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 The City of God

  example, Roman humanitas that had suppressed the Druids who practiced human sacrifice. Of course, all empires are humanitarian to those who enjoy them, just as all their wars are waged for selfless humanitarian purposes. But the Romans didn’t think this; they saw their imperium as unique, as especially dedicated to helping the rest of the world. Furthermore, the imperium was a deeply cosmopolitan empire, enabling travel and encouraging trade across thousands of miles and between wildly different peoples. In an age of very limited travel, when most people lived their entire lives within 15 miles of the place they were born and never knew anyone who was not basically the same as them, the imperium was a community of unprecedentedly diverse ways of being human—far more than the Greeks, who had never stopped thinking of every non-Greek speaker as basically barbarous. For the Romans, there were many gentes—peoples or nations— within the Empire, and they could remain who they were, so long as they obeyed some basic laws and did some certain minimal kinds of service to the imperium as they could. Their humanitarian and cosmopolitan self-understanding was manifest in how they governed these conquered peoples; in brief, with an almost schizophrenic combination of liberality and brutality. The Romans were quite religiously and culturally tolerant, but they were politically almost fascist. Once conquered, a people could do

• From The City of God

  Chapter 7. --That the World's Belief in Christ is the Result of Divine Power, Not of Human Persuasion. But it is thoroughly ridiculous to make mention of the false divinity of Romulus as any way comparable to that of Christ. Nevertheless, if Romulus lived about six hundred years before Cicero, in an age which already was so enlightened that it rejected all impossibilities, how much more, in an age which certainly was more enlightened, being six hundred years later, the age of Cicero himself, and of the emperors Augustus and Tiberius, would the human mind have refused to listen to or believe in the resurrection of Christ's body and its ascension into heaven, and have scouted it as an impossibility, had not the divinity of the truth itself, or the truth of the divinity, and corroborating miraculous signs, proved that it could happen and had happened? Through virtue of these testimonies, and notwithstanding the opposition and terror of so many cruel persecutions, the resurrection and immortality of the flesh, first in Christ, and subsequently in all in the new world, was believed, was intrepidly proclaimed, and was sown over the whole world, to be fertilized richly with the blood of the martyrs. For the predictions of the prophets that had preceded the events were read, they were corroborated by powerful signs, and the truth was seen to be not contradictory to reason, but only different from customary ideas, so that at length the world embraced the faith it had furiously persecuted.

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

  At the time of the Reformation, Switzerland numbered as many Cantons (13) as our country originally numbered States, and the Swiss Diet was then a loose confederation representing only the Cantons and not the people, just as was our Continental Congress. But by the revision of the Constitution in 1848 and 1874, the Swiss Republic, following the example of our Constitution, was consolidated from a loose, aristocratic Confederacy of independent Cantons into a centralized federal State,3with a popular as well as a cantonal representation. In one respect the modern Swiss Constitution is even more democratic than that of the United States; for, by the Initiative and the Referendum, it gives to the people the right of proposing or rejecting national legislation. But there is a still stronger bond of union between the two countries than that which rests on the affinity of political institutions. Zwingli and Calvin directed and determined the westward movement of the Reformation to France, Holland, England, and Scotland, and exerted, indirectly, a moulding influence upon the leading Evangelical Churches of America. George Bancroft, the American historian, who himself was not a Calvinist, derives the republican institutions of the United States from Calvinism through the medium of English Puritanism. A more recent writer, Douglas Campbell, of Scotch descent, derives them from Holland, which was still more under the influence of the Geneva Reformer than England. Calvinism breeds manly, independent, and earnest characters who fear God and nothing else, and favors political and religious freedom. The earliest and most influential settlers of the United States—the Puritans of England, the Presbyterians of Scotland and Ireland, the Huguenots of France, the Reformed from Holland and the Palatinate,—were Calvinists, and brought with them the Bible and the Reformed Confessions of Faith. Calvinism was the ruling theology of New England during the whole Colonial Period, and it still rules in great measure the theology of the Presbyterian, Congregational, and Baptist Churches. In the study of the sources I have derived much benefit from the libraries of Switzerland, especially the Stadtbibliothek of Zürich, which contains the invaluable Simler collection and every important work relating to the Reformation in Switzerland. I take great pleasure in expressing my obligation to Dr. G. von Wyss, president, and Dr. Escher, librarian, for their courtesy and kindness on repeated visits to that library. The sources on the Reformation in French Switzerland are now made fully accessible by the new critical edition of Calvin’s works, by Herminjard’s collection of the correspondence of the French-speaking Reformers (not yet completed), and by the publications of the documentary history of Geneva during the period of Calvin’s labors, including the registers of the Council and of the Consistory.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  I didn’t hardly go to school at all.’ ‘Then how come you got to be so smart? how come you got to know so much?’ And he smiled, pleased, but he said: ‘Little-bit, I don’t know so much.’ Then he said, with a change in his face and voice which she had grown to know: ‘I just decided me one day that I was going to get to know everything them white bastards knew, and I was going to get to know it better than them, so could no white son-of-a-bitch nowhere never talk me down, and never make me feel like I was dirt, when I could read him the alphabet, back, front, and sideways. He weren’t going to beat my arse, then. And if he tried to kill me, I’d take him with me, I swear to my mother I would.’ Then he looked at her again, and smiled and kissed her, and he said: ‘That’s how I got to know so much, baby.’ She asked: ‘And what you going to do, Richard? What you want to be?’ And his face clouded. ‘I don’t know. I got to find out. Looks like I can’t get my mind straight nohow.’ She did not know why he couldn’t—or she could only dimly face it—but she knew he spoke the truth. She had made her great mistake with Richard in not telling him that she was going to have a child. Perhaps, she thought now, if she had told him everything might have been very different, and he would be living yet. But the circumstances under which she had discovered herself to be pregnant had been such to make her decide, for his sake, to hold her peace awhile. Frightened as she was, she dared not add to the panic that overtook him on the last summer of his life. And yet perhaps it was, after all, this—this failure to demand of his strength what it might then, most miraculously, have been found able to bear; by which—indeed, how could she know?—his strength might have been strengthened, for which she prayed to-night to be forgiven. Perhaps she had lost her love because she had not, in the end, believed in it enough. She lived quite a long way from Richard—four underground stops; and when it was time for her to go home, he always took the underground uptown with her and walked her to her door. On a Saturday when they had forgotten the time and stayed together later than usual, he left her at her door at two o’clock in the morning.

