Pride

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

  "We," wrote the Ephesian bishop to the Roman pope and his church, "We observe the genuine day; neither adding thereto nor taking therefrom. For in Asia great lights353 have fallen asleep, which shall rise again in the day of the Lord’s appearing, in which he will come with glory from heaven, and will raise up all the saints: Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who sleeps in Hierapolis, and his two aged virgin daughters; his other daughter, also, who having lived under the influence of the Holy Spirit, now likewise rests in Ephesus; moreover, John, who rested upon the bosom of our Lord,354 who was also a priest, and bore the sacerdotal plate,355 both a martyr and teacher; he is buried in Ephesus. Also Polycarp of Smyrna, both bishop and martyr, and Thraseas, both bishop and martyr of Eumenia, who sleeps in Smyrna. Why should I mention Sagaris, bishop and martyr, who sleeps in Laodicea; moreover, the blessed Papirius, and Melito, the eunuch [celibate], who lived altogether under the influence of the Holy Spirit, who now rests in Sardis, awaiting the episcopate from heaven, in which he shall rise from the dead. All these observed the fourteenth day of the passover according to the gospel, deviating in no respect, but following the rule of faith. "Moreover, I, Polycrates, who am the least of you, according to the tradition of my relatives, some of whom I have followed. For seven of my relatives were bishops, and I am the eighth; and my relatives always observed the day when the people of the Jews threw away the leaven. I, therefore, brethren, am now sixty-five years in the Lord, who having conferred with the brethren throughout the world, and having studied the whole of the Sacred Scriptures, am not at all alarmed at those things with which I am threatened, to intimidate me. For they who are greater than I have said, ’we ought to obey God rather than men.’ ... I could also mention the bishops that were present, whom you requested me to summon, and whom I did call; whose names would present a great number, but who seeing my slender body consented to my epistle, well knowing that I did not wear my gray hairs for nought, but that I did at all times regulate my life in the Lord Jesus."356 Victor turned a deaf ear to this remonstrance, branded the Asiatics as heretics, and threatened to excommunicate them.357 But many of the Eastern bishops, and even Irenaeus, in the name of the Gallic Christians, though he agreed with Victor on the disputed point, earnestly reproved him for such arrogance, and reminded him of the more Christian and brotherly conduct of his predecessors Anicetus, Pius, Hyginus, Telesphorus, and Xystus, who sent the eucharist to their dissenting brethren. He dwelt especially on the fraternal conduct of Anicetus to Polycarp. Irenaeus proved himself on this occasion, as Eusebius remarks, a true peacemaker, and his vigorous protest seems to have prevented the schism.

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  Kaplan’s pride was typical, but not universal. In the same way that porn sometimes seems to be both everywhere and nowhere, it also engenders embarrassment or a whiff of scandal, even among those who recognize its influence on developments in the means of communication. This leads to a seeming paradox in which we treat pornography simultaneously as a widely known established truth and as a skeleton in the technological cupboard—one that can be spoken about only in a conspiratorial tone. In June 2006, the online Electronics Design, Strategy News published a comprehensive analysis of the pornography industry’s influence on emerging technology markets, focusing particularly on the growing market for next-generation cellphones. These phones have the processing power, display quality and Internet speed sufficient for adult applications. What is not surprising is that many adult companies have already jumped into this new market, quietly working with mainstream partners to provide pornographic services for high-speed smartphones. What is surprising is the article’s headline: “Dirty Little Secret.” “The mobile Internet is the most recent example of the industry’s dirty little secret,” writes Bill Roberts in the article. “Pornography is an old friend of technology. Flush with content, pornographers can reap new profits from each new channel, and they risk being left behind if they don’t adopt them. As risk takers, pornographers offer the heavy-volume usage that startups need in order to prove and improve their concepts. As prompt paying customers, by most accounts, pornographers provide important early revenue to technology partners.” There is a real question here about who is privy to this secret, and from whom it is supposedly being kept. “Young males with cash to spend are repeating the boost they gave early multimedia computers, broadband and video-on-demand, by paying premium prices for advanced multimedia cell phones so they can surf for sex anyplace, anytime—to the benefit of ARM, Motorola, Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung, SanDisk, Sony, Texas Instruments and a host of other companies,” he writes, as though readers should be surprised. Nobody he interviewed for the piece seems surprised. Ghatim Kabbara, managing director of the Barcelona-based software company Safira Solutions, says the first client for the company’s cellphone content delivery service was Cherry Media, a mobile pornography portal, and that half of Safira’s mobile business still comes from adult content. American forecasters were predicting revenues between half and one and a half billion dollars for cellphone porn in 2009 for the United States alone. Other predictions put the worldwide market at more than $2 billion, with more than 112 million users by 2010. As with every number connected to the pornography industry, every analyst agrees that these ones are questionable. Industry players tend to exaggerate the numbers; users tend to lie in the other direction. Plus, however much money will be actually spent on pornography, no statistic can take into account the piracy, theft and consensual sharing of adult content among those who invest in new technologies but never spend or make a dollar directly from pornography.

