Love

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 Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  Augustine proudly shows off his son’s prowess in The Teacher, while assuring us that he did not teach the boy. Boys learn with God’s own inborn instruments. But, as usual with Augustine, love sets the atmosphere in which God’s gifts work. The hatred of his father’s and his teachers’ beatings made Augustine adopt a different strategy for dealing with his own son (and, later, his students in the classroom and his colleagues in the monastery): I learned [to speak] as a baby, not inhibited by fear of punishment, surrounded as I was by coddling nurses, laughing games, and happy play. I learned without others’ punitive insistence that I learn, from my own heart’s need to deliver what I was laboring forth [parienda] to the outer world. . . . I picked up words from anyone who spoke to me, not just from tutors, and I somehow did labor forth my feelings in others’ ears. Unfettered inquisitiveness, it is clear, teaches better than do intimidating assignments. (T 1.23) Augustine’s dialogue Order in the Universe, composed near the time of The Teacher, can be taken as one long illustration of that passage on Augustine’s learning in an atmosphere of love. Dealing with young disciples in the dialogue on order, Augustine uses whatever piques the students’ interest—odd noises in a drainpipe, gamecocks, enthusiastic singing in an outhouse—to circle back to the subject of order in the universe. Yet permissive as Augustine was in his pedagogy, he was not starry-eyed about the human drives evidenced in the cradle. He notes the infant’s demands for attention, the envy and anger at other infants competing for that attention. The urge to rule (libido dominandi) is the devil’s first sin of pride and the cause of Adam’s fall, whose traces show in every heir to that primal sin. Despite all this, Godsend, the unwanted child, soon captivated his father and became a kind of laboratory experiment in the wonders of the human mind’s development. This is the boy of whom Augustine wrote, “His talent, if a father’s fondness deceives me not, was full of promise” (Happiness in This Life 1.6).

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I laid in front of her watching before I followed suit by licking my finger and placing it inside her as well. Her wet pussy took in both of our fingers. “Sin, Sin, I love you,” Sam said as she opened her eyes and looked deeply into mine. With my finger still pleasing her, I sat up and began kissing her passionately. Sam took her finger out of herself and placed both hands on my face. “I do love you so much, Sin. You just don’t know.” Sam’s voice cracked and before she could hold back, as the cum filled my hand, tears filled her eyes. “I love you too, Samantha,” I said. “I love you too.” The next thing I knew Sam was in my arms, weeping. Without her saying a word I knew what was going on in her mind. She was thinking about Detail. “You saved me,” Sam said. “I could never repay you, Sin. You saved me from a life of hell when you—” “Shhh,” I said, placing my index finger, the same finger I had just fucked her with, over her lips. She then stuck her tongue out and began licking my finger up and down like it was a dick. I pulled her to me by the finger that was in her mouth and tongued her down. The harder I kissed her the more she cried. I knew what it was like to love someone so much that just thinking about that person stirred up uncontrollable emotions. I knew because I loved Sam that same way. I loved her so much that I would die for her. I would kill for her and she knew it. She knew it because I had proven it when I put that ten-inch butcher knife into Detail’s back. I don’t know what came over me that day. I just walked in the apartment and saw Detail beating Sam to a pulp, and she wouldn’t fight back. She just wouldn’t fight back, so I had to fight back for her. I was a project chick, and used to throwing them blows. After all, I’d fought muthafuckas over my stupid-ass name all the time. But even fighting over my name became secondary to all the blows I had to throw because of kids talking about my mother. You know how it was back in the day—you fight one sibling and you had to fight them all. But you best believe I caught them hoes slippin’ one by one and beat their asses. But the one time they caught me, I got suspended and sent home with a black eye and a busted nose. My moms had the nerve to fuss me out, talkin’ about all I ever did was fight and that I was out of school more for fighting than I was in school for learning.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  “Hey, baby,” Keita replied in her sultry voice. “I miss you, lover man.” Keita was my boo. My down-ass chick that I held above all the others. Now, I was a stone-cold dog, but even a dog needed a main bitch. For me, that was Keita. I had met her about a year ago at All Star Weekend in Denver. She was with her girls and I was with my niggaz, but when our eyes met there was no one else in the room. We got to politicking and I found out that she was from the Bronx. We spent the whole weekend together and by the time we got back to New York I had already decided that I was gonna make her my wifey. “I miss you too, my one and only,” I said, sounding like a real clown-ass nigga. I was a lion at heart, but when it came to Keita, I was a pussycat. As hard as I was, Keita was my only weakness. The bastard in me warned against it, but the heart makes you crazy. “You still at work?” she asked. “Nah, baby, I got off early. I’m on my way uptown to meet Benny and them.” “I’m glad, sweetie. Sometimes I don’t understand you, Dante. You make good money at the car dealership, so why do you continue slaving for UPS at night?” By now, you’re probably confused, so let me explain it to you. Chocolate is what my niggaz and these tricks call me, but my given name is Dante Burton. The part about me working at a car dealership during the day was true, but I had quit my night job at UPS months ago. I never bothered to tell Keita, because it was a good alibi for the odd hours I kept with my tricks. I’ve found that I could make way more money slinging dick than loading trucks. “I know, ma, but you know a nigga gotta hustle. How else are we gonna get that big house?” “Baby, you’re too sweet. I’m lucky to have a man like you,” she said in a most sincere tone. Sometimes I felt bad about misleading Keita, but whenever a bitch broke me off a wad of cash, my conscience flew out the window. “You know it’s all about us, Keita. What you got going on tonight?” “Nothing much. Me and my girls might go to Envy.” “You better not be in there letting them scumbag niggaz grind all up on your ass.” I said seriously. I was very possessive when it came to Keita. “Boy, stop acting crazy. You know I don’t know how to do nothing but the two-step.” She laughed. I loved to hear Keita laugh. It always reminded me of bells, and all things happy. “I hear that hot shit. You just remember what the fuck I said.” “Okay, Daddy,” she sang. “You want me to pick you up afterward so we can go get something to eat?”

