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 Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  A city: that framework constructed by men for men, monotonous if you will, but only as are wax cells laden with honey, a place of meeting and exchange, where peasants come to sell their produce, and linger to gape and stare at the paintings of a portico. . . . My cities were born of encounters, both my own encounters with given corners of the earth and the conjunction of my plans as emperor with the incidents of my personal life. Plotinopolis grew from the need to establish new market towns in Thrace, but also from the tender desire to honor Plotina. Hadrianotherae is designed to serve as a trading town for the forest dwellers of Asia Minor: at first it had been for me a summer retreat, with its forest full of wild game, its hunting lodge of rough hewn logs below the hill of the god Attys, and its headlong stream where we bathed each morning. Hadrianopolis in Epirus reopened an urban center in the heart of an impoverished province: it owes its start to a visit which I made to the oracle of Dodona. Hadrianopolis in Thrace, an agricultural and military outpost strategically placed on the edge of barbarian lands, is populated by veterans of the Sarmatian wars: I know at first hand the strength and the weakness of each one of those men, their names, the number of their years of service, and of their wounds. Antino�polis, dearest of all, born on the site of sorrow, is confined to a narrow band of arid soil between the river and the cliffs. I was only the more desirous, therefore, to enrich it with other resources, trade with India, river traffic, and the learned graces of a Greek metropolis. There is not a place on earth that I care less to revisit, but there are few to which I have devoted more pains. It is a veritable city of columns, a perpetual peristyle. I exchange dispatches with its governor, Fidus Aquila, about the propylaea of its temple and the statues of its triumphal arch; I have chosen the names of its district divisions and religious and administrative units, symbolic names both obvious and secret which catalogue all my memories. I myself drew the plan of its Corinthian colonnades and the corresponding alignment of palm trees spaced regularly along the river banks. Countless times have I walked in thought that almost perfect quadrilateral, cut by parallel streets and divided in two by the broad avenue which leads from a Greek theatre to a tomb. We are crowded with statues and cloyed with the exquisite in painting and sculpture, but this abundance is an illusion, for we reproduce over and over some dozen masterpieces which are now beyond our power to invent. Like other collectors I have had copied for the Villa the Hermaphrodite and the Centaur, the Niobid and the Venus. I have wanted to live as much as possible in the midst of this music of forms.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  And yet this submission was not blind; those lids so often lowered in acquiescence or in dream were not always so; the most attentive eyes in the world would sometimes look me straight in the face, and I felt myself judged. But I was judged as is a god by his adorer: my harshness and sudden suspicions (for I had them later on) were patiently and gravely accepted. I have been absolute master but once in my life, and over but one being. If I have said nothing yet of a beauty so apparent it is not merely because of the reticence of a man too completely conquered. But the faces which we try so desperately to recall escape us: it is only for a moment ... I see a head bending under its dark mass of hair, eyes which seemed slanting, so long were the lids, a young face broadly formed, as if for repose. This tender body varied all the time, like a plant, and some of its alterations were those of growth. The boy changed; he grew tall. A week of indolence sufficed to soften him completely; a single afternoon at the hunt made the young athlete firm again, and fleet; an hour's sun would turn him from jasmine to the color of honey. The boyish limbs lengthened out; the face lost its delicate childish round and hollowed slightly under the high cheekbones; the full chest of the young runner took on the smooth, gleaming curves of a Bacchante's breast; the brooding lips bespoke a bitter ardor, a sad satiety. In truth this visage changed as if I had molded it night and day. When I think back on these years I seem to return to the Age of Gold. Trouble was no more: past efforts were repaid by an ease which was almost divine. Travel was play, a pleasure well known, controlled, and skilfully planned. Work, though incessant, was only a form of delight. My life, where everything came late, power and happiness, too, now acquired the splendor of high noon, the luminous glow of siesta time when everything, the objects of the room and the figure lying beside one, bathes in golden shade. Passion satisfied has its innocence, almost as fragile as any other: the remainder of human beauty was relegated to the rank of mere spectacle, and ceased to be game for my pursuit. This adventure, begun casually enough, served to enrich but also to simplify my life: the future was matter for slight concern; I ceased to question the oracles; the stars were no longer anything more than admirable patterns upon the vault of heaven. Never before had I noted with such elation the glimmer of dawn on the distant islands, the coolness of caves sacred to nymphs and haunted by birds of passage, the low flight of quail at dusk. I reread the poets; some seemed better to me than before, but most of them worse.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  In a swift, unconscious convulsion he clutched together the bevelled glass salt and pepper pots. ‘Of course not. I love you.’ He looked up for a split second and then went on very quickly and quietly, pushing the last French beans around his plate with his fork, ‘I really love you, I don’t think I could live without you. I couldn’t bear it when you were ill, and … I don’t know …’ It was much more of an avowal than I’d asked for, and the tears came to my eyes and I grinned at the same time. I covered his hand that was coupling the cruet with my own, and looked anywhere but at him—around the horrible, narrow but disproportionately tall room, which had obviously been made by splitting some more generous space in two. Afterwards we got changed upstairs and shared a tooth-mug of vodka, which made me if anything more amorous, though in a generalised way, as if it were not just Phil but the whole world that was in love with me. I put on some very old, faded, tight-loose pink jeans and a white T-shirt with no arms and side-seams ripped open almost to my hips. Phil squeezed into other new acquisitions—some hugging and rather High Street dark blue slacks with a thin white belt, and a gripping pale blue T-shirt. When we were clear of the hotel I took Phil’s arm. It moved me to do this, to insist out loud that he was mine (he himself, keen to be so claimed, didn’t quite flow with it, butchly somehow held himself apart—though I locked my fingers through his). At Winchester one summer day I had run across a couple of queens-one perhaps an old Wykehamist showing his friend the places where his honour died. They had wandered over to Gunner’s Hole, that curving canal-like backwater, drawn off and returning to the Itchen, where in Charles’s day swimming had taken place. Now, of course, there was a beautiful indoor pool—where I was soon to establish my freestyle record—and the Hole had surrendered, as it must always have promised to do, to crowding cow-parsley and heavy seeded grasses, while in the water itself long green weeds curled to and fro in the current. I came scuffing past through the meadow, hot, shirt undone, and saw them gazing, one pointing at the rioting May-time flowers, then spotting me, giving me a glance—very brief but I felt it—and then the two of them turning back towards College, arm in arm. I mastered a frisson of shock into pleasure—not at them individually (they seemed hopelessly old and refined) but at the openness of their gesture. I wanted men to walk out together. I wanted a man to walk out with. Well, I had one. My heel was suddenly tacky, and I stopped—though Phil kept going and almost pulled me over. I hopped forwards, supported by him, and turned my sole upwards under the yellow street light.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  And this was only the beginning of a really useful night.’ This touched me far more than the attacks on me—which I read as a kind of flattery—and humbled me with a true sense of my uselessness. James was like Charles in this: without in the least intending it they exposed my egoism by the example of their goodness, by all their sweet, philanthropic sublimations. There was the jolt of the lift being called, and its whining descent. I jumped up and put the diary back, but not quite in line, so that it would be clear that I had looked at it. I nipped into the kitchen for the Guardian , sprawled on the sofa and then—since there was something farcical and implausible in this—decided I would be asleep. I pretended to surface as James came in: ‘Dearest! Sorry, I’m so tired—frightful night. Down the Shaft till all hours.’ He didn’t seem too thrilled about this. ‘I hope it was fun.’ ‘Up to a point. I went with my little Philpot but ran into Arthur …’ ‘So you had them both, I imagine?’ ‘Well …’—I left it in the realm of possibilities. He slammed around the kitchen, ground more coffee, put bread in the toaster almost as if to complain that I should have done all this for him already; but to fend off what had to be said, too. ‘You’d better tell me what happened,’ I said. He hugged me suddenly and hard. ‘Yes; do you mind if I tell you the whole thing? At the risk of sounding rather foolish.’ ‘My darling.’ ‘Let’s go in the other room.’ We did so and he opened one of the big windows on the faint summer roar, and walked about and gazed into the rooms across the road while I sat attentively. ‘I suppose I’ve been feeling a bit wretched lately,’ he said, and then stopped. ‘What sort of wretched?’ ‘About love and sex and life in general.’ He put down his coffee mug as if it were a nuisance. ‘I don’t know, I just feel so out of it. I’m working so hard I can scarcely do anything I want—I never see anybody. Well, I see hundreds of people, but never anybody I want to see. When did we last meet, for instance? I know you’re busy with your boys and what have you—but I would like to see you darling a bit more often, you know? You are one of my oldest, dearest friends, fuck it.’ ‘I do feel the same, James. I’m always thinking of you and having conversations with you in my head and imagining what you would say about things. You’re my most constant companion, even though I’m so pathetic and never get in touch with you.’ He smiled: ‘You see, just talking to you now makes me feel better.