• From Little Women (1868)

  During the next few minutes the rumor that Amy March had got twenty-four delicious limes (she ate one on the way) and was going to treat circulated through her 'set', and the attentions of her friends became quite overwhelming. Katy Brown invited her to her next party on the spot. Mary Kingsley insisted on lending her her watch till recess, and Jenny Snow, a satirical young lady, who had basely twitted Amy upon her limeless state, promptly buried the hatchet and offered to furnish answers to certain appalling sums. But Amy had not forgotten Miss Snow's cutting remarks about 'some persons whose noses were not too flat to smell other people's limes, and stuck-up people who were not too proud to ask for them', and she instantly crushed 'that Snow girl's' hopes by the withering telegram, "You needn't be so polite all of a sudden, for you won't get any." A distinguished personage happened to visit the school that morning, and Amy's beautifully drawn maps received praise, which honor to her foe rankled in the soul of Miss Snow, and caused Miss March to assume the airs of a studious young peacock. But, alas, alas! Pride goes before a fall, and the revengeful Snow turned the tables with disastrous success. No sooner had the guest paid the usual stale compliments and bowed himself out, than Jenny, under pretense of asking an important question, informed Mr. Davis, the teacher, that Amy March had pickled limes in her desk. Now Mr. Davis had declared limes a contraband article, and solemnly vowed to publicly ferrule the first person who was found breaking the law. This much-enduring man had succeeded in banishing chewing gum after a long and stormy war, had made a bonfire of the confiscated novels and newspapers, had suppressed a private post office, had forbidden distortions of the face, nicknames, and caricatures, and done all that one man could do to keep half a hundred rebellious girls in order. Boys are trying enough to human patience, goodness knows, but girls are infinitely more so, especially to nervous gentlemen with tyrannical tempers and no more talent for teaching than Dr. Blimber. Mr. Davis knew any quantity of Greek, Latin, algebra, and ologies of all sorts so he was called a fine teacher, and manners, morals, feelings, and examples were not considered of any particular importance. It was a most unfortunate moment for denouncing Amy, and Jenny knew it. Mr. Davis had evidently taken his coffee too strong that morning, there was an east wind, which always affected his neuralgia, and his pupils had not done him the credit which he felt he deserved. Therefore, to use the expressive, if not elegant, language of a schoolgirl, "He was as nervous as a witch and as cross as a bear". The word 'limes' was like fire to powder, his yellow face flushed, and he rapped on his desk with an energy which made Jenny skip to her seat with unusual rapidity.

• From The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)

  In the totemic group of the Kangaroo, which has its centre at Undiara, certain characteristics of the ceremony are more clearly marked. After the rites which we have described have been accomplished on the sacred rock, the young men go and hunt the kangaroo, bringing their game back to the camp. Here, the old men, with the Alatunja in their midst, eat a little of the flesh of the animal, and anoint the bodies of those who took part in the Intichiuma with its fat. The rest is divided up among the men assembled. Next, the men of the totem decorate themselves with totemic designs and the night is passed in songs commemorating the exploits accomplished by men and animal kangaroos in the times of the Alcheringa. The next day, the young men go hunting again in the forest and bring back a larger number of kangaroos than the first time, and the ceremonies of the day before recommence.[1130] With variations of detail, the same rite is found in other Arunta clans,[1131] among the Urabunna,[1132] the Kaitish,[1133] the Unmatjera,[1134] and in the Encounter Bay Tribe.[1135] Everywhere, it is made up of the same essential elements. A few specimens of the totemic animal or plant are presented to the chief of the clan, who solemnly eats them and who must eat them. If he did not fulfil this duty, he would lose the power of celebrating the Intichiuma efficaciously, that is to say, so as to recreate the species annually. Sometimes the ritual consumption is followed by an unction made with the fat of the animal or certain parts of the plant.[1136] This rite is generally repeated by the men of the totem, or at least by the old men, and after it has been accomplished, the exceptional interdictions are raised. In the tribes located farther north, among the Warramunga and neighbouring societies,[1137] this ceremony is no longer found. However, traces are found which seem to indicate that there was a time when it was known. It is true that the chief of the clan never eats the totem ritually and obligatorily. But in certain cases, men who are not of the totem whose Intichiuma has just been celebrated, must bring the animal or plant to camp and offer it to the chief, asking him if he wants to eat it. He refuses and adds, "I have made this for you; you may eat it freely."[1138] So the custom of the presentation remains and the question asked of the chief seems to date back to an epoch when the ritual consumption was practised.[1139] III The interest of the system of rites which has just been described lies in the fact that in them we find, in the most elementary form that is actually known, all the essential principles of a great religious institution which was destined to become one of the foundation stones of the positive cult in the superior religions: this is the institution of sacrifice.

