Pride As Defense

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 Giovanni's Room (1956)

  GIOVANNI'S ROOM 43 Tve heard about boys who dothat.Nasty little beasts/ Westood insilence forawhile, *Why don'tyouinvite him tohave a drink withus?' Jacquessuggested. I looked athim. Whydon't I? Well,youmay find this hard to believe, but,actually, I'msortof queer for girls myseK. If that was his sisterlooking so good,I'dinviteher tohave a drinkwith us. I don't spend moneyonmen/ Icouldsee Jacques strugglingnot tosay that I didn't haveanyobjectiontoallowing men to spendmoney on me; I watchedhisbrief struggle with a slight smile, for I knew hecouldn'tsay it; then hesaid, withthatcheery, bravesmile of his: 1wasnotsuggestingthat you jeopardize, even foramoment, that' — he paused — *that immaculatemanhoodwhich is your pride and joy.Ionly suggestedthatyouinvite himbecause he willalmost certainly refuse ifI invitehim.' *But man/I said,grinning, 'think of the confusion. He'll think that I'm, the onewho's lusting for his body. How dowe get out of that?' If there shouldbeany confusion,* said Jacques, with dignity, 1 willbe happytoclear it up.' We measuredeachotherfora moment.Then I laughed. Waittillhecomes back this way. I hope heordersa magnum of themost expensive champagne in France.' I turned, leaningon thebar.I felt,somehow, 44 James Baldwin elated.Jacques, besideme,was veryquiet, suddenly veryfrailandold, andIfelta quick, sharp, ratherfrightened pityforhim.Giovanni had been out on the floor,serving the people at tables,andhenow returnedwith a rather grim smileonhis face, carrying a loadedtray. 'Maybe,"Isaid,It would look better if our glasseswereempty.* We finishedourdrinks. Iset downmy glass. TBarman?' I called. Thesame?' Tes/ Hestarted to turn away. TBarman,* I said, quickly, 'we would liketo offer you a drink, if wemay.' *Eh,bienr said a voicebehind us, 'c'est fort galNot onlyhave you finally— thank heaven! — corrupted diis great American footballplayer, you use him nowto corruptviy barman. Vraimenty JacquesI AtyourageI' It wasGuillaumestandingbehind us, grin- ning like amoviestar,andwaving thatlong white handkerchief which he wasnever, in the bar atany rate, to beseen without. Jacques turned, hugely delighted to be accused of such rare seductiveness, andhe andGuillaume fell into eachother arms likeold theatrical sisters. 'Eh hieriy ma cherie,comment vas-tu? I have not seen youfor a longtime.' 'ButI havebeen awfullybusy,' said Jacques. 1 don't doubt itl Aren't you ashamed,vieille foiur 'Et toil You certainly don't seem tohave been wasting yourtime.'

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

  He was wrong, of course, as the long chronology catalogued here has shown. 2 A certain ambiguity remained. Redneck, cracker, and hillbilly were simultaneously presented as an ethnic identity, a racial epithet, and a workingman’s badge of honor. A North Carolina journalist neatly summed up the identity confusion: “If you think you’re a redneck, you think you’re hardworking, fun-loving and independent. If you don’t think you’re a redneck, you think they’re loud, obnoxious, bigoted and shallow.” Added to the article was a pop quiz featuring questions about NASCAR, food, and TV’s Hee Haw, as if by a simple computation right answers could distinguish the “real Bubbas from the wanna-bes.” 3 To be sure, breeding remained paramount in considerations of identity. In 1994, one irate journalist insisted that the Georgia politician Newton Leroy Gingrich was no redneck: he was born in Pennsylvania, had no southern accent, had served as a college professor, and got elected to Congress by suburbanites of Atlanta, many of them Yankees. This newsman’s expertise came from the fact that he was “kin to a great many of that breed.” Besides, he chided, “Gingrich wouldn’t last half an hour in a room of genuine rednecks.” You were a dyed-in- the-wool redneck or you weren’t. By this measure, neither Gingrich nor David Duke, the former Klan member who ran for governor of Louisiana in 1991, was a redneck. Duke was disqualified because he loved un-American Nazi salutes. Submitting to plastic surgery to make himself too pretty was also out of character. “No good ole Southern boy would dream of such a thing. It’s unmasculine, un-Southern.” This was the view of Jeffrey Hart, a conservative intellectual from Dartmouth College and former speechwriter for Presidents Nixon and Reagan. 4 • • • Redneck was no longer the exclusive province of country singers. It had become part of the cultural lingua franca, a means of sizing up public men, and a strangely mutated gender and class identity. Nor were women silent in this debate. Two prominent female writers earned acclaim in the modern genre of white trash fiction. In the tradition of William Faulkner and James Agee, Dorothy Allison and Carolyn Chute offered unsparing accounts of rural poverty. Allison creatively reconstructed the conditions she knew from her early years in Bastard Out of Carolina (1992), while Chute, a working-class, college-educated writer from Portland, told of trailer trash in rural Maine in her breakout book, The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1985). What set these writers apart was that they wrote from within their class, not as outside observers; they were outing themselves, and knew precisely how to describe poor women’s experiences. Class and sexuality remained their dominant themes, and neither sugarcoated her subjects as good ol’ girls.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  seek my repose with as much solicitude as you took to deprive me of it. From that very hour we interchanged promises of marriage which were sealed with a ring. It seems to me, then, madam, that you wrong me in calling me wicked. The great and perfect friendship which subsists between the bastard and myself would have given me occasion to do wrong if I had been so disposed, yet we have never gone further than kissing, it being my conviction that God would do me the grace to obtain my father's consent before the consummation of our marriage. I have done nothing against God or against my conscience. I have waited till the age of thirty to see what you and my father would do for me ; and my youth has been passed in such chastity and virtue that no one in the world can justly cast the least reproach upon me in that respect. Finding myself on the decline, and without the hope of obtaining a husband of my own rank, reason determined me to take one according to my taste, not for the lust of the eyes, for, as you know, he whom I have chosen is not comely ; nor yet for that of the flesh, smce there has been no consummation ; nor for the pride and ambition of this life, for he is poor, and of little preferment ; but I have had regard purely and simply to the virtue and good qualities he possesses, as to which all the world is constrained to do him justice, and to the great love he has for me, which affords me the hope of enjoying quiet and contentment with him. After having maturely considered the good and the evil which might result to me, I took the course which ap- peared to me the best, and finally resolved, after two years' examination, to end my life with him ; and this I so fully resolved that no torments which could be inflicted upon me, nor death itself, could make me change my purpose. So, madam, I beseech you to excuse in me 2o6 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE [Nmrl %\ what is highly excusable, as you very well know, and leave me to enjoy the peace and quiet I expect to find with him." The queen, unable to make any reasonable reply to language so resolute and so true, could only renew her passionate chiding and abuse, and bursting into tears, "Wretch," she said, "instead of humbling yourself, and testifying repentance for the fault you have committed, you speak with audacity, and, instead of blushing, you do not so much as shed one tear ; thereby giving plain proof of your obstinacy and hardness of heart. But if the king and your father do as I would have them, they will put you in a place where you will be constrained to hold other language."

