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.

Page 68 of 174 · 20 per page

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Cutting the air between them with his arm, the referee held Alastair off, gestured him away, and as he did so caught up his left glove in his hand. Across its blancoed surface, smeared by the impact of the second blow, was the bright trace of blood. Bill turned to me with a look of relief. ‘He’s done it,’ he said. ‘They’ll have to stop it now. Yes, he’s done it.’ The shouts in the hall were modified with a sympathy easily accorded to the loser, and Alastair, himself looking rather stunned, cheated somehow by his own victory, jogged about in the ring, punching the air, which was all that was left for him, and showing he had hardly noticed, he needed a fight. After brief deliberations between the ref and the officious, serious judges (this was their life, after all) the unanimous decision was announced. Then Alastair relaxed, hugged and patted his opponent with a careless fondness, and did his lively round of thanks and handshakes. I was moved by the propriety of this. Bill of course went off with his champion, and after I’d watched the opening of the next fight, which didn’t promise to go so well for Limehouse, I wondered what the hell I was doing and sloped off too through the audience and out by the swinging blue doors. Through another door on the right I heard the familiar fizz of showers and felt the familiar need to see what was going on in them. There was such an innocence to the place that they saw nothing suspicious in my presence there—nothing either in Bill’s, who, freed from adult prerogatives, absorbed himself with earnest complicity in this little manly world. The mood here also was one of pure sportsmanship, of candid bustle, like a chorus dressing room. Both teams shared the facilities, and Alastair and his opponent sat side by side on a bench, Alastair undoing, with patient, soldierly tenderness, the bandages that bound the black boy’s hands, and then offering his own hands to be undone, his wrists lying intimately on the other’s hairless thigh. The black boy wore a plaster woefully along his already puffing cheekbone. ‘I’d have a shower, lads,’ said Bill professionally. Watching the lads undress I felt, as perhaps Bill always felt too, not only randy curiosity but a real pang of exclusion, in every way outside their world. The shower was a perfunctory business and soon Alastair was back by us, towelling himself with surprising unselfconsciousness for a sixteen-year-old.

• From Untrue (2018)

  Such hysterical reactions to the expression of female sexual desire worked to contain and constrain Mrs. B. And other women too. The paradigm that females are sexless and decorous protectors of the hearth prevailed for decades, even in the face of intervening generations of abolitionists, suffragettes, and crusaders from Ida Wells to Margaret Sanger critiquing it with their pointed activism. And while flappers—originally a derogatory English term for prostitute—made real strides by boisterously presuming the liberties and freedoms that suffragists and others attempted to engineer through lobbying, legislation, and political protest, with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, historians of the era tell us, these pioneering young disruptors were bludgeoned back into propriety. In fact, even working outside the home was suspect for the next decade, and women who tried might well be subjected to public censure, “taking jobs from men.” Making matters still more difficult for women of color, between 1932 and 1933, 68 percent of jobs posted by the Philadelphia Employment Bureau stipulated the jobs were “white only,” doubling down on the discrimination. Women arguably didn’t have an opportunity to challenge rigid gender scripting that placed them in the domestic sphere and men in the world of action and agency, reasserting an overarching vision of female passivity consistent with Darwin’s, Acton’s, and Krafft-Ebing’s, until men were off to Europe and the South Pacific for World War II in the early 1940s. Then, with holes in the industrial labor force, American women took jobs in factories and shipyards; others ran offices and their households. It was a world without men, a world of burgeoning female competence and confidence, even in traditionally male arenas like heavy manufacturing. Women wore jeans and made bombs in factories, with Rosie the Riveter exhorting them all along, “We Can Do It!” Female agency, aptitude, and autonomy were not merely tolerated; they were encouraged, nurtured, and publicly extolled as patriotic. Between 1940 and 1944, female labor force participation grew by nearly half. And with most men away, women weren’t just working in factories, rising to the top in their office jobs, and generally running the show. Historians, cultural critics who study gender, and sex researchers have noted that “situational lesbianism” is common in contexts—from Saudi Arabia to all-girls schools to women’s prisons to wartime—where there is a dearth of men. And with social scrutiny relaxed and men out of the picture, lesbians had unusual freedoms, notes historian Jessica Toops, while avowedly heterosexual women were more likely and able to pursue romantic and sexual relationships with other women, acting on what sex researcher Lisa Diamond calls “female sexual fluidity.”