• From Little Women (1868)

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE DAISY AND DEMI I cannot feel that I have done my duty as humble historian of the March family, without devoting at least one chapter to the two most precious and important members of it. Daisy and Demi had now arrived at years of discretion, for in this fast age babies of three or four assert their rights, and get them, too, which is more than many of their elders do. If there ever were a pair of twins in danger of being utterly spoiled by adoration, it was these prattling Brookes. Of course they were the most remarkable children ever born, as will be shown when I mention that they walked at eight months, talked fluently at twelve months, and at two years they took their places at table, and behaved with a propriety which charmed all beholders. At three, Daisy demanded a 'needler', and actually made a bag with four stitches in it. She likewise set up housekeeping in the sideboard, and managed a microscopic cooking stove with a skill that brought tears of pride to Hannah's eyes, while Demi learned his letters with his grandfather, who invented a new mode of teaching the alphabet by forming letters with his arms and legs, thus uniting gymnastics for head and heels. The boy early developed a mechanical genius which delighted his father and distracted his mother, for he tried to imitate every machine he saw, and kept the nursery in a chaotic condition, with his 'sewinsheen', a mysterious structure of string, chairs, clothespins, and spools, for wheels to go 'wound and wound'. Also a basket hung over the back of a chair, in which he vainly tried to hoist his too confiding sister, who, with feminine devotion, allowed her little head to be bumped till rescued, when the young inventor indignantly remarked, "Why, Marmar, dat's my lellywaiter, and me's trying to pull her up." Though utterly unlike in character, the twins got on remarkably well together, and seldom quarreled more than thrice a day. Of course, Demi tyrannized over Daisy, and gallantly defended her from every other aggressor, while Daisy made a galley slave of herself, and adored her brother as the one perfect being in the world. A rosy, chubby, sunshiny little soul was Daisy, who found her way to everybody's heart, and nestled there. One of the captivating children, who seem made to be kissed and cuddled, adorned and adored like little goddesses, and produced for general approval on all festive occasions. Her small virtues were so sweet that she would have been quite angelic if a few small naughtinesses had not kept her delightfully human. It was all fair weather in her world, and every morning she scrambled up to the window in her little

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  I keep talking about the prostitute as a woman. This is both because the image of “prostitute” with which I was raised was always a woman, and because when I think of prostitution, I inevitably think of myself in that role, compare my responses to what I see and hear. But there are a lot of men working out there, and they’re not being hired by women. Samantha Miller told me that just as there is a great deal more prostitution going on than most people suspect, there is a great deal more prostitution between men going on. Most of these “call guys,” as it were, seem to be white, young, good-looking, healthy, fairly well-educated, and gay. “Seventy-five percent of the men that they see are married,” says Samantha. “There’s this huge thing going on all over the world; men are having sex with men all over the place and not talking about it. That’s where heterosexual transmission of AIDS is. I wish all married men would see male prostitutes, because I know they’re doing safe sex. But when men are doing it with each other, they’re not.” Prostitutes are sometimes beautiful women, sometimes not; they are young and old; thin and heavy; buxom and flat-chested. They are comfortable with their bodies. I asked Jackie Daniels, a nom de plume for a longtime prostitute who happens to be well known by another name in another field, about the high-maintenance chores of the profession. “When I first started, I had this idea that I had to be perfect,” she answered. Jackie is an attractively tousled, almost maternally curvaceous woman in her late thirties. “I thought I had to have my legs completely waxed and my pussy shaved just so, and if I had a broken fingernail, I wouldn’t make appointments. But there’s just some men who love women, and they just want to see all kinds of women. They just love women. It doesn’t matter what size, shape, smell, color, anything, they just love women. Then there are men who have a certain type they want—they want busty, or they want petite, or they want young. I have this one guy who I just adore, and he and I are just about the same age, and he wants someone older. He wants to fuck his mother.” Even now, when she’s semiretired and in a relationship with one wealthy man, Jackie finds it hard to give up the idea of prostitution. The possibilities—the easy money, the no-consequences open-natured exchange—are always there, inviting. She knows it could happen right now, tonight, easy as pie, and she knows she’s good at the job. She knows that the doorman and elevator operator and garageman at her penthouse apartment over the marina know what she does for a living, and seem to approve. “I want to show this apartment to people and go, ‘See? I am really good in bed! Look at this apartment! Look at what my pussy got me!”

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  “It became a very thriving business, and basically now they have a name for it. You hear about the ‘long tail’ and it’s a fancy word. People write books about it,” he said. The term “long tail” was coined by Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson in 2004. It describes a business model that provides a huge variety of specialized, hard-to-find items that are sold in very small numbers at premium prices to an equally huge variety of specialized clientele. “We had the long tail in 1994. There was no name for it. I just instinctively knew it would work.” Bunimovitz knew he had a technological lead over his competitors, and he also knew how quickly he could lose that lead and just become one porn-database provider among many. He kept moving. “Every business model that I had, I worked under the assumption that it was about to go away,” he said. “The technology is very dynamic, customers are very dynamic, and you have to always look two, three years down the road. You have to try enough things that one of them will be the right thing for the future.” He did not do market studies or focus groups. He did not do SWOT analyses or develop mission and vision statements. He did not wait to see which way the technological winds were blowing before committing. He did what the porn industry does: he experimented, he left behind the old, and he employed new technologies based on nothing more than his own hopes and instincts. In 1997, his staff employed a scripting engine called ASP, or Active Server Pages, to make their website more dynamic. Months after they went live, a developer walked smugly into his office with a new book that explained to programmers how to do exactly what the team had already done. The technological development cycle had picked up the pace, though, and soon ASP was nothing special on the web. Bunimovitz still had the edge for a while, because nobody had a catalogue anywhere near as comprehensive as his. But once DVDs became standard, his vast repository of videotapes became much less valuable. Price became the only differentiating factor from one site to another. “Suddenly you’re selling for a dollar over cost,” he said. “It was no longer an interesting business. I had to reinvent.” He moved to DVD along with everyone else, but was already looking ahead for the next technology that could put him out in front again. “This was 1999, and I figured I had to find something new. We decided to go after video-on-demand for broadband. At the time people who saw videos online had 56k modems. You’d get those little videos, postage-stamp sized and shaky, two frames a second,” he said. “We went broadband-only from day one. Because I was like, ‘Hey, we’re going to differentiate ourselves.’”