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  The long journey southward started tolerably well, with the heat still humming and the lamps still intact in the Petrograd-Simferopol first-class sleeper, and a passably famous singer in dramatic makeup, with a bouquet of chrysanthemums in brown paper pressed to her breast, stood in the corridor, tapping upon the pane, along which somebody walked and waved as the train started to glide, without one jolt to indicate we were leaving that gray city forever. But soon after Moscow, all comfort came to an end. At several points of our slow dreary progression, the train, including our sleeping car, was invaded by more or less Bolshevized soldiers who were returning to their homes from the front (one called them either “deserters” or “Red Heroes,” depending upon one’s political views). My brother and I thought it rather fun to lock ourselves up in our compartment and thwart every attempt to disturb us. Several soldiers traveling on the roof of the car added to the sport by trying to use, not unsuccessfully, the ventilator of our room as a toilet. My brother, who was a first-rate actor, managed to simulate all the symptoms of a bad case of typhus, and this helped us out when the door finally gave way. Early on the third morning, at a vague stop, I took advantage of a lull in those merry proceedings to get a breath of fresh air. I moved gingerly along the crowded corridor, stepping over the bodies of snoring men, and got off. A milky mist hung over the platform of an anonymous station—we were somewhere not far from Kharkov. I wore spats and a derby. The cane I carried, a collector’s item that had belonged to my uncle Ruka, was of a light-colored, beautifully freckled wood, and the knob was a smooth pink globe of coral cupped in a gold coronet. Had I been one of the tragic bums who lurked in the mist of that station platform where a brittle young fop was pacing back and forth, I would not have withstood the temptation to destroy him. As I was about to board the train, it gave a jerk and started to move; my foot slipped and my cane was sent flying under the wheels. I had no special affection for the thing (in fact, I carelessly lost it a few years later), but I was being watched, and the fire of adolescent amour propre prompted me to do what I cannot imagine my present self ever doing. I waited for one, two, three, four cars to pass (Russian trains were notoriously slow in gaining momentum) and when, at last, the rails were revealed, I picked up my cane from between them and raced after the nightmarishly receding bumpers. A sturdy proletarian arm conformed to the rules of sentimental fiction (rather than to those of Marxism) by helping me to swarm up. Had I been left behind, those rules might still have held good, since I would have been brought near Tamara, who by that time had also moved south and was living in a Ukrainian hamlet less than a hundred miles from the scene of that ridiculous occurrence.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  It was characterized by pride. The heretics are proud, although in reality they know nothing (i Timothy 6:4). There are indications that these intellectuals set themselves on a level above ordinary Christians; in fact, they may well have said that complete salvation was outside the grasp of the ordinary man or woman and open only to them. At times, the Pastoral Epistles stress the word all in a most significant way. The grace of God, which brings salvation, has appeared to all (Titus 2:11). It is God's will that all should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (i Timothy 2:4). The intellectuals tried to make the greatest blessings of Christianity the exclusive possession of a chosen few; and, in complete contrast, the true faith stresses the all-embracing love of God. There were within that heresy two opposite tendencies. There was a tendency to self-denial. The heretics tried to lay down special food laws, forgetting that everything God has made is good (i Timothy 4:4-5). They listed many things as impure, forgetting that to the pure all things are pure (Titus 1:15). It is not impossible that they regarded sex as something unclean and belittled marriage, and even tried to persuade those who were married to renounce it, for in Titus 2:4 the simple duties of married life are stressed as being binding on Christians. But this heresy also resulted in immorality. The heretics even went into private houses and led away weak and foolish women who were swayed by all kinds of desires (2 Timothy 3:6). They claimed to know God, but denied him by their actions (Titus 1:16). They were out to impose upon people and to make money out of their false teaching. To them, gain was godliness (i Timothy 6:5); they taught and deceived for sordid gain (Titus is i i). On the one hand, this heresy produced an un-Christian self-denial, and on the other it produced an equally un Christian immorality. It was characterized, too, by words and tales and genealogies. It was full of godless chatter and useless controversies (i Timothy 6:20). It produced endless genealogies (I Timothy r:4; Titus 3:9). It produced myths and fables (I Timothy 1:4; Titus 1:14). It was at least in some way and to some extent tied up with Jewish legalism. Among its devotees were those `of the circumcision' (Titus I: io). The aim of the heretics was to be teachers of the law (i Timothy r:7). It pressed on people Jewish myths and the commandments of those who reject the truth (Titus 1: 14). Finally, these heretics denied the resurrection of the body. They said that any resurrection that a Christian was going to experience had been experienced already (2 Timothy 2:18). This is probably a reference to those who held that the only resurrection Christians experienced was a spiritual one when they died with Christ and rose again with him in the experience of baptism (Romans 6:4). The Beginnings of Gnosticism

