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 90 of 174 · 20 per page

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  So I was proud of Beth standing there in the manicured garden of Adams House, wearing her broad white Disinvestment banner across her black commencement gown, but I was also very scared for her. Out there can be even more difficult, although now she knows at least that she can and did survive Harvard. And with her own style unimpaired. I embarrassed myself because I kept trying to find secret places to cry in, but it was still a very emotionally fulfilling occasion. I feel she’s on her way now in a specific sense that must leave me behind, and that is both sad and very reassuring to me. I am convinced that Beth has the stuff—the emotional and psychic wherewithal to do whatever she needs to do for her living, and I have given her the best I have to offer. I remember writing “What My Child Learns of the Sea” when she was three months old, and it’s both terrifying and wonderful to see it all coming true. I bless the goddess that I am still here to see it. I tremble for her, for them all, because of the world we are giving them and all the work still to be done, and the gnawing question of will there be enough time? But I celebrate her, too, another one of those fine, strong, young Black women moving out to war, outrageous and resilient, plucky and beautiful. I’m proud of her, and I’m proud of having seen her this far. It’s a relief for me to know that whatever happens with my health now, and no matter how short my life may be, she is essentially on her way in the world, and next year Jonathan will be stepping out with his fine self, too. I look at them and they make my heart sing. Frances and I have done good work. August 10, 1985 Melbourne, Australia A group of white Australian women writers invited me to give the keynote address on “The Language of Difference” at a women’s writing conference held in Melbourne as part of the 150-year celebration of the founding of the state of Victoria. These are my remarks: I am here upon your invitation, a Black African-American woman speaking of the language of difference. We come together in this place on the 150th anniversary of the state of Victoria, an Australian state built upon racism, destruction, and a borrowed sameness. We were never meant to speak together at all. I have struggled for many weeks to find your part in me, to see what we could share that would have meaning for us all. When language becomes most similar, it becomes most dangerous, for then differences may pass unremarked.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I don’t expect to be believed; but nevertheless I am telling the bare truth when I say that in my impersonation of “Shylock” I brought in the very piece of “business” that made Henry Irving’s “Shylock” fifteen years later, “ever memorable”, according to the papers. When at the end, baffled and beaten, Shylock gives in: “I pray you, give me leave to go from hence, I am not well: send the deed after me, And I will sign it,” the Duke says, “Get thee gone, but do it,” and Gratiano insults the Jew—the only occasion, I think, when Shakespeare allows the beaten to be insulted by a gentleman. On my way to the door as Shylock, I stopped, bent low before the Duke’s dismissal; but at Gratiano’s insult, I turned slowly round, while drawing myself up to my full height and scanning him from head to foot. Irving used to return all across the stage and folding his arms on his breast look down on him with measureless contempt. When fifteen years later Irving, at the Garrick Club one night after supper, asked me what I thought of this new “business”; I replied that if Shylock had done what he did, Gratiano would probably have spat in his face and then kicked him off the stage. Shylock complains that the Christians spat upon his gaberdine. My boyish, romantic reading of the part, however, was essentially the same as Irving’s, and Irving’s reading was cheered in London to the echo because it was a rehabilitation of the Jew, and the Jew rules the roost today in all the cities of Europe. At my first words I could feel the younger members of the audience look about as if to see if such reciting as mine was proper and permitted; then one after the other gave in to the flow and flood of passion. When I had finished everyone cheered, Whalley and Lady W… enthusiastically, and to my delight, Lucille as well. After the rehearsal, everyone crowded about me: “Where did you learn?” “Who taught you?” At length Lucille came. “I knew you were someone”, she said in her pretty way, “quelqu’un”, “but it was extraordinary! You’ll be a great actor, I’m sure.” “And yet you deny me a kiss”, I whispered, taking care no one should hear. “I deny you nothing”, she replied, turning away, leaving me transfixed with hope and assurance of delight. “Nothing”, I said to myself, “nothing means everything”; a thousand times I said it over to myself in an ecstasy. That was my first happy night in England. Mr. Whalley congratulated me and introduced me to his daughter who praised me enthusiastically, and best of all the Doctor said, “We must make you Stage Manager, Harris, and I hope you’ll put some of your fire into the other actors.”