• From Little Women (1868)

  gale of merriment, and Mr. Laurence laughed till they thought he'd have an apoplectic fit. "I don't see anything funny," she said gravely, when she could be heard. "Nothing could be more natural and proper than for my Professor to open a school, and for me to prefer to reside in my own estate." "She is putting on airs already," said Laurie, who regarded the idea in the light of a capital joke. "But may I inquire how you intend to support the establishment? If all the pupils are little ragamuffins, I'm afraid your crop won't be profitable in a worldly sense, Mrs. Bhaer." "Now don't be a wet-blanket, Teddy. Of course I shall have rich pupils, also —perhaps begin with such altogether. Then, when I've got a start, I can take in a ragamuffin or two, just for a relish. Rich people's children often need care and comfort, as well as poor. I've seen unfortunate little creatures left to servants, or backward ones pushed forward, when it's real cruelty. Some are naughty through mismanagment or neglect, and some lose their mothers. Besides, the best have to get through the hobbledehoy age, and that's the very time they need most patience and kindness. People laugh at them, and hustle them about, try to keep them out of sight, and expect them to turn all at once from pretty children into fine young men. They don't complain much—plucky little souls—but they feel it. I've been through something of it, and I know all about it. I've a special interest in such young bears, and like to show them that I see the warm, honest, well-meaning boys' hearts, in spite of the clumsy arms and legs and the topsy- turvy heads. I've had experience, too, for haven't I brought up one boy to be a pride and honor to his family?" "I'll testify that you tried to do it," said Laurie with a grateful look. "And I've succeeded beyond my hopes, for here you are, a steady, sensible businessman, doing heaps of good with your money, and laying up the blessings of the poor, instead of dollars. But you are not merely a businessman, you love good and beautiful things, enjoy them yourself, and let others go halves, as you always did in the old times. I am proud of you, Teddy, for you get better every year, and everyone feels it, though you won't let them say so. Yes, and when I have my flock, I'll just point to you, and say 'There's your model, my lads'." Poor Laurie didn't know where to look, for, man though he was, something of the old bashfulness came over him as this burst of praise made all faces turn

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  “To be a sexual being, a wildly sexual being, is good,” Bense said in a later interview. “This is a divine, ecstatic experience that we are all having here. Not sleazy. These are aspects of ourselves that we are proud of, that we treasure and are sharing with these other people.” Roving sex clubs for men, women, and mixed groups continue in San Francisco today. These clubs aren’t a new society, just new events representing people’s continued willingness to figure out how to be sexual with each other in a way that works. Compared to a man who picks up a new woman at a bar every weekend or a supposedly monogamous partnership riddled with deception, they seem both honest and safe. Bense hosted such parties at his own building until it was shut down after frequent clashes with the city and the police. He opened the parties with blessings and prayers. “I found that when you give people a temple to play in, they deal with each other as if we are all gods.” Bense is not being fatuous; his reach is simply a long one. The same words we use for good and loving sex, words like passion, ecstasy, oneness, are the words of religion. Carol Queen had her first group sex experience at the Jack and Jill Off and now helps organize sex club experiences for women as well as mixed groups. Besides the immediate benefits of good, safe sex with a number of people, there is the broader one of coping in a time of plague. “We are a community coming to terms with a troubling reality in a way that can wind up getting people off.” When people complain about how “exploitive” or “degrading” something like a sex club is (having never been to one), they fail to acknowledge how terrible and exploitive marriage, monogamy, and the nuclear family can be for millions of people; how painful and harmful are traditional gender roles for many people; how downright dangerous heterosexual, patriarchal culture is for all women. If radical sexuality works, if sex clubs, underground magazines, anarchic sex shows, and safe-sex education do what they aim to do, then a falling away will happen. Yes, as is feared, a crumbling of boundaries: between male and female, feminine and masculine, top and bottom, gay and straight. The center will not hold. Whether or not the culture that results will be more or less exploitive than the one in which we live is an unknown. All bets are off; anything could happen.