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  It happened at this time that Queen Claude, consort of King Francis, passed through Autun, accompanied by the regent-mother and her daughter, the Duchess of Alengon. Then came a femme de chambre of the queen, named Perrette, to the duchess, and said to her, " Hearken to me, madam, I beseech you, and you will do as good an act as if you went to hear the service of the day, or even better." The duchess willingly listened, know- ing that from her lips would come nothing but what was meet to be heard. Perrette told her how she had en- gaged a little girl to help her to soap the queen's linen, and that, on asking her news of the town, the girl had told her of the vexation felt by the honourable ladies thereof at being obliged to yield precedence to this canon's wife, part of whose history she related to her. The duchess immediately went to the queen and the regent-mother, and repeated to them what she had heard ; and without other form of process they immedi- ately sent for that wretch, who did not conceal herself ; far, indeed, of being ashamed, she was proud of the honour of being the mistress of the house of so rich a man. Accordingly, she presented herself with effront- ery before the princesses, who were so astounded at her impudence that at first they knew not what to say to her ; but afterwards the regent-mother spoke to her in terms that would have drawn tears from any woman of good understanding. Instead, however, of weeping, the wretched woman said to them, with great assurance. " I beseech you, mesdames, not to let my honour be Stventh day:\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 487 touched ; for, thank God, I have lived with the canon so well and so virtuously that no one can say a word against me on that score. Let it not be supposed that I offend God ; for it is three years since the good canon has touched me, and we live as chastely and with as much love as if we were two dear little angels, without there ever having been between us a word or a wish to the contrary. Whoever, then, shall disunite us will commit a great sin ; for the good man, who is nearly eighty years old, will not live long without me, who am forty-five."

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Well, not really shunned, just smiled at, smiled at a great deal, smiled at and watched and giggled over when passed in the hall. I confess I enjoyed being different. I got more attention by being the hippie guy than I had when I was normal. I felt better in a lot of ways, more superior, because I was no longer sheltered. I had been in the world, and the world had approved of me. They were cute, these little Christian people. I liked them. They reminded me of my roots, where I had come from all those days ago, before my month in the woods with the pot smokers and the hippies and the free love for everybody. When the director’s assistant told me to shave she told me sheepishly. She knew it was a silly request. Hey, listen, I told her, I will do exactly what the man tells me to do, you know, because I respect the man, I don’t want a fight. She smiled back at me, seeing the genius of my emotional intelligence. “Do you need a razor or something?” She looked at me, sort of smirking. “You know,” I replied, leaning against the wall in the hallway, “I think I have one somewhere; I have a backpack or something somewhere.” “You don’t know where your stuff is?” she asked, obviously coming from a primitive, materialistic, territorial paradigm. “Oh, you know, it is probably in my room, or maybe around, you know, who knows?” “Well maybe you should put it somewhere where you won’t lose it.” “Well, you know, if I lost it, what would I have lost, right?” I asked her. “You would have lost your backpack,” she answered matter-of-factly. She had sort of a bothered, questioning look on her face. “Right. Right, but you know, what would any of us lose by losing our possessions. Maybe we would gain something, like relationships, like the beauty of good friends, intimacy, you know what I mean, man? Like we wouldn’t be losing anything if we lost our stuff, we’d be gaining everything.” “Yeah,” she said. “That’s fascinating. Well, just shave, okay. If you need a razor I will get you one.” She was getting very flustered or something, really wanting to pull out of the conversation. I figured she hadn’t met anybody fascinating like me before. “Yeah,” I told her. “Yeah, if I need anything I will come looking for you. That’s sweet of you, real sweet.” “Honestly, it’s my job,” she told me. “Cool. That’s chill,” I said. “What?” “That’s chill. You know, on ice.” “Right.” She said this very slowly. She stood there silently, just looking at me like I was a big, mysterious puzzle. “So tell me,” I said, breaking the silence, “what do your people call you?” “My people?” “Yeah, like your friends, your close ones.” “Are you asking my name?” “Right on. Your name. What’s your name?” “Janet.” “Janet. Right. Janet. Planet Janet from the Jupiter scene.” Long pause.

