Realization

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  There was the house, low and long and obscure, with one light burning downstairs, in Sir Clifford's room. But which room she was in, the woman who held the other end of the frail thread which drew him so mercilessly, that he did not know. He went a little nearer, gun in hand, and stood motionless on the drive, watching the house. Perhaps even now he could find her, come at her in some way. The house was not impregnable: he was as clever as burglars are. Why not come to her? He stood motionless, waiting, while the dawn faintly and imperceptibly paled behind him. He saw the light in the house go out. But he did not see Mrs. Bolton come to the window and draw back the old curtain of dark-blue silk, and stand herself in the dark room, looking out on the half-dark of the approaching day, looking for the longed-for dawn, waiting, waiting for Clifford to be really re-assured that it was daybreak. For when he was sure of daybreak, he would sleep almost at once. She stood blind with sleep at the window, waiting. And as she stood, she started, and almost cried out. For there was a man out there on the drive, a black figure in the twilight. She woke up greyly, and watched, but without making a sound to disturb Sir Clifford. The daylight began to rustle into the world, and the dark figure seemed to go smaller and more defined. She made out the gun and gaiters and baggy jacket--it would be Oliver Mellors, the keeper. Yes, for there was the dog nosing around like a shadow, and waiting for him! And what did the man want? Did he want to rouse the house? What was he standing there for, transfixed, looking up at the house like a love-sick male dog outside the house where the bitch is! Goodness! The knowledge went through Mrs. Bolton like a shot. He was Lady Chatterley's lover! He! He! To think of it! Why, she, Ivy Bolton, had once been a tiny bit in love with him herself! When he was a lad of sixteen and she a woman of twenty-six. It was when she was studying, and he had helped her a lot with the anatomy and things she had had to learn. He'd been a clever boy, had a scholarship from Sheffield Grammar School, and learned French and things: and then after all had become an overhead blacksmith shoeing horses, because he was fond of horses, he said: but really because he was frightened to go out and face the world, only he'd never admit it. But he'd been a nice lad, a nice lad, had helped her a lot, so clever at making things clear to you. He was quite as clever as Sir Clifford: and always one for the women. More with women than men, they said.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  This chasm makes itself known to us in all kinds of ways. A little girl wanders home, at age seven, after being teased in school and asks her parents, “Are we niggers and what does this mean?” Sometimes it is subtle—the simple observation of who lives where and works what jobs and who does not. Sometimes it’s all of it at once. I have never asked how you became personally aware of the distance. Was it Mike Brown? I don’t think I want to know. But I know that it has happened to you already, that you have deduced that you are privileged and yet still different from other privileged children, because you are the bearer of a body more fragile than any other in this country. What I want you to know is that this is not your fault, even if it is ultimately your responsibility. It is your responsibility because you are surrounded by the Dreamers. It has nothing to do with how you wear your pants or how you style your hair. The breach is as intentional as policy, as intentional as the forgetting that follows. The breach allows for the efficient sorting of the plundered from the plunderers, the enslaved from the enslavers, sharecroppers from landholders, cannibals from food. Dr. Jones was reserved. She was what people once referred to as “a lady,” and in that sense reminded me of my grandmother, who was a single mother in the projects but always spoke as though she had nice things. And when Dr. Jones described her motive for escaping the dearth that marked the sharecropper life of her father and all the others around her, when she remembered herself saying, “I’m not going to live like this,” I saw the iron in her eyes, and I remembered the iron in my grandmother’s eyes. You must barely remember her by now—you were six when she died. I remember her, of course, but by the time I knew her, her exploits—how, for instance, she scrubbed white people’s floors during the day and went to school at night—were legend. But I still could feel the power and rectitude that propelled her out of the projects and into homeownership.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  MAN PROPOSES, GOD DISPOSES The case having been concluded, I had no reason for staying in Pretoria. So I went back to Durban and began to make preparations for my return home. But Abdulla Sheth was not the man to let me sail without a send-off. He gave a farewell party in my honour at Sydenham. It was proposed to spend the whole day there. Whilst I was turning over the sheets of some of the newspapers I found there, I chanced to see a paragraph in a corner of one of them under the caption ‘Indian franchise’. It was with reference to the Bill then before the House of Legislature, which sought to deprive the Indians of their right to elect members of the Natal Legislative Assembly. I was ignorant of the Bill, and so were the rest of the guests who had assembled there. I inquired of Abdulla Sheth about it. He said: ‘What can we understand in these matters? We can only understand things that affect our trade. As you know all our trade in the Orange Free State has been swept away. We agitated about it, but in vain. We are after all lame men, being unlettered. We generally take in newspapers simply to ascertain the daily market rates, etc. What can we know of legislation? Our eyes and ears are the European attorneys here.’ ‘But,’said I, ‘there are so many young Indians born and educated here, Do not they help you?’ ‘They!’ exclaimed Abdulla Sheth in despair. ‘They never care to come to us, and to tell you the truth, we care less to recognize them. Being Christians, they are under the thumb of the white clergymen, who in their turn are subject to the Government.’ This opened my eyes. I felt that this class should be claimed as our own. Was

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  BRAHMACHARYA -- I We now reach the stage in this story when I began seriously to think of taking the brahmacharya vow. I had been wedded to a monogamous ideal ever since my marriage, faithfulness to my wife being part of the love of truth. But it was in South Africa that I came to realize the importance of observing brahmacharya even with respect to my wife. I cannot definitely say what circumstance or what book it was, that set my thoughts in that direction, but I have a recollection that the predominant factor was the influence of Raychandbhai, of whom I have already written, I can still recall a conversation that I had with him. On one occasion I spoke to him in high praise of Mrs. Gladstone’s devotion to her husband. I had read some where that Mrs. Gladstone insisted on preparing tea for Mr. Gladstone even in the House of Commons, and that this had become a rule in the life of this illustrious couple, whose actions were governed by regularity. I spoke of this to the poet, and incidentally eulogized conjugal love.’Which of the two do you prize more,’ asked Raychandbhai,’the love of Mrs. Gladstone for her husband as his wife, or her devoted service irrespective of her relation to Mr. Gladstone? Supposing she had been his sister, or his devoted servant, and ministered to him with the same attention, what would you have said? Do we not have instances of such devoted sisters or servants? Supposing you had found the same loving devotion in a male servant, would you have been pleased in the same way as in Mrs. Gladstone’s case ? Just examine the view-point suggested by me.’ Raychandbhai was himself married. I have an impression that at the moment his words sounded harsh, but they gripped me irresistibly. The devotion of a servant was, I felt, a thousand times more praiseworthy than that of a wife to her husband. There was nothing surprising in the wife’s devotion to her husband, as

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  my wont Idiscussed my thoughts with my co-workers, It became my conviction that procreation and the consequent care of children were inconsistent with public serviice. I had to break up my household at Johannesburg to be able to serve during the ‘Rebellion’. Within one month of offering my services, I had to give up the house I had so carefully furnished. I took my wife and children to Phoenix and led the Indian ambulance corps attached to the Natal forces. During the difficult marches that had then to be performed, the idea flashed upon me that if I wanted to devote myself to the service of the community in this manner, I must relinquish the desire for children and wealth and live the life of a vanaprastha – of one retired from household cares. The’Rebellion’ did not occupy me for more than six weeks, but this brief period proved to be a very important epoch in my life. The importance of vows grew upon me more clearly than ever before. I realized that a vow, far from closing the door to real freedom, opened it. Up to this time I had not met with success because the will had been lacking, because I had had no faith in myself, no faith in the grace of God, and therefore, my mind had been tossed on the boisterous sea of doubt. I realized that in refusing to take a vow man was drawn into temptation, and that to be bound by a vow was like a passage from libertinism to a real monogamous marriage. ‘I believe in effort, I do not want to bind myself with vows,’ is the mentality of weakness and betrays a subtle desire for the thing to be avoided. Or where can be the difficulty in making a final decision ? I vow to flee from the serpent which I know will bite me, I do not simply make an effort to flee from him. I know that mere effort may mean certain death. Mere effort means ignorance of the certain fact that the serpent is bound to kill me. The fact, therefore, that I could rest content with an effort only, means that I have not yet clearly realized the necessity of definite action.’But supposing my views are changed in the future, how can I bind myself by a vow ? ‘ Such a doubt often deters us. But that doubt also betrays a lack of clear perception that a particular thing must be renounced. That is why Nishkulanand has sung ‘Renunciatfon without aversion is not lasting.’ Where therefore the desire is gone, a vow of renunciation is the natural and inevitable fruit. 64.