• From The City of God

  472 Books That Matter: The City of God will matter in the eschaton, so its marks must have some purchase on humans even after the resurrection of the body. Now, this intuition for Augustine is confirmed, in the wounds of the martyrs. Now, we said already, we know bodies will retain their natural characteristics—curly hair, brown eyes, the like. Some of the infirmities of age, however, will be done away with—bad backs, weak knees, I’m happy to say baldness, these will be reversed, he says. But there are other marks, other injuries that will not be so easily effaced. The resurrection will not simply present the immaculate, theologically air-brushed bodies of a J. Crew catalog; the resolution of history is not the forgetting or effacing of what has happened. And this is so aesthetically, but also more fundamentally. In this discussion, he mentions what seems on first glance, a fairly esoteric issue, whether people will be resurrected with the scars they have suffered in their lives, or if those scars will be erased in the resurrection. Augustine does not directly answer this question, but he does say we can know that at least scars of one group, the wounds of the martyrs—those who died for the faith—will not be effaced, but will remain, although in those wounds, he says, there will be no deformity only dignity. A beauty will shine out from those wounds, although the glory will not be directly of those wounds. The defects will not be there, but the proof, Augustine says, of their valor will be. How can we know this, you might wonder? Augustine's answer is interestingly based on his understanding of the eschatological Christ as revealed in Scripture, for just as Jesus kept his wounds after the Resurrection—the marks on his body—so God will retain on human bodies at least the marks that were suffered for the faith. The direction of his thinking is clear, it is Christ’s resurrected body, the one that’s gone through death and transfiguration, and is not undone, that is the crucial anchor for the nature of history’s significance for our bodies. Christ’s resurrection is not the un-doing of Christ’s death then,