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

  Lifting his Jesuit hat with one of his long and thin hands and making a smooth gesture of humility with the other, he said in a tight and grim voice: "Mr. Consul ... I greet you!" This broker Siegismund Gosch, a bachelor of about forty, was the most honest and good-natured person in the world, despite his demeanor; only he was an esthete, an original mind. His clean-shaven face was distinguished by a curved nose, a pointed chin, sharp features and a wide, downward-sloping mouth, his narrow one Lips he pressed together in a closed and vicious way. It was his aim - and he succeeded not badly - to display a wild, beautiful and devilish intriguer's head, a wicked, malicious, interesting and fearsome character figure between Mephistopheles and Napoleon ... His gray hair was brushed low and somber on his forehead. He sincerely regretted not being hunchbacked. – He was a strange and amiable figure among the inhabitants of the old trading town. He belonged to them because, in all bourgeois manner, he ran a small, solid brokerage business that was respected in his modesty; but in his cramped, dark office stood a large bookcase filled with works of poetry in every language, and the rumor went that he had been working on a translation of all of Lope de Vegas's dramas since he was twenty. Once, however, he had played the Domingo in an amateur performance of Schiller's Don Carlos. This was the high point of his life. - Never had a base word escaped his lips, and even in business conversations he managed to utter the usual idioms only between his teeth and with an expression on his face, as if he wanted to say: "Rogue, ha! In the grave I curse your ancestors!' He was, in many respects, the heir and successor of the late Jean Jacques Hoffstede; only that his nature was darker and more pathetic, and possessed none of the jocular merriment that the older Johann Buddenbrook's friend had salvaged from the previous century. - One day he lost six and a half Kuranttaler on two or three stocks that he had bought speculatively on the stock exchange. Then his sense of drama carried him away and he gave a performance. He sat down on a bench in a posture as if he had lost the Battle of Waterloo, pressed a clenched fist to his forehead, and repeated several times, with a blasphemous look in his eyes, "Ha, damn it!" There the small, quiet, sure wins , which he raked in when selling this or that piece of land bored him basically, so was this loss, this tragic blow, with which heaven struck him, the schemer, a pleasure, a blessing for him, on which he drank for weeks. To the salutation: "I hear you had bad luck, Mr. Gosch? I'm sorry...' he would reply, 'Oh my dear friend! Uomo non educato dal dolore riman semper bambino! ' Understandably, no one understood.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  She walked the cold, foggy streets, a little woman and not pretty, with a lewd, brutal swagger, saying to the whole world: ‘You can kiss my arse.’ Nothing tamed or broke her, nothing touched her, neither kindness, nor scom, nor hatred, nor love. She had never thought of prayer. It was unimaginable that she would ever bend her knees and come crawling along a dusty floor to anybody’s altar, weeping for forgiveness. Perhaps her sin was so extreme that it could not be forgiven; perhaps her pride was so great that she did not need forgiveness. She had fallen from that high estate which God had intended for men and women, and she made her fall glorious because it was so complete. John could not have found in his heart, had he dared to search it, any wish for her redemption. He wanted to be like her, only more powerful, more thorough, and more cruel; to make those around him, all who hurt him, suffer as she made the student suffer, and laugh in their faces when they asked pity for their pain. He would have asked no pity, and his pain was greater than theirs. Go on, girl, he whispered, as the student, facing her implacable ill-will, sighed and wept. Go on, girl. One day he would talk like that, he would face them and tell them how much he hated them, how they had made him suffer, how he would pay them back! Nevertheless, when she came to die, which she did eventually, looking more grotesque than ever, as she deserved, his thoughts were abruptly arrested, and he was chilled by the expression on her face. She seemed to stare endlessly outward and down, in the face of a wind more piercing than any she had felt on earth, feeling herself propelled with speed into a kingdom where nothing could help her, neither her pride, nor her courage, nor her glorious wickedness. In the place where she was going, it was not these things that mattered but something else, for which she had no name, only a cold intimation, something that she could not alter in any degree, and that she had never thought of. She began to cry, her depraved face breaking into an infant’s grimace; and they moved away from her, leaving her dirty in a dirty room, alone to face her Maker.