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

  Reply to Objection 1: From the very fact that truth is the end of contemplation, it has the aspect of an appetible good, both lovable and delightful, and in this respect it pertains to the appetitive power. Reply to Objection 2: We are urged to the vision of the first principle, namely God, by the love thereof; wherefore Gregory says (Hom. xiv in Ezech.) that “the contemplative life tramples on all cares and longs to see the face of its Creator.” Reply to Objection 3: The appetitive power moves not only the bodily members to perform external actions, but also the intellect to practice the act of contemplation, as stated above. Whether the moral virtues pertain to the contemplative life?Objection 1: It would seem that the moral virtues pertain to the contemplative life. For Gregory says (Hom. xiv in Ezech.) that “the contemplative life is to cling to the love of God and our neighbor with the whole mind.” Now all the moral virtues, since their acts are prescribed by the precepts of the Law, are reducible to the love of God and of our neighbor, for “love . . . is the fulfilling of the Law” (Rom. 13:10). Therefore it would seem that the moral virtues belong to the contemplative life. Objection 2: Further, the contemplative life is chiefly directed to the contemplation of God; for Gregory says (Hom. xiv in Ezech.) that “the mind tramples on all cares and longs to gaze on the face of its Creator.” Now no one can accomplish this without cleanness of heart, which is a result of moral virtue [*Cf.[3720] Q[8], A[7]]. For it is written (Mat. 5:8): “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God”: and (Heb. 12:14): “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see God.” Therefore it would seem that the moral virtues pertain to the contemplative life. Objection 3: Further, Gregory says (Hom. xiv in Ezech.) that “the contemplative life gives beauty to the soul,” wherefore it is signified by Rachel, of whom it is said (Gn. 29:17) that she was “of a beautiful countenance.” Now the beauty of the soul consists in the moral virtues, especially temperance, as Ambrose says (De Offic. i, 43,45,46). Therefore it seems that the moral virtues pertain to the contemplative life. On the contrary, The moral virtues are directed to external actions. Now Gregory says (Moral. vi [*Hom. xiv in Ezech.; Cf. A[1], OBJ[3]]) that it belongs to the contemplative life “to rest from external action.” Therefore the moral virtues do not pertain to the contemplative life.