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  Some might point to the “ton of dirty pictures” as the key to the pornographic formula for success. This only takes you so far, though. There was a great irony about selling porn online: a sprawling riot of every imaginable form of pornography was already available for free, as long as you had the technological know-how to find it. “If you pay for porn, you’ve failed the Internet,” Annalee Newitz said to me. The reality is that nobody—then or now—in the technological know would actually pay for pornographic content. Why would they when they could get it all for free? This is one of the great counterintuitive surprises about the relationship between the Internet and porn: the success and influence of the porn industry was due to more than the material. It was about customer service. It was about making the Internet easier. People who wanted erotic content were more willing to pay for it than they were to learn how to spelunk the depths of Usenet. What people were really paying for was not the product but ease of access. The great accomplishment of the adult industry at this time was to prove that the Internet could deliver that kind of convenience to a paying market. Consider two examples of early commercial success on the Net: Danni and Jenni. Seattle born Danni Ashe—her stage name—became a stripper at age seventeen. She first worked in her native Seattle, but cannily exploited a sideline in magazine modelling and soft-core video to build her profile. She toured nationally, and eventually became a headline draw at strip clubs around the country. A self-described “geek with big breasts,” she could not have been more predisposed to making money on the Internet had she been genetically engineered. In 1994, she was already familiar with the nether regions of the information superhighway. “I ventured onto the Internet and quickly got into the Usenet newsgroups, where I was hearing that my pictures were being posted, and started talking to people,” she told PBS’s Frontline. “I spent several really intense months in the newsgroups, and it was out of those conversations that the idea for Danni’s Hard Drive was born.” Aside from building a brand on the most obvious double entendre in the computing universe, Danni Ashe’s business enterprise became one of the busiest sites on the Internet. When the site launched in 1995, punters paid $19.95 per month for access to soft-core pictures and personal information about Ashe. In its first week, her site had a million hits. For the first two years of its existence, it was the busiest site on the web. In 1997, Ashe had seventeen thousand paying subscribers; that climbed to twenty-five thousand by 1999. In 2001 she was employing forty-five people and turning an $8-million profit annually. She became a dot-com millionaire, not as a result of irrational hype but by selling content.

• From Little Women (1868)

  "Oh, tell us what they are!" cried Meg, who sat beside him. "Here is one." And taking up the hand which lay on the arm of his chair, he pointed to the roughened forefinger, a burn on the back, and two or three little hard spots on the palm. "I remember a time when this hand was white and smooth, and your first care was to keep it so. It was very pretty then, but to me it is much prettier now, for in this seeming blemishes I read a little history. A burnt offering has been made to vanity, this hardened palm has earned something better than blisters, and I'm sure the sewing done by these pricked fingers will last a long time, so much good will went into the stitches. Meg, my dear, I value the womanly skill which keeps home happy more than white hands or fashionable accomplishments. I'm proud to shake this good, industrious little hand, and hope I shall not soon be asked to give it away." If Meg had wanted a reward for hours of patient labor, she received it in the hearty pressure of her father's hand and the approving smile he gave her. "What about Jo? Please say something nice, for she has tried so hard and been so very, very good to me," said Beth in her father's ear. He laughed and looked across at the tall girl who sat opposite, with an unusually mild expression in her face. "In spite of the curly crop, I don't see the 'son Jo' whom I left a year ago," said Mr. March. "I see a young lady who pins her collar straight, laces her boots neatly, and neither whistles, talks slang, nor lies on the rug as she used to do. Her face is rather thin and pale just now, with watching and anxiety, but I like to look at it, for it has grown gentler, and her voice is lower. She doesn't bounce, but moves quietly, and takes care of a certain little person in a motherly way which delights me. I rather miss my wild girl, but if I get a strong, helpful, tenderhearted woman in her place, I shall feel quite satisfied. I don't know whether the shearing sobered our black sheep, but I do know that in all Washington I couldn't find anything beautiful enough to be bought with the five- and-twenty dollars my good girl sent me." Jo's keen eyes were rather dim for a minute, and her thin face grew rosy in the firelight as she received her father's praise, feeling that she did deserve a portion of it. "Now, Beth," said Amy, longing for her turn, but ready to wait.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  And what did it profit me, that scarce twenty years old, a book of Aristotle, which they call the often Predicaments, falling into my hands (on whose very name I hung, as on something great and divine, so often as my rhetoric master of Carthage, and others, accounted learned, mouthed it with cheeks bursting with pride), I read and understood it unaided? And on my conferring with others, who said that they scarcely understood it with very able tutors, not only orally explaining it, but drawing many things in sand, they could tell me no more of it than I had learned, reading it by myself. And the book appeared to me to speak very clearly of substances, such as “man,” and of their qualities, as the figure of a man, of what sort it is; and stature, how many feet high; and his relationship, whose brother he is; or where placed; or when born; or whether he stands or sits; or be shod or armed; or does, or suffers anything; and all the innumerable things which might be ranged under these nine Predicaments, of which I have given some specimens, or under that chief Predicament of Substance. What did all this further me, seeing it even hindered me? when, imagining whatever was, was comprehended under those often Predicaments, I essayed in such wise to understand, O my God, Thy wonderful and unchangeable Unity also, as if Thou also hadst been subjected to Thine own greatness or beauty; so that (as in bodies) they should exist in Thee, as their subject: whereas Thou Thyself art Thy greatness and beauty; but a body is not great or fair in that it is a body, seeing that, though it were less great or fair, it should notwithstanding be a body. But it was falsehood which of Thee I conceived, not truth, fictions of my misery, not the realities of Thy blessedness. For Thou hadst commanded, and it was done in me, that the earth should bring forth briars and thorns to me, and that in the sweat of my brows I should eat my bread.