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

  Hence, it is evident, that elevation to the episcopate assumes perfection in the person thus honoured; and that it would be the height of presumption, for any man to consider himself perfect. Even St. Paul says, “Not as though I had already attained or were already perfect” (Philipp. iii. 12). Again, in the same chapter, he adds, “Let us, therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded.” To desire perfection, and to strive to follow after it, is not presumption. It is that holy zeal to which St. Paul exhorts us, saying, “Be, therefore, zealous for the better gifts” (1 Cor. xii. 31). Hence, it is praiseworthy to wish to embrace the religious life, although a desire for the episcopate is gross presumption. St. Gregory says, in his Pastoral, “He who has refused a bishopric has not completely resisted it; and he who has willed to be raised to it, has first seen himself cleansed by the stone of the altar.” By these words we are to understand, that a man, chosen for the episcopate, should not absolutely refuse this honour. Nor yet should he aspire to it, unless he knows that he be cleansed in preparation for it. Nor should anyone, who is not thus purified, dare to approach the sacred mysteries. Neither, if he be chosen by divine grace, for this dignity, ought he, through pride disguised as humility, to decline to accept it. But, as it is exceedingly difficult for any man to know whether he be purified or not, the safest course is to decline a bishopric. Another point must be considered in our comparison between the religious and episcopal state The religious life implies a renunciation of earthly possessions; whereas a bishopric is accompanied by great additional wealth. They who become religious give up all they possess, thus showing that they seek not temporal but spiritual goods. They who undertake the episcopal office are frequently wont to think more of temporal, than of eternal riches. St. Gregory says in his Pastoral, “that the truly praiseworthy condition under which to accept a bishopric, would be, if a man were to know, as a certainty, that such an office would inv be severe torture.” Again, he says, “It is not every man who loves the sanctity of the episcopal office. But that sanctity is completely ignored by those, who, aspiring to such a dignity, are entranced by the idea of having others subject to them, are rejoiced at the thought of being praised, set their hearts on being honoured, and rejoice at the prospect of affluence. In such a case as that, men are coveting worldly advancement under the disguise of an office, in which it is their duty to try to extirpate earthly ambition.”

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

  While the Möllendorpfs, for example... And then you can't deny the Hagenstroms' efficiency. Hermann is already very useful in the business and Moritz, despite his weak chest, did brilliantly in school. He is said to be very shy and is studying law.« "Fine . . . but at least I'm glad, Tom, that there are other families who don't have to bow down to them, and that we Buddenbrooks, for example . . ." 'Now,' said Tom, 'let's not start bragging. Every family has its weak points,” he continued more quietly, looking at Jochen's broad back. “God knows how things are with Uncle Justus, for example. Dad always shakes his head when he talks about him, and grandfather Kröger had to help out a couple of times, I think, with large sums of money... And things aren't all right with the cousins either. Jürgen, who wants to study, still doesn't get to the final exam ... And with Jakob, at Dalbeck & Comp. in Hamburg, one should not be satisfied at all. He never gets by with his money, although he is well taken care of; and what Uncle Justus refuses him, Aunt Rosalie sends him... No, I don't think you should pick up a stone. By the way, if you want to hold the scales for the Hagenstroms, 'Did we get in that car to talk about it? Yes! Yes! maybe I should! But I don't want to think about it now. I just want to forget it. Now we're going to the Schwarzkopfs. I never knowingly saw them... I suppose they're nice people?” "Oh! Diederich Swattkopp, that's a passable old Kierl... That means he doesn't always speak that way, only when he's had more than five glasses of grog. Once, when he was in the office, we went to the boatmen's party together... He drank like a fool. His father was born on a Norway driver and later became captain on this line. Diederich has had a good education; the pilot command is a responsible and fairly well-paid position. He's an old sea dog... but always gallant with the ladies. Watch out, he'll give you the cure..." "Ha! - And the woman?' 'I don't know his wife myself. She'll be comfortable. By the way, there is a son who was in secondary or primary when I was in my time and is now probably studying... Look, there is the sea! A little quarter of an hour...” In an avenue of young beeches they drove a stretch very close to the sea, which lay blue and peaceful in the sun.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  It wasn’t that I cared about my friends more than myself, it was that I believed I was above the grace of God. Like Rick, I am too prideful to accept the grace of God. It isn’t that I want to earn my own way to give something to God, it’s that I want to earn my own way so I won’t be charity. As I drove over the mountain that afternoon, realizing I was too proud to receive God’s grace, I was humbled. Who am I to think myself above God’s charity? And why would I forsake the riches of God’s righteousness for the dung of my own ego? [image "9780785263708_0098_004" file=Image00034.jpg] Rick tells me that as he lay there in his bed waiting to die, he heard God say to him, “Your life is not your own, but you have been bought with a price,” and at this point he felt a certain peace. Rick told me he understood, cognitively as well as emotionally, that his role in his relationship with God was to humbly receive God’s unconditional love. My pastor, of course, is still alive, a miracle he cannot explain. Before he could save himself, he drifted into sleep, but he woke the next morning with ample energy, as if he had never swallowed the pills at all. After surviving the suicide attempt, Rick went to Bible college, married a girl he met in school, and now they have four children. A little over a year ago he planted a church in down-town Portland, widely considered the most unchurched region in the United States. There were only about eight of us at our first meeting, and now the church has grown to more than five hundred people. On a given Sunday there are dozens of nonbelievers at our church, and each week Rick shares with them the patient love of God. He talks about Jesus as if he knows Him, as if he has talked to Him on the phone earlier that morning. Rick loves God because he accepts God’s unconditional love first. Rick says that I will love God because he first loved me. I will obey God because I love God. But if I cannot accept God’s love, I cannot love Him in return, and I cannot obey Him. Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God’s love will. The ability to accept God’s unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return. Accepting God’s kindness and free love is something the devil does not want us to do. If we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not love her. This is not the voice of God. God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  Euripides has it: ‘If you have more of good than evil, being a man, you will do right well. But, dear child, refrain from evil thoughts; cease from hubris, presumptuous pride; for to wish to be greater than God is nothing other than hubris’ (Euripides, Hippolytus 472-474). To try to take one’s own way, to resist the will of the gods, to think one knows better than the gods, is hubris, insolent, arrogant, overweening pride. This innate terror of hubris was burned into the consciousness of the Greek. For a man to be drunk with success, for a man to get the idea that he can direct life and that he can cope with life and that he can forge out unbroken success, for a man to forget God is hubris. For a nation to seek for world power and world domination, and to map out vast schemes of conquest, leaving the gods entirely out of the reckoning, is hubris. For a philosopher to grasp a few natural laws and then to think that he can explain the universe and eliminate God is hubris. Hubris is there whenever a man forgets that he is a man, and forgets that God has the last word, and for the Greek that hubris was rendered doubly disastrous because of the envy of the gods. So far we have been thinking of hubris in what might be called its theological sense in Greek thought. But these words have also an ethical sense. To put it in another way, if a man has hubris in his heart, that hubris will come out in a certain attitude to his fellow men, and a certain treatment of them. Just as there is a certain overweening pride in a man’s attitude to God, so there can be a certain insolent arrogance in his attitude to his fellow men. The Greek ethical writers regarded hubris as the greatest of sins towards one’s fellow men; and in it they identified two basic elements. (i) Hubris is the outcome of allowing the passions to rule. Plato has it: ‘When opinion conquers, and by the help of reason, leads us to the best, the conquering principle is called temperance (sōphrosuriē); but when desire, which is devoid of reason, rules in us, and drags us to pleasure, that power of misrule is called hubris’ (Plato, Protagoras 238a). The man who is governed by hubris is governed by passion and not reason. Aristotle draws a distinction between the temperate man (sōphrōn), whose conduct is governed by law, and the man who commits outrage (hubrizein). Such a man obeys the dictates of passion and not of law and reason. (ii) But to the Greeks the really terrible thing about hubris was that it was partly the product of sheer contemptuous insolence, and partly the product of the sheer desire to hurt other people. Hubris is committed in contempt of others (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1149b 22).