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

  The middle class has no meaningful presence in the book: all that distinguishes the Pomerleaus from the Beans is Gram’s religious discipline and the fact that Earlene’s dad possesses artisan skills. Class is vividly shown when Earlene’s father insists on patrolling the driveway dividing the two properties. He commands Earlene, “Don’t go over on the Beans’ side of the right-of-way. Not ever!” But of course she does. He loses his daughter to the other side. 9 Chute’s reception as a writer was often conflated with the life she led. With some condescension, she was praised for her “apparent ignorance of literary tradition,” which magically preserved a “vigorous originality.” Though compared to Faulkner, she had not read a single one of his novels until after reviewers noted the similarity between her Beans of Egypt and the Mississippian’s work. A reviewer for Newsweek saw her characters as “candidates for compulsory sterilization,” where “malevolent infants of doubtful paternity litter the floor.” In interviews, Chute talked about her impoverished past, and insisted that she retained a personal bond with “my people.” She explained, “Your material is what you live.” 10 Her husband, Michael, an illiterate laborer, was a conduit to “her people.” The stories he told of rural characters influenced her writing. She herself had worked on a potato farm, in chicken processing, and in a shoe factory. Growing up in a working-class neighborhood in a suburb of Portland, she dropped out of high school, later taking classes at the University of Southern Maine. Her father was from North Carolina, which gave her southern roots. All of this contributed to the deeply political underpinnings of her books. She rejected the idea that anyone could escape the cycle of poverty—not if it meant leaving one’s “homeland,” “family,” and “roots.” The tribal nature of poor whites was their strength. The sense of place and of land was their only ballast. 11 Over the next fifteen years, Chute’s politics sharpened. In 1985, she did not call herself a redneck, but by 2000 she did. She lived off the grid, without modern plumbing, and until 2002 without a computer; she continued to wear work boots and bandanas. By now, “redneck” was a symbol of working-class populism for Chute. She organized her own Maine militia group, supported gun rights, and became an outspoken critic of corporate power. There was, she wrote in a postscript to the revised version of The Beans of Egypt in 1995, a “dangerous chasm in the classes [that] is alive and well in the United States of America.” The Beans were no longer ordinary people trying to survive; they were symbols of an approaching class war and a “crumbling” American dream.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  When Yoli [Yolanda Rios] and I cooked curried chicken and beans and rice and took our extra blankets and pillows up the hill to the striking students occupying buildings at City College in 1969, demanding open admissions and the right to an education, I was a Black Lesbian. When I walked through the midnight hallways of Lehman College that same year, carrying Midol and Kotex pads for the young Black radical women taking part in the action, and we tried to persuade them that their place in the revolution was not ten paces behind Black men, that spreading their legs to the guys on the tables in the cafeteria was not a revolutionary act no matter what the brothers said, I was a Black Lesbian. When I picketed for welfare mothers’ rights, and against the enforced sterilization of young Black girls, when I fought institutionalized racism in the New York City schools, I was a Black Lesbian. But you did not know it because we did not identify ourselves, so now you can say that Black Lesbians and Gay men have nothing to do with the struggles of the Black Nation. And I am not alone. When you read the words of Langston Hughes you are reading the words of a Black Gay man. When you read the words of Alice Dunbar-Nelson and Angelina Weld Grimké, poets of the Harlem Renaissance, you are reading the words of Black Lesbians. When you listen to the life-affirming voices of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, you are hearing Black Lesbian women. When you see the plays and read the words of Lorraine Hansberry, you are reading the words of a woman who loved women deeply. Today, Lesbians and Gay men are some of the most active and engaged members of Art Against Apartheid, a group which is making visible and immediate our cultural responsibilities against the tragedy of South Africa. We have organizations such as the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, Dykes Against Racism Everywhere, and Men of All Colors Together, all of which are committed to and engaged in antiracist activity. Homophobia and heterosexism mean you allow yourselves to be robbed of the sisterhood and strength of Black Lesbian women because you are afraid of being called a Lesbian yourself. Yet we share so many concerns as Black women, so much work to be done. The urgency of the destruction of our Black children and the theft of young Black minds are joint urgencies. Black children shot down or doped up on the streets of our cities are priorities for all of us. The fact of Black women’s blood flowing with grim regularity in the streets and living rooms of Black communities is not a Black Lesbian rumor.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I wrote to Taine at once, telling him of the position and my illness and asking him to send me a letter of recommendation if he thought I was fit. By return of post I got a letter from him recommending me in the warmest way. This letter I sent on to Dr. Bigge, the Headmaster, together with one from Professor Smith of Lawrence and Dr. Bigge answered by asking me to come to Brighton to see him. Within twenty-four hours I went and was accepted forthwith, though he thought I looked too young to keep discipline. He soon realised that his fears were merely imaginary: I could have kept order in a cage of hyenas. A long book would not exhaust my year as a Master in Brighton College; but only two or three happenings require notice here as affecting my character and its growth. First of all, I found in every class of thirty lads, five or six of real ability, and in the whole school three or four of astonishing minds, well graced, too in manners and spirit. But six out of ten were both stupid and obstinate and these I left wholly to their own devices. Dr. Bigge warned me by a report of my work exhibited on the notice-board of the Sixth Form that while some of my scholars displayed great improvement, the vast majority showed none at all. I went to see him immediately and handed him my written resignation to take place at any moment he pleased. “I cannot bother with the fools who don’t even wish to learn”, I said, “but I’ll do anything for the others.” Most of the abler boys liked me, I believe, and a little characteristic incident came to help me. There was a Form-master named Wolverton, an Oxford man and son of a well-known Archdeacon, who sometimes went out with me to the theatre or the roller-skating rink in West Street. One night at the rink he drew my attention to a youth in a straw hat going out accompanied by a woman. “Look at that”, said Wolverton, “there goes So and So in our colors and with a woman! Did you see him?” “I didn’t pay much attention”, I replied, “but surely there’s nothing unusual in a Sixth Form boy trying his wings outside the nest.” At the next Masters’ Meeting, to my horror, Wolverton related the circumstance and ended up by declaring that unless the boy could give the name of the woman, he should be expelled. He called upon me as a witness to the fact. I got up at once and said that I was far too shortsighted to distinguish the boy at half the distance and I refused to be used in the matter in any way.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  In 1895 he had been made Junior Gentleman of the Chamber. From 1896 to 1904 he lectured on criminal law at the Imperial School of Jurisprudence (Pravovedenie) in St. Petersburg. Gentlemen of the Chamber were supposed to ask permission of the “Court Minister” before performing a public act. This permission my father did not ask, naturally, when publishing in the review Pravo his celebrated article “The Blood Bath of Kishinev” in which he condemned the part played by the police in promoting the Kishinev pogrom of 1903. By imperial decree he was deprived of his court title in January 1905, after which he severed all connection with the Tsar’s government and resolutely plunged into antidespotic politics, while continuing his juristic labors. From 1905 to 1915 he was president of the Russian section of the International Criminology Association and at conferences in Holland amused himself and amazed his audience by orally translating, when needed, Russian and English speeches into German and French and vice-versa. He was eloquently against capital punishment. Unswervingly he conformed to his principles in private and public matters. At an official banquet in 1904 he refused to drink the Tsar’s health. He is said to have coolly advertised in the papers his court uniform for sale. From 1906 to 1917 he co-edited with I. V. Hessen and A. I. Kaminka one of the few liberal dailies in Russia, the Rech (“Speech”) as well as the jurisprudential review Pravo. Politically he was a “Kadet,” i.e. a member of the KD (Konstitutsionno-demokraticheskaya partiya), later renamed more aptly the party of the People’s Freedom (partiya Narodnoy Svobodï). With his keen sense of humor he would have been tremendously tickled by the helpless though vicious hash Soviet lexicographers have made of his opinions and achievements in their rare biographical comments on him. In 1906 he was elected to the First Russian Parliament (Pervaya Duma), a humane and heroic institution, predominantly liberal (but which ignorant foreign publicists, infected by Soviet propaganda, often confuse with the ancient “boyar dumas”!). There he made several splendid speeches with nationwide repercussions. When less than a year later the Tsar dissolved the Duma, a number of members, including my father (who, as a photograph taken at the Finland Station shows, carried his railway ticket tucked under the band of his hat), repaired to Vyborg for an illegal session. In May 1908, he began a prison term of three months in somewhat belated punishment for the revolutionary manifesto he and his group had issued at Vyborg. “Did V. get any ‘Egerias’ [Speckled Woods] this summer?” he asks in one of his secret notes from prison, which, through a bribed guard, and a faithful friend (Kaminka), were transmitted to my mother at Vyra.

