gave up television for a period of time as a sort of fast. He started praying and got regular about going to church. He was a great human being getting even better. I could feel God’s love for him. I loved the fact that it wasn’t my responsibility to change somebody, that it was God’s, that my part was just to communicate love and approval. When I am talking to somebody there are always two conversations going on. The first is on the surface; it is about politics or music or whatever it is our mouths are saying. The other is beneath the surface, on the level of the heart, and my heart is either communicating that I like the person I am talking to or I don’t. God wants both conversations to be true. That is, we are supposed to speak truth in love. If both conversations are not true, God is not involved in the exchange, we are on our own, and on our own, we will lead people astray. The Bible says that if you talk to somebody with your mouth, and your heart does not love them, that you are like a person standing there smashing two cymbals together. You are only annoying everybody around you. I think that is very beautiful and true.

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

  But as she leaves, already in the doorway, Frau Permaneder turns around again. She returns to her brother, kisses him on both cheeks and says, "It's a beautiful day, Tom, I'm happier than I've been in a year! We Buddenbrooks aren't on our last legs yet, thank God, whoever believes that is very much mistaken! Now that little Johann is here - it's so nice that we called him Johann again - now I feel as if a whole new era must come again!" Second chapter Christian Buddenbrook, Proprietor of H.C.F. Burmeester & Comp. zu Hamburg, his fashionable gray hat and his yellow cane with the bust of a nun in his hand, came into his brother's living room, who was reading with Gerda. It was nine thirty on the evening of the baptism day. "Good evening," said Christian. "Oh, Thomas, I have to speak to you urgently... I'm sorry, Gerda... It's urgent, Thomas." They went into the dark dining room, where the Consul lit one of the gas lamps on the wall and looked at his brother. He didn't suspect anything good. Apart from the first greeting, he hadn't had a chance to talk to Christian; but he had watched him attentively today during the ceremony and seen that he had been unusually serious and restless, yes, that in the course of Pastor Pringsheim's speech he had even left the hall for several minutes for some reason... Thomas had not a line for him more written since that day in Hamburg, on which Christian received ten thousand marks of his inheritance in advance from his hands to cover debts. "Go on like this," the Consul had said. 'Then your pennies will soon be gone. As for me, I hope that you will very rarely cross my paths in the future. You have tested my friendship too hard over the years'... Why did he come now? Something urgent had to be driving him... "Well?" asked the Consul. "I can't do it any more," answered Christian, sitting down sideways on one of the high-backed chairs surrounding the dining table, hat and cane between his skinny knees. "May I ask what you can no longer do and what brings you to me?" said the Consul, who remained standing. "I can't do it anymore," Christian repeated, turning his head from side to side with terribly restless seriousness and letting his small, round, deep-set eyes roam. He was now 33 years old, but he looked much older. His reddish-blond hair had thinned so much that almost the entire top of his skull was exposed. The bones stood out sharply above the sunken cheeks; in between, however, his large nose bulged, naked, fleshless, gaunt, in an enormous bulge... "If only it were this," he continued, running his hand down his left side without closing his body to touch ... "It's not pain, it's a torment, you know, a constant, indefinite torment.

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

  I have a crush on her because she just can't pretend, not a thousand miles away..." "Yes, Tom," said the Consul; "she is a good child who deserves all happiness." Then she read the letter to the end... Second chapter At the end of April Mrs. Grünlich moved back into her parents' house, and although life lay behind her again, although her old existence began again, she had to attend the prayers again and hear Lea Gerhardt read to her on Jerusalem evening, she was quite obviously in happy and hopeful mood. As soon as her brother, the consul, picked her up from the train station - she had come from Büchen - and drove with her through the Holstentor into the city, he could not help but compliment her that - next to Klothilden - she was still the fairest of the family, to which she had replied, 'Oh God, Tom, I hate you! Taunting an old woman like that..." But it was correct nonetheless: Madame Grünlich preserved herself in the most advantageous way, and in view of her strong, ash-blonde hair, which was padded on both sides of the parting, brushed back over the small ears and gathered at head height with a broad tortoiseshell comb - in view of the From the soft expression that remained with her gray-blue eyes, her pretty upper lip, the fine oval and the delicate colors of her face, one would not have guessed at thirty but at twenty-three. She wore the most elegant dangling earrings of gold, which her grandmother had worn in a slightly different form. A loose fitting waist off light, dark silk fabric with satin lapels and flat epaulettes of lace gave her bust a delightful expression of softness... She was in the best of moods, as I said, and on Thursdays, when Consul Buddenbrooks and the ladies Buddenbrooks from Breitenstrasse, Consul Krögers, Klothilde and Sesemi Weichbrodt came to dinner with Erika, she would talk most vividly about Munich, about the beer, the Dampfnudeln, the painter who had wanted to portray her, and the court equipage who had made the greatest impression on her. She also mentioned Mr. Permaneder in passing, and assuming that Pfiffi Buddenbrook made a comment or two about the fact that such a trip was quite pleasant, but that there did not appear to have been any practical success, Frau ignored it Greenish that with an unspeakable dignity, as she put her head back and still tried to press her chin on her chest... Besides, whenever the bell of the porch door rang across the great hall, she made it a habit to rush to the landing to see who was coming... What could that mean? Only Ida Jungmann, Tony's governess and longtime confidante, who said something to her now and then, probably knew that, like: "Tonychen, my little child, you should see, he'll come!