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Frank claimed that she got it all wrong side up: it was men who suffered because they had to put up with the ways of women—and this from the time that they were born until the day they died. But it was she who was right, she knew; with Frank she had always been right; and it had not been her fault that Frank was the way he was, determined to live and die a common nigger. But he was always swearing that he would do better; it was, perhaps, the brutality of his penitence that had kept them together for so long. There was something in her which loved to see him bow—when he came home, stinking with whisky, and crept with tears into her arms. Then he, so ultimately master, was mastered. And holding him in her arms while, finally, he slept, she thought with the sensations of luxury and power: ‘But there’s lots of good in Frank. I just got to be patient and he’ll come along all right.’ To ‘come along’ meant that he would change his ways and consent to be the husband she had travelled so far to find. It was he who, unforgivably, taught her that there are people in the world for whom ‘coming along’ is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive. For ten years he came along, but when he left her he was the same man she had married. He had not changed at all. He had never made enough money to buy the home she wanted, or anything else she really wanted, and this had been part of the trouble between them. It was not that he could not make money, but that he would not save it. He would take half a week’s wages and go out and buy something he wanted, or something he thought she wanted. He would come home on Saturday afternoons, already half drunk, with some useless object, such as a vase, which, it had occurred to him, she would like to fill with flowers—she who never noticed flowers and who would certainly never have bought any. Or a hat, always too expensive or too vulgar, or a ring that looked as though it had been designed for a whore.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  You see from this example, ladies, with what adroit ness a woman can get herself out of a scrape. If she is prompt at finding an expedient to conceal a bad deed, I believe she would be still more prompt and ingenious in discovering means to hinder herself from doing: a gfood one ; for, as I have heard say, good wit is always the stronger. " You may boast of your cunning as much as you will," said Hircan, " but I believe if the same thing had happened to you, you could not have concealed it." " I would as soon you told me flatly," said Nomer- fide, "that I am the most stupid woman in the world." " I do not say that," replied Hircan ; " but I look upon you as more likely to be alarmed at a rumour against you than to find an ingenious way of putting an end to it." * Although Margaret asserts that this is a true story, and that the actors in it belonged to the liousehold of her first husband, it is to be found in many previous collections ; as, for instance, the Ce7it jVonvelles Nouvelles, where it occurs as the sixteenth novel, entitled Le Borgne Avengle. It is the sixth fable of the first book of the Pantcha Tantra, a collection of Hindoo stories. 50 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE \Xovel 7 "You think that everyone is like yourself, who to get rid of one rumour set another afloat. You pass for a very cunning man, but if you think that you surpass woman in that way, I will give up my turn to you, that you may tell us some story in point. Of course you know plenty, of which you are yourself the hero." " I am not here to make myself appear worse than I am," returned Hircan, " though there are some who give me a worse character than I desire to deserve," he added, looking at his wife. " Don't let me hinder you from speaking the truth," said she. " I would rather hear you relate your sly tricks than see you play them. But be assured that nothing can diminish the love I have for you." " For that reason," said Hircan, " I do not complain of the injustice with which you often judge me. And so, since we understand each other, there will be so much the more peace and quiet for the future. But I am not the man to tell a story of myself, the truth of which may be displeasing to you, but shall relate one of a person who was an intimate friend of mine," NOVEL VII. Trick put by a mercer of Paris upon an old woman, to conceal his intrigue with her daughter.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Before getting off the Greyhound bus, I threw away my pack of cigarettes. I knew I would not be able to smoke while working at camp. The guy who picked me up from the bus station could smell the smoke on my clothes so he sat quietly and asked few questions. Though Paul and I had been in the woods for only a month, we had been traveling around America for several months, and so the first thing I noticed when I got to camp was that these were clean people; they ironed their clothes and that sort of thing. They had clean-shaven faces and spoke through smiles. I liked them, they all looked so new to me, so much like they belonged in storefront windows, like fine china dolls or models for Banana Republic. There was a buzz about me almost immediately. I didn’t want there to be, but I had been traveling for so long I’d forgotten some basic things like sleeping indoors and eating with utensils. Some of the bolder staff members approached me to try to talk. I think they thought I was sort of stupid because they spoke very slowly and made wide motions with their hands as they spoke. “I’m Jane. My name, Jane, what your name?” The camp director, a very conservative man, sent word to me through a servant that I was to shave and wear appropriate clothes. It is true I had gotten a little hairy in the woods. They had rules, these people, they had expectations, and if you did not comply you were socially shunned. Well, not really shunned, just smiled at, smiled at a great deal, smiled at and watched and giggled over when passed in the hall. I confess I enjoyed being different. I got more attention by being the hippie guy than I had when I was normal. I felt better in a lot of ways, more superior, because I was no longer sheltered. I had been in the world, and the world had approved of me. They were cute, these little Christian people. I liked them. They reminded me of my roots, where I had come from all those days ago, before my month in the woods with the pot smokers and the hippies and the free love for everybody. When the director’s assistant told me to shave she told me sheepishly. She knew it was a silly request. Hey, listen, I told her, I will do exactly what the man tells me to do, you know, because I respect the man, I don’t want a fight. She smiled back at me, seeing the genius of my emotional intelligence. “Do you need a razor or something?” She looked at me, sort of smirking. “You know,” I replied, leaning against the wall in the hallway, “I think I have one somewhere; I have a backpack or something somewhere.” “You don’t know where your stuff is?” she asked, obviously coming from a primitive, materialistic, territorial paradigm.