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  But how? Religion could not tell me. The schools could not tell me. The streets could not help me see beyond the scramble of each day. And I was such a curious boy. I was raised that way. Your grandmother taught me to read when I was only four. She also taught me to write, by which I mean not simply organizing a set of sentences into a series of paragraphs, but organizing them as a means of investigation. When I was in trouble at school (which was quite often) she would make me write about it. The writing had to answer a series of questions: Why did I feel the need to talk at the same time as my teacher? Why did I not believe that my teacher was entitled to respect? How would I want someone to behave while I was talking? What would I do the next time I felt the urge to talk to my friends during a lesson? I have given you these same assignments. I gave them to you not because I thought they would curb your behavior—they certainly did not curb mine—but because these were the earliest acts of interrogation, of drawing myself into consciousness. Your grandmother was not teaching me how to behave in class. She was teaching me how to ruthlessly interrogate the subject that elicited the most sympathy and rationalizing—myself. Here was the lesson: I was not an innocent. My impulses were not filled with unfailing virtue. And feeling that I was as human as anyone, this must be true for other humans. If I was not innocent, then they were not innocent. Could this mix of motivation also affect the stories they tell? The cities they built? The country they claimed as given to them by God? Now the questions began burning in me. The materials for research were all around me, in the form of books assembled by your grandfather. He was then working at Howard University as a research librarian in the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, one of the largest collections of Africana in the world. Your grandfather loved books and loves them to this day, and they were all over the house, books about black people, by black people, for black people spilling off shelves and out of the living room, boxed up in the basement. Dad had been a local captain in the Black Panther Party. I read through all of Dad’s books about the Panthers and his stash of old Party newspapers. I was attracted to their guns, because the guns seemed honest. The guns seemed to address this country, which invented the streets that secured them with despotic police, in its primary language—violence. And I compared the Panthers to the heroes given to me by the schools, men and women who struck me as ridiculous and contrary to everything I knew.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Again, to his credit, the young man persisted. He did not beg to be released (though he did beg for a reprieve). He did not lose his temper or revile his tormenters. He struggled with his pain, willing (though not wise enough) to savor it. But he began to see what transcendence might be possible, what god he might someday be fit to serve. The spoiler had suddenly pulled away and stood up. His pawn had almost come, and he would not allow that, even if the boy’s cock had not been trussed up, and the orgasm would not have damaged it. The master was running his silk-clad hands over the bruised scarlet skin, murmuring like a groom soothing a jumpy horse. He had no more use for the boy, so he was tender. He could tell that Curt couldn’t take much more, and he was not interested in continuing at the present level. It would have taken days of this sort of work to make his arm just a little tired, and nowadays, exhaustion was the chief thing he got out of flogging. Normally, at this point in the scene he would offer the subject’s ass to the other master, if one were present. Most bottoms got pissy if there wasn’t some kind of sex at the end of a scene, and he personally found it distasteful. There was a limit to pretense, after all, a limit to what you could give someone who was not your heart’s desire. But the spoiler had anticipated this and deflected the invitation. “My turn,” he said, drawing a whip from his shirt. It had been wrapped around his waist, hidden until now. He had been lucky to wear it on this night’s jaunt. This occasioned some alarm on one face, some curiosity on the other. “Be my guest,” said the master, and went to hold up the wall and commune with a small, brown cigar. This was the man who had pointed the boy in his direction. Perhaps Curt had capabilities the master had not sensed. The spoiler shook out a dog quirt. It was a single length of light tan leather, plaited in David Morgan’s workshop, thirty-nine inches in length. Of that, ten inches were the cracker of braided black cord. Sweat had started to darken its handle and the inside of the wrist strap. It was a signal whip, intended to make a rhythmic noise that would set the pace for a dog team. It could also be used to alert the lead dog to change direction, or break up a fight. It was not used to punish huskies, who had such thick fur and hides that they would have simply grinned the way dogs do when people do something foolish, and continued about their noisy bad-dog business. But a boy’s skin is not nearly as thick as a wolfdog’s, as Curt was about to learn.