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  At last the lion regained his feet and mustered his strength to spring upon horse and rider, now disarmed. I had foreseen this danger; happily Antinous' mount did not stir: our horses had been admirably trained for this sort of game. I interposed my horse, exposing the right flank; I was used to such action and it was not very difficult for me to dispatch the beast, already mortally stricken. He collapsed for the second time; the muzzle rolled in the mire and a stream of dark blood ran into the water. The mighty cat, color of the desert, of honey, of the sun itself, expired with a majesty greater than man's. Antinous leaped down from his horse, which was covered with foam and trembling still; our companions rejoined us and the negroes dragged the immense prey back to the camp. A feast was improvised; lying flat on his stomach before a platter of copper, the youth handed us our portions of lamb roasted beneath the coals. In his honor we drank palm wine. His exultation mounted like song. Perhaps he exaggerated the significance of the aid which I had given him, forgetting that I would have done as much for any hunter in danger; we felt, nevertheless, that we had gone back into that heroic world where lovers die for each other. Pride and gratitude alternated in his joy like the strophes of an ode. The blacks did wonders: soon under the starry sky the skin was swinging suspended on two stakes at the entrance of my tent. Despite the aromatics applied to it, its wild odor haunted us all night long. The next morning, after a meal of fruits, we left the camp; at the moment of departure we caught sight of what was left of the royal beast of the day before: by that time it was only a red carcass in a ditch, surmounted by a cloud of flies. Some days later we returned to Alexandria. The poet Pancrates arranged a special entertainment for me at the Museum; in a music room was assembled a collection of fine and rare instruments. Old Dorian lyres, heavier and more complicated than ours today, stood side by side with curved citharas of Persia and Egypt; there were Phrygian pipes shrill as eunuchs' voices, and delicate Indian flutes, the name of which I do not know. For a long time an Ethiopian beat upon some African drums. Then a woman played a triangular harp of melancholy tone; her cool beauty would have won me had I not already decided to simplify my life by reducing it to what was for me the essential. My favorite musician, Mesomedes of Crete, used the water organ to accompany the recitation of his poem The Sphinx, a disturbing, undulating work, as elusive as the sand before the wind.

• From Sin: The Early History of an Idea (2012)

  Paul had stated emphatically that the resurrection body would be pneumatikon, “spiritual,” definitely not flesh and blood (1 Cor 15.44, 50). The raised meet Christ “in the clouds . . . in the air” (1 Thes 4.15). Justin’s saints, by contrast, convene on earth—where else could flesh and blood go?—and reign in the restored Jerusalem. On this point, Justin stands closer to later rabbinic eschatology than Paul does. The terrestrial location of Christ’s kingdom allows Justin to avail himself of the rich imagery of the prophets, such as Isaiah 65 (“There shall be a new heaven and a new earth . . . and I will rejoice over Jerusalem,” Trypho 81). And such appropriation was another way to make his case that the Septuagint was a book of Christian revelation, and that the promises in scripture made to Israel about their final redemption—those promises that Paul referred to in Romans 15.3—would be realized not by the “old” Israel, vetus Israel, but by the “true” Israel, Justin’s own community, the verus Israel of the church (Trypho 123). Beleaguered by his Christian competition; challenged, perhaps, by skeptical Jews; eventually persecuted by incensed pagans: Justin is not much moved to define or to discuss the sins of his own community. Rather, he dwells at great length on the sins of others, defining his group as the sole innocent—and right-thinking—society. Heretics, victims of their own pride and faulty reasoning, blaspheme against God and secretly commit gross indecencies and murders. Pagans—perhaps the least culpable of these three groups of outsiders—are unwittingly led astray by the deceits of demons. Jews, the very worst of all, are innately bloody-minded, committed idolaters, repeat offenders in every generation. The sins of all these others give us a reverse (and idealized) image of Justin’s own community: sober, chaste, pious, self-disciplined—in short, genuinely philosophical. They alone, in effect, do not sin. Justin’s Christ, in consequence, saves the true believer not from sin as such (correct belief has already done that) but from the pollution caused by sin (Trypho 13, with reference specifically to purity obtained through Christ’s blood). And eschatologically, Christ will save those who believe in him from the universal consequence of sin: by coming in the flesh and by dying in the flesh, Christ had conquered and would conquer humanity’s last enemy, death itself. Chapter 3A RIVALRY OF GENIUSSin and Its Consequences in Origen and Augustine For Jesus of Nazareth as for his later followers, sin was an event or an activity that ruptured the relationship between a person and God. Jews were guided in their efforts to avoid sin and to please their god by his revelation on Sinai, and especially by the Ten Commandments. But the god of Israel evidently did not expect perfection, because his Torah also gave guidelines for the ways in which his people were to deal with sin. These included repentance, restitution where possible (especially if the victim of the sinner’s wrongdoing were another person), atonement, and sacrifice.