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  With the exception of Felicia and myself, the other Black women in the Bag came protected by a show of all the power symbols they could muster. Whatever else they did during the week, on Friday nights when Lion or Trip appeared, sometimes with expensively dressed women on their arms, sometimes alone, they commanded attention and admiration. They were well-heeled, superbly dressed, self-controlled high-steppers who drove convertibles, bought rounds of drinks for their friends, and generally took care of business. But sometimes, even they couldn’t get in unless they were recognized by the bouncer. My friends and I were the hippies of the gay-girl circuit, before the word was coined. Many of us wound up dead or demented, and many of us were distorted by the many fronts we had to fight upon. But when we survived, we grew up strong. Every Black woman I ever met in the Village in those years had some part in my survival, large or small, if only as a figure in the head-count at the Bag on a Friday night. Black lesbians in the Bagatelle faced a world only slightly less hostile than the outer world which we had to deal with every day on the outside—that world which defined us as doubly nothing because we were Black and because we were Woman—that world which raised our blood pressures and shaped our furies and our nightmares. The temporary integration of war plants, and the egalitarian myth of Rosie the Riveter had ended abruptly with the end of World War II and the wholesale return of the american woman to the role of little wifey. So far as I could see, gay-girls were the only Black and white women who were even talking to each other in this country in the 1950s, outside of the empty rhetoric of patriotism and political movements. Black or white, Ky-Ky, butch, or femme, the only thing we shared, often, and in varying proportions, was that we dared for connection in the name of woman, and saw that as our power, rather than our problem. All of us who survived those common years had to be a little strange. We spent so much of our young-womanhood trying to define ourselves as woman-identified women before we even knew the words existed, let alone that there were ears interested in trying to hear them beyond our immediate borders. All of us who survived those common years have to be a little proud. A lot proud.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  But for that year, Laurel’s served as an important place for those of us who met and made some brief space for ourselves there. It had a feeling of family. On summer Sunday afternoons, Muriel and I would split from the gay beach at Coney Island or Riis Park early, take the subway back home in time to wash up and dress and saunter over to Laurel’s in time for the food at 4:00. I had my first open color confrontation with a gay-girl one Sunday afternoon in Laurel’s. Muriel and I had come back that day from Riis Park, full of sun and sand. We loved with the salt still on our skins, then bathed, washed our hair, and got ready to go out. I put on my faded cord riding britches with the suede crotch, and a pale blue short-sleeved sweatshirt bought earlier that week at John’s on Avenue C for sixty-nine cents. My skin was tanned from the sun and burnished ruddy with the heat and much loving. My hair was newly trimmed and freshly washed, with the particular crispness that it always develops in sustained summer heat. I felt raunchy and restless. We walked out of the hot August afternoon sun into the suddenly dark coolness of Laurel’s downstairs. There was Muriel in her black Bermuda shorts and shirt, ghost pale, her eternal cigarette in hand. And I was beside her, full of myself, knowing I was fat and Black and very fine. We were without peer or category, and on that day I was conscious of being very proud of it, no matter who looked down her nose at us. After Muriel and I had gotten our food and beer and copped one of the tables, Dottie and Pauli came over. We saw them a lot at the Bag and in the supermarket over on Avenue D, but we’d never been to their house nor they to ours, except for New Year’s food, when everyone came. “Where you guys been?” Pauli had an ingenuous smile, her blonde hair and blue eyes incandescent against the turquoise mandarin shirt she wore. “Riis. Gay Beach.” Muriel’s finger crooked over the bottle as she took a slug. All of us eschewed glasses as faggy, although I sometimes longed for one because the cold beer hurt my teeth. Pauli turned to me. “Hey, that’s a great tan you have there. I didn’t know Negroes got tans.” Her broad smile was intended to announce the remark as a joke. My usual defense in such situations was to ignore the overtones, to let it go.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  And I knew that decision would affect the rest of my life, although exactly how was not really clear to me then. When I had moved into the apartment with Rhea, I had merely scratched my name beside hers on the slip of paper stuck into the slot of our mailbox in the hall. But one blustery day in the first week of April, on my lunch hour, I walked around to Hite’s Hardware on East Broadway and ordered a proper metal mailbox tag, with Muriel’s and my names upon it. I stood watching as the machine stamped the two names into the shiny brass rectangle, feeling proud, excited, and a little bit scared. It felt like a ritual joining, a symbolic marriage. Afterward, I bought an egg cream on Chatham Square to celebrate, and stood looking at the little shiny plate with our two names side by side, separated only by a little dash. This would be my surprise for Muriel when she came down to New York on her birthday, the following week. No more playing house. For me, this was the real thing, a step from which there was no turning back. I wasn’t just playing around any more, gay-girl. I was living with a woman and we were lovers. I had done, silently and easily, what I had longed and feared to do, I had made a commitment which was irrevocable. Without conscious articulation of why, I knew together meant forever for me, even though there was no troth plighted, no wedding ceremony, no paper signed. Muriel and I were united together by our loving and our wills, for good or ill. Through the spring, I had thought long and hard about whether or not I could live that closely with anyone, and for the rest of my life, as I felt this was going to be—without question. Once I decided I could make that commitment, I never doubted for a minute that Muriel was the person I wanted to make it with. We made our own vows of love and forever. As the spring evenings turned warmer, Muriel met me at the Chatham Square Library. Sometimes we went wandering through the back streets of Chinatown, buying strange succulent vegetables and peculiar fragrant pieces of dried meat to experiment with, along with hard wrinkled mushrooms by the piece. Each of us knew a different New York, and we explored together, showing each other secret treasured places in the middle of the alleyways south of Canal Street.