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  HOMEWARD By now I had been three years in South Africa. I had got to know the people and they had got to know me. In 1896 I asked permission to go home for six months, for I saw that I was in for a long stay there. I had established a fairly good practice, and could see that people felt the need of my presence. So I made up my mind to go home, fetch my wife and children, and then return and settle out there. I also saw that, if I went home, I might be able to do there some public work by educating public opinion and creating more interest in the Indians of South Africa. The £ 3 tax was an open sore. There could be no peace until it was abolished. But who was to take charge of the Congress work and Education Society in my absence? I could think of two men Adamji Miyakhan and Parsi Rustomji. There were many workers now available from the commercial class. But the foremost among those who could fulfil the duties of the secretary by regular work, and who also commanded the regard of the Indian community, were these two. The secretary certainly needed a working knowledge of English. I recommended the late Adamji Miyakhan’s name to the Congress, and it approved of his appointment as secretary. Experience showed that the choice was a very happy one. Adamji Miyakhan satisfied all with his perseverance, liberality, amiability and courtesy, and proved to every one that the secretary’s work did not require a man with a barrister’s degree or high English education. About the middle of 1896 I sailed for home in the s. s. Pongola which was bound for Calcutta. There were very few passengers on board. Among them were two English oficers, with whom I came in close contact. With one of them I used to play

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Sir Malcolm decided to travel with Connie, and Duncan could come on with Hilda. The old artist always did himself well: he took berths on the Orient Express, in spite of Connie's dislike of _trains de luxe_, the atmosphere of vulgar depravity there is aboard them nowadays. However, it would make the journey to Paris shorter. Sir Malcolm was always uneasy going back to his wife. It was habit carried over from the first wife. But there would be a house-party for the grouse, and he wanted to be well ahead. Connie, sunburnt and handsome, sat in silence, forgetting all about the landscape. "A little dull for you, going back to Wragby," said her father, noticing her glumness. "I'm not sure I shall go back to Wragby," she said, with startling abruptness, looking into his eyes with her big blue eyes. His big blue eyes took on the frightened look of a man whose social conscience is not quite clear. "You mean you'll stay on in Paris a while?" "No! I mean never go back to Wragby." He was bothered by his own little problems, and sincerely hoped he was getting none of hers to shoulder. "How's that, all at once?" he asked. "I'm going to have a child." It was the first time she had uttered the words to any living soul, and it seemed to mark a cleavage in her life. "How do you know?" said her father. She smiled. "How _should_ I know!" "But not Clifford's child, of course?" "No! Another man's." She rather enjoyed tormenting him. "Do I know the man?" asked Sir Malcolm. "No! You've never seen him." There was a long pause. "And what are your plans?" "I don't know. That's the point." "No patching it up with Clifford?" "I suppose Clifford would take it," said Connie. "He told me, after last time you talked to him, he wouldn't mind if I had a child: so long as I went about it discreetly." "Only sensible thing he could say, under the circumstances. Then I suppose it'll be all right." "In what way?" said Connie, looking into her father's eyes. They were big blue eyes rather like her own, but with a certain uneasiness in them, a look sometimes of an uneasy little boy, sometimes a look of sullen selfishness, usually good-humoured and wary. "You can present Clifford with an heir to all the Chatterleys, and put another baronet in Wragby." Sir Malcolm's face smiled with a half-sensual smile. "But I don't think I want to," she said.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  importance to fasting or having only one meal a day on holidays. And if there was some occasion for penance or the like, I gladly utilized it too for the purpose of fasting. But I also saw that, the body now being drained more effectively, the food yielded greater relish and the appetite grew keener. It dawned upon me that fasting could be made as powerful a weapon of indulgence as of restraint. Many similar later experiences of mine as well as of others can be adduced as evidence of this starting fact. I wanted to improve and train my body, but as my chief object now was to achieve restraint and a conquest of the palate, I selected first one food and then another, and at the same time restricted the amount. But the relish was after me, as it were. As I gave up one thing and took up another, this latter afforded me a fresher and greater relish than its predecessor. In making these experiments I had several companions, the chief of whom was Hermann Kallenbach. I have already written about this friend in the history of Satyagraha in South Africa, and will not go over the same ground here. Mr. Kallenbach was always with me whether in fasting or in dietetic changes. I lived with him at his own place when the Satyagraha struggle was at its height. We discussed our changes in food and derived more pleasure from the new diet than from the old. Talk of this nature sounded quite pleasant in those days, and did not strike me as at all improper. Experience has taught me, however, that it was wrong to have dwelt upon the relish of food. One should eat not in order to please the palate, but just