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  Were it otherwise, then an emperor's son would still have to suffer the drawbacks of a princely education, the worst possible school for a future prince. Happily, in so far as our State has been able to formulate a rule for imperial succession, that rule has been adoption: I see there the wisdom of Rome. I know the dangers of choice, and its possible errors; I am well aware, too, that blindness is not reserved to paternal affections alone; but any decision in which intelligence presides, or where it at least plays a part, will always seem to me infinitely superior to the vague wishes of chance and unthinking nature. The power to the worthiest! It is good and fitting that a man who has proved his competence in handling the affairs of the world should choose his replacement, and that a decision of such grave consequence should be both his last privilege and his last service rendered to the State. But this important choice seemed to me more difficult than ever to make. I had bitterly reproached Trajan for having evaded the problem for twenty years before he resolved to adopt me, and for having decided the matter only upon his deathbed. But nearly eighteen years had passed since my accession to power and I in my turn, despite the dangers of an adventurous life, had put off till the last my choice of a successor. Hundreds of rumors were circulating, almost all of them false; countless hypotheses had been built up; but what was supposed my secret decision was only my hesitation and my doubt. All around me good functionaries abounded, but not one of them had the necessary breadth of view. Forty years of integrity made Marcius Turbo a likely candidate, my friend and companion of yore and my incomparable prefect of the Praetorian Guard; but he was my age, too old. Julius Severus, an excellent general and a good administrator for Britain, knew little of the complex affairs of the Orient; Arrian had given proof of all the qualities expected of a statesman, but he was Greek, and the time has not yet come to place a Greek emperor over Rome and its prejudices. Servianus was living still: such longevity looked like deliberate calculation on his part, an obstinate form of waiting. He had waited for sixty years. In Nerva's time he had been both disappointed and encouraged by the adoption of Trajan; he was hoping for more, but the rise to power of this cousin incessantly occupied with the army seemed at least to assure him a considerable place in the State, perhaps second place. There, too, he was mistaken, for he had obtained only a rather empty share of honors.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  A small fleet of vessels was assembled for a voyage on the Nile with a program comprising official inspections, festivals, and banquets which promised to be as tiring as those of a season at the Palatine. I myself had organized all that: the luxury and display of a court were not without political value in this ancient country accustomed to royal pomp. But I had therefore the more desire to devote these few days which would precede the arrival of my guests to hunting. In Palmyra, Meles Agrippa had arranged some parties for us in the desert, but we had not gone far enough to see lions. Two years earlier Africa had provided the chance for some marvelous wild animal hunts; Antinous, then too young and inexperienced, had had no permission to take a significant part. In that respect I lacked courage for him in a way that I should not have dreamed for myself. Yielding, as always, I promised him now the chief role in this lion hunt. The time had passed for treating him as a child, and I was proud of his young strength. We set off for the oasis of Ammon, some days' journey from Alexandria, that same place where long ago Alexander had learned from the priests of his divine birth. The natives were reporting a particularly dangerous animal in the area which often attacked men as well as beasts. At night around the camp fire we gaily compared our exploits-to-be with those of Hercules. But the first days brought us only a few gazelles. Then we decided to take up a position, the two of us, near a sandy pool all overgrown with rushes. The lion was supposed to come there at dusk to drink. The negroes were instructed to drive him toward us with the noise of conch horns, cymbals, and cries; the rest of our escort had been left some distance away. The air was heavy and still; there was no need even to consider the direction of the wind. We could hardly have passed the tenth hour of the day, for Antinous called my attention to the red water lilies still wide open on the pond. Suddenly the royal beast appeared in a turmoil of trampled reeds and turned his handsome head toward us, one of the most godlike faces that danger can assume. Placed somewhat behind I had no time to restrain the boy; he imprudently spurred his horse and hurled first his spear and then his two javelins, with skill, but from too close range. Pierced in the neck, the animal fell to earth, lashing the ground with his tail; the whirl of sand kept us from distinguishing more than a reddening, confused mass.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  We’d call Mom and Dad out to watch us perform, doing handstands together, back to back, with both of us touching each other’s feet. “The amazing Kovics,” I’d shout to Mom. “Ladies and gentlemen, the amazing Kovics are about to perform their death-defying feats.” I can still remember both of them standing below us with pride in their eyes as we turned and balanced on those bars. I’d swing my body back and forth, back and forth, until I had swept myself into a perfect handstand, my body in a strong beautiful arc above my back yard. I’d look out around me, holding the handstand as long as I could, and swing down, dismounting with a beautiful twist, thumping onto the ground, stinging my bare feet. It was perfect, I’d say to myself, beautiful, just beautiful. I was a natural athlete, and there wasn’t much of anything I wasn’t able to do with my body back then. I was proud and confident and there was always a tremendous energetic bounce in the way I moved. I knew what it was to walk and run and I loved it. After climbing the ropes in school, I’d go out to the track. I remember the feel of the long, lightweight, fiberglass pole in my hands and the black Permatrack beneath my feet; even in the meets I’d jump without shoes. I’d start running from the very end of the long track toward the pit, with the sleek pole gently vibrating up and down in my hands and my face full of determination. I’d hit the hole with the end of my pole, swinging like a pendulum, then kick high into the air, twisting, clearing the bar by inches, falling into the pit on my back, looking at the bar still up there. As I got older Mom would kid me a lot because I wasn’t interested in girls, but I was still dreaming about them all the time. I thought constantly about Joan Marfe, the girl who’d sat next to me in sixth grade, but I was too shy to ever ask her for a date. I’d heard a priest at some kind of church conference warn us how a thing called petting could lead to sin. Kissing was all right, the priest said in a serious voice, but petting or heavy petting almost always led to sex, and sex, he said, was a mortal sin. I remember listening to him that day and promising myself and God I’d try never to get too close to a girl. I wanted to do all the things the guys in the study hall whispered about, but I didn’t want to offend God. I never even went to the senior or junior prom. I just wanted to be a great athlete and a good Catholic and maybe even a priest someday or a major leaguer.