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

  I answer that, As stated above ([3745]FS, Q[114], A[4]), the root of merit is charity; and, while, as stated above (Q[25], A[1]), charity consists in the love of God and our neighbor, the love of God is by itself more meritorious than the love of our neighbor, as stated above (Q[27], A[8]). Wherefore that which pertains more directly to the love of God is generically more meritorious than that which pertains directly to the love of our neighbor for God’s sake. Now the contemplative life pertains directly and immediately to the love of God; for Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xix, 19) that “the love of” the Divine “truth seeks a holy leisure,” namely of the contemplative life, for it is that truth above all which the contemplative life seeks, as stated above (Q[181], A[4], ad 2). On the other hand, the active life is more directly concerned with the love of our neighbor, because it is “busy about much serving” (Lk. 10:40). Wherefore the contemplative life is generically of greater merit than the active life. This is moreover asserted by Gregory (Hom. iii in Ezech.): “The contemplative life surpasses in merit the active life, because the latter labors under the stress of present work,” by reason of the necessity of assisting our neighbor, “while the former with heartfelt relish has a foretaste of the coming rest,” i.e. the contemplation of God. Nevertheless it may happen that one man merits more by the works of the active life than another by the works of the contemplative life. For instance through excess of Divine love a man may now and then suffer separation from the sweetness of Divine contemplation for the time being, that God’s will may be done and for His glory’s sake. Thus the Apostle says (Rom. 9:3): “I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren”; which words Chrysostom expounds as follows (De Compunct. i, 7 [*Ad Demetr. de Compunct. Cordis.]): “His mind was so steeped in the love of Christ that, although he desired above all to be with Christ, he despised even this, because thus he pleased Christ.” Reply to Objection 1: External labor conduces to the increase of the accidental reward; but the increase of merit with regard to the essential reward consists chiefly in charity, whereof external labor borne for Christ’s sake is a sign. Yet a much more expressive sign thereof is shown when a man, renouncing whatsoever pertains to this life, delights to occupy himself entirely with Divine contemplation.

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

  I answer that, Among means to an end that one is the more suitable whereby the various concurring means employed are themselves helpful to such end. But in this that man was delivered by Christ’s Passion, many other things besides deliverance from sin concurred for man’s salvation. In the first place, man knows thereby how much God loves him, and is thereby stirred to love Him in return, and herein lies the perfection of human salvation; hence the Apostle says (Rom. 5:8): “God commendeth His charity towards us; for when as yet we were sinners . . . Christ died for us.” Secondly, because thereby He set us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues displayed in the Passion, which are requisite for man’s salvation. Hence it is written (1 Pet. 2:21): “Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps.” Thirdly, because Christ by His Passion not only delivered man from sin, but also merited justifying grace for him and the glory of bliss, as shall be shown later ([4230]Q[48], A[1];[4231] Q[49], AA[1], 5). Fourthly, because by this man is all the more bound to refrain from sin, according to 1 Cor. 6:20: “You are bought with a great price: glorify and bear God in your body.” Fifthly, because it redounded to man’s greater dignity, that as man was overcome and deceived by the devil, so also it should be a man that should overthrow the devil; and as man deserved death, so a man by dying should vanquish death. Hence it is written (1 Cor. 15:57): “Thanks be to God who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” It was accordingly more fitting that we should be delivered by Christ’s Passion than simply by God’s good-will. Reply to Objection 1: Even nature uses several means to one intent, in order to do something more fittingly: as two eyes for seeing; and the same can be observed in other matters. Reply to Objection 2: As Chrysostom [*Athanasius, Orat. De Incarn. Verb.] says: “Christ had come in order to destroy death, not His own, (for since He is life itself, death could not be His), but men’s death. Hence it was not by reason of His being bound to die that He laid His body aside, but because the death He endured was inflicted on Him by men. But even if His body had sickened and dissolved in the sight of all men, it was not befitting Him who healed the infirmities of others to have his own body afflicted with the same. And even had He laid His body aside without any sickness, and had then appeared, men would not have believed Him when He spoke of His resurrection. For how could Christ’s victory over death appear, unless He endured it in the sight of all men, and so proved that death was vanquished by the incorruption of His body?”