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

  ORIGEN. But you will ask, whether it were possible that Peter should not have been offended, when once the Saviour had said, All ye shall be offended in me. To which one will answer, what is foretold by Jesus must of necessity come to pass; and another will say, that He who at the prayer of Ninevites turned away the wrath He had denounced by Jonas, might also have averted Peter’s offence at his entreaty. But his presumptuous confidence, prompted by zeal indeed but not a cautious zeal, became the cause not only of offence but of a thrice repeated denial. And since He confirmed it with the sanction of an oath, some one will say that it was not possible that he should not have denied Him. For Christ would have spoken falsely when he said, Verily I say unto thee, if Peter’s assertion, I will not deny thee, had been true. It seems to me that the other disciples having in view not that which was first said, All ye shall be offended, but that which was said to Peter, Verily I say unto thee, &c. made a like promise with Peter because they were not comprehended in the prophecy of denial. Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples. Here again Peter knows not what he says; he could not die with Him who was to die for all mankind, who were all in sin, and had need of some one to die for them, not that they should die for others. RABANUS. Peter understood the Lord to have foretold that he should deny Him under terror of death, and therefore he declares that though death were imminent, nothing could shake him from his faith; and the other Apostles in like manner in the warmth of their zeal, valued not the infliction of death, but human presumption is vain without Divine aid. CHRYSOSTOM. [I suppose also that Peter fell into these words through ambition and boastfulness. And they had disputed at supper which of them should be greatest, whence we see that the love of empty glory disturbed them much. And so to deliver him from such passions, Christ withdrew His aid from him. Moreover observe how after the resurrection, taught by his fall he speaks to Christ more humbly, and does not any more resist His words. All this his fall wrought for him; for before he had attributed all to himself, when he ought rather to have said, I will not deny Thee if Thou succour me with Thy aid. But afterwards he shews that every thing is to be ascribed to God; Why look ye so earnestly upon us, as though by our own power and holiness we had made this man to walk?]q (Act 3:12.) Hence then we learn the great doctrine, that man’s wish is not enough, unless he enjoys Divine support.