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  I said hello to everyone, including a few of the doctors and nurses who had warned me that for a high-level injury like my own—no use of my stomach muscles, and a spine that had been severed by a bullet—the odds against me walking again, much less even getting up on my feet, were astronomical. Some of them looked at me like I was crazy while still others chose to simply ignore me, turning their heads as I dragged myself past them. Of course, back then as a fiercely determined, twenty-one-year-old former Marine Corps sergeant just back from a war and a former high school athlete, I believed I could accomplish anything I set out to do. As far as I was concerned, like Jafu, nothing was impossible. I remember telling Jimmy Ford several weeks later that the only way I was going to leave the hospital was on my feet. “I’m going to walk out of this place, Jimmy, if it’s the last thing I do!” By late November of 1968, having been in the hospital a little over eleven months and my rehab now complete, I was finally ready to be released. I’ll always remember that last day at the hospital: Dick and Jimmy helping me put on my braces one last time, awkwardly dragging my body with my crutches out of the ADL room, Dick spotting me all the way across the hall and into the elevator where we rode down to the ground floor. “You can do it, Ronnie! You can do it. Careful, Ronnie. Careful now!” I had only a little farther to go before I reached the SCI parking lot where my brand-new hand-controlled Oldsmobile was parked. I struggled, dragging myself across the gravel lot, growing more and more determined—doing my best not to fall . . . trying not to lose my balance. “A little bit farther. A little bit farther! Keep going, Ronnie! Almost there, Ronnie!” shouted Dick. “Only a little more to go.” When we finally reached the car I leaned forward, still balancing myself on the crutches, and unlocked the door, and after opening it slowly I spun around, swinging myself into the seat. “I did it, Dick!” I shouted. “I told you I was going to walk out of this place.” I had triumphed. I had done it. After returning home to Massapequa, Long Island, I continued my rehabilitation, putting on braces every day, and just as I had dragged myself around the hospital, I now began to drag my body around the yard each day, seeing how far I could go, determined to continue my struggle to walk again. It was great to be home and as I progressed each day I would sometimes notice the neighbors staring over from their front lawns or out their windows at the neighborhood boy who had returned from the war with the terrible wound, desperately trying to walk again.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  I should have preferred to see their generosity take other forms than that of ostentation in alms, and to teach them to augment their possessions wisely in the interest of the community as they had done hitherto only for the enrichment of their children. With this intention I myself took over the direction of the imperial domains; no one has the right to treat the earth so unproductively as the miser does his pot of gold. Our merchants are sometimes our best geographers, our best astronomers, and our most learned naturalists. Our bankers number among our ablest judges of men. I made use of these special capacities, but fought with all my strength against their possibilities for encroachment. Subsidies given to shipbuilders had multiplied tenfold our trade with foreign nations; thus I succeeded in reinforcing our costly imperial fleet with but slight expense. So far as importations from the Orient and Africa are concerned, Italy might as well be an island, dependent upon grain dealers for its subsistence, since it no longer supplies itself; the only means of coping with the dangers of this situation is to treat these indispensable men of business as functionaries to be watched over closely. In recent years our older provinces have attained to a state of prosperity which can still perhaps be increased, but it is important that that prosperity should serve for all, and not alone for the bank of Herod Atticus, or for the small speculator who buys up all the oil of a Greek village. No law is too strict which makes for reduction of the countless intermediaries who swarm in our cities, an obscene, fat and paunchy race, whispering in every tavern, leaning on every counter, ready to undermine any policy which is not to their immediate advantage. In time of shortage a judicious distribution from the State granaries helps to check the scandalous inflation of prices, but I was counting most of all on the organization of the producers themselves, the vineyard owners in Gaul and the fishermen in the Black Sea (whose miserable pittance is devoured by importers of caviar and salt fish, middlemen battening on the produce of those dangerous labors). One of my best days was the one on which I persuaded a group of seamen from the Archipelago to join in a single corporation in order to deal directly with retailers in the towns. I have never felt myself more usefully employed as ruler.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  For the army, peace is too often only a period of turbulent idleness between two periods of combat: the alternative to inaction or to disorder is first, preparation for a war already determined upon, and then the war itself. I broke with these routines; my perpetual visits to the advance posts were only one means among many of maintaining that peacetime army in a state of useful activity. Everywhere, on level ground as in the mountains, on the edge of the forest and in the desert, the legions spread or concentrate their buildings, always the same, their drill fields, their barracks, constructed at Cologne to resist the snow, at Lambaesis for shelter from sand storms; likewise their storehouses, from which I ordered all useless materials sold, and their officers' clubs, over which a statue of the emperor presides. But that uniformity is no more than apparent: those interchangeable quarters house throngs of auxiliary troops who are never the same; each race contributes to the army its particular strength and its characteristic weapons, the genius of its foot soldiers, horsemen, or