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

  JEROME. We have often said that Peter had too hot a zeal, and a very great affection towards the Lord the Saviour. Therefore after that his confession, and the reward of which he had heard from the Saviour, he would not have that his confession destroyed, and thought it impossible that the Son of God could be put to death, but takes Him to him affectionately, or takes Him aside that he may not seem to be rebuking his Master in the presence of his fellow disciples, and begins to chide Him with the feeling of one that loved Him, and to contradict Him, and say, Be it far from thee, Lord; or as it is better in the Greek, ἵλεώς σοι Κύριε, οὐ μὴ ἔσται σοι τοῦτο, that is, Be propitious to Thyself, Lord, this shall not be unto Thee. ORIGEN. As though Christ Himself had needed a propitiation. His affection Christ allows, but charges him with ignorance; as it follows, He turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an offence unto me. HILARY. The Lord, knowing the suggestion of the craft of the devil, says to Peter, Get thee behind me; that is, that he should follow the example of His passion; but to him by whom this expression was suggested, He turns and says, Satan, thou art an offence unto me. For we cannot suppose that the name of Satan, and the sin of being an offence, would be imputed to Peter after those so great declarations of blessedness and power that had been granted him. JEROME. But to me this error of the Apostle, proceeding from the warmth of his affection, will never seem a suggestion of the devil. Let the thoughtful reader consider that that blessedness of power was promised to Peter in time to come, not given him at the time present; had it been conveyed to him immediately, the error of a false confession would never have found place in him. CHRYSOSTOM. For what wonder is it that this should befal Peter, who had never received a revelation concerning these things? For that you may learn that that confession which he made concerning Christ was not spoken of himself, observe how in these things which had not been revealed to him, he is at a loss. Estimating the things of Christ by human and earthly principles, he judged it mean and unworthy of Him that He should suffer. Therefore the Lord added, For thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.

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

  4. He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. 5. After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. THEOPHYLACT. Our Lord being about to depart out of this life, shews His great care for His disciples: Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. BEDE. The Jews had many feasts, but the principal one was the passover; and therefore it is particularly said, Before the feast of the passover. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lv) Pascha is not a Greek word, as some think, but Hebrew: though there is remarkable agreement of the two languages in it. The Greek word to suffer being πασχεῖν, pascha has been thought to mean passion, as being derived from the above word. But in Hebrew, pascha is a passing over; the feast deriving its name from the passing of the people of God over the Red Sea into Egypt. All was now to take place in reality, of which that passover was the type. Christ was led as a lamb to the slaughter; whose blood sprinkled upon our door-posts, i. e. whose sign of the cross marked on our foreheads, delivers us from the dominion of this world, as from Egyptian bondage. And we perform a most wholesome journey or pass-over, when we pass over from the devil to Christ, from this unstable world to His sure kingdom. In this way the Evangelist seems to interpret the word: When Jesus knew that His hour was come when He should pass over1 out of this world unto the Father. This is the pascha, this the passing over. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxx. 1) He did not know then for the first time: He had known long before. By His departure He means His death. Being so near leaving His disciples, He shews the more love for them: Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end; i. e. He left nothing undone which one who greatly loved should do. He reserved this for the last, that their love might be increased by it, and to prepare them by such consolation for the trials that were coming. His own He calls them, in the sense of intimacy. The word was used in another sense in the beginning of the Gospel: (c. 1:11) His own received Him not. It follows, which were in the world: for those were dead who were His own, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who were not in the world. These then, His own which were in the world, He loved all along, and at the last manifested His love in completeness: He loved them unto the end.