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

  They were stubbornly and unalterably Roman and would never have dreamt of becoming assimilated to the people among whom they were set. We can hear the Roman pride breathing through the charge against Paul and Silas in Acts 16:20-1: `These men are Jews, and they are trying to teach and to introduce laws and customs which it is not right for us to observe -for we are Romans.' `You are a colony of heaven' (Authorized Version), Paul wrote to the Philippian church (3:20). Just as the Roman colonists never forgot in any environment that they were Romans, so the Philippians must never forget in any society that they were Christians. Nowhere were people prouder of being Roman citizens than in these colonies; and Philippi was one such colony. Paul and Philippi It was on the second missionary journey, about the year AD 52, that Paul first came to Philippi. Urged on by the vision of the man of Macedonia with his appeal to come over and help them (cf. Acts 16:6-io), Paul had sailed from Alexandrian Troas in Asia Minor. He had landed at Neapolis in Europe, and made his way from there to Philippi. The story of Paul's stay in Philippi is told in Acts 16; and an interesting story it is. It centres round three people - Lydia, the seller of purple; the demented slave girl, used by her masters to tell fortunes; and the Roman jailer. It is an extraordinary cross-section of ancient life. These three people were of different nationalities. Lydia was from Asia, and her name may well be not a proper name at all but simply `the Lydian lady'. The slave girl was a native Greek. The jailer was a Roman citizen. The whole empire was being gathered into the Christian Church. But not only were these three individuals of different nationalities; they came from very different levels of society. Lydia was a dealer in purple, one of the most costly substances in the ancient world, and was the equivalent of a merchant prince. The girl was a slave and, therefore, in the eyes of the law not a person at all, but a living tool. The jailer was a Roman citizen, a member of the sturdy Roman middle class, from which the civil service was drawn. In these three, the top, the bottom and the middle of society are all represented. No chapter in the Bible shows so well the all-embracing faith which Jesus Christ brought to men and women. Persecution Paul had to leave Philippi after a storm of persecution and an illegal imprisonment. That persecution was inherited by the Philippian church.