archers. There I found, in the rough, that diversity in unity which I sought for the empire as a whole. I authorized the use of native speech for commands, and encouraged the soldiers in their national war cries; I sanctioned unions between veterans and barbarian women, and gave legal status to their children, trying thus to mitigate the harshness of camp life, and to treat these simple and ignorant men as men. At the risk of rendering them less effectively mobile I intended to attach them to whatever territory they were expected to defend; I did not hesitate to regionalize the army. On an imperial scale I was hoping to re-establish the equivalent of the militias of the early Republic, where each man was wont to defend his field or his farm. I worked above all to develop the technical efficiency of the legions; my aim was to make use of these military centers as levers of civilization, as wedges strong enough to enter in little by little just where the more delicate instruments of civil life would have been blunted. The army was becoming a connecting link between the forest dwellers, the inhabitants of steppes and marshes, and the more refined urban populations; it offered primary schooling to the barbarians, and a school of endurance and responsibility for the cultured Greeks or our own equestrian youths accustomed to the comforts of Rome. The arduous elements of that life were known to me at first hand, as well as its easier side, with its subterfuges. I abolished special privileges, forbidding too frequent leaves for the officers and ordering the camps cleared of costly gardens, pleasure pavilions, and banquet halls.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (de Verb. Dom. Serm. 1) All these however were good shepherds, not because they shed their blood, but because they did it for the sheep. For they shed it not in pride, but in love. Should any among the heretics suffer trouble in consequence of their errors and iniquities, they forthwith boast of their martyrdom; that they may be the better able to steal under so fair a cloak: for they are in reality wolves. But not all who give their bodies to be burned, are to be thought to shed their blood for the sheep; rather against the sheep; for the Apostle saith, Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. (1 Cor. 13:3) And how hath he even the smallest charity, who does not love connexion (convictus) with Christians? to command which, our Lord did not mention many shepherds, but one, I am the good Shepherd. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lx. 5) Our Lord shews here that He did not undergo His passion unwillingly; but for the salvation of the world. He then gives the difference between the shepherd and the hireling: But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth. GREGORY. (Hom. in Evang. xiv.) Some there are who love earthly possessions more than the sheep, and do not deserve the name of a shepherd. He who feeds the Lord’s flock for the sake of temporal hire, and not for love, is an hireling, not a shepherd. An hireling is he who holds the place of shepherd, but seeketh not the gain of souls, who panteth after the good things of earth, and rejoices in the pride of station. AUGUSTINE. (de Verb. Dom. Serm. xlix) He seeketh therefore in the Church, not God, but something else. If he sought God he would be chaste; for the soul hath but one lawful husband, God. Whoever seeketh from God any thing beside God, seeketh unchastely. GREGORY. (Hom. in Evang. xiv.) But whether a man be a shepherd or an hireling, cannot be told for certain, except in a time of trial. In tranquil times, the hireling generally stands watch like the shepherd. But when the wolf comes, then every one shews with what spirit he stood watch over the flock. AUGUSTINE. (de Verb. Dom. Serm. xlix.) The wolf is the devil, and they that follow him; according to’ Matthew, Which come to you in sheeps’ clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. (Matt. 7:15)

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

  In this way it is not unlawful for religious to preach, teach, and do like things, both because they are bound neither by vow nor by precept of their rule to abstain from these things, and because they are not rendered less apt for these things by any sin committed, but on the contrary they are the more apt through having taken upon themselves the practice of holiness. For it is foolish to say that a man is rendered less fit for spiritual duties through advancing himself in holiness; and consequently it is foolish to declare that the religious state is an obstacle to the fulfilment of such like duties. This error is rejected by Pope Boniface [*Boniface IV] for the reasons given above. His words which are quoted (XVI, qu. i, can. Sunt. nonnulli) are these: “There are some who without any dogmatic proof, and with extreme daring, inspired with a zeal rather of bitterness than of love, assert that monks though they be dead to the world and live to God, are unworthy of the power of the priestly office, and that they cannot confer penance, nor christen, nor absolve in virtue of the power divinely bestowed on them in the priestly office. But they are altogether wrong.” He proves this first because it is not contrary to the rule; thus he continues: “For neither did the Blessed Benedict the saintly teacher of monks forbid this in any way,” nor is it forbidden in other rules. Secondly, he refutes the above error from the usefulness of the monks, when he adds at the end of the same chapter: “The more perfect a man is, the more effective is he in these, namely in spiritual works.” Secondly, a thing is said to be unlawful for a man, not on account of there being in him something contrary thereto, but because he lacks that which enables him to do it: thus it is unlawful for a deacon to say mass, because he is not in priestly orders; and it is unlawful for a priest to deliver judgment because he lacks the episcopal authority. Here, however, a distinction must be made. Because those things which are a matter of an order, cannot be deputed to one who has not the order, whereas matters of jurisdiction can be deputed to those who have not ordinary jurisdiction: thus the delivery of a judgment is deputed by the bishop to a simple priest. In this sense it is said to be unlawful for monks and other religious to preach, teach, and so forth, because the religious state does not give them the power to do these things. They can, however, do them if they receive orders, or ordinary jurisdiction, or if matters of jurisdiction be delegated to them.