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

  GREGORY. (ubi sup.) But both debtors being forgiven, the Pharisee is asked which most loved the forgiver of the debts. For it follows, Who then will love him most? To which he at once answers, I suppose, that he to whom he forgave most. And here we must remark, that while the Pharisee is convicted upon his own grounds, the madman carries the rope by which he will be bound; as it follows, But he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged. The good deeds of the sinful woman are enumerated to him, and the evils of the pretended righteous; as it follows, And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thy house, thou gavest me no water for my feet, but she hath washed my feet with her tears. TITUS BOSTRENSIS. As if He said, To provide water is easy, to pour forth tears is not easy. Thou hast not provided even what was at hand, she hath poured forth what was not at hand; for washing my feet with her tears, she washed away her own stains. She wiped them with her hair, that so she might draw to herself the sacred moisture, and by that by which she once enticed youth to sin, might now attract to herself holiness. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 6. in Matt.) But as after the breaking of a violent storm there comes a calm, so when tears have burst forth, there is peace, and gloomy thoughts vanish; and as by water and the Spirit, so by tears and confession we are again made clean. Hence it follows, Wherefore I say unto you, Her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loveth much. For those who have violently plunged into evil, will in time also eagerly follow after good, being conscious to what debts they have made themselves responsible. GREGORY. (Hom. 33. in Evan.) The more then the heart of the sinner is burnt up by the great fire of charity, so much the more is the rust of sin consumed. TITUS BOSTRENSIS. But it more frequently happens that he who has sinned much is purified by confession, but he who has sinned little, refuses from pride to come to be healed thereby. Hence it follows, But to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 67. in Matt.) We have need then of a fervent spirit, for nothing hinders a man from becoming great. Let then no sinner despair, no virtuous man fall asleep; neither let the one be self-confident, for often the harlot shall go before him, nor the other distrustful, for he may even surpass the foremost. Hence it is also here added, But he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven thee.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  I have encouraged experimentation with the thought and methods of the past, a learned archaism which might recapture lost intentions and lost techniques. I tried those variations which consist of transcribing in red marble a flayed Marsyas, portrayed heretofore only in white, going back thus into the world of painted figures; or of transposing to the pallor of Parian marble the black grain of Egypt's statues, changing the idol to a ghost. Our art is perfect, that is to say, completed, but its perfection can be modulated as finely as can a pure voice: we have still the chance to play with skill the game of perpetual approach to, or withdrawal from, that solution found once for all; we may go to the limit of control, or excess, and enclose within that beauteous sphere innumerable new constructions. There is advantage in having behind us multiple points of comparison, in being free to follow Scopas intelligently, or to diverge, voluptuously, from Praxiteles. My contacts with the arts of barbarians have led me to believe that each race limits itself to certain subjects and to certain modes among those conceivable; each period, too, makes a selection among the possibilities offered to each race. In Egypt I have seen colossal gods, and kings; on the wrists of Sarmatian prisoners I have found bracelets which endlessly repeat the same galloping horse, or the same serpents devouring each other. But our art (I mean that of the Greeks) has chosen man as its center. We alone have known how to show latent strength and agility in bodies in repose; we alone have made a smooth brow the symbol of wise reflection. I am like our sculptors: the human contents me; I find everything there, even what is eternal. The image of the Centaur sums up for me all forests, so greatly loved, and storm winds never breathe better than in a sea goddess' billowing scarf. Natural objects and sacred emblems have value for me only as they are weighted with human associations: the phallic and funeral pine cone, the vase with doves which suggests siesta beside a fountain, the griffon which carries the beloved to the sky. The art of portraiture was of slight interest to me. Our Roman busts have value only as records, faces copied to the last wrinkle, with every single wart; stencils of figures with whom we brush elbows in life, and whom we forget as soon as they die. The Greeks, on the contrary, have loved human perfection to the point of caring but little for the varied visages of men. I tend merely to glance at my own likeness, that dark face so changed by the whiteness of marble, those wide-opened eyes, that thin though sensuous mouth, controlled to the point of quivering. But I have been more preoccupied by the face of another.