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  We should never undertake the task of chiding another’s sin unless, cross-examining our own conscience, we can assure ourselves, before God, that we are acting from love. If reproaches or threats or injuries, voiced by the one you are calling to account, have wounded your spirit, then, for that person to be healed by you, you must not speak till you are healed yourself, lest you act from worldly motives, to hurt, and make your tongue a sinful weapon against evil, returning wrong for wrong, curse for curse. Whatever you speak out of a wounded spirit is the wrath of an avenger, not the love of an instructor. Act as you desire, so long as you are acting with love. Then there will be no meanness in what may sound mean, while you are acutely aware that you are striving with the sword of God’s word to free another from the grip of sin. And if, as often happens, you begin some course of action from love, and are proceeding with it in love, but a different feeling insinuates itself because you are resisted, deflecting you from reproach of a man’s sin and making you attack the man himself—it were best, while watering the dust with your tears, to remember that we have no right to crow over another’s sin, since we sin in the very reproach of sin if anger at sin is better at making us sinners than mercy is at making us kind. He also used the formula in a sermon on the First Letter of John, that broad treatment of love (JL 7.8): Because of varying circumstances, we see one man looking harsh because he loves and another looking pleasant because of vice. The father gives a son blows, the whoremonger gives blandishments. Consider them in themselves, blows or blandishments—who wouldn’t take the blandishments and duck the blows? But look at the motives—they are the blows of love, the blandishments of vice. You see my point, that human acts should be judged by their basis in love. Many things have a surface appearance of good, but are not based on love—like blossoms on a thorn plant. Other things look hard, look forbidding, but they instill a discipline informed by love. Once again, to put it simply: Act as you desire, so long as you act with love. If you are silent, be silent from love. If you accuse, accuse from love. If you correct, correct from love. If you spare, spare from love. Let love be rooted deep in you, and only good can grow from it.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  He was jealous of the two friends' love, and contrived all sorts of devices to calumniate them, and tried to separate them by the agency of treacherous persons. But one dark night the two lovers met and killed these persons. Then they fled in a boat and hid themselves for a long time, and finally came to Yedo. There they lived as Guards, concealing their true condition. Mondo was now sixty-three years old, and Hayemon sixty-six; and through all these years their hearts had not changed. They had never taken any interest in a woman. They had been genuine pederasts. Hayemon continued to consider Mondo as his young lover. He arranged his thin hair with his own hands in the Style of a page's hair, using much perfumed oil. Mondo's brow was like that of a woman, and he took great care of his person; he polished his nails with aromatic wood, and shaved himself carefully. There is no doubt that these two old men continued their amorous encounters up to an advanced age. Male love is essentially different from the ordinary love of a man and a woman; and that is why a Prince, even when he has married a beautiful Princess, cannot forget his pages. Woman is a creature of absolutely no importance; but sincere pederastic love is true love. Both of these men detested woman as a vile garden worm. They never associated with their neighbours, and when a near-by husband and wife quarrelled and Started breaking the crockery and the doors, these two old men did not try to reconcile them: on the contrary, they encouraged the husband, crying: 'Be brave, O man, and Strong! Kill her, beat her to death! Drive her from your house, and take a handsome man instead of her! 'They used to shake their fists at the woman, and thought the man feeble and lacking in courage. In the spring Mount Uyeno is thronged with visitors who come to see the cherry trees loaded with blossom, and at such time people drink excellent wines, and many get drunk. As the folk passed Hayemon's house, he used to distinguish the women's voices from the men's. When he heard men's voices, he ran out in the hope of seeing some beautiful youth: but when he heard women's voices, he shut his door and remained perfectly indifferent. One day it Started to rain, and several women who were making a pleasure party were caught in the shower. They all ran for shelter beneath the eaves of Hayemon's house, and chattered together: 'If we knew who lived here, we could get ourselves invited to tea and rest till the evening; and perhaps they would lend us umbrellas. They might even invite us to an agreeable supper. It is a great pity that we are not their friends.'One of them, who was older, bolder and less scrupulous than the rest, dared to open the door a little and cast a glance into the house.