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  After Honker’s closed we would fill the café and play the juke box, the guys always choosing Springsteen and talking about life in New York, about life in the city. But more than they talked, they listened. So much of what I know about getting along with people I learned from the hippies. They were magical in community. People were drawn to them. They asked me what I loved, what I hated, how I felt about this and that, what sort of music made me angry, what sort of music made me sad. They asked me what I daydreamed about, what I wrote about, where my favorite places in the world were. They asked me about high school and college and my travels around America. They loved me like a good novel, like an art film, and this is how I felt when I was with them, like a person John Irving would write. I did not feel fat or stupid or sloppily dressed. I did not feel like I did not know the Bible well enough, and I was never conscious what my hands were doing or whether or not I sounded immature when I talked. I had always been so conscious of those things, but living with the hippies I forgot about myself. And when I lost this self-consciousness I gained so much more. I gained an interest in people outside my own skin. They were greater than movies to me, greater than television. The spirit of the hippies was contagious. I couldn’t hear enough about Eddie’s ballerina girlfriend or Owen’s epic poems. I would ask them to repeat stories because, to me, they were like great scenes in favorite movies. I cannot tell you how quickly these people, these pot-smoking hippies, disarmed me. Because I grew up in the safe cocoon of big-Christianity, I came to believe that anything outside the church was filled with darkness and unlove. I remember, one Sunday evening, sitting in the pew as a child listening to the pastor read from articles in the newspaper. He took an entire hour to flip through the paper reading about all the gory murders and rapes and burglaries, and after each article he would sigh and say, Friends, it is a bad, bad world out there. And things are only getting worse. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined there were, outside the church, people so purely lovely as the ones I met in the woods. And yet my hippie friends were not at all close to believing that Christ was the Son of God. This did not confuse me so much as it surprised me. Until this point, the majority of my friends had been Christians. In fact nearly all of them had been Christians. I was amazed to find, outside the church, genuine affection being shared, affection that seemed, well, authentic in comparison to the sort of love I had known within the church.

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

  b. It warms; He set him on a high land that he might eat the fruit of the fields, that he might suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the hardest stone; butter of the herd, and milk of the sheep, with the fat of rams, and of the rams of the breed of Basan; and goats with the marrow of wheat; and that he might drink the purest blood of the grape. Deut. 32:13, 14. I am come to cast fire on the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled? St. Luke 12:49. The Lord hath said it, whose fire is in Sion and His furnace in Jerusalem. Is. 31:9. He brought me into the cellar of wine; He set charity in order in me. Stay me up with flowers; compass me about with apples, for I languish with love. His left hand is under my head, and His right hand shall embrace me.… My Beloved is mine, and I am His, who feedeth among the lilies. Cantic. 2:4–6, 16. c. It gladdens; The earth shall be filled with the fruit of Thy works … that wine may cheer the heart of man. Ps. 103:13, 15. Wine drunken with moderation is the joy of the soul and the heart. Ecclus. 31:36. A cluster of cyprus my Love is to me in the vineyards of Engaddi. Cantic. 1:13. King Solomon hath made him a litter of the wood of Libanus; the pillars thereof he made of silver, the seat of gold, the going up of purple; the midst he covered with charity for the daughter of Jerusalem. Go forth, ye daughters of Sion, and see King Solomon in the diadem wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart. Cantic. 3:9–11. Give strong drink to them that are sad, and wine to them that are grieved in mind. Let them drink and forget their want, and remember their sorrow no more. Prov. 31:6, 7. 3. The holy mystery of the Church; Jesus, that He might sanctify the people by His own Blood, suffered without the gate. Heb. 13:12. a. It drives away devils; The blood shall be to you for a sign in the houses where you shall be; and I will see the blood, and will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you when I shall strike the land of Egypt. Ex. 12:13. They showed the elephants the blood of grapes and mulberries to provoke them to fight. 1 Mac. 6:34.