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

  Reply to Objection 3: To understand and to will denote the act alone, and do not include in their meaning objects from the diversity of which God may be said to know or will more or less, as has been said with respect to God’s love. Whether God always loves more the better things?Objection 1: It seems that God does not always love more the better things. For it is manifest that Christ is better than the whole human race, being God and man. But God loved the human race more than He loved Christ; for it is said: “He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32). Therefore God does not always love more the better things. Objection 2: Further, an angel is better than a man. Hence it is said of man: “Thou hast made him a little less than the angels” (Ps. 8:6). But God loved men more than He loved the angels, for it is said: “Nowhere doth He take hold of the angels, but of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold” (Heb. 2:16). Therefore God does not always love more the better things. Objection 3: Further, Peter was better than John, since he loved Christ more. Hence the Lord, knowing this to be true, asked Peter, saying: “Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me more than these?” Yet Christ loved John more than He loved Peter. For as Augustine says, commenting on the words, “Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me?”: “By this very mark is John distinguished from the other disciples, not that He loved him only, but that He loved him more than the rest.” Therefore God does not always love more the better things. Objection 4: Further, the innocent man is better than the repentant, since repentance is, as Jerome says (Cap. 3 in Isa.), “a second plank after shipwreck.” But God loves the penitent more than the innocent; since He rejoices over him the more. For it is said: “I say to you that there shall be joy in heaven upon the one sinner that doth penance, more than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance” (Lk. 15:7). Therefore God does not always love more the better things. Objection 5: Further, the just man who is foreknown is better than the predestined sinner. Now God loves more the predestined sinner, since He wills for him a greater good, life eternal. Therefore God does not always love more the better things. On the contrary, Everything loves what is like it, as appears from (Ecclus. 13:19): “Every beast loveth its like.” Now the better a thing is, the more like is it to God. Therefore the better things are more loved by God.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  She agreed to listen because her sisters, children, husband and her close friends begged her to stay and learn. They asked her to have an open mind and learn about cults and mind control from me. With the help of long-term former members who had been her friends while in the group, she was overwhelmed with compelling and believable stories. She learned about horrible abuses of power that her daughter experienced and discovered had happened to others. She sat with and listened to her old friends she had previously dismissed and avoided. Love, patience, and respect guided the process. It worked beautifully! As I am waiting at the airport, I get into a conversation with some fellow travelers who have recognized me from my appearance on the Leah Remini show exposing Scientology abuses. They have many questions. They ask me to tell them more about how I got interested in helping people out of cults. I ask them if they have ever heard of the Moon cult? No, they haven’t. But they have heard of the newspaper owned by them, the Washington Times. As I’m describing how high-demand groups have proliferated over the past few years, reaching what I consider epidemic proportions, they stop me. They can’t believe it’s true. They are amazed to hear that cults are successfully recruiting people. I go back through decades of big stories: “Charles Manson?” The woman had read that he was supposed to get married. “Patty Hearst and the SLA?” They’ve never heard of her. “Do you know about Jonestown and Jim Jones?” Astonishingly, no, they don’t. This edition is being published on the 40th anniversary of the Jonestown tragedy, which took place November 18th, 1978. The hardcover edition of Combating Cult Mind Control came out on the 10th anniversary of the Jonestown tragedy. While today most Americans know the expression “drink the Kool-Aid,” many people have never heard of Jim Jones and his cult, the Peoples Temple. Even fewer know the grim story of how cyanide was mixed with Flavor Aid and forced down the throats of over 300 children and hundreds of adults. Jones told them it was an act of “revolutionary suicide.” They believed he was God on earth. In total, he killed 912 people.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Her overblown gestures seemed like the gaudy plumage of something too refined and frail to appear unadorned. Besides, morbid, serious Susan, who would brood with a bespectacled roommate for hours over tea and toast when a romance collapsed, could not help but feel a kind of admiration for this person who ran around town chattering about the most embarrassing and painful situations as though she were discussing a musical comedy. It was vulgar, but there was a bravado to it that Susan began to sentimentalize against her will. (In fact, she did discover later that Leisha was very fragile, and that she was usually reacting to a nasty scene that some boy or other had already made public before she ever opened her mouth, that her hysterical tattling was thus a form of self-defense.) This burgeoning interest in her finally found expression when Leisha got pregnant—for the third time, said Alex. She was in bed with the flu and morning sickness when Alex and Susan went to visit her. She was sitting up in her dishevelled bed in an old blue velveteen robe, surrounded by fashion magazines and sodas, her brown eyes lively and alert. She looked at Susan with discomforting but flattering intensity. Susan sat on the bed. “I heard you were sick. I thought I’d come to see how you were doing.” They talked about leather gloves, high heels and their favorite writers. It was the first time that Susan had ever really heard Leisha’s voice—the quick, low-pitched voice affected by a certain type of teenage sex star in the fifties and picked up again by bouffant-haired singers in the seventies, only in Leisha it had an intelligent edge that was not ironic but somehow plain and comforting, as if, honey, she’d been there and back, and she knew how important it was just to sit and have a drink and a good talk—which now seemed like a ridiculous affectation in a twenty-one-year-old college student. Susan realized that almost anything you talked about with this girl would seem important. And it appeared that Leisha was having a similar reaction to her. It was, as Leisha said later, the time they fell in love. After Leisha had her third abortion, they began spending time together. They met ritualistically for brunch at the Dialtone Café on Sundays so they could discuss whatever had happened the night before, or rant about whatever they’d been obsessed with the previous week. “The thing that drives me nuts about it is that Elena—well, she’s just a twat.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  and laugh once again. We could be honest about the war and ourselves. Before each meeting there was the thumb-and-fist handshake—it meant you cared about your brother. We were men who had gone to war. Each of us had his story to tell, his own nightmare. Each of us had been made cold by this thing. We wore ribbons and uniforms. We talked of death and atrocity to each other with unaccustomed gentleness. I remember being very nervous and anxious at that first meeting. I told them, Give me a speech, give me a place to show this wheelchair. I really wanted to get going immediately. The brothers told me to calm down and not to worry, there would be plenty of chances to speak, it was time to get the organization together. Afterward I went into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and one of the guys came up to me and gave me a big hug. He held me for a long time and when he let go there were tears streaming down his face. “I love you, brother,” he said, wiping his eyes. And then he said, “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry I did that.” “It’s okay,” I said. “I love you too. Now when’s my first speaking gig?” They told me to go to a rally in Pasadena the next day. I would be speaking at noon with a couple of other people. * * * The VVAW sent me to do a lot of speeches after that and soon I was on television all the time. On one network there was a big argument with a producer who didn’t want a disfigured veteran on her show. “We’ve seen enough of that,” she told me over the phone. “Every night for the last couple of years people have seen it on the six o’clock news and they’re tired of it.” She tried to be nice and told me that she had read a book called Johnny Got His Gun, so she knew what I was all about, but she didn’t think it would be tasteful at all to let the people of L.A. see a crippled kid on a Sunday morning. I was at a rally a few weeks later when Donald Sutherland began to read the last couple of pages of the book the woman had talked to me about, the one about the kid in World War I who gets blown to hell like myself and loses almost everything, he’s just a hulk, a slab of meat. Sutherland began to read the passage and something I will never forget swept over me. It was as if someone was speaking for everything I ever went through in the hospital. It was as if the book was speaking about me, my wound and the hell it had been coming back