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

  changing humors of the court. Hence even contending parties in the East were accustomed to seek counsel and protection from the Roman chair, and oftentimes gave that see the coveted opportunity to put the weight of its decision into the scale. This occasional practice then formed a welcome basis for a theory of jurisdiction. The Roma locuta est assumed the character of a supreme and final judgment. Rome learned much and forgot nothing. She knew how to turn every circumstances with consummate administrative tact, to her own advantage. Finally, though the Greek church, down to the fourth ecumenical council, was unquestionably the main theatre of church history and the chief seat of theological learning, yet, according to the universal law of history, "Westward the star of empire takes its way," the Latin church, and consequently the Roman patriarchate, already had the future to itself. While the Eastern patriarchates were facilitating by internal quarrels and disorder the conquests of the false prophet, Rome was boldly and victoriously striking westward, and winning the barbarian tribes of Europe to the religion of the cross. § 58. The Latin Patriarch. These advantages of the patriarch of Rome over the patriarch of Constantinople are at the same time the leading causes of the rise of the papacy, which we must now more closely pursue. The papacy is undeniably the result of a long process of history. Centuries were employed in building it, and centuries have already been engaged upon its partial destruction. Lust of honor and of power, and even open fraud,525 have contributed to its development; for human nature lies hidden under episcopal robes, with its steadfast inclination to abuse the power intrusted to it; and the greater the power, the stronger is the temptation, and the worse the abuse. But behind and above these human impulses lay the needs of the church and the plans of Providence, and these are the proper basis for explaining the rise, as well as the subsequent decay, of the papal dominion over the countries and nations of Europe. That Providence which moves the helm of the history of world and church according to an eternal plan, not only prepares in silence and in a secrecy unknown even to themselves the suitable persons for a given work, but also lays in the depths of the past the foundations of mighty institutions, that they may appear thoroughly furnished as soon as the time may demand them. Thus the origin and gradual growth of the Latin patriarchate at Rome looked forward to the middle age, and formed part of the necessary, external outfit of the church for her disciplinary mission among the heathen barbarians.

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  When I ask Alex to tell me what she likes and doesn’t like about the sex itself, she quickly makes a list: “I love doing couples together. S/M, totally. I will not let a client fuck me in the butt. I do that with friends, and it’s one of the few things I save for friends only. Number one, it’s too dangerous, and number two, it’s just too intimate. And one of my favorite things sexually is being fisted, getting fist-fucked, and a couple of clients ask to do that. I have one regular client who I do it to, rectally, and that’s fine, I love it. He has the whole setup in his house, a sling. But I wouldn’t let a client do that for me, it’s too personal and too close to who I really am. I’ve had clients who want to watch me masturbate, but when they want me to come, too, it’s really tedious, because I generally don’t. I guess I could fake it if I had to. I would love to do women alone, but so far there’ve been only a few who called, and they chickened out. Most of the women who do call are in a couple. I tried advertising in a gay paper, but mostly what I got was gay men curious about trying something with a woman. “When I first started doing this, I was seeing a woman. I’d been involved with her for two and a half years, we were living together, and she was really upset. It was hard for her to understand that this was about business for me and not pleasure, and it wasn’t like fucking other people. We split up for other reasons in the end. There’s a guy I’m seeing now, and I told him right at the outset and he has a really hard time with it. If I’m going to be involved with someone, they’ve got to know. I’m not in the closet about anything. “I think it’s totally ridiculous that it’s illegal. Totally ridiculous that it be regulated at all. Adults have bodies and some of us have money, and if we want to negotiate to use what we’ve got—I just don’t understand why anything between consenting adults should be illegal. What business is it of the government? It’s somebody pushing their morals on me, based on their belief system, which is totally different from mine. Totally ridiculous. “I really believe there are some people who truly, truly love the work, a hundred percent of the time, and there’s nothing they’d rather do. And then there’s some people like me—sometimes I like it, sometimes I don’t. I can tolerate it because the money’s good, and I’m not going to make that kind of money anywhere else. And then I think there’s people who just could not handle it at all.

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  Author: And one of the things I have been told is that companies like Google and Disney will hire from within the adult industry because they think they are ahead of the curve. Hod: Yeah. They think we have little more information on the technology. Hod: The funny part is that our designer definitely did not leverage that this was an adult game when he went on to Call of Duty. We changed some things on our website and on our MySpace page while he was applying for the job because he was concerned that the adult aspect was not going to help him get the job. Author: And this is apparently a big debate: What do you put on your CV when you’re looking for a job outside of the industry? Hod: I would not play up the fact that it was adult. I definitely don’t think that the fact that I made an adult game would wow them. I think that would scare them more than anything else. I would use the information that would wow them, which is that I was the project manager and things like that. In the video game industry there is a big taboo about the adult industry. Author: Someone said you’ve had one negative review so far. But you have to imagine there’s going to be a backlash against this kind of game. Hod: We planned for it. The game was made expecting that backlash to happen. Author: So you’ll benefit from the controversy in some ways— you’ll get publicity that way. Hod: The thing is I could stand behind everything in our game. Everything in our game I could solely stand behind. We’re waiting for the backlash to come. Author: And, I guess, you’ll know you’ve made it big when that happens. Hod: Exactly. Author: So, all the fights, is it men against men? Is it ever men and women fighting?