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  “No,” she said, hurriedly. “I’m the designated driver tonight. Tell you what, though, why don’t you meet me at my place and we can eat each other.” “Sounds like a plan,” I said, thinking of her warm mouth on me. “Okay, so I’ll see you later, Daddy. I love you.” “I love you too, ma.” With a great deal of reluctance, I ended the call. I loved Keita to the point where it sometimes hurt me physically. Damn this thing called love for making me so fucking weak! My boys thought I was bugging for falling for a chick so quickly, but they didn’t understand. I had been with a lot of bitches in my day, but none of them ever quite measured up. They were always lacking in one area or another, either not being pretty enough, or smart enough. My baby girl was the total package. Keita was five-four, with medium-length black hair that she usually wore in a wrap, and honey-colored skin. Whenever she smiled, you couldn’t help but to smile back. She just had that effect on people. Keita was an independent woman who got up and went to work every morning, and hardly asked for anything other than my time and affection. She was hood, but she wasn’t ghetto. I could have just as much fun with her at a black-tie affair as I could at a Rucker’s game in the summertime. She could move in either circle. My girl liked to go out and have a good time, but she knew how to conduct herself. Though I was insanely jealous, I never had to worry about her stepping out on me. It just wasn’t her way. Keita’s mother was heavy into the church and had instilled that in all four of her daughters. Hell or high water, my boo was in service every Sunday morning. Having Keita in my corner made me feel like the luckiest dude on earth. Most of you are probably wondering: If this girl is so special then why the hell do I step out on her? To put it simply, it’s just the nature of my species. Sometimes the thrill of the hunt is even greater than the prize. • • • Mochas was our spot. It had been since they opened their doors about four or five years ago. It was a small but cool lounge on Eighth Avenue in Harlem. During the week you could go there for drinks and possibly a comedy show, but on the weekends they brought in the DJ and everybody got their groove on.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “He’s not mad at you,” she said. Keeping a steady simmer of eye contact. “He knows you wouldn’t say anything.” And it was true: I hadn’t said anything. My silence keeping me in the realm of the invisible. I had been frightened, yes. Maybe you could pin some of the silence on that fear, a fear I could call up even later, after Russell and Suzanne and the others were in jail. But it was something else, too. The helpless thoughts of Suzanne. Who had sometimes colored her nipples with cheap lipstick. Suzanne, who walked around so brutish, like she knew you were trying to take something from her. I didn’t tell anyone because I wanted to keep her safe. Because who else had loved her? Who had ever held Suzanne in their arms and told her that her heart, beating away in her chest, was there on purpose? My hands were sweating, but I couldn’t wipe them on my jeans. I tried to make sense of this moment, to hold an image of Suzanne in my mind. Suzanne Parker. The atoms reorganizing themselves the first time I’d seen her in the park. How her mouth had smiled into mine. No one had ever looked at me before Suzanne, not really, so she had become my definition. Her gaze softening my center so easily that even photographs of her seemed aimed at me, ignited with private meaning. It was different from Russell, the way she looked at me, because it contained him, too: it made him and everyone else smaller. We had been with the men, we had let them do what they wanted. But they would never know the parts of ourselves that we hid from them—they would never sense the lack or even know there was something more they should be looking for. Suzanne was not a good person. I understood this. But I held the actual knowledge away from myself. How the coroner said the ring and pinky fingers of Linda’s left hand had been severed because she had tried to protect her face. Suzanne seemed to look at me as if there could be some explanation, but then a slight movement behind the shrouded windshield of the bus caught her attention—even then, she was alert to Russell’s every shift—and a businesslike air came over her. “Okay,” she said, urged by the tick of an unseen clock. “I’m taking off.” I had almost wanted a threat. Some indication that she might return, that I should fear her or could draw her back with the right combination of words. I only ever saw her again in photographs and news reports. Still. I could never imagine her absence as permanent. Suzanne and the others would always exist for me; I believed that they would never die. That they would hover forever in the background of ordinary life, circling the highways and edging the parks. Moved by a force that would never cease or slow.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  philosophy and Eastern religion, that the Divinity was well pleased with the sacrifices, the speculations, the tortures of man; it was to St. John that it was left to teach in all its fulness that the one sign of God’s children is ’the love of the brethren.’ And as it is Love that pervades our whole conception of his teaching, so also it pervades our whole conception of his character. We see him—it surely is no unwarranted fancy—we see him declining with the declining century; every sense and faculty waxing feebler, but that one divinest faculty of all burning more and more brightly; we see it breathing through every look and gesture; the one animating principle of the atmosphere in which he lives and moves; earth and heaven, the past, the present, and the future alike echoing to him that dying strain of his latest words, ’We love Him because He loved us.’ And when at last he disappears from our view in the last pages of the sacred volume, ecclesiastical tradition still lingers in the close: and in that touching story, not the less impressive because so familiar to us, we see the aged apostle borne in the arms of his disciples into the Ephesian assembly, and there repeating over and over again the same saying, ’Little children, love one another;’ till, when asked why he said this and nothing else, he replied in those well known words, fit indeed to be the farewell speech of the Beloved Disciple, ’Because this is our Lord’s command and if you fulfil this, nothing else is needed.’ " § 42. Apostolic Labors of John. John in the Acts. In the first stadium of Apostolic Christianity John figures as one of the three pillars of the church of the circumcision, together with Peter and James the brother of the Lord; while Paul and Barnabas represented the Gentile church.581 This seems to imply that at that time he had not yet risen to the full apprehension of the universalism and freedom of the gospel. But he was the most liberal of the three, standing between James and Peter on the one hand, and Paul on the other, and looking already towards a reconciliation of Jewish and Gentile Christianity. The Judaizers never appealed to him as they did to James, or to Peter.582 There is no trace of a Johannean party, as there is of a Cephas party and a party of James. He stood above strife and division.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  When we got to our cars, Dushawn gave me one last strong hug and kiss I’ll remember ’til I die. I blurted, “You think Camille’s gonna hate my ass?” He looked at me like I had sprouted another head and said, “Naw. I’ll talk to her. She used to tell me all the time how cool you was. She told me I needed to dump them skank-ass hoes and get wit a girl that really cared about me. She knew that meant you, La La.” We hugged and kissed again. It wasn’t the XXX hug we had shared in the old factory but I could feel it was real. When I tried to let go, he tightened his hold and gave me a long deep kiss that reached down to my seriously satisfied pussy. I didn’t want it to end. I said, “I got one question.” He said, “Ask.” “When the shit went down about my diary. Did your mama talk to you first?” “Yeah.” “Didn’t you tell her we wasn’t doin’ nothin’?” “Yeah.” “She didn’t believe you, or what?” “Prolly not, ’cause she had caught me with my draws around my ankles more than a few times,” he laughed. “Come on, Dushawn. I know you had to tell her some’m else for her to be that mad. What’d you tell her?” “I’ll tell you if you promise to see me again,” he teased. “Promise!” He pulled me closer and whispered, “The truth—I told her you was wifey material and that when I was ready to settle down, you was definitely on my list.” All I could say was, “Mmph! Mmph! Mmph!” • • • The next year was the best and worst in my life. Me and Cami got tighter than ever. Her mama still hated my ass but bein’ that we was grown-ass bitches on our own, it wasn’t nuthin’ she could really do. I finished cosmetology school and got my license. Camille had a baby with Tarik Jackson and moved to North Long Beach. We still talked every day, but her baby girl slowed her way down. I was by myself. Breast cancer had taken my momma after I graduated from high school. We barely had a chance to say good-bye. One minute she was complaining of a little bump under her titty, and a few months later she was gone. I was lonelier than I’d ever been in my life. I hadn’t heard shit from Dushawn since the day we kicked a hole in it. Camille told me that he moved up north to go to school. I didn’t hold it against him too much. He had already told me what the deal was, besides, I had all kinds a men steppin’ my way, if I wanted them. I looked good, I smelled good, I dressed good, and I had my own thang poppin’ at my hair and nail shop called Tight. • • •

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  But since they could not meet openly, because of the Lord, they waited for a suitable opportunity. It was the custom to give the palace a thorough cleaning on the thirteenth of December, and for the courtiers to change their old clothes for new and spotless garments. On that day, following a plan conceived by Korin's servant, Sohatjiro was introduced into the palace in a big bamboo basket, in which Korin had already sent some new soft robes to his mother. They succeeded in carrying Sohatjiro into the room adjoining the Lord's bedroom. Korin pretended that he had pains in the stomach, and kept the screen doors well oiled so as to be able to open them easily in the night. The first time Korin went out of the room, the Lord complained of the noise he made; but, as the night advanced, the latter fell into a deep sleep and started to snore very loudly. Then Korin, thinking that the moment had come when he might join his love, crept into the next room. The two lovers embraced and swore a faithful and changeless love until their deaths. They spoke very quietly, in a whisper, of their amorous pleasures; but by ill luck it happened that the Lord was wakened by their voices. He shouted: 'There is someone in the next room, and he shall not escape.'He grasped a spear, which was renting against his pillow, and rushed upon Sohatjiro as he turned to run away. But Korin seized him by the sleeve and said: 'It is not worthy of