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Of course I pretended that I hadn’t observed anything unusual about her, except that she was extremely intelligent and extremely capable. Finally the president himself stepped in. There was a short interview between him and Valeska during which he very diplomatically proposed to give her a better position in Havana. No talk of the blood taint. Simply that her services had been altogether remarkable and that they would like to promote her—to Havana. Valeska came back to the office in a rage. When she was angry she was magnificent. She said she wouldn’t budge. Steve Romero and Hymie were there at the time and we all went out to dinner together. During the course of the evening we got a bit tight. Valeska’s tongue was wagging. On the way home she told me that she was going to put up a fight; she wanted to know if it would endanger my job. I told her quietly that if she were fired I would quit too. She pretended not to believe it at first. I said I meant it, that I didn’t care what happened. She seemed to be unduly impressed; she took me by the two hands and she held them very gently, the tears rolling down her cheeks. That was the beginning of things. I think it was the very next day that I slipped her a note saying that I was crazy about her. She read the note sitting opposite me and when she was through she looked me square in the eye and said she didn’t believe it. But we went to dinner again that night and we had more to drink and we danced and while we were dancing she pressed herself against me lasciviously. It was just the time, as luck would have it, that my wife was getting ready to have another abortion. I was telling Valeska about it as we danced. On the way home she suddenly said—“Why don’t you let me lend you a hundred dollars?” The next night I brought her home to dinner and I let her hand the wife the hundred dollars. I was amazed how well the two of them got along. Before the evening was over it was agreed upon that Valeska would come to the house the day of the abortion and take care of the kid. The day came and I gave Valeska the afternoon off. About an hour after she had left I suddenly decided that I would take the afternoon off also. I started toward the burlesque on Fourteenth Street. When I was about a block from the theater I suddenly changed my mind. It was just the thought that if anything happened—if the wife were to kick off—I wouldn’t feel so damned good having spent the afternoon at the burlesque. I walked around a bit, in and out of the penny arcades, and then I started homeward. It’s strange how things turn out.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Alexander’s well-known hymn “There Is a Green Hill Far Away”: There is a green hill far away without 4 a city wall , where the dear Lord was crucified , who died to save us all. . . . O dearly, dearly has he loved , and we must love him too , and trust in his redeeming blood , and try his works to do. 5 On a different poetic plane altogether, there is John Henry Newman’s majestic “Praise to the Holiest in the Height,” which I knew as a hymn many years before I met it in Edward Elgar’s glorious setting in The Dream of Gerontius: O loving wisdom of our God! when all was sin and shame , a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came. O wisest love! That flesh and blood , which did in Adam fail , should strive afresh against the foe , should strive and should prevail. . . . O generous love! That he, who smote in Man for man the foe , the double agony in Man for man should undergo. And in the garden secretly , and on the cross on high , should teach his brethren, and inspire to suffer and to die. 6 And then there was the best known of all Good Friday hymns, at least in my tradition: Isaac Watts’s great meditation on Galatians 6:14, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”: When I survey the wondrous Cross on which the Prince of Glory died , my richest gain I count but loss , and pour contempt on all my pride. . . . Were the whole realm of nature mine , that were an offering far too small; love so amazing, so divine , demands my soul, my life, my all. 7 I had sung all these and many others over and over and knew at least some by heart. The message was reinforced by the simple Anglican liturgy I heard every Sunday, in which so many prayers ended with words like “through the love of our Savior, Jesus Christ” or “through the merits and death of Jesus Christ our Lord.” I would soon come to know by heart, through hearing it so often, the majestic yet intimate words of Thomas Cranmer’s prayer at the heart of the Communion service: Almighty God, who of thy tender mercy toward mankind didst give thy Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who made there, by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. The love of God and the death of Jesus . That is what it’s all about. But, as with the stories I mentioned earlier, none of these hymns or prayers really explains how it “works.”