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  Despite stellar ratings, erotica repelled rather than attracted national sponsors. That was fine, though; Znaimer was not interested in becoming a porn mogul. He just needed these early UHF adopters to overcome the technological barrier and get used to tuning in on Friday nights. Baby Blue viewers therefore formed the initial market for everything else Citytv had to offer. When significant numbers of people then started watching Citytv during some of the other 166 hours of the week, advertising revenue started to roll in. Pornography was the draw that allowed Znaimer to make money from other sources, and empowered Citytv to change how broadcasters around the world viewed programming, especially for urban audiences. Znaimer broke down the divide between the station and the community it served—the faces on screen were younger, more diverse, and more connected to the lifeblood of the city than anything that had been seen on TV before. He put female journalists into non-traditional roles. News was reported by lone videographers rather than camera crews. This was a major money saver, but it also made the news feel more fresh and raw. He started something called “Speakers’ Corner,” a coin-operated television booth where ordinary citizens could speak their mind for a minute or two. This was a democratization of broadcast television, allowing the videotaped rants, love letters and deep thoughts of any Torontonian to find their way on air. The Citytv model has been imitated and emulated in many parts of the world, with the station’s own brand licensed in Colombia and Spain. Znaimer became a millionaire. He never earned much from erotica, but without it, he never could have made his mainstream fortune. When I asked Znaimer why he thought pornography had this special power to push people toward new media, he looked at me as though I must be a little bit simple. “The ‘why’ is it’s built into our creation, it’s God’s Great Gift, it’s the world’s most interesting subject, it’s fucking,” he said. “Fucking is fun and fucking is forbidden in many cultures, lots of religions seek to control it, and so the social strictures can sometimes be extremely grievous for long periods of time. So, at every stage, as soon as people can make symbols, create pictures, they make pictures of fucking. So, it’s the abiding, fabulous thing. Think of where human life would be if we didn’t eat and we didn’t fuck. The answer is, there is so much cultural confinement of this natural impulse, it has to find expression in art or in some kind of media reproduction. And then, since the history of media is about getting closer and closer to the real thing, the interest in sex and the utility of sex in leading that charge will never be exhausted.”

• From The Fermata (1994)

  As so often happens, success finally came through the convergence of several independent paths of research. There was a long rope swing in our back yard. I had been climbing this swing a little higher every day, on the hunch that something unusual might happen when I was able to make it all the way to the knot at the top, which was perhaps thirty feet off the ground. The rope was smooth where we normally held it to swing (sitting on a rolled-up remnant of industrial carpeting tied in place and launching ourselves from a wooden refrigerator crate), but the higher I climbed, the rougher its hempen texture became. Every day I got a little stronger, in my stomach muscles as well as my arms, and I also got better at relieving some of the burden on my arms by winding the rope around one leg and clamping it between the top of one sneaker and the sole of the other. My hands burned more each time. I opened and closed my fists when I was safely back on the ground to make the pain inside them go away. After a week and a half, I finally reached the knot at the top and slapped the finely cracked bark on the load-bearing bough, amazed and even somewhat terrified that I had been able to work my way up so high. I expected, after that conquering slap, to return to earth with new powers, but in fact I had no new powers: I only had fourteen or fifteen excellent oval calluses on my fingers, of which I was very proud. In private I pushed at these calluses while I was thinking. One weekend during this period my father took me to the hardware store. A man we called the Needle Man was in the parking lot. The Needle Man was deaf and dumb; he went around the city selling packets of sewing needles for a living. He was a short, toothless person of about sixty who always wore a baseball cap; there was something wrong with one of his knees, which bent sideways when he put his weight on it. He approached us and went into his silent sales pitch: he flashed the packet of needles, shrugged, looked away, flashed the packet of needles again, licked his thumb and tested the wind direction, smiled, gummed, shrugged, looked away, looked at us. My father gave him a dollar for the needles. The Needle Man nodded and left us. He never showed gratitude. I connected him with Rumpelstiltskin and with Gollum in The Hobbit. We already had five or six packets of needles that we had bought from him, so my father handed this one to me. “Maybe you can think of something to do with them,” he said.

• From Dante's Divine Comedy (2001)