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

  From their own point of view, they were right. In Acts 1:21-2, we have the basic definition of an apostle. Judas the traitor had committed suicide; it was necessary to fill the gap made in the apostolic band. The one to be chosen is described as someone who must be `one of the men who have accompanied us throughout the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us' and `a witness with us to his resurrection'. To be an apostle, it was necessary to have kept company with Jesus during his earthly life and to have witnessed his resurrection. That qualification Paul obviously did not fulfil. Further, not so very long ago, he had been the chief persecutor of the Christian Church. In the very first verse of the letter, Paul answers that challenge. Proudly, he insists that his apostleship is from no human source and that no human hand ordained him to that office, but that he received his call direct from God. Others might have the qualifications demanded when the first vacancy in the apostolic band was filled; but he had a unique qualification - he had met Christ face to face on the Damascus road. Independence and Agreement Further, Paul insists that for his message he was dependent on no one. That is why in chapters 1-2 he carefully details his visits to Jerusalem. He is insisting that he is not preaching some second-hand message which he received from a human source; he is preaching a message which he received direct from Christ. But Paul was no anarchist. He insisted that, although the message he received came to him in a unique and personal way, it had received the full approval of those who were the acknowledged leaders of the Christian Church (2:6-io). The gospel he preached came direct from God to him; but it was a gospel in full agreement with the faith delivered to the Church. The Judaizers

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  And then, I wound up: “this common sense program won’t please your Senators or your Congressmen who prefer cheap claptrap to thought, or your superfine Professors who believe the war of classes is ‘a mere arithmetical problem’ (and I imitated the Professor’s thin voice), but it may nevertheless be accepted by the American farmer tired of being milked by the Yankee manufacturer and it should stand as the first chapter in the new Granger gospel.” I bowed to the Mayor and turned away but the audience broke into cheers and Senator Ingalls came over and shook my hand saying he hoped to know me better and the cheering went on till I had gotten back to my place and resumed my seat. A few minutes later and I was touched on the back by Professor Smith. As I turned round he said smiling “you gave me a good lesson: I’ll never make a public speaker and what I said doubtless sounded inconsequent and absurd; but if you’d have a talk with me, I think I could convince you that my theory will hold water.” “I’ve no doubt you could,” I broke in, heartily ashamed of having made fun of a man I didn’t know; “I didn’t grasp your meaning but I’d be glad to have a talk with you.” “Are you free tonight?” he went on: I nodded: “Then come with me to my rooms. These ladies live out of town and we’ll put them in their buggy and then be free. This is Mrs.… he added presenting me to the stouter lady and this, her sister, Miss Stevens.” I bowed and out we went, I keeping myself resolutely in the background till the sisters had driven away: then we set off together to Professor Smith’s rooms, for our talk. If I could give a complete account of that talk, this poor page would glow with wonder and admiration all merged in loving reverence. We talked or rather Smith talked for I soon found he knew infinitely more than I did, was able indeed to label my creed as that of Mill, “a bourgeois English economist” he called him with smiling disdain. Ever memorable to me, sacred indeed, that first talk with the man who was destined to reshape my life and inspire it with some of his own high purpose. He introduced me to the communism of Marx and Engels and easily convinced me that land and its products, coal and oil, should belong to the whole community which should also manage all industries for the public benefit.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  We are the hyphenated people of the diaspora whose self-defined identities are no longer shameful secrets in the countries of our origin, but rather declarations of strength and solidarity. We are an increasingly united front from which the world has not yet heard. June 1, 1984 Berlin My classes are exciting and exhausting. Black women are hearing about them and their number is increasing. I can’t eat cooked food and I am getting sicker. My liver is so swollen I can feel it under my ribs. I’ve lost almost fifty pounds. That’s a switch, worrying about losing weight. My friend Dagmar, who teaches here, has given me the name of a homeopathic doctor specializing in the treatment of cancer, and I’ve made an appointment to see her when I come back from the feminist book fair in London next week. She’s an anthroposophic doctor, and they believe in surgery only as a last resort. In spite of all this, I’m doing good work here. I’m certainly enjoying life in Berlin, sick or not. The city itself is very different from what I’d expected. It is lively and beautiful, but its past is never very far away, at least not for me. The silence about Jews is absolutely deafening, chilling. There is only one memorial in the whole city and it is to the Resistance. At the entrance is a huge grey urn with the sign, “This urn contains earth from German concentration camps.” It is such a euphemistic evasion of responsibility and an invitation to amnesia for the children that it’s no wonder my students act like Nazism was a bad dream not to be remembered. There is a lot of networking going on here among women, collectives, and work enterprises as well as political initiatives, and a very active women’s cultural scene. I may be too thin, but I can still dance! June 7, 1984 Berlin Dr. Rosenberg agrees with my decision not to have a biopsy, but she has said I must do something quickly to strengthen my bodily defenses. She’s recommended I begin Iscador injections three times weekly. Iscador is a biological made from mistletoe which strengthens the natural immune system, and works against the growth of malignant cells. I’ve started the injections, along with two other herbals that stimulate liver function. I feel less weak. I am listening to what fear teaches. I will never be gone. I am a scar, a report from the front lines, a talisman, a resurrection. A rough place on the chin of complacency. “What are you getting so upset about, anyway?” a student asked in class. “You’re not Jewish!” So what if I am afraid? Of stepping out into the morning? Of dying?