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  What I now want to suggest is that, within this larger picture, the evangelists have also explained how this “forgiveness of sins,” this “return from exile,” comes about. It comes about because the one will stand in for the many. It comes about because Jesus dies, innocently, bearing the punishment that he himself had marked out for his fellow Jews as a whole. It comes about because from the beginning Jesus was redefining the nature of the kingdom with regard to radical self-giving and self-denial, and it looks as though that was never simply an ethical demand but, at its heart, a personal vocation. It comes about because throughout his public career Jesus was redefining power itself, and his violent death was the ultimate demonstration-in-practice of that redefinition. These last four sentences have summarized some strands from John, Luke, Matthew, and Mark, and we must set out each one slightly more fully. (Each one, of course, could be expanded into a whole chapter at least. My aim here is to sketch, not to fill in all the details.) For John, Caiaphas the high priest declares the truth, even though for him it was merely a political ploy. “Let one man die for the people, rather than the whole nation being wiped out” (11:50). John comments that Caiaphas, being high priest that year, was inspired to prophesy, even though he himself would not have seen it like that. This meant, said John, “that Jesus would die for the nation; and not only for the nation, but to gather into one the scattered children of God” (11:51–52). This hints at the truth then articulated from another angle in chapter 12. When some Greeks come looking for Jesus, Jesus comments that when he has been “lifted up from the earth,” he will “draw all people” to himself (12:32). Once the “ruler of the world” has been “cast out,” then those held captive under his reign will be free. This line of thought makes sense on the assumption, rooted in Israel’s scriptures, that what God does at last for Israel will have worldwide repercussions. This is the deep theological root of the Gentile mission, hitherto impossible, but now, with the defeat of the dark power, an open possibility. The servant will die for the nation, but will thereby do for the world what Israel was called to do but could not do, setting the nations free from their ancient bondage so that they can now join the single People of God. The same train of thought is visible in the First Letter of John: “The Righteous One, Jesus the Messiah . . . is the sacrifice which atones for our sins—and not ours only, either, but those of the whole world” (2:1–2). It stands behind passage after passage in Paul.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It was too bad Leisha couldn’t see her now, with her steady job, her matching housewares, her kind and gentle boyfriend. It was also annoying to know that Leisha would come to some happy conclusion about her based on the current trappings of her life (“How wonderful it is that Susan has become so stable”) and then compare her favorably with the younger Susan. Susan examined her clearly lined face as she stood before the mirror. There had been changes in her during the last six years, and she thought most of them were good. But she was still, for better or worse, the same woman who had drunkenly screwed a stranger in the reeking can of a tacky bar and then run out into a cab, smiling as she pressed her phone number into his hand. She sighed and went into the “living area,” leaning against an exposed brick wall to look out a curtainless window. It seemed as though her friendship with Leisha had never been what she would now call a friendship at all, but a complex system of reassurance and support for self-involved fantasies that they had propped up between them and reflected back and forth. Susan now identified her early fascination with Leisha as a vicarious erotic connection with the ex-lover they had both slept with. She did not fantasize about Leisha and this man together, but she had been oddly gratified to experience secondhand the dynamic between him and this throaty-voiced little bad girl, and to reflect this dynamic back to Leisha, making it more of a drama by becoming another character in the story. Leisha had done the same, clearly enjoying her two-way link with their lover and the mysterious, contrary, perverse woman he had described to her, this tackily glamorous icon of a dirty-magazine woman who was also her reliable friend Susan. During the first year of their friendship they discussed and described him, pro and con, right down to the blond pinkness, the raised, strangely exposed quality of his genitals, and they were both greatly amused to discover that the sight of them talking and giggling together unnerved him. — She had dinner that night with her old friend Barbara. They went to a restaurant on Bleecker Street that served neat little dinners to predictably soothing music. Barbara was a jeweler who had never quite been able to become a big name in the industry, but whose work was a persistent presence in fashion magazines and department stores. She had recently separated from her husband of twelve years, a sculptor whom Susan had known. Barbara didn’t seem so much upset by the separation as appalled.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “The thing that drives me nuts about it is that Elena—well, she’s just a twat. She really is.” Leisha was talking about a party they’d been to, during which a recent ex of hers had disappeared into the bedroom with a South American. “He thinks she’s so exotic because she’s twenty-six and she’s been married and she’s from South America, but I’ve seen her and she’s nothing special. She’s just passive and quiet and looks totally ordinary. He probably thinks she’s got a lot going for her because she’s a law student and I’m not directed yet. But I know I’m as interesting as she is and when I figure out what I want to do…I don’t know.” She picked up her fork, put it down, pulled at the back of her hair and wrapped her arms around her shoulders in the straightjacket position that she assumed when she was upset. Susan could actually remember her response: “I’m so sick and tired of hearing the words ‘directed’ and ‘career,’ I could scream.” “But you do want a career, don’t you?” “No. I want to work at Dunkin’ Donuts when I get out of school. I want to get fat. Or be addicted to heroin. I want to be a disaster.” “Why? Oh, you’re joking. But I know what you mean. I’m sick of these closed-minded career people too. It’s just that I’m getting tired of feeling like a stupid…well, a stupid cunt. I want to do something with my talent. I know I’ve got talent.” Susan ate her toast and stared at her, loving her, almost gloating over her. She loved her tiny fingers, her hot face, her bright nervous energy, her pathetic assertion that she had talent. That she talked like the worst stereotype of the girliest girl imaginable only enhanced her appeal. Susan could not explain this perverse love to herself, but there it was. Perhaps it was so strong because she had almost no other female friends in college; most of her emotional energy had been spent on men—she’d had fewer affairs than Leisha but spent twice the time brooding over them. Maybe the extremities and obviousness of a cartoon girl were all that she could handle in another woman. It was probably for this reason that Leisha chose to be a cartoon girl, she thought sadly. The curious thing was, Leisha had loved Susan too, at least initially, as another kind of caricature. Susan had been surprised to hear that for months she’d been a source of jealousy and speculation, that Leisha had been deeply puzzled by this solemn, self-contained and (to Leisha) weirdly silent girl. Besides, Susan had quite a reputation in Ann Arbor herself, thanks to their mutual boyfriend. “She’s nothing like she looks,” he’d say to anyone who’d listen. “She’s kinky as hell.” Then he’d generously explain how and in what ways, somehow managing to leave his kinkiness out.