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

  Objection 4: Further, the manifestation of Christ’s excellence is a good, not of Christ Himself, but of those who know Him. Hence it is promised as a reward to such as love Christ that He will be manifested to them, according to Jn. 14:21: “He that loveth Me, shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him and will manifest Myself to him.” Therefore Christ did not merit the manifestation of His greatness. On the contrary, The Apostle says (Phil. 2:8,9): “Becoming obedient unto death . . . For which cause God also hath exalted Him.” Therefore by obeying He merited His exaltation and thus He merited something for Himself. I answer that, To have any good thing of oneself is more excellent than to have it from another, for “what is of itself a cause is always more excellent than what is a cause through another,” as is said Phys. viii, 5. Now a thing is said to have, of itself, that of which it is to some extent the cause. But of whatever good we possess the first cause by authority is God; and in this way no creature has any good of itself, according to 1 Cor. 4:7: “What hast thou that thou hast not received?” Nevertheless, in a secondary manner anyone may be a cause, to himself, of having certain good things, inasmuch as he cooperates with God in the matter, and thus whoever has anything by his own merit has it, in a manner, of himself. Hence it is better to have a thing by merit than without merit. Now since all perfection and greatness must be attributed to Christ, consequently He must have by merit what others have by merit; unless it be of such a nature that its want would detract from Christ’s dignity and perfection more than would accrue to Him by merit. Hence He merited neither grace nor knowledge nor the beatitude of His soul, nor the Godhead, because, since merit regards only what is not yet possessed, it would be necessary that Christ should have been without these at some time; and to be without them would have diminished Christ’s dignity more than His merit would have increased it. But the glory of the body, and the like, are less than the dignity of meriting, which pertains to the virtue of charity. Hence we must say that Christ had, by merit, the glory of His body and whatever pertained to His outward excellence, as His Ascension, veneration, and the rest. And thus it is clear that He could merit for Himself.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  And so, just as naturally as in dream, I find myself once again drifting with the current, usually walking along a highway, my face set toward the sinking sun. Now all my faculties become alert. I am the most suave, silky, cunning animal—and I am at the same time what might be called a holy man. I know how to fend for myself. I know how to avoid work, how to avoid entangling relationships, how to avoid pity, sympathy, bravery, and all the other pitfalls. I stay in place or with a person just long enough to obtain what I need, and then I’m off again. I have no goal: the aimless wandering is sufficient unto itself. I am free as a bird, sure as an equilibrist. Manna falls from the sky; I have only to hold out my hands and receive. And everywhere I leave the most pleasant feeling behind me, as though, in accepting the gifts that are showered upon me, I am doing a real favor to others. Even my dirty linen is taken care of by loving hands. Because everybody loves a right-living man! Gottlieb! What a beautiful name it is! Gottlieb! I say it to myself over and over. Gottlieb Leberecht Müller! In this condition I have always fallen in with thieves and rogues and murderers, and how kind and gentle they have been with me! As though they were my brothers. And are they not, indeed? Have I not been guilty of every crime, and suffered for it? And is it not just because of my crimes that I am united so closely to my fellowman? Always, when I see a light of recognition in the other person’s eyes, I am aware of this secret bond. It is only the just whose eyes never light up. It is the just who have never known the secret of human fellowship. It is the just who are committing the crimes against man, the just who are the real monsters. It is the just who demand our fingerprints, who prove to us that we have died even when we stand before them in the flesh. It is the just who impose upon us arbitrary names, false names, who put false dates in the register and bury us alive. I prefer the thieves, the rogues, the murderers, unless I can find a man of my own stature, my own quality. I have never found such a man! I have never found a man as generous as myself, as forgiving, as tolerant, as carefree, as reckless, as clean at heart. I forgive myself for every crime I have committed. I do it in the name of humanity. I know what it means to be human, the weakness and the strength of it. I suffer from this knowledge and I revel in it also. If I had the chance to be God I would reject it. If I had the chance to be a star I would reject it.

• From Sin: The Early History of an Idea (2012)

  In Christ Jesus, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. I will not venture to speak of anything but what Christ has wrought through me, to win obedience from the gentiles by word and by deed, by the signs of powers and wonders, by the power of the holy spirit, so that from Jerusalem as far round as Illyricum I have preached the gospel of Christ fully, though trying earnestly not to preach the gospel where Christ has already been named, in order not to build on a foundation laid by someone else. (Rm 15.18–20) All of these regions, from the eastern Mediterranean to Asia Minor, have not suddenly become Christian. It is difficult, then, to know what Paul means by this statement, except perhaps that he feels crowded, and that he can be more useful in Spain. But if he is convinced, as he states in Romans, that “salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand” (13.12), what does he expect will happen to all these pagans? And what about the rest of “the Jews”? On this question Pauline scholarship has undergone a seismic shift since the 1970s. The ruling paradigm had been (and with slight modifications, alas, still is) that Paul, in becoming an apostle of Christ, repudiated temple and Torah, replaced law with grace, condemned circumcision, and conceived his gentile communities as a “new Israel” or as “the Israel of God” (Gal 6.16). Only those Jews who agreed with Paul, who likewise repudiated the law, and who also joined the new Christian movement—so goes this interpretation—would be “saved.” In this view, in other words, Christianity as a gentile religion distinct from and hostile to Judaism was already fully born in the first generation of the new movement.