you, Lord, to agitate yourself in this way. Be caI beg you. There was no one here but I. I was only uttering certain complaints because of my pain. Forgive me, Lord, for having disturbed your sleep.' At that moment Sohatjiro Started to climb over the wall by the help of a large branch, and the Lord saw him. He Sternly questioned Korin; but the other denied everything. Then, since he had great love for Korin, the Lord thought that this was perhaps another evil badger haunting the garden, and he calmed himself. But one of the sentinels, Shinroku Kanai, came and said to the Lord: 'I saw the track of a man in this room, and himself with my own eyes in the garden. His hair was disordered and his actions were Strange. It must be Korin's secret lover. I advise the Lord to watch Korin.'But Korin answered bravely: 'My dear one has given me his life. He is my faithful lover. Even if I must die, I will not tell his name. I have already said this many times to my Lord.'He was calm and serene. Two days later Korin was led into the guard-room of the palace, and the Lord said to him: 'I myself will execute you, Korin, as a warning to my courtiers not to deceive me. Prepare to die.'And he took a halberd in his hands.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  7 They Loved Each Other even to Extreme Old Age T HERE WAS A LITTLE SHOP IN A STREET OF the Yanaka district of Yedo, with a narrow bill hung in the doorway which read: 'We have a remedy for superfluous hairs. It is equally good for many other ailments.'Copybooks for Students were also sold there; but since these were written by the hand of an old man, no one bought them. A bamboo blind hung between the worn and dirty screens. The trade of that shop was negligible, and the proprietor did not make enough out of it to live by. A graceful pine tree rose above the sloping roof; summer chrysanthemums flourished in the garden, and there was a well of pure water and a pail on the end of a pole. Sometimes birds came and perched on the pail. The owner of the shop was an old samurai, who had abandoned his career as a samurai when he was Still young. He lived on the money he had obtained by the sale of his former garments and his precious family heirlooms. He had only one intimate friend, who was of the same age as himself; and they very often played chess together. His only other companion was a little dog. He had no other visitors, except his few rare customers. Once, at the end of a hot summer day, he removed his clothes, which were soaked with sweat, and took a bath in his garden. His friend wept at the sight of his worn old body, and tenderly caressed the poor bent back. With his voice full of tears he said, as he washed his friend's wrinkled and bony shoulders: 'A certain great Chinese poet said in one of his poems: "A fine young man proudly sang the beauty of his body, admiring himself in a mirror. But that was yesterday. To-day, alas! he is no more than a poor old man worn out with wrinkles, and his head is covered with grey hair." That is exactly our own Story. We have sung together hand in hand without a care when we were young. But now it is only a distant memory and a dream.'Then the two old men joined hands and wept tears of regret for their past, while the hot water in the little tub grew cold. These two men were samurais who had been born in the Province of Tjikuzen. The younger's name was Mondo Tamashima, and he had been celebrated for the beauty of his face. Many people took him for a young Princess. The elder was called Hayemon Toyoda, and was a skilful marksman. He fell in love with Mondo, who returned his love sincerely. Mondo was sixteen years old and Hayemon nineteen when their love began. They were Strongly devoted to each other, and vowed an affection deeper than the sea. But another samurai loved Mondo.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  She regretted not to die in a foreign land, because she was not far from God, who would raise her up at the last day. "Bury my body anywhere," was her last request, "and trouble not yourselves for it; only this one thing I ask, that you remember me at the altar of my God, wherever you may be."2150 Augustine, in his Confessions, has erected to Monica the noblest monument that can never perish. If ever there was a thorough and fruitful conversion, next to that of Paul on the way to Damascus, it was that of Augustine, when, in a garden of the Villa Cassiciacum, not far from Milan, in September of the year 386, amidst the most violent struggles of mind and heart—the birth-throes of the new life—he heard that divine voice of a child: "Take, read!" and he "put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. xiii. 14). It is a touching lamentation of his: "I have loved Thee late, Thou Beauty, so old and so new; I have loved Thee late! And lo! Thou wast within, but I was without, and was seeking Thee there. And into Thy fair creation I plunged myself in my ugliness; for Thou wast with me, and I was not with Thee! Those things kept me away from Thee, which had not been, except they had been in Thee! Thou didst call, and didst cry aloud, and break through my deafness. Thou didst glimmer, Thou didst shine, and didst drive away, my blindness. Thou didst breathe, and I drew breath, and breathed in Thee. I tasted Thee, and I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burn for Thy peace. If I, with all that is within me, may once live in Thee, then shall pain and trouble forsake me; entirely filled with Thee, all shall be life to me."