• From The City of God

  And captive raiment, rudely rolled In one promiscuous heap; While boys and matrons, wild with fear, In long array were standing near. " [43] In other words, the place consecrated to so great a goddess was chosen, not that from it none might be led out a captive, but that in it all the captives might be immured. Compare now this "asylum"--the asylum not of an ordinary god, not of one of the rank and file of gods, but of Jove's own sister and wife, the queen of all the gods--with the churches built in memory of the apostles. Into it were collected the spoils rescued from the blazing temples and snatched from the gods, not that they might be restored to the vanquished, but divided among the victors; while into these was carried back, with the most religious observance and respect, everything which belonged to them, even though found elsewhere. There liberty was lost; here preserved. There bondage was strict; here strictly excluded. Into that temple men were driven to become the chattels of their enemies, now lording it over them; into these churches men were led by their relenting foes, that they might be at liberty. In fine, the gentle [44] Greeks appropriated that temple of Juno to the purposes of their own avarice and pride; while these churches of Christ were chosen even by the savage barbarians as the fit scenes for humility and mercy. But perhaps, after all, the Greeks did in that victory of theirs spare the temples of those gods whom they worshipped in common with the Trojans, and did not dare to put to the sword or make captive the wretched and vanquished Trojans who fled thither; and perhaps Virgil, in the manner of poets, has depicted what never really happened? But there is no question that he depicted the usual custom of an enemy when sacking a city. [43] Virgil, AEneid. ii. 761. [44] Though levis was the word usually employed to signify the inconstancy of the Greeks, it is evidently here used, in opposition to immanis of the following clause, to indicate that the Greeks were more civilized than the barbarians, and not relentless, but, as we say, easily moved.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  It was when John was five years old and in the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he was noticed by an eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individual existence. They were learning the alphabet that day, and six children at a time were sent to the blackboard to write the letters they had memorized. Six had finished and were waiting for the teacher’s judgment when the back door opened and the school principal, of whom everyone was terrified, entered the room. No one spoke or moved. In the silence the principal’s voice said: ‘Which child is that?’ She was pointing at the blackboard, at John’s letters. The possibility of being distinguished by her notice did not enter John’s mind, and so he simply stared at her. Then he realized, by the immobility of the other children and by the way they avoided looking at him, that it was he who was selected for punishment. ‘Speak up, John,’ said the teacher, gently. On the edge of tears, he mumbled his name and waited. The principal, a woman with white hair and an iron face, looked down at him. ‘You’re a very bright boy, John Grimes,’ she said. ‘Keep up the good work.’ Then she walked out of the room. That moment gave him, from that time on, if not a weapon at least a shield; he apprehended totally, without belief or understanding, that he had in himself a power that other people lacked; that he could use this to save himself, to raise himself; and that, perhaps, with this power he might one day win that love which he so longed for. This was not, in John, a faith subject to death or alteration, nor yet a hope subject to destruction; it was his identity, and part, therefore, of that wickedness for which his father beat him and to which he clung in order to withstand his father. His father’s arm, rising and falling, might make him cry, and that voice might cause him to tremble; yet his father could never be entirely the victor, for John cherished something that his father could not reach. It was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding the other. He lived for the day when his father would be dying and he, John, would curse him on his death-bed.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I always thought they were both selfish. But things are better now and that’s what’s important. I have a better family now than I had as a kid. I guess there’s no way not to have something left over from what’s happened to you. As for what I’ve done, I’m very pleased. I know you’re supposed to say your wedding day is the best day of your life. But, for me, the day I graduate from college will be the best day of my life. Because I’ll be able to say to myself, I did it. I never thought I would.” At age thirty-three, Paula is finally, painfully, completing her adolescence and becoming a true adult. Her journey is not yet ended and it isn’t clear what lies ahead. In her thirties, Paula is working through and trying to understand some of the losses she sustained growing up. Moving beyond anger and disappointment, she’s forging relationships with both of her parents in which their shortcomings are neither denied nor dwelt upon. She’s finding ways of remaining connected with them. She clearly loves her young son and wants him to share in her newly regained family. After spending eighteen years dependent on alcohol, she’s slowly building a view of herself that rests on pride at what she has overcome and accomplished rather than on shame, compliance, and avoidance of pain. Paula is also figuring out how to be a mother. She knows how she doesn’t want to bring up her son, but knowing what not to do isn’t the same as knowing how to do it better. She still has a lot to learn about how to be independent and how to create and enjoy a satisfying, loving relationship. I leave her and her son at the crossroads. TWENTY-TWO Conclusions “What’s done to children, they will do to society.” Karl A. Menninger A round the time I was finishing this book, a very important judge on the family law bench in a large state I shall not name invited me to come see him. I was eager to meet with him because I wanted to discuss some ideas I have for educating parents under court auspices that go beyond the simple advice “don’t fight.” After we had talked for a half an hour or so, the judge leaned back in his chair and said he’d like my opinion about something important. He had just attended several scientific lectures in which researchers argued that children are shaped more by genes than by family environment. Case in point, studies of identical twins reared separately show that in adulthood such twins often like the same foods and clothing styles, belong to the same political parties, and even bestow identical names on their dogs. The judge looked perplexed. “Do you think that could mean divorce is in the genes?” he asked in all seriousness. “And if that’s so, does it matter what a court decides when parents divorce?”