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  The weakness of women, like that of slaves, lies in their legal status; they take their revenge by their strength in little things, where the power which they wield is almost unlimited. I have rarely seen a household where women do not rule; I have often seen also ruling with them the steward, the cook, or the enfranchised slave. In financial matters they remain legally subject to some form of guardianship, but in practice it is otherwise. In each small shop of the Suburra it is ordinarily the poulterer's or fruiterer's wife who sits firmly ensconced in command of the counter. The wife of Attianus directed the family estate with the acumen of a true businessman. The law should differ as little as possible from accustomed practice, so I have granted women greater liberty to administer or to bequeath their fortunes, and to inherit. I have insisted that no woman should be married without her consent; this form of legalized rape is as offensive as any other. Marriage is their great venture; it is only fair that they should not engage upon it against their will. One part of our ills comes from the fact that too many men are shamefully rich and too many desperately poor. Happily in our days we tend toward a balance between these two extremes; the colossal fortunes of emperors and freedmen are things of the past: Trimalchio and Nero are dead. But everything is still to be done for the intelligent reorganization of world economy. On coming to power I renounced the voluntary contributions made by the cities to the emperor; they are only a form of theft. I advise you to refuse them in your turn. My wholesale cancellation of private debts to the State was a more hazardous measure, but there was need to start afresh after ten years of wartime financing. Our currency has been dangerously depressed for a century; it is nevertheless by the exchange rate of our gold pieces that Rome's eternity is appraised; it behooves us to give them solid weight and true value in terms of commodities. Our lands are cultivated without plan: only the more fortunate regions, like Egypt, Africa, Tuscany, and a few others, have known how to create peasant communities carefully trained in the culture of vineyards or grain. One of my chief cares has been to promote that class, and to draw instructors from it for more primitive or conservative rural populations with less skill. I have put an end to the scandal of unfilled fields neglected by great landowners too little concerned for the public good; any field not cultivated for five years' time belongs hereafter to the farmer who proposes to put it to use. It is much the same for the mines. Most of our rich men make enormous gifts to the State, and to public institutions and the emperor; many do this for their own interest, a few act unselfishly, but nearly all gain thereby in the end.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  After the failed seduction, Leucippe’s virginal resolve is steeled, and she even refuses future opportunities to sleep with Clitophon. Leucippe does not so much develop as a character, as the story itself returns to conventional order. She becomes a romantic heroine to fit. The romance builds toward the final and gravest threat to her chastity, the gruesome scene in which her master, Thersander, attempts to rape her. Although the setting is a private encounter between a master and his slave, the elements of the scene are perfectly homologous with the escapes of Anthia and Tarsia from the public brothel. This scene is extremely conscious of itself and its place in the economy of romance. The villainy of Thersander is compounded by his brash refusal to believe that Leucippe has maintained her virginity through such arduous trials; thus he refused to believe in the romance as a package of happy conceits. His unwillingness to suspend disbelief, to allow this sort of literature to exist, is for the author almost as wicked as his eagerness to rape Leucippe. Leucippe, in this scene, at last becomes fully aware of her status as a romantic heroine; she taunts Thersander with the fact that his threats will only bestow greater glory on her, which would be a strange thing for a slave to say, after all, unless she knew she was a romantic heroine. She warns Thersander that her eleutheria, her freedom, will protect her. Achilles has contrived a brilliant scene in which eleutheria refers precisely to the heroine’s objective status rather than to her autonomy. For no coherent reason whatsoever, this claim deters Thersander from his malicious designs. Or rather, for no reason other than the bare logic of the romantic genre itself, in which the honorable protagonist will remain inviolate, does she retain her purity. Whereas Thersander refuses to believe in the rules of romance, Achilles Tatius asks the reader to believe solely out of convention rather than narrative plausibility. Leucippe’s mēchanē, her device of escape, is simultaneously the least convincing, and the most self-aware, of any in the genre.20

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I couldn’t feature myself sinking a last-second clincher from the key, as Elgin Baylor did for Seattle that year in the NCAA playoffs against San Francisco. Ditto school politics; the unending compulsion to test one’s own popularity was baffling to me. These were not ideas I had of myself, and I did not propose to urge them on anyone else. I declined to say I was a football star, but I did invent a swimming team for Concrete High. The coach wrote a fine letter for me, and so did my teachers and the principal. They didn’t gush. They wrote plainly about a gifted, upright boy who had already in his own quiet way exhausted the resources of his school and community. They had done what they could for him. Now they hoped that others would carry on the good work. I wrote without heat or hyperbole, in the words my teachers would have used if they had known me as I knew myself. These were their letters. And on the boy who lived in their letters, the splendid phantom who carried all my hopes, it seemed to me I saw, at last, my own face. Arthur and I had fallen into a sharp way of talking to each other. It was supposed to be banter, but it turned easily cruel and sometimes led to shoving matches, grunting, scuffling affairs during which we smiled fixedly to show how little of our strength we were using. We started doing this after school one day while we were at the bus stop. It would have played itself out as usual except that some other boys took an interest and began shouting encouragement. This in turn attracted the attention of Mr. Mitchell, who