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Strangely enough, at that time the idea was generally accepted that a man or woman could only live three days without food. It was years before Dr. Tanner showed the world that a man could fast for forty days or more. Everyone I met acted as if he believed that if he were fully three days without food, he must die incontinently. I laughed at the idea which seemed to me absurd, but so strong was the universal opinion and the influence of the herd-sentiment, that on the third day I too felt particularly empty and thought I had better take my place in the bread line. There were perhaps five thousand in front of me and there were soon fifty or sixty thousand behind me. We were five deep moving to the depot where the bread trains were discharging, one after the other. When I got pretty close to the food wagons, I noticed that the food supply was coming to an end, and next moment I noticed something else. Again and again women and girls came into our bread line and walked through the lines of waiting men, who, mark you, really believed they were going to die that night if they could not get food, but instead of objecting they one and all made way for the women and girls and encouraged them: “Go right on, Madam, take all you want:” “This way, Missee, you won’t be able to carry much, I’m afraid”;—proof on proof, it seemed to me, of courage, good humor and high self-abnegation. I went into that bread line an Irish boy and came out of it a proud American, but I did not get any bread that night or the next. In fact, my first meal was made when I ran across Reece on the Friday or Saturday after: Reece, as usual, had fallen on his feet and found a hotel where they had provisions—though at famine prices. He insisted that I should come with him and soon got me my first meal. In return, I told him and Ford of the cattle I had saved. They were, of course, delighted and determined next day to come out and retrieve them. “One thing is certain,” said Ford, “six hundred head of cattle are worth as much today in Chicago as fifteen hundred head were worth before the fire, so we hain’t lost much.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Why?” he asked, “why!” I only just restrained myself in time or I’d have given him the true reason. “You’ll come much nearer winning the Scholarship”, he said at length, “than any of them guesses.” After the “Exams” came the athletic games, much more interesting than the beastly lessons. I won two first prizes and Jones four, but I gained fifteen “seconds”, a record, I believe, for according to my age I was still in the Lower School. I was fully aware of the secret of my success and strange to say, it did not increase but rather diminished my conceit. I won, not through natural advantages but by will-power and practice. I should have been much prouder had I succeeded through natural gifts. For instance, there was a boy named Reggie Miller, who at sixteen was five feet ten in height, while I was still under five feet: do what I would, he could jump higher than I could, though he only jumped up to his chin while I could jump the bar above my head. I believed that Reggie could easily practice and then outjump me still more. I had yet to learn in life that the resolved will to succeed was more than any natural advantage. But this lesson only came to me later. From the beginning I was taking the highway to success in everything by strengthening my will even more than my body. Thus, every handicap in natural deficiency turns out to be an advantage in life to the brave soul, whereas every natural gift is surely a handicap. Demosthenes had a difficulty in his speech, practising to overcome this, made him the greatest of orators. The last day came at length and at eleven o’clock all the school and a goodly company of guests and friends gathered in the schoolroom to hear the results of the examinations and especially the award of the scholarships. Though most of the boys were early at the great blackboard where the official figures were displayed, I didn’t even go near it till one little boy told me shyly: “You’re head of your Form and sure of your remove.” I found this to be true, but wasn’t even elated. A Cambridge professor, it appeared, had come down in person to announce the result of the “Math” Scholarship.

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

  `You are a colony of heaven' (Authorized Version), Paul wrote to the Philippian church (3:20). Just as the Roman colonists never forgot in any environment that they were Romans, so the Philippians must never forget in any society that they were Christians. Nowhere were people prouder of being Roman citizens than in these colonies; and Philippi was one such colony. Paul and Philippi It was on the second missionary journey, about the year AD 52, that Paul first came to Philippi. Urged on by the vision of the man of Macedonia with his appeal to come over and help them (cf. Acts 16:6-io), Paul had sailed from Alexandrian Troas in Asia Minor. He had landed at Neapolis in Europe, and made his way from there to Philippi. The story of Paul's stay in Philippi is told in Acts 16; and an interesting story it is. It centres round three people - Lydia, the seller of purple; the demented slave girl, used by her masters to tell fortunes; and the Roman jailer. It is an extraordinary cross-section of ancient life. These three people were of different nationalities. Lydia was from Asia, and her name may well be not a proper name at all but simply `the Lydian lady'. The slave girl was a native Greek. The jailer was a Roman citizen. The whole empire was being gathered into the Christian Church. But not only were these three individuals of different nationalities; they came from very different levels of society. Lydia was a dealer in purple, one of the most costly substances in the ancient world, and was the equivalent of a merchant prince. The girl was a slave and, therefore, in the eyes of the law not a person at all, but a living tool. The jailer was a Roman citizen, a member of the sturdy Roman middle class, from which the civil service was drawn. In these three, the top, the bottom and the middle of society are all represented. No chapter in the Bible shows so well the all-embracing faith which Jesus Christ brought to men and women. Persecution Paul had to leave Philippi after a storm of persecution and an illegal imprisonment. That persecution was inherited by the Philippian church. He tells them that they have shared in his imprisonment and in his defence of the gospel (r:7). He tells them not to fear their adversaries, for they are going through what he himself has gone through and is now enduring (r:28-30). True Friendship