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

  AMBROSE. (in Luc. 6:73) The good Lord indeed whilst He requires diligence, gives strength; nor will He dismiss them fasting, lest they faint by the way, that is, either in the course of this life, or before they have reached the fountainhead head of life, that is, the Father, and have learnt that Christ is of the Father, lest haply, after receiving that He is born of a virgin, they begin to esteem His virtue not that of God, but of a man. Therefore the Lord Jesus divides the food, and His will indeed is to give to all, to deny none; He is the Dispenser of all things, but if thou refusest to stretch forth thy hand to receive the food, thou wilt faint by the way, nor canst thou find fault with Him, who pities and divides. BEDE. (ubi sup.) But they who return to repentance after the crimes of the flesh, after thefts, violence, and murders, come to the Lord from afar; for in proportion as a man has wandered farther in evil working, so he has wandered farther from Almighty God. The believers amongst the Gentiles came from afar to Christ, but the Jews from near, for they had been taught concerning Him by the letter of the law and the prophets. In the former case, however, of the feeding with five loaves, the multitude lay upon the green grass; here, however, upon the ground, because by the writing of the law, we are ordered to keep under the desires of the flesh, but in the New Testament we are ordered to leave even the earth itself and our temporal goods. THEOPHYLACT. Further, the seven loaves are spiritual discourses, for seven is the number, which points out the Holy Ghost, who perfects all things; for our life is perfected in the number of seven days’d. PSEUDO-JEROME. Or else, the seven loaves are the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the fragments of the loaves are the mystical understanding of the1 first week. BEDE. (ubi sup.) For our Lord’s breaking the bread means the opening of mysteries; His giving of thanks shews how great a joy He feels in the salvation of the human race; His giving the loaves to His disciples that they might set them before the people, signifies that He assigns the spiritual gifts of knowledge to the Apostles, and that it was His will that by their ministry the food of life should be distributed to the Church. PSEUDO-JEROME. The small fishes blessed are the books of the New Testament, for our Lord when risen asks for a piece of broiled fish;1 or else in these little fishes, we receive the saints, seeing that in the Scriptures of the New Testament are contained the faith, life, and sufferings of them who, snatched away from the troubled waves of this world, have given us by their example spiritual refreshment.

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

  BEDE. (ubi sup.) And because it is not sufficient to have left all, he adds that which makes up perfection, and have followed thee. As if he said, We have done what Thou hast commanded. What reward therefore wilt Thou give us?1 But while Peter asks only concerning the disciples, our Lord makes a general answer; wherefore it goes on: Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands. But in saying this, He does not mean that we should leave our fathers, without helping them, or that we should separate ourselves from our wives; but He instructs us to prefer the glory of God to the things of this world. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. in Matt. 64) But it seems to me that by these words He intended covertly to proclaim that there were to be persecutions, as it would come to pass that many fathers would allure their sons to impiety, and many wives their husbands.1 Again He delays not to say, for my name’s sake and the Gospel’s, as Mark says, or for the kingdom of God, as Luke says; the name of Christ is the power of the Gospel, and of His kingdom; for the Gospel is received in the name of Jesus Christ, and the kingdom is made known, and comes by His name. BEDE. Some, however, taking occasion from this saying, in which it is announced that he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, teach that Jewish fable of a thousand years after the resurrection of the just, when all that we have left for the Lord’s sake is to be restored with manifold usury, besides which we are to receive the crown of everlasting life. These persons do not perceive, that although the promise in other respects be honourable, yet in the hundred wives, which the other Evangelists mention, its foulness is made manifest: particularly when the Lord testifies that there shall be no marriage in the resurrection, and asserts that those things which are put away from us for His sake are to be received again in this life with persecutions, which, as they affirm, will not take place in their thousand yearss. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Cat. in Marc. Oxon.) This hundredfold reward therefore must be in participation, not in possession, for the Lord fulfilled this to them not carnally, but spiritually.