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  To a world that had grown very weary gazing on the cold passionless grandeur which Cato realized, and which Lucan sung, it presented an ideal of compassion and of love—an ideal destined for centuries to draw around it all that was greatest, as well as all that was noblest upon earth—a Teacher who could weep by the sepulchre of His friend, who was touched with the feeling of our infirmities. To a world, in fine, distracted by hostile creeds and colliding philosophies, it taught its doctrines, not as a human speculation, but as a Divine revelation, authenticated much less by reason than by faith. ’With the heart man believeth unto righteousness;’ ’He that doeth the will of my Father will know the doctrine, whether it be of God;’ ’Unless you believe you cannot understand;’ ’A heart naturally Christian;’ ’The heart makes the theologian,’ are the phrases which best express the first action of Christianity upon the world. Like all great religions, it was more concerned with modes of feeling than with modes of thought. The chief cause of its success was the congruity of its teaching with the spiritual nature of mankind. It was because it was true of the moral sentiments of the age, because it represented faithfully the supreme type of excellence to which men were then tending, because it corresponded with their religious wants, aims, and emotions, because the whole spiritual being could then expand and expatiate under its influence that it planted its roots so deeply in the hearts of men." Merivale (Convers. of the Rom. Emp., Preface) traces the conversion of the Roman empire chiefly to four causes: 1) the external evidence of the apparent fulfilment of recorded prophecy and miracles to the truth of Christianity; 2) the internal evidence of satisfying the acknowledged need of a redeemer and sanctifier; 3) the goodness and holiness manifested in the lives and deaths of the primitive believers; 4) the temporal success of Christianity under Constantine, which "turned the mass of mankind, as with a sweeping revolution, to the rising sun of revealed truth in Christ Jesus." Renan discusses the reasons for the victory of Christianity in the 31st chapter of his Marc-Aurèle (Paris 1882), pp. 561–588. He attributes it chiefly "to the new discipline of life," and "the moral reform," which the world required, which neither philosophy nor any of the established religions could give. The Jews indeed rose high above the corruptions of the times. "Glorie éternelle et unique, qui doit faire oublier bien des folies et des violence! Les Juifs sont les révolutionnaires du 1er et du 2e siècle de notre ère." They gave to the world Christianity.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  We had first met at a London dinner party during one of my earlier visits to England; it was, wonderfully, and without question, love at first sight. Neither of us had any awareness of anyone else at the dinner table that night, and neither of us—we agreed much later—had ever been so completely and irrationally swept away by the power of our feelings. Several months later, when I returned to London for my year’s sabbatical leave, he called and asked me to go out to dinner. I was renting a mews house in South Kensington, so we went to a restaurant nearby. It was, for both of us, a continuation of what we had felt when we first met. I was spellbound by the ease with which he understood me, and physically overwhelmed by his intensity. We both knew, long before the wine was through, that we were beyond any way of turning back. It was raining when we left the restaurant, and he put his arm around me as we ran madcap to my place. Once there, he held me very close to him for a long, long time. I felt and smelled the rain against his coat, felt his arms around me, and remembered, with relief, how extraordinary scents and rain and love and life can be. I had not been with a man in a very long time, and, understanding this, he was kind and gentle and utterly loving. We saw each other as often as we could. Because we both were inclined to intense feelings and moods, we could console one another easily and, likewise, give one another a wide berth whenever necessary. We talked about everything. He was almost frighteningly intuitive, smart, passionate, and, occasionally, deeply melancholic; and he came to know me better than anyone had ever known me. He had no difficulty seeing the complexity in emotional situations or moods—his own made him well able to understand and respect irrationality, wild enthusiasms, paradox, change, and contradiction. We shared a love for poetry, music, tradition, and irreverence, as well as an unflagging awareness of the darker side of almost everything that was light, and the lighter side of almost everything that was bleak or morbid.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  At no time during either of the dinner parties was manic-depressive illness discussed; it was, in fact, the very normality of the evenings that was so reassuring and so important to me. Being introduced to such “normal” men, both from a world much like the one I had known as a child, was one of David’s many intuitive acts of kindness. “It is the history of our kindnesses that alone makes this world tolerable,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. “If it were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters … I should be inclined to think our life a practical jest in the worst possible spirit.” After knowing David, I never again saw life in its worst possible spirit. I left London with a terrible sense of apprehension, but David wrote and called often. In the late fall we spent time together in Washington, and, as I finally was feeling myself again, I enjoyed life in ways that I hadn’t for years. Those November days remain in my memory as a gentle yet intensely romantic swirl of long walks in the cold, visits to old houses and yet older churches, light snows covering the eighteenth-century gardens of Annapolis, and icy rivers threading their way out of and beyond the Chesapeake Bay. The evenings were filled with dry sherry and meandering dinner conversations about almost everything; the nights were filled with wonderful lovemaking and much-sought, long-absent, untroubled sleep. David returned to London; I returned to Los Angeles; we wrote and spoke often, missed one another, and threw ourselves into our respective lives of work. I went back to England in May, and we had two weeks of long, warm pre-summer days in London, Dorset, and Devon. One Sunday morning, after church, we walked up into the hills to listen to the ringing of the church bells, and I noticed that David had stopped, was standing still, and breathing heavily. He joked about getting too much strenuous exercise at night, we both laughed, and left it at that.