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  My experience with E… and Lucille made the routine of school life almost intolerable to me. I could only force myself to study by reminding myself of the necessity of winning the second prize in the Mathematical Scholarship, which would give me ten pounds, and ten pounds would take me to America. Soon after the Christmas holidays I had taken the decisive step. The examination in winter was not nearly so important as the one that ended the summer term, but it had been epoch-making to me. My punishments having compelled me to learn two or three books of Vergil by heart and whole chapters of Caesar and Livy, I had come to some knowledge of Latin: in the examination I had beaten not only all my class, but thanks to trigonometry and Latin and history, all the two next classes as well. As soon as the school reassembled I was put in the Upper Fifth. All the boys were from two to three years older than I was, and they all made cutting remarks about me to each other and avoided speaking to “Pat.” All this strengthened my resolution to get to America as soon as I could. Meanwhile I worked as I had never worked: at Latin and Greek as well as Mathematics; but chiefly at Greek, for there I was backward: by Easter I had mastered the grammar—irregular verbs and all—and was about the first in the class. My mind, too, through my religious doubts and gropings and through the reading of the thinkers had grown astonishingly: one morning I construed a piece of Latin that had puzzled the best in the class and the Doctor nodded at me approvingly. Then came the step I spoke of as decisive. The morning prayers were hardly over one bitter morning when the Doctor rose and gave out the terms of the scholarship Exam at Midsummer; the winner to get eighty pounds a year for three years at Cambridge, and the second ten pounds with which to buy books. “All boys”, he added, “who wish to go in for this scholarship will now stand up and give their names.” I thought only Gordon would stand up, but when I saw Johnson get up and Fawcett and two or three others I too got up… A sort of derisive growl went through the school; but Stackpole smiled at me and nodded his head as much as to say, “they’ll see”, and I took heart of grace and gave my name very distinctly. Somehow I felt that the step was decisive. I liked Stackpole and this term he encouraged me to come to his rooms to talk whenever I felt inclined, and as I had made up my mind to use all the half-holidays for study, this association did me a lot of good and his help was invaluable.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I soon made friends with Curtis; got into the habit of dining with him and when he found that my handwriting was very good, he gave me the day-book to keep and in a couple of months had taught me bookkeeping while entrusting me with a good deal of it. He was not lazy; but most men of forty like to have a capable assistant. By Christmas that year I was keeping all the books except the ledger and I knew, as I thought, the whole business of the hotel. The dining-room, it seemed to me was very badly managed; but as luck would have it, I was first to get control of the office. As soon as Curtis found out that I could safely be trusted to do his work, he began going out at dinner time and often stayed away the whole day. About New Year he was away for five days and confided in me when he returned, that he had been on a “bust.” He wasn’t happy with his wife, it appeared, and he used to drink to drown her temper. In February he was away for ten days; but as he had given me the key of the safe I kept everything going. One day Kendrick found me in the office working and wanted to know about Curtis: “how long had he been away!” “A day or two,” I replied. Kendrick looked at me and asked for the ledger: “it’s written right up!” he exclaimed, “did you do it?” I had to say I did; but at once I sent a bellboy for Curtis. The boy didn’t find him at his house and next day I was brought up before Mr. Cotton. I couldn’t deny that I had kept the books and Cotton soon saw that I was shielding Curtis out of loyalty. When Curtis came in next day, he gave the whole show away; he was half-drunk still and rude to boot. He had been unwell, he said; but his work was in order. He was ‘fired’ there and then by Mr. Cotton and that evening Kendrick asked me to keep things going properly till he could persuade his uncle that I was trustworthy and older than I looked. In a couple of days I saw Mr. Cotton and Mr. Kendrick together. “Can you keep the books and be night-clerk and take care of the billiard-room?” Mr. Cotton asked me sharply. “I think so” I replied, “I’ll do my best.” “Hm!” he grunted: “what pay do you think you ought to have?” “I’ll leave that to you sir,” I said, “I shall be satisfied whatever you give me.” “The devil you will,” he said grumpily, “suppose I said, keep on at your present rate?” I smiled; “O.K. Sir.”