• From The City of God

  Chapter 17. --To What Profit the Romans Carried on Wars, and How Much They Contributed to the Well-Being of Those Whom They Conquered. For, as far as this life of mortals is concerned, which is spent and ended in a few days, what does it matter under whose government a dying man lives, if they who govern do not force him to impiety and iniquity? Did the Romans at all harm those nations, on whom, when subjugated, they imposed their laws, except in as far as that was accomplished with great slaughter in war? Now, had it been done with consent of the nations, it would have been done with greater success, but there would have been no glory of conquest, for neither did the Romans themselves live exempt from those laws which they imposed on others. Had this been done without Mars and Bellona, so that there should have been no place for victory, no one conquering where no one had fought, would not the condition of the Romans and of the other nations have been one and the same, especially if that had been done at once which afterwards was done most humanely and most acceptably, namely, the admission of all to the rights of Roman citizens who belonged to the Roman empire, and if that had been made the privilege of all which was formerly the privilege of a few, with this one condition, that the humbler class who had no lands of their own should live at the public expense--an alimentary impost, which would have been paid with a much better grace by them into the hands of good administrators of the republic, of which they were members, by their own hearty consent, than it would have been paid with had it to be extorted from them as conquered men? For I do not see what it makes for the safety, good morals, and certainly not for the dignity, of men, that some have conquered and others have been conquered, except that it yields them that most insane pomp of human glory, in which "they have received their reward," who burned with excessive desire of it, and carried on most eager wars. For do not their lands pay tribute? Have they any privilege of learning what the others are not privileged to learn? Are there not many senators in the other countries who do not even know Rome by sight? Take away outward show, [217] and what are all men after all but men? But even though the perversity of the age should permit that all the better men should be more highly honored than others, neither thus should human honor be held at a great price, for it is smoke which has no weight. But let us avail ourselves even in these things of the kindness of God. Let us consider how great things they despised, how great things they endured, what lusts they subdued for the sake of human glory, who merited that glory, as it were, in reward for such virtues; and let this be useful to us even in suppressing pride, so that, as that city in which it has been promised us to reign as far surpasses this one as heaven is distant from the earth, as eternal life surpasses temporal joy, solid glory empty praise, or the society of angels the society of mortals, or the glory of Him who made the sun and moon the light of the sun and moon, the citizens of so great a country may not seem to themselves to have done anything very great, if, in order to obtain it, they have done some good works or endured some evils, when those men for this terrestrial country already obtained, did such great things, suffered such great things. And especially are all these things to be considered, because the remission of sins which collects citizens to the celestial country has something in it to which a shadowy resemblance is found in that asylum of Romulus, whither escape from the punishment of all manner of crimes congregated that multitude with which the state was to be founded.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 12. --By What Virtues the Ancient Romans Merited that the True God, Although They Did Not Worship Him, Should Enlarge Their Empire. Wherefore let us go on to consider what virtues of the Romans they were which the true God, in whose power are also the kingdoms of the earth, condescended to help in order to raise the empire, and also for what reason He did so. And, in order to discuss this question on clearer ground, we have written the former books, to show that the power of those gods, who, they thought, were to be worshipped with such trifling and silly rites, had nothing to do in this matter; and also what we have already accomplished of the present volume, to refute the doctrine of fate, lest any one who might have been already persuaded that the Roman empire was not extended and preserved by the worship of these gods, might still be attributing its extension and preservation to some kind of fate, rather than to the most powerful will of God most high. The ancient and primitive Ro mans, therefore, though their history shows us that, like all the other nations, with the sole exception of the Hebrews, they worshipped false gods, and sacrificed victims, not to God, but to demons, have nevertheless this commendation bestowed on them by their historian, that they were "greedy of praise, prodigal of wealth, desirous of great glory, and content with a moderate fortune. " [198]Glory they most ardently loved:for it they wished to live, for it they did not hesitate to die. Every other desire was repressed by the strength of their passion for that one thing. At length their country itself, because it seemed inglorious to serve, but glorious to rule and to command, they first earnestly desired to be free, and then to be mistress. Hence it was that, not enduring the domination of kings, they put the government into the hands of two chiefs, holding office for a year, who were called consuls, not kings or lords. [199] But royal pomp seemed inconsistent with the administration of a ruler (regentis), or the benevolence of one who consults (that is, for the public good) (consulentis), but rather with the haughtiness of a lord (dominantis). King Tarquin, therefore, having been banished, and the consular government having been instituted, it followed, as the same author already alluded to says in his praises of the Romans, that "the state grew with amazing rapidity after it had obtained liberty, so great a desire of glory had taken possession of it. "That eagerness for praise and desire of glory, then, was that which accomplished those many wonderful things, laudable, doubtless, and glorious according to human judgment. The same Sallust praises the great men of his own time, Marcus Cato, and Caius Caesar, saying that for a long time the republic had no one great in virtue, but that within his memory there had been these two men of eminent virtue, and very different pursuits. Now, among the praises which he pronounces on Caesar he put this, that he wished for a great empire, an army, and a new war, that he might have a sphere where his genius and virtue might shine forth. Thus it was ever the prayer of men of heroic character that Bellona would excite miserable nations to war, and lash them into agitation with her bloody scourge, so that there might be occasion for the display of their valor. This, forsooth, is what that desire of praise and thirst for glory did. Wherefore, by the love of liberty in the first place, afterwards also by that of domination and through the desire of praise and glory, they achieved many great things; and their most eminent poet testifies to their having been prompted by all these motives:

• From The City of God

  "Porsenna there, with pride elate, Bids Rome to Tarquin ope her gate; With arms he hems the city in, AEneas' sons stand firm to win. " [200] At that time it was their greatest ambition either to die bravely or to live free; but when liberty was obtained, so great a desire of glory took possession of them, that liberty alone was not enough unless domination also should be sought, their great ambition being that which the same poet puts into the mouth of Jupiter: "Nay, Juno's self, whose wild alarms Set ocean, earth, and heaven in arms, Shall change for smiles her moody frown, And vie with me in zeal to crown Rome's sons, the nation of the gown. So stands my will. There comes a day, While Rome's great ages hold their way, When old Assaracus's sons Shall quit them on the myrmidons, O'er Phthia and Mycenae reign, And humble Argos to their chain. " [201] Which things, indeed, Virgil makes Jupiter predict as future, whilst, in reality, he was only himself passing in review in his own mind, things which were already done, and which were beheld by him as present realities. But I have mentioned them with the intention of showing that, next to liberty, the Romans so highly esteemed domination, that it received a place among those things on which they bestowed the greatest praise. Hence also it is that that poet, preferring to the arts of other nations those arts which peculiarly belong to the Romans, namely, the arts of ruling and commanding, and of subjugating and vanquishing nations, says, "Others, belike, with happier grace, From bronze or stone shall call the face, Plead doubtful causes, map the skies, And tell when planets set or rise; But Roman thou, do thou control The nations far and wide; Be this thy genius, to impose The rule of peace on vanquished foes, Show pity to the humble soul, And crush the sons of pride. " [202]