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

  I answer that, Poverty of spirit properly corresponds to fear. Because, since it belongs to filial fear to show reverence and submission to God, whatever results from this submission belongs to the gift of fear. Now from the very fact that a man submits to God, it follows that he ceases to seek greatness either in himself or in another but seeks it only in God. For that would be inconsistent with perfect subjection to God, wherefore it is written (Ps. 19:8): “Some trust in chariots and some in horses; but we will call upon the name of . . . our God.” It follows that if a man fear God perfectly, he does not, by pride, seek greatness either in himself or in external goods, viz. honors and riches. In either case, this proceeds from poverty of spirit, in so far as the latter denotes either the voiding of a puffed up and proud spirit, according to Augustine’s interpretation (De Serm. Dom. in Monte i, 4), or the renunciation of worldly goods which is done in spirit, i.e. by one’s own will, through the instigation of the Holy Spirit, according to the expounding of Ambrose on Lk. 6:20 and Jerome on Mat. 5:3. Reply to Objection 1: Since a beatitude is an act of perfect virtue, all the beatitudes belong to the perfection of spiritual life. And this perfection seems to require that whoever would strive to obtain a perfect share of spiritual goods, needs to begin by despising earthly goods, wherefore fear holds the first place among the gifts. Perfection, however, does not consist in the renunciation itself of temporal goods; since this is the way to perfection: whereas filial fear, to which the beatitude of poverty corresponds, is consistent with the perfection of wisdom, as stated above ([2484]AA[7],10). Reply to Objection 2: The undue exaltation of man either in himself or in another is more directly opposed to that submission to God which is the result of filial fear, than is external pleasure. Yet this is, in consequence, opposed to fear, since whoever fears God and is subject to Him, takes no delight in things other than God. Nevertheless, pleasure is not concerned, as exaltation is, with the arduous character of a thing which fear regards: and so the beatitude of poverty corresponds to fear directly, and the beatitude of mourning, consequently. Reply to Objection 3: Hope denotes a movement by way of a relation of tendency to a term, whereas fear implies movement by way of a relation of withdrawal from a term: wherefore the last beatitude which is the term of spiritual perfection, fittingly corresponds to hope, by way of ultimate object; while the first beatitude, which implies withdrawal from external things which hinder submission to God, fittingly corresponds to fear.

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

  GREGORY. (Hom. in Evang. xxviii. 1, 2) Our Lord in His answer implies that He is in a certain sense where He is invited present, even when He is absent from a place. He saves by His command simply, even as by His will He created all things: Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way, thy son liveth. Here is a blow to that pride which honours human wealth and greatness, and not that nature which is made after the image of God. Our Redeemer, to shew that things made much of among men, were to be despised by Saints, and things despised made much of, did not go to the nobleman’s son, but was ready to go to the centurion’s servant. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxv. 2) Or thus; In the centurion there was confirmed faith and true devotion, and therefore our Lord was ready to go. But the nobleman’s faith was still imperfect, as he thought our Lord could not heal in the absence of the sick person. But Christ’s answer enlightened him. And the man believed the word which Jesus had spoken to him, and went his way. He did not believe, however, wholly or completely. ORIGEN. His rank appears in the fact of his servants meeting him: And as he was now going down, his servants met him, and told him, saying, Thy son liveth. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxv. 3) They met him, to announce what had happened, and prevent Christ from coming, as He was no longer wanted. That the nobleman did not fully believe, is shewn by what follows: Then enquired he of them at what hour he began to amend. He wished to find out whether the recovery was accidental, or owing to our Lord’s word. And they said unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. How obvious is the miracle? His recovery did not take place in an ordinary way, but all at once; in order that it might be seen to be Christ’s doing, and not the result of nature: So the father knew that it was at the same hour, in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son livelh; and himself believed, and his whole house. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xvi. c. 3) If he only believed when he was told that his son was well again, and had compared the hour according to his servant’s account, with the hour predicted by Christ, he did not believe when he first made the petition. BEDE. So, we see, faith, like the other virtues, is formed gradually, and has its beginning, growth, and maturity. His faith had its beginning, when he asked for his son’s recovery; its growth, when he believed our Lord’s words, Thy son liveth; its maturity, after the announcement of the fact by his servants.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The young lady, (who kept not her eyes fixed upon the nether world, but, conceiting herself as much and more than as much as she was, moved them artfully hither and thither, gazing all about, and was quick to note who delighted to look upon her,) soon became aware of Rinieri and said, laughing, in herself, 'I have not come hither in vain to-day; for, an I mistake not, I have caught a woodcock by the bill.' Accordingly, she fell to ogling him from time to time with the tail of her eye and studied, inasmuch as she might, to let him see that she took note of him, thinking that the more men she allured and ensnared with her charms, so much the more of price would her beauty be, especially to him on whom she had bestowed it, together with her love. The learned scholar, laying aside philosophical speculations, turned all his thoughts to her and thinking to please her, enquired where she lived and proceeded to pass to and fro before her house, colouring his comings and goings with various pretexts, whilst the lady, idly glorying in this, for the reason already set out, made believe to take great pleasure in seeing him. Accordingly, he found means to clap up an acquaintance with her maid and discovering to her his love, prayed her make interest for him with her mistress, so he might avail to have her favour. The maid promised freely and told the lady, who hearkened with the heartiest laughter in the world and said, 'Seest thou where yonder man cometh to lose the wit he hath brought back from Paris? Marry, we will give him that which he goeth seeking. An he bespeak thee again, do thou tell him that I love him far more than he loveth me; but that it behoveth me look to mine honour, so I may hold up my head with the other ladies; whereof and he be as wise as folk say, he will hold me so much the dearer.' Alack, poor silly soul, she knew not aright, ladies mine, what it is to try conclusions with scholars. The maid went in search of Rinieri and finding him, did that which had been enjoined her of her mistress, whereat he was overjoyed and proceeded to use more urgent entreaties, writing letters and sending presents, all of which were accepted, but he got nothing but vague and general answers; and on this wise she held him in play a great while.