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  The more clearly I see what I’m up against, the more able I am to fight this process going on in my body that they’re calling liver cancer. And I am determined to fight it even when I am not sure of the terms of the battle nor the face of victory. I just know I must not surrender my body to others unless I completely understand and agree with what they think should be done to it. I’ve got to look at all of my options carefully, even the ones I find distasteful. I know I can broaden the definition of winning to the point where I can’t lose. June 10, 1984 Berlin Dr. Rosenberg is honest, straightforward, and pretty discouraging. I don’t know what I’d do without Dagmar there to translate all her grim pronouncements for me. She thinks it’s liver cancer, too, but she respects my decision against surgery. I mustn’t let my unwillingness to accept this diagnosis interfere with getting help. Whatever it is, this seems to be working. We all have to die at least once. Making that death useful would be winning for me. I wasn’t supposed to exist anyway, not in any meaningful way in this fucked-up white boys’ world. I want desperately to live, and I’m ready to fight for that living even if I die shortly. Just writing those words down snaps everything I want to do into a neon clarity. This european trip and the Afro-German women, the Sister Outsider collective in Holland, Gloria’s great idea of starting an organization that can be a connection between us and South African women. For the first time I really feel that my writing has a substance and stature that will survive me. I have done good work. I see it in the letters that come to me about Sister Outsider, I see it in the use the women here give the poetry and the prose. But first and last I am a poet. I’ve worked very hard for that approach to living inside myself, and everything I do, I hope, reflects that view of life, even the ways I must move now in order to save my life. I have done good work. There is a hell of a lot more I have to do. And sitting here tonight in this lovely green park in Berlin, dusk approaching and the walking willows leaning over the edge of the pool caressing each other’s fingers, birds birds birds singing under and over the frogs, and the smell of new-mown grass enveloping my sad pen, I feel I still have enough moxie to do it all, on whatever terms I’m dealt, timely or not. Enough moxie to chew the whole world up and spit it out in bite-sized pieces, useful and warm and wet and delectable because they came out of my mouth. June 17, 1984 Berlin

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Number two”, I said to myself: “is there anything else?” “Of course”, she said, “you must say that the girl you are with, is the prettiest girl in the room or in the town, in fact is quite unlike any other girl, superior to all the rest, the only girl in the world for you. All women like to be the only girl in the world for as many men as possible.” “Number three”, I said to myself: “Don’t they like to be kissed?” I asked. “That comes afterwards”, said my sister, “lots of men begin with kissing and pawing you about before you even like them. That puts you off. Flattery first of looks and dress, then devotion and afterwards the kissing comes naturally.” “Number four!” I went over these four things again and again to myself and began trying them even on the older girls and women about me and soon found that they all had a better opinion of me almost immediately. I remember practicing my new knowledge first on the younger Miss Raleigh whom, I thought, Vernon liked. I just praised her as my sister had advised: first her eyes and hair (she had very pretty blue eyes). To my astonishment she smiled on me at once; accordingly I went on to say she was the prettiest girl in the town and suddenly she took my head in her hands and kissed me, saying “You’re a dear boy!” But my great experience was yet to come. There was a very good-looking man whom I met two or three times at parties; I think his name was Tom Connolly: I’m not certain, though I ought not to forget it; for I can see him as plainly as if he were before me now: five feet ten or eleven, very handsome with shaded violet eyes. Everybody was telling a story about him that had taken place on his visit to the Viceroy in Dublin. It appeared that the Vicereine had a very pretty French maid and Tom Connolly made up to the maid. One night the Vicereine was taken ill and sent her husband up stairs to call the maid. When the husband knocked at the maid’s door, saying that his wife wanted her, Tom Connolly replied in a strong voice: “It’s unfriendly of you to interrupt a man at such a time.” The Viceroy, of course, apologized immediately and hurried away, but like a fool he told the story to his wife who was very indignant and next day at breakfast she put an aide-de-camp on her right and Tom Connolly’s place far down the table. As usual, Connolly came in late and the moment he saw the arrangement of the places, he took it all in and went over to the aide-de-camp.