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  We created our own world of discussion, desire, and love, living on champagne, roses, snow, rain, and borrowed time, an intense and private island of restored life for both of us. I had no hesitancy in telling him everything about myself, and he, like David, was extremely understanding about my manic-depressive illness. His immediate response, after I told him, was to take my face in his hands, kiss me gently on either cheek, and say, “I thought it was impossible for me to love you any more than I do.” He was silent for a while and then added, “It doesn’t really surprise me, but it does explain a certain vulnerability that goes along with your boldness. I am very glad you told me.” He meant it. They were not just easy words to cover awkward feelings. Everything he did and said after our discussion only underscored the meaning of his words. He understood, took into account, and put into perspective my vulnerabilities; but he also knew and loved my strengths as he saw them. He kept both in mind, protecting me from the hurt and pain of my illness and loving those aspects of me that he felt carried over with passion into life and love and work and people. I told him about my problems with the idea of taking lithium, but also that my life was dependent upon it. I told him that I had discussed with my psychiatrist the possibility of taking a lower dose in hopes of alleviating some of the more problematic side effects; I was eager to do this, but very frightened that I would have a recurrence of my mania. He argued that there would never be a safer or more protected period of time in my life in which to do it and that he would see me through. After discussing it with my psychiatrist in Los Angeles and my doctor in London, I did, very slowly, cut back on the amount of lithium I was taking. The effect was dramatic. It was as though I had taken bandages off my eyes after many years of partial blindness. A few days after lowering my dose, I was walking in Hyde Park, along the side of the Serpentine, when I realized that my steps were literally bouncier than they had been and that I was taking in sights and sounds that previously had been filtered through thick layers of gauze. The quacking of the ducks was more insistent, clearer, and more intense; the bumps on the sidewalk were far more noticeable; I felt more energetic and alive. Most significant, I could once again read without effort. It was, in short, remarkable.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  The same hotel, the same room. We look out on the courtyard where the bicycles are parked, and there is the little room up above, under the attic, where some smart young Alec played the phonograph all day long and repeated clever little things at the top of his voice. I say “we” but I’m getting ahead of myself, because Mona has been away a long time and it’s just today that I’m meeting her at the Gare St. Lazare. Toward evening I’m standing there with my face squeezed between the bars, but there’s no Mona, and I read the cable over again but it doesn’t help any. I go back to the Quarter and just the same I put away a hearty meal. Strolling past the Dôme a little later suddenly I see a pale, heavy face and burning eyes—and the little velvet suit that I always adore because under the soft velvet there were always her warm breasts, the marble legs, cool, firm, muscular. She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me, embraces me passionately—a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, legs, bottles, windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us and we in each other’s arm oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks—a flood of talk. Wild consumptive notes of hysteria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die. We walk down the Rue du Château, looking for Eugene. Walk over the railroad bridge where I used to watch the trains pulling out and feel all sick inside wondering where the hell she could be. Everything soft and enchanting as we walk over the bridge. Smoke coming up between our legs, the tracks creaking, semaphores in our blood. I feel her body close to mine—all mine now—and I stop to rub my hands over the warm velvet. Everything around us is crumbling, crumbling and the warm body under the warm velvet is aching for me. … Back in the very same room and fifty francs to the good, thanks to Eugene. I look out on the court but the phonograph is silent. The trunk is open and her things are lying around everywhere just as before. She lies down on the bed with her clothes on. Once, twice, three times, four times… I’m afraid she’ll go mad… in bed, under the blankets, how good to feel her body again! But for how long? Will it last this time? Already I have a presentiment that it won’t. She talks to me so feverishly—as if there will be no tomorrow. “Be quiet, Mona! Just look at me… don’t talk!” Finally she drops off and I pull my arm from under her. My eyes close. Her body is there beside me… it will be there till morning surely. … It was in February I pulled out of the harbor in a blinding snowstorm.