to keep the body going. When each organ of sense subserves the body and through the body the soul. Its special relish disappears, and then alone does it begin to function in the way nature intended it to do. Any number of experiments is too small and no sacrifice is too great for attaining this symphony with nature. But unfortunately the current is now-a-days flowing strongly in the opposite direction. We are not ashamed to sacrifice a multitude of other lives in decorating the perishable body and trying to prolong it existence for a few fleeting moments, with the result that we kill ourselves, both body and soul. In trying to cure one old disease. We give rise to a hundred new ones: in trying to enjoy the pleasures of sense, we lose in the end even our capacity for enjoyment. All this is passing before our very eyes, but there are none so blind as those who will not see. Having thus set forth their object and the train of ideas which led up to them, I now propose to describe the dietetic experiments at some length. 107.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  But this is where I start having trouble, Phoebe. Buildings fell. People died. You once told me I hadn’t even tried to understand. So, here I am, trying. 2.JOHN LEALOnce John Leal left Noxhurst, halfway through his last term of college, he drifted until he ended up in Yanji, China. In this city, adjacent to North Korea, he began working with an activist group that smuggled Korean refugees toward asylum in Seoul. He’d found his life’s work, he thought. Instead, he was kidnapped by North Korean agents, spirited across the border, and thrown into a prison camp outside of Pyongyang. In the stories he later told the group, he said the gulag brutalities were bad enough, but at least they’d been expected. What astonished him was the allegiance his fellow inmates showed toward the lunatic despot whose policies had installed them in their cells. They’d been jailed because, oh, they’d splashed a drop of tea on his newsprint portrait. A neighbor claimed to have overheard them whistling a South Korean pop song. Punished for absurdities, they still maintained that the beloved sovereign, a divine being, couldn’t be to blame. At first, he assumed this was lip service, the prisoners afraid to say otherwise. But then, he thought of the refugees he’d met in Yanji, how they talked of loving the god they’d fled. They attributed the regime’s troubles to anyone but the sole person in charge. A month into John Leal’s time in the gulag, prison guards held an optional foot race, the prize a framed icon of the despot. In the confusion, those who fell were trampled. One child died of a broken spine. Through howls of pain, he shouted hosannahs for his lord. They weren’t lying, the poor fools. They believed in the man as one might believe in Jesus Christ. Some people needed leading. In or out of the gulag, they craved faith. But think if the tyrant had been as upright as his disciples trusted him to be. The heights he’d have achieved, if he loved them—if, John Leal thought, until his idea began. 3.PHOEBEI hoped I’d be a piano genius, Phoebe told the group, in the first Jejah confession she tried giving. She’d have sat in the circle, holding a kidskin journal. Though I’d driven Phoebe here, I was outside, going home. It’s a mistake. I should have stayed, but I didn’t. Instead, I’ll add what details I can. The full lips, spit-polished. She licked them, tense. I’m striving to picture it: Phoebe, talking. The thin, long-fingered hands folded tight. She looked down, inhaled.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  realized that nothing but harm could result from adopting a resolution that even those who voted for it were unable to carry out. ‘Mere boycott of foreign cloth cannot satisfy us, for who knows long it will be, before we shall be able to manufacture Swadeshi cloth in sufficient quantity for our needs, and before we can bring about effective boycott of foreign cloth? We want something that will produce an immediate effect on the British. Let your boycott of foreign cloth stand, we do not mind it, but give us something quicker, and speedier in addition’- so spoke in effect Maulana Hasrat Mohani. Even as I was listening to him, I felt that something new, over and above boycott of foreign cloth, would be necessary. An immediate boycott of foreign cloth seemed to me also to be a clear impossibility at that time. I did not then know that we could, if we liked, produce enough Khadi for all our clothing requirements; this was only a later discovery. On the other hand, I knew even then that, if we depended on the mills alone for effecting the boycott of foreign cloth, we should be betrayed. I was still in the middle of this dilemma when the Maulana concluded his speech. I was handicapped for want of suitable Hind or Urdu words. This was my first occasion for delivering an argumentative speech before an audience especially composed of Musalmans of the North. I had spoken in Urdu at the Muslim League at Calcutta, but it was only for a few minutes, and the speech was intended only to be a feeling appeal to the audience. Here, on the contrary, I was faced with a critical, if not hostile, audience, to whom I had to explain and bring home my view-point. But I had cast aside all shyness. I was not there to deliver an address in the faultless, polished Urdu of the Delhi Muslims, but to place before the gathering my views in such broken Hindi as I could command. And in this I was successful. This meeting afforded me a direct proof of the fact that Hindi-Urdu alone could become the #lingua franca# of India. Had I spoken in