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

  Objection 11: Further, the common good is greater than the good of the individual. Now if a man die in a just war in order to save his country, an aureole is not due to him. Therefore even though he be put to death in order to keep the faith that is in himself, no aureole is due to him: and consequently the same conclusion follows as above. Objection 12: Further, all merit proceeds from the free will. Yet the Church celebrates the martyrdom of some who had not the use of the free will. Therefore they did not merit an aureole: and consequently an aureole is not due to all martyrs. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Sancta Virgin. xlvi): “No one, methinks, would dare prefer virginity to martyrdom.” Now an aureole is due to virginity, and consequently also to martyrdom. Further, the crown is due to one who has striven. But in martyrdom the strife presents a special difficulty. Therefore a special aureole is due thereto. I answer that, Just as in the spirit there is a conflict with the internal concupiscences, so is there in man a conflict with the passion that is inflicted from without. Wherefore, just as a special crown, which we call an aureole, is due to the most perfect victory whereby we triumph over the concupiscences of the flesh, in a word to virginity, so too an aureole is due to the most perfect victory that is won against external assaults. Now the most perfect victory over passion caused from without is considered from two points of view. First from the greatness of the passion. Now among all passions inflicted from without, death holds the first place, just as sexual concupiscences are chief among internal passions. Consequently, when a man conquers death and things directed to death, his is a most perfect victory. Secondly, the perfection of victory is considered from the point of view of the motive of conflict, when, to wit, a man strives for the most honorable cause; which is Christ Himself. Both these things are to be found in martyrdom, which is death suffered for Christ’s sake: for “it is not the pain but the cause that makes the martyr,” as Augustine says (Contra Crescon. iii). Consequently an aureole is due to martyrdom as well as to virginity. Reply to Objection 1: To suffer death for Christ’s sake, is absolutely speaking, a work of supererogation; since every one is not bound to confess his faith in the face of a persecutor: yet in certain cases it is necessary for salvation, when, to wit, a person is seized by a persecutor and interrogated as to his faith which he is then bound to confess. Nor does it follow that he does not merit an aureole. For an aureole is due to a work of supererogation, not as such, but as having a certain perfection. Wherefore so long as this perfection remains, even though the supererogation cease, one merits the aureole.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  As soon as I had all the facts clear, I asked the nephew to dine with me and laid the situation before him. I had only one loyalty—to my employers and the good of the ship. To my astonishment he seemed displeased at first; “more trouble,” he began, “why can’t you stick to your own job and leave the others alone? What’s in a commission after all?” When he came to understand what the commission amounted to and that he himself could do the buying in half an hour a day, he altered his tone. “What will my uncle say now?” he cried and went off to tell the owner his story. There was a tremendous row two days later for Mr. Cotton was a business man and went to the butcher we dealt with and ascertained for himself how important the ‘rake-off’ really was. When I was called into the uncle’s room Payne tried to hit me; but he found it was easier to receive than to give punches and that “the damned kid” was not a bit afraid of him. Curiously enough, I soon noticed that the “rake-off” had had the secondary result of giving us an inferior quality of meat; whenever the butcher was left with a roast he could not sell, he used to send it to us confident that Payne wouldn’t quarrel about it. The negro cook declared that the meat now was far better; all that could be desired in fact, and our customers too were not slow to show their appreciation. One other change the discharge of Payne brought about; it made me master of the dining-room. I soon picked a smart waiter and put him as chief over the rest and together we soon improved the waiting and discipline among the waiters out of all comparison. For over a year I worked eighteen hours out of the twenty four and after the first six months or so, I got one hundred and fifty dollars a month and saved practically all of it. Some experience in this long, icy-cold winter in Chicago enlarged my knowledge of American life and particularly of life on the lowest level. I had been about three months in the hotel when I went out one evening for a sharp walk, as I usually did, about seven o’clock. It was bitterly cold, a western gale raked the streets with icy teeth, the thermometer was about ten below zero. I had never imagined anything like the cold. Suddenly I was accosted by a stranger, a small man with red moustache and stubbly unshaven beard:

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  In my two years I read every book in the library, and half a dozen are still beloved by me. I profited, too, from all games and exercises. I was no good at cricket; I was shortsighted and caught some nasty knocks through an unsuspected astigmatism; but I had an extraordinary knack of bowling which, as I have stated, put me in the First Eleven. I liked football and was good at it. I took the keenest delight in every form of exercise: I could jump and run better than almost any boy of my age and in wrestling and a little later in boxing, was among the best in the school. In the gymnasium, too, I practiced assiduously; I was so eager to excel that the teacher was continually advising me to go slow. At fourteen I could pull myself up with my right hand till my chin was above the bar. In all games the English have a high ideal of fairness and courtesy. No one ever took an unfair advantage of another and courtesy was a law. If another school sent a team to play us at cricket or football, the victors always cheered the vanquished when the game was over, and it was a rule for the Captain to thank the Captain of the visitors for his kindness in coming and for the good game he had given us. This custom obtained too in the Royal Schools in Ireland that were founded for the English garrison, but I couldn’t help noting that these courtesies were not practiced in ordinary Irish schools. It was for years the only thing in which I had to admit the superiority of John Bull. The ideal of a gentleman is not a very high one. Emerson says somewhere that the evolution of the gentleman is the chief spiritual product of the last two or three centuries; but the concept, it seems to me, dwarfs the ideal. A “gentleman” to me is a thing of some parts but no magnitude: one should be a gentleman and much more: a thinker, guide or artist. English custom in the games taught me the value and need of courtesy, and athletics practiced assiduously did much to steel and strengthen my control of all my bodily desires: they gave my mind and reason the mastery of me. At the same time they taught me the laws of health and the necessity of obeying them. I found out that by drinking little at meals I could reduce my weight very quickly and was thereby enabled to jump higher than ever; but when I went on reducing I learned that there was a limit beyond which, if I persisted, I began to lose strength: athletics taught me what the French call the juste milieu, the middle path of moderation.