  Scope: In the circle of Mars, the defining virtue is courage, as that of the sun’s sphere was wisdom. Dante explores his roots: He meets his great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, and has an extended discussion about early Florence and his own family. In his discussion with Dante, Cacciaguida, who sees the future as well as the past, presents his pilgrim descendant with the most sustained prediction of his exile from Florence. In this lecture, we see how Dante comes to an understanding of his own vocation as a writer and how he learns that his exile can become an opportunity for prophecy in the very writing of the Commedia. The circle of Mars is the circle for those who lived their lives as warriors, and just as his great-great-grandfather was a crusader and martyr in earlier times, so Dante the pilgrim learns that he is to be a crusader with the pen rather than with the sword and a martyr through his exile. Thus, Dante’s ancestry is linked to his future, and the treatment of intertwined public and private themes continues. Outline I. Dante travels from the circle of the sun to the circle of Mars, which will be the subject of this lecture. A. In Mars, the pilgrim meets his own ancestor, his great-great- grandfather Cacciaguida, who tells Dante about his own ancestry and the early history of Florence; about the present, including the strife that will lead to Dante’s exile; and about the future, giving the poem’s most sustained account of Dante’s exile. B. The poet patterns this meeting after the meeting of Aeneas and his father, Anchises, in the underworld in Book 6 of the Aeneid. 1. Cacciaguida quotes directly from Virgil’s Aeneid, Book VI, lines 684–688, and he does so in Latin, which is highly unusual in the Commedia. 2. At first, Dante does not recognize his ancestor. 3. Similar to the scene in Virgil, in this scene, Cacciaguida gives Dante reasons for his journey and “commissions” him for his return.

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  I was using a film camera, a format that is largely forgotten today called Super 16. With Super 16, you can’t record the sound on the film. So, it was too cumbersome to carry a recorder, a camera, a big battery pack and an inverter and also you ran out of money very quickly, because most of them were misses, not hits. I ended up using up a lot of film on a girl who wouldn’t do anything after wasting a ten-minute roll of film. And of course you had to have it developed and printed. So, this became very expensive. When video came along, I checked with the station and it just so happened that a camera like that was available for cash, very quickly and quietly. It was black-and-white, it was reel-to-reel and it was mono-sound, in other words, the lowest technology of video. But it was better than nothing and I quickly found out that it was the opposite of film technology, you spent a lot of money on the video equipment but the tape was very cheap. Whereas with film, the cameras were relatively cheap but you went broke buying film and getting it developed. I never threw out a tape, because I got to tell you this with no conceit: I became so colourful that even the misses were funny. They didn’t just say, “No, I’m not going to do it.” They had all sorts of agonizing, tortured, New York liberal reasons why they couldn’t do it. I am the inventor of modern reality television. I’ll tell you a dirty word: tripod. I never used a tripod, because that wasn’t what I was doing. I would be walking down the street. I would see a celebrity, the celebrity would see me, you know? I had about twelve seconds to get the camera up and running. I never had a chance to set up anything. No tripods, no script, just open the iris to the correct thing, try to look in the viewfinder to make sure you had the right exposure, pull the trigger, and that was the technical end of it. When I would pick up girls, about 50 per cent of the time you’d get a crowd of idiots in the background going, “Don’t do it, girl, he’s a pig, he’s a pervert, stay away from him, girlie, I wouldn’t let him touch me if I were you.” You’d hear this in the background, sometimes they’d jump into the picture and yell and scream because they were nobodies and they wanted to be on TV. So, this was really street theatre, not always a good street theatre either.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  “Exactly,” Caleb said. “And it’s like, ‘I know you have your phone right there! We all always have our phones on us. It’s not like you didn’t see the Snapchat.’ So then you’re left staring at it waiting for them to reply.” “Plus, you don’t know what anything means,” Ellie added. “There’s no inflection. Like, if someone texts you, ‘Thanks for a great night.’ That could mean: ‘I want it to happen again,’ or it could be closing it off. You just don’t know.” “What about when a guy slides into your DMs on Instagram?” said LeeAnn. “That’s totally different than a text,” Caleb said. “A DM is more like you know why you’re talking. You’re going to hook up. DMs are the most casual. Anyone can DM you. If you’re really interested in a girl, you’ll text. Maybe you’ll Snap.” Nearly every interview I’ve ever conducted on hookup culture, like this one, quickly devolved into a discussion of its drawbacks. Why, I asked the group, do you continue to participate? “Well, it is a lot easier,” Ellie said. “And it can be fun.” “And it’s still sex,” Caleb added. “Even bad sex is still sex.” The Feminist Fuckboy “I do believe, though, that you can have a casual sexual lifestyle and also be respectful and loving.” Wyatt was entering his junior year at a small liberal arts college on the East Coast that, despite having no Greek life, was known for its entrenched hookup scene. In part, that was due to a dearth of men on what was formerly an all-women’s campus: competition for male attention was fierce. Added to that, Wyatt was a rare heterosexual male dance major and handsome—wavy chestnut hair, sculpted features, a well-muscled body that he was only too happy to flaunt at parties, removing his shirt at the least provocation. He pretty much had his pick of partners on campus, and over the past year, he had taken full advantage of that. “At my school, they call it ‘Golden Dick Syndrome,’” he said. “There is this inherent godliness that straight men tend to feel here, where it’s just like, ‘Everybody wants me.’ It’s just the way it is. Instead of one girl across the party that you know is interested in you, imagine there are six. It can actually feel kind of weird.” Wyatt had not been popular when he was younger. As he said, “Most people who go to colleges like mine weren’t exactly the kings of their high schools, you know?” He was more the guy who stayed home on Saturday nights playing Grand Theft Auto and listening to hip-hop. “I’m a big Kanye defender,” he said. “For how hypermasculine he is, he actually strips it down more than most big stars. He talks about what a jerk he is and how he’s a sex addict and has depression and anxiety. In the end, I think he’s a lot more up-front than most men.”