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Tedaldo marvelled exceedingly that any one should so resemble him as to be taken for him and was grieved for Aldobrandino's ill fortune. Then, having learned that the lady was alive and well and it being now night, he returned, full of various thoughts, to the inn and having supped with his servant, was put to sleep well nigh at the top of the house. There, what with the many thoughts that stirred him and the badness of the bed and peradventure also by reason of the supper, which had been meagre, half the night passed whilst he had not yet been able to fall asleep; wherefore, being awake, himseemed about midnight he heard folk come down into the house from the roof, and after through the chinks of the chamber-door he saw a light come up thither. Thereupon he stole softly to the door and putting his eye to the chink, fell a-spying what this might mean and saw a comely enough lass who held the light, whilst three men, who had come down from the roof, made towards her; and after some greetings had passed between them, one of them said to the girl, 'Henceforth, praised be God, we may abide secure, since we know now for certain that the death of Tedaldo Elisei hath been proved by his brethren against Aldobrandino Palermini, who hath confessed thereto, and judgment is now recorded; nevertheless, it behoveth to keep strict silence, for that, should it ever become known that it was we [who slew him], we shall be in the same danger as is Aldobrandino.' Having thus bespoken the woman, who showed herself much rejoiced thereat, they left her and going below, betook themselves to bed. Tedaldo, hearing this, fell a-considering how many and how great are the errors which may befall the minds of men, bethinking him first of his brothers who had bewept and buried a stranger in his stead and after of the innocent man accused on false suspicion and brought by untrue witness to the point of death, no less than of the blind severity of laws and rulers, who ofttimes, under cover of diligent investigation of the truth, cause, by their cruelties, prove that which is false and style themselves ministers of justice and of God, whereas indeed they are executors of iniquity and of the devil; after which he turned his thought to the deliverance of Aldobrandino and determined in himself what he should do. Accordingly, arising in the morning, he left his servant at the inn and betook himself alone, whenas it seemed to him time, to the house of his mistress, where, chancing to find the door open, he entered in and saw the lady seated, all full of tears and bitterness of soul, in a little ground floor room that was there.

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

  The influence of Le Fèvre and the study of the Bible brought him gradually to the conviction that salvation can be found only in Christ, that the word of God is the only rule of faith, and that the Roman traditions and rites are inventions of man. He was amazed that he could find in the New Testament no trace of the pope, of the hierarchy, of indulgences, of purgatory, of the mass, of seven sacraments, of sacerdotal celibacy, of the worship of Mary and the saints. Le Fèvre, being charged with heresy by the Sorbonne, retired in 1521 to his friend William Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux, who was convinced of the necessity of a reformation within the Catholic Church, without separation from Rome.342 There he translated the New Testament into French, which was published in 1523 without his name (almost simultaneously with Luther’s German New Testament.) Several of his pupils, Farel, Gérard, Roussel, Michel d’Arande, followed him to Meaux, and were authorized by Briçonnet to preach in his diocese. Margaret of Valois, sister of King Francis I. (then Duchess of Alençon, afterwards Queen of Navarre), patronized the reformers and also the freethinkers. But Farel was too radical for the mild bishop, and forbidden to preach, April 12, 1523. He went to Gap and made some converts, including four of his brothers; but the people found his doctrine "very strange," and drove him away. There was no safety for him anywhere in France, which then began seriously to persecute the Protestants. Farel fled to Basel, and was hospitably received by Oecolampadius. At his suggestion he held a public disputation in Latin on thirteen theses, in which he asserted the perfection of the Scriptures, Christian liberty, the duty of pastors to preach the Gospel, the doctrine of justification by faith, and denounced images, fasting, celibacy, and Jewish ceremonies (Feb. 23, 1524).343 The disputation was successful, and led to the conversion of the Franciscan monk Pellican, a distinguished Greek and Hebrew scholar, who afterwards became professor at Zürich. He also delivered public lectures and sermons. Oecolampadius wrote to Luther that Farel was a match for the Sorbonne.344 Erasmus, whom Farel imprudently charged with cowardice and called a Balaam, regarded him as a dangerous disturber of the peace,345 and the Council (probably at the advice of Erasmus) expelled him from the city. Farel now spent about a year in Strassburg with Bucer and Capito. Before he went there he made a brief visit to Zürich, Schaffhausen, and Constance, and became acquainted with Zwingli, Myconius