• From The City of God

  The propriety of publishing a translation of so choice a specimen of ancient literature needs no defence. As Poujoulat very sensibly remarks, there are not a great many men now-a-days who will read a work in Latin of twenty-two books. Perhaps there are fewer still who ought to do so. With our busy neighbors in France, this work has been a prime favorite for 400 years. There may be said to be eight independent translations of it into the French tongue, though some of these are in part merely revisions. One of these translations has gone through as many as four editions. The most recent is that which forms part of the Nisard series; but the best, so far as we have seen, is that of the accomplished Professor of Philosophy in the College of France, Emile Saisset. This translation is indeed all that can be desired:here and there an omission occurs, and about one or two renderings a difference of opinion may exist; but the exceeding felicity and spirit of the whole show it to have been a labor of love, the fond homage of a disciple proud of his master. The preface of M. Saisset is one of the most valuable contributions ever made to the understanding of Augustin's philosophy. [25] Of English translations there has been an unaccountable poverty. Only one exists, [26] and this so exceptionally bad, so unlike the racy translations of the seventeenth century in general, so inaccurate, and so frequently unintelligible, that it is not impossible it may have done something towards giving the English public a distaste for the book itself. That the present translation also might be improved, we know; that many men were fitter for the task, on the score of scholarship, we are very sensible; but that any one would have executed it with intenser affection and veneration for the author, we are not prepared to admit. A few notes have been added where it appeared to be necessary. Some are original, some from the Benedictine Augustin, and the rest from the elaborate commentary of Vives. [27] Marcus Dods. Glasgow, 1871. [On the back of the title pages to vols. I. and II. of the Edinburgh edition, Dr. Dods indicates his associates in the work of translation and annotation as follows: "Books IV. , XVII. and XVIII. have been translated by the Rev. George Wilson, Glenluce; Books V. , VI. , VII. and VIII. by the Rev. J. J. Smith. "] [4] A. D. 410. [5] Retractations, ii. 43. [6] Letters, 132-8. [7] See some admirable remarks on this subject in the useful work of Beugnot, Histoire de la Destruction du Paganisme, ii. 83 et sqq. [8] As Waterland (iv. 760) does call it, adding that it is "his most learned, most correct, and most elaborate work. " [9] For proof, see the Benedictine Preface.

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

  The romantic story of William Tell, so charmingly told by Egidius Tschudi, the Swiss Herodotus,9 and by Johannes von Müller, the Swiss Tacitus, and embellished by the poetic genius of Friedrich Schiller, must be abandoned to the realm of popular fiction, like the cognate stories of Scandinavian and German mythology, but contains, nevertheless, an abiding element of truth as setting forth the spirit of those bold mountaineers who loved liberty and independence more than their lives, and expelled the foreign invaders from their soil. The glory of an individual belongs to the Swiss people. The sacred oath of the men of Grütli on the Lake of Lucerne, at the foot of Seelisberg (1306 or 1308?), and the more certain confederation of Dec. 9, 1315, at Brunnen, were renewals of the previous covenant of 1291.10 The Swiss successfully vindicated their independence against the attacks of the House of Habsburg in the memorable battles of Morgarten ("the Marathon of Switzerland" 1315), Sempach (1386), and Näfels (1388), against King Louis XI. of France at St. Jacob near Basle (the Thermopylae of Switzerland, 1444), and against Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy at Granson, Murten (Morat), and Nancy (1476 and 1477). Nature and history made Switzerland a federative republic. This republic was originally a loose, aristocratic confederacy of independent cantons, ruled by a diet of one house where each canton had the same number of deputies and votes, so that a majority of the Diet could defeat a majority of the people. This state of things continued till 1848, when (after the defeat of the Sonderbund of the Roman Catholic cantons) the constitution was remodelled on democratic principles, after the American example, and the legislative power vested in two houses, one (the Ständerath or Senate) consisting of forty-four deputies of the twenty-two sovereign cantons (as in the old Diet), the other (the Nationalrath or House of Representatives) representing the people in proportion to their number (one to every twenty thousand souls); while the executive power was given to a council of seven members (the Bundesrath) elected for three years by both branches of the legislature. Thus the confederacy of cantons was changed into a federal state, with a central government elected by the people and acting directly on the people.11 This difference in the constitution of the central authority must be kept in mind in order to understand why the Reformation triumphed in the most populous cantons, and yet was defeated in the Diet.12 The small forest cantons had each as many votes as the much larger cantons of Zurich and Berne, and kept out Protestantism from their borders till the year 1848. The loose character of the German Diet and the absence of centralization account in like manner for the victory of Protestantism in Saxony, Hesse, and other states and imperial cities, notwithstanding the hostile resolutions of the majority of the Diet, which again and again demanded the execution of the Edict of Worms.