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  We had first met at a London dinner party during one of my earlier visits to England; it was, wonderfully, and without question, love at first sight. Neither of us had any awareness of anyone else at the dinner table that night, and neither of us—we agreed much later—had ever been so completely and irrationally swept away by the power of our feelings. Several months later, when I returned to London for my year’s sabbatical leave, he called and asked me to go out to dinner. I was renting a mews house in South Kensington, so we went to a restaurant nearby. It was, for both of us, a continuation of what we had felt when we first met. I was spellbound by the ease with which he understood me, and physically overwhelmed by his intensity. We both knew, long before the wine was through, that we were beyond any way of turning back. It was raining when we left the restaurant, and he put his arm around me as we ran madcap to my place. Once there, he held me very close to him for a long, long time. I felt and smelled the rain against his coat, felt his arms around me, and remembered, with relief, how extraordinary scents and rain and love and life can be. I had not been with a man in a very long time, and, understanding this, he was kind and gentle and utterly loving. We saw each other as often as we could. Because we both were inclined to intense feelings and moods, we could console one another easily and, likewise, give one another a wide berth whenever necessary. We talked about everything. He was almost frighteningly intuitive, smart, passionate, and, occasionally, deeply melancholic; and he came to know me better than anyone had ever known me. He had no difficulty seeing the complexity in emotional situations or moods—his own made him well able to understand and respect irrationality, wild enthusiasms, paradox, change, and contradiction. We shared a love for poetry, music, tradition, and irreverence, as well as an unflagging awareness of the darker side of almost everything that was light, and the lighter side of almost everything that was bleak or morbid.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Centuries of such seeming steadiness in the genes could only very partially prepare my mother for all of the turmoil and difficulties that were to face her once she left her parents’ home to begin a family of her own. But it has been precisely that persevering steadiness of my mother, her belief in seeing things through, and her great ability to love and learn, listen and change, that helped keep me alive through all of the years of pain and nightmare that were to come. She could not have known how difficult it would be to deal with madness; had no preparation for what to do with madness—none of us did—but consistent with her ability to love, and her native will, she handled it with empathy and intelligence. It never occurred to her to give up. Both my mother and father strongly encouraged my interests in writing poetry and school plays, as well as in science and medicine. Neither of them tried to limit my dreams, and they had the sense and sensitivity to tell the difference between a phase I was going through and more serious commitments. Even my phases, however, were for the most part tolerated with kindness and imagination. Being particularly given to strong and absolute passions, I was at one point desperately convinced that we had to have a sloth as a pet. My mother, who had been pushed about as far as possible by allowing me to keep dogs, cats, birds, fish, turtles, lizards, frogs, and mice, was less than wildly enthusiastic. My father convinced me to put together a detailed scientific and literary notebook about sloths. He suggested that, in addition to providing practical information about their dietary needs, living space, and veterinary requirements, I also write a series of poems about sloths and essays about what they meant to me, design a habitat for them that would work within our current house, and make detailed observations of their behavior at the zoo; if I did all this, he said, my parents would then consider finding a sloth for me. What they both knew, I am sure, was that I was simply in love with the idea of a strange idea, and that given some other way of expressing my enthusiasms, I would be quite content. They were right, of course, and this was only further driven home by actually watching the sloths at the National Zoo. If there is anything more boring than watching a sloth—other than watching cricket, perhaps, or the House Appropriations Committee meetings on C-SPAN—I have yet to come across it. I had never been so grateful to return to the prosaic world of my dog, who, by comparison, seemed Newtonian in her complexity.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  That is why he says as he enters the world: ‘You did not desire sacrifice and offering; it is a body you have prepared for me. You took no pleasure in whole burnt offerings and in sin offerings. So then I said: “So then I come – in the roll of the book it is written of me – to do, O God, your will.”’ At the beginning of this passage, he says: ‘You did not desire sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sin offerings and you took no pleasure in them,’ and it is such offerings as these that the law prescribes. Then he went on to say: ‘Behold, I come to do your will.’ He abolishes the kind of offerings referred to in the first quotation in order to establish the kind of offering referred to in the second. It is by this way of ‘the will’ that we have been purified through the once-and-for-all offering of the body of Christ. TO the writer to the Hebrews, the whole business of sacrifice was only a pale copy of what real worship ought to be. The purpose of religion was to bring people into a close relationship with God, and that is what these sacrifices could never do. The best that they could do was to provide a distant and occasional contact with God. He uses two words to indicate what he means. He says that these things are a pale shadow. The word he uses is skia, the Greek for a shadow, and it means a vague reflection, a mere silhouette, a form without reality. He says that they do not give a real image. The word he uses is eikōn, which means a complete representation, a detailed reproduction. It actually means a portrait, and would mean a photograph, if there had been such a thing in those days. In effect, he is saying: ‘Without Christ, you cannot get beyond the shadows of God.’ He brings proof. Year by year, the sacrifices of the tabernacle and especially of the Day of Atonement go on. An effective thing does not need to be done again; the very fact of the repetition of these sacrifices is the final proof that they are not purifying human souls and not giving full and uninterrupted access to God. Our writer goes further: he says that all they are is a reminder of sin. Far from purifying people, they remind them that they are not purified and that their sins still stand between them and God. Let us take an analogy. Someone is ill. A bottle of medicine is prescribed.