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

  ' Whereupon one took his dictation notebook to study sentences like this: 'Our Hedwig is very willing, but she never sweeps up the rubbish on the attic properly.' In this exercise, full of temptations and snares, the intention was that one should write Hedwig, willing and sweeping with a ch, Estrich with a g and Kehricht possibly also with a g, and that had been taken care of thoroughly, which is why the correction now had to be made. But when everything was ready, you packed up and sat on the windowsill to hear Ida read to you. that one should write Hedwig, willing and sweeping with a ch, Estrich with a g and Kehricht with a g, and that had been taken care of thoroughly, which is why the correction now had to be made. But when everything was ready, you packed up and sat on the windowsill to hear Ida read to you. that one should write Hedwig, willing and sweeping with a ch, Estrich with a g and Kehricht with a g, and that had been taken care of thoroughly, which is why the correction now had to be made. But when everything was ready, you packed up and sat on the windowsill to hear Ida read to you. The good soul read about Little Cat, about the one who set out to learn how to be afraid, about Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel and the Frog King - with a deep, patient voice and half-closed eyes, because she was telling the fairy tales that she had read all too often in her life, almost entirely out of her head, mechanically turning over the pages with her wet forefinger. During this conversation, however, the strange thing happened that little Kai began to feel the need to do the same as the book and to tell something himself, and that was all the more desirable as one gradually knew all the printed fairy tales, and also Now and then Ida had to rest a little. Kai's stories were short and simple at first, but then became bolder and more complicated and gained interest because they were not entirely up in the air, but started from reality and cast it in a strange and mysterious light... Hanno particularly liked hearing the story by an evil but extraordinarily powerful sorcerer, who keeps a beautiful and highly talented prince named Josephus captive in the form of a colorful bird and torments all people with his treacherous arts. But the chosen one is already growing up in the distance, who will one day fearlessly campaign at the head of an irresistible army of dogs, chickens and guinea pigs against the magician and save the prince and the whole world, but especially Hanno Buddenbrook, from him by means of a sword stroke will. Then, freed and disenchanted, Josephus will return to his kingdom, become king and allow both Hanno and Kai to rise to very high ranks...

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

  The silent enthusiasm with which Mrs. Permaneder hugged her mother, her brother and – more cautiously – her sister-in-law when she heard this news? And now that spring has come, the spring of the year sixty-one, now he is here and receives the sacrament of holy baptism, he on whom so many hopes have long rested, of whom so much has been spoken, who has been expecting and longing for so many years been asked of God and for whom Doctor Grabow was tormented ... he is there and looks quite inconspicuous. The little hands play with the gold braid on the nurse's waist, and the head, which is covered with a light blue lace cap trimmed with lace, lies a little sideways and carelessly turned away from the pastor on the pillow, so that the eyes close with an almost precociously examining blink look into the hall and at the relatives. In these eyes, whose upper lids have very long lashes, the light blue of the paternal iris and the brown of the maternal iris have become a light, indefinite golden brown that changes with the light; but the angles on either side of the bridge of the nose are deep and of bluish shade. This gives this little face, which is hardly one yet, something prematurely characteristic, and does not dress up a four-week-old at best; but God will grant that it means nothing unfavorable, He's alive and it could be different. The Consul will never forget the handshake with which good Doctor Grabow said to him four weeks ago when he was able to leave mother and child said: "Be thankful, dear friend, it would not have been amiss..." The consul did not dare to ask, which would not have been amiss. He dismisses with horror the thought that this tiny creature, long awaited in vain, which was born so strangely silently, almost happened like Antonia's second little daughter... But he knows that it was a despair for mother and child Hour was four weeks ago, and he bends down happily and tenderly to Gerda, who, her patent-leather shoes crossed on a velvet cushion, is leaning in an armchair in front of him and next to the old Consul. How pale she still is! And how strangely beautiful in her pallor, with her heavy auburn hair, and her enigmatic eyes resting on the preacher with a certain veiled moquerie.