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

  These difficulties are felt by the ablest advocates of the borrowing hypothesis, and hence they call to aid one or several pre-canonical Gospels which are to account for the startling discrepancies and signs of independence, whether in omissions or additions or arrangement. But these pre-canonical Gospels, with the exception of the lost Hebrew Matthew, are as fictitious as the Syro-Chaldaic Urevangelium of Eichhorn, and have been compared to the epicycles of the old astronomers, which were invented to sustain the tottering hypothesis of cycles. As to Luke, we have shown that he departs most from the triple tradition, although he is supposed to have written last, and it is now almost universally agreed that he did not use the canonical Matthew.890 Whether he used the Hebrew Matthew and the Greek Mark or a lost proto-Mark, is disputed, and at least very doubtful.891 He follows a plan of his own; he ignores a whole cycle of events in Mark 6:45–8:26; he omits in the common sections the graphic touches of Mark, for which he has others equally graphic; and with a far better knowledge of Greek he has yet more Hebraisms than Mark, because he drew largely on Hebrew sources. As to Matthew, he makes the impression of primitive antiquity, and his originality and completeness have found able advocates from Augustin down to Griesbach and Keim. And as to Mark, his apparent abridgments, far from being the work of a copyist, are simply rapid statements of an original writer, with many fresh and lively details which abundantly prove his independence. On the other hand, in several narratives he is more full and minute than either Matthew or Luke.892 His independence has been successfully proven by the most laborious and minute investigations and comparisons.893 Hence many regard him as the primitive Evangelist made use of by both Matthew and Luke, but disagree among themselves as to whether it was the canonical Mark or a proto-Mark.894 In either case Matthew and Luke would be guilty of plagiarism. What should we think of an historian of our day who would plunder another historian of one-third or one-half of the contents of his book without a word of acknowledgment direct or indirect? Let us give the Evangelists at least the credit of common honesty, which is the basis of all morality. Apostolic Teaching the Primary Source of All the Synoptists.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  This old bra is too—autobiographical.” She pulled down on it to seat it better, and then shrugged. Daggett’s breath caught at her motions, and she laughed at her casual power over him. “They’re just breasts,” she said. “I wish they were a little bigger.” “Nonsense,” he said. “You mustn’t say that around here.” He leaned forward and whispered, “Be careful what you wish for.” His eyes moved hungrily from her right breast to her left, and then back. “So you’re saying if right now I took this bra off in front of you you’d really have your balls removed?” “An alarm would go off in Lila’s office,” Daggett said. “Two headless men would come and take me away to be reversibly castrated. My testicles would live in a little mesh bag in a special lobster tank filled with a charged nutrient broth.” Rhumpa was appalled. “You mean with the lobsters in there?” “No, no, no,” he reassured. “Just a special tank.” “Oh.” “And meanwhile I’d wander around visiting museums and, you know, reading travel magazines and listening to choral music and feeling sorry for myself.” “Sounds not so bad,” Rhumpa said. “Oh, it’s bad.” He cleared his throat and stood. Rhumpa thought she saw a distinct hump in his corduroys. “So—why don’t you have your shower and I’ll get to work out here choosing and sorting. It’s not easy to lay out a selection, and I’ll need at least four minutes of complete concentration, I’m afraid.” Rhumpa went into the shower and was stepping out of her panties when he knocked. “Yes?” she fluted through the door. “Sorry, I’ll need your bra, as well, for comparison,” he called. “You can just hand it out.” So Rhumpa opened the door and swung the bra out through the crack. “Got it,” he said cheerily. While she was waiting for the shower water to adjust its temperature, she took a moment to look at herself in the mirror. Not too terrible, she thought. Admittedly her thighs were on the verge of jiggly, but her skin was smooth and almondy-brown, and her dense black bush was shiny and not unattractive. She pulled out her hair clip and looked at her face. Men liked her lips, she knew. No, she thought, it wasn’t inconceivable that she could be in a solo sex video. Rhumpa’s hearing had always been keen. As she was about to step into the shower, she heard a tiny clink from the hotel room.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  Climbing the five steps of a metal ladder, she stood on a tall platform that technicians used when they needed to open or close a hydraulic valve that led to a smaller treatment tank. She began singing the Benassi Brothers, swinging her ass: “I love men, money, power, and I love my sex.” She could see the monster turning on its legs, trying clumsily to keep time. On an impulse, she unclamped and unsealed the front of her wetsuit and danced with her breasts on display, her nipples high and pointy in unpuzzled skyward erections. Almost immediately, many monster hands took hold of many penises, and there was a general convulsion of orgasmic fluid release. The monster sat in a puddle of its own secretions . Then it revived. Rhumpa spoke: “I will give you good loving if you grow a head.” There was silence, and then a bulb formed at the top of the fleshy confusion. There was a huge sucking sound, and a head popped into place. It was a normal head, male, with a mouth and a nose and two eyes, and it blinked at her. “Can you hear me now?” she voiced. Out of the mouth came a strange amphibious croak: “Aaaa-oooowwwawaooo.” “Take a moment to organize your thoughts,” she said. “You are built from other people’s orgasms, and yet you seem to have a soul.” “Not much of a soul, but it’s there,” said the pornmonster. “And do you wish to be freed from the tank?” “Yes, I do.” “Do you think you would live a normal life if you were free?” “No, not normal,” said the pornmonster. “I have way too many sex organs for that. But I could lead a better life. I would like to help in some way. My name is Friggley.” In the control room, Harry watched and took notes, squeezing his crotch from time to time. The creature looked like a hedge ball with frondy things hanging off it. It moved rapidly but shufflingly forward, a tumorousness of overstimulated desire. Harry observed as it surrounded Rhumpa and slid her wetsuit completely off. One after another of the penises found and sounded her cervix. Rhumpa seemed, oddly, to be enjoying it—it was a gangbang from a single source. When the fleshly storm had passed, she leapt onto its back and grabbed hold of what looked like two scrotums. “Harry, open the main hatch, I’ve got my new friend Friggley by the balls, and I’m going to take him to the Handjob Festival. ” Harry, in awe, opened the main gate of the tank enclosure, and Friggley shuffled down the road. Then, in a sudden flurry, more drama. The Pearloiner leapt out from a bush with a cackle and tried to snatch away several of Friggley’s clitorises and hide them in her freezing jar.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  θρᾶσύ-γυιος, ov, strong of limb, Ἀλειτομάχοιο νίκα θρασύγυιος Pind, P. 8. 52. pitied BetRos, 6, ἣ, an impudent coward, braggart, poltroon, Arist. Eth oN. 3.710: II. name of a gem, Pseudo-Plut. 2. 1158 B. Opacu-epyds, dv, bold of deed, Noun. D. 35. 365. θρᾶσύ-θῦμος, ον, bold-hearted, Manetho 4. 529. θρᾶσυ-κάρδιος, ov, bold of heart, Il. 10. 41., 13. 343; restored in Anacr. 1. 4 (from Walz Rhett. 6. p. 129) for θρεοκάρδιος. θρασυλογέω, to speak boldly, Schol. Soph. Ag. 1258. θρασυλογία, ἡ, bold speech, Basil. θρασυ-λόγος, ov, bold of speech, E. M. 133. 42. θρασύ-μᾶχος, ov, bold in battle, Arist. Rhet. 2. 23, 29. θρᾶσυ-μέμνων, ov, bravely steadfast (cf. μέμνων), epith. of Hercules, Il. 5. 639, Od. 11. 267. θρἄσυ-μήδης, ες, bold of thought or plan, daring, resolute, Pind. P. 4. 254, N. 9. 31:—in Hom. only as pr. n. θρασύμητις - Θρήκη. θρᾶἄσύ-μητις, ιδος, ὁ, 7,=foreg., Anth. P. 6. 324. θρᾶσυ-μήηχᾶνος, Dor. -μάχανος, ov, bold in contriving, daring in design, “Ἣρακλέης Pind. O, 6. 114; λέοντες Id. N. 4. τοι. θρᾶσύ-μῦθος, ov, bold of tongue, saucy, Pind. O. 13. 13. {picive, (θρασύς) =the older form θαρσύνω, to make bold, embolden, encourage, Aesch. Ag. 222; πλήθει τὴν ἀμαθίαν θρασύνοντες lending courage to their ignorance by number, Thuc. 1.142, cf. 7. 76 :—Pass. and Med., aor. θρασυνθῆναι Aesch. Supp. 772; ἐθρασύνατο Isocr. 43 C, 87 A:—to be bold or ready, take courage, Aesch. Ag. 1188, etc. ; μηδὲν θρασύνου Eur. Hec. 1183 ; οὐ.. ἀλόγως θρασυνόμεθα Thue. 5.104; πρὶν ὅρμῳ ναῦν θρασυνθῆναι before the ship was confident of safety at her moorings, Aesch. Supp. 1. c. IT. Pass., in bad sense, fo be over~ bold, audacious, to speak boldly or insolently, Soph. Ph. 1387, Ar. Ran. 846, Isocr. l.c., Dem. 272.123 ἐπί τινι Ar. Ach. 330, Isocr. 87 A; πρός tt Luc. Merc. Cond. 6. 111. θρασύνειν τι to brag of a thing, Polyb. 4. 31, 4. θρᾶἄσυ-ξενία, 7, the boldness of a stranger, Plat. Legg. 879 E. θρᾶσύ-πονος, ov, bold or ready at work, Pind. O. 1.156. θρασυ-πτόλεμος, ov, bold in war, Anth. P. append. 201. θρᾶσύς, εἴα, ύ : fem. θρασέα, metii gr., Philem. Pay. 4: (v. sub fin.) :— bold, spirited, of good courage, Lat. audax, Homeric epith. of Hector, Il. 8. 89, etc.; of Ulysses (infr. 2); of Laogonos, 16. 604; also, Op. πόλεμος 6. 254., το. 28, Od. 4.146; Opacedwy ἀπὸ χειρῶν 5. 434, Il. 17. 662, al.; Op. Καρδία Pind. P. 10. 69; πούς Ar. Ran. 330; ἐν τῷ ἔργῳ θρασύς Hdt. 7. 49; Op. τόξοισι Aesch. Pr. 871; ἡ ἐλπὶς θρασεῖα τοῦ μέλλοντος full of confidence, Thuc. 7.773 θρασὺς τὸ ἦθος Arist. Pol. 5. 11, 27. 2. mostly in bad sense, over-bold, rash, ven- turous, Lat. audax, σὺν δ᾽ 6 θρασὺς εἵπετ᾽ ᾿Οδυσσεύς Od. το. 436 (Schol. προπετή5); Topydves Pind. P. 12. 13 ;—so mostly in Att., audacious, arrogant, Aesch. Pr.178; [Ἄρης .. πρὸς ἀλλήλους Op., of civil war, Id. Eum. 863; γλώσσῃ θρασύς Soph. Aj. 1142; ἐν τοῖς λόγοις Id. Ph.