ran across the street yelling, “Break it up! Break it up!” He came between us and held us apart as if we were slavering to get at each other. “Okay,” he said, “what’s the problem here?” Neither of us answered. I knew exactly what was going to happen, and that nothing I could say would change it. “You don’t fight on school property,” Mr. Mitchell told us. “If you’ve got a grudge, I’ve got the place to work it out.” He took out his notebook, wrote down our names, and congratulated us on volunteering for the smoker. MR. MITCHELL HAD started the smokers some years back to showcase the boxing talent of a few boys, and his own talent as their coach, but since then they had become big business. The tickets cost three dollars and sold out in a matter of days. This didn’t happen because the quality of the fights got better, but because they got worse. Nobody wanted to see artful flyweights dance up and down, moving their shoulders prettily while darting in for another scientific love tap. They wanted to see slope-shouldered bruisers stand toe to toe and pound each other into goulash. They wanted to see blood. They wanted to see pain. Mr.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I’d spent too much time goofing off with the wrong boys. I’d forgotten to check for the tongue during artificial respiration. Why couldn’t I remember that? Check for the goddam tongue! I could work on some poor drowned sonofabitch till the cows came home but it wasn’t going to do squat for him if he’d swallowed his tongue. Was that so hard to remember? And I would say No, next time I’d remember, but the truth was I hadn’t forgotten at all, I just didn’t want to put my fingers in some kid’s mouth after he’d been eating peanut butter and crackers. If I ever came across an actual drowned person I would do everything I was supposed to do, even the business with the tongue; I just couldn’t perform solemn and efficient resuscitation upon the body of a boy who was whispering that his pud was waterlogged and in need of a big squeeze. But I liked being a Scout. I was stirred by the elevated diction in which we swore our fealty to the chaste chivalric fantasies of Lord Baden-Powell. My uniform, baggy and barren though it was, made me feel like a soldier. I became a serious student of the ranks and honors available to the ambitious, and made up calenders of deadlines by which I planned my rise from Tenderfoot to Eagle. I developed a headwaiter’s eye; when we met with other troops to compete at Scout skills I could read their uniforms at a glance and know exactly who was who. The main purpose of scouting as I understood it was to accumulate symbols that would compel respect, or at least civility, from those who shared them and envy from those who did not. Conspicuous deeds of patriotism and piety, rope craft, water wisdom, fire wizardry, first-aid, all the arts of forest and mountain and stream, seemed to me just different ways of getting badges. Dwight gave me Skipper’s old Scout manual, Handbook for Boys , outdated even when Skipper had it, a 1942 edition full of pictures of “Fighting Scouts” keeping a lookout for Nazi subs and Jap bombers. I read the Handbook almost every night, cruising for easy merit badges like Indian Lore, Bookbinding, Reptile Study, and Personal Health (“Show proper method of brushing teeth and discuss the importance of dental care. . . .”). The merit-badge index was followed by advertisements for official Scout gear, and then a list of The Firms That Make the Things You Want, among them Coca-Cola, Eastman Kodak, Evinrude and Nestle’s (“The Boy Scout Emergency Ration”), and finally by a section called Where to Go to School. The schools were mostly military academies with sonorous double-barreled names. Carson Long. Morgan Park. Cochran-Bryan. Valley Forge. Castle Heights. I liked reading all these advertisements. They were a natural part of the Handbook , in whose pages the Scout Spirit and the spirit of commerce mingled freely, and often indistinguishably.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  Kovic—” he was looking at his father now—“this kid of yours sure has a lot of guts.” “We’re really proud of him,” said the heavy guy. “The whole town’s proud of him and what he did,” said the tall commander, smiling again. “He’s sacrificed a lot,” said the heavy guy, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “And we’re gonna make certain,” the tall commander said, “we’re gonna make certain that his sacrifice and any of the others weren’t in vain. We’re still in that war to win,” he said, looking at the boy’s father. His father nodded his head up and down, showing the commander he understood. It was time to go. The heavy guy had grabbed the back handles of the chair. Acting very confident, he reminded the boy that he had worked in the naval hospital. The boy said goodbye to his mom and dad, and the heavy guy eased the wheelchair down the long wooden ramp to the sidewalk in front of the house. “I’ve been pushin’ you boys around for almost two years now,” he said. The boy listened as the heavy guy and the commander stood for a moment in the front yard trying to figure out how they were going to get him into the back seat of the Cadillac convertible. “You’re goin’ in style today,” shouted the commander. “Nothing but the best,” said the heavy guy. “I haven’t learned how to . . .” “We know, we understand,” said the commander. And before he could say another word, the heavy guy who had worked at the hospital lifted him out of the chair in one smooth motion. Opening the door with a kick of his foot, he carefully placed him in the back seat of the big open car. “All right, Mr. Grand Marshal.” The heavy guy patted him on the shoulder, then jumped into the car with the commander, beeping the horn all the way down Toronto Avenue. “We’re goin’ over to Eddie Dugan’s house,” said the commander, turning his head. “Ya know Eddie?” He was talking very fast now. “Good boy,” said the commander. “Lost both legs like you. Got plastic ones. Doin’ great, isn’t he?” He jabbed the heavy man with his fist. “Got a lot of guts that kid Eddie Dugan,” the heavy man said. “I remember him . . .” The commander was turning the corner now, driving slowly down the street. “Yeah, I remember Eddie way back when he was . . . when he was playin’ on the Little Leagues. And as God is my witness,” said the commander, turning his head back toward him again, “as God is my witness, I seen Eddie hit a home run on his birthday. He was nine or ten, something like that back then.” The commander was laughing now. “I was coaching with his dad and it was Eddie’s birthday. A lot of you guys got messed up over there.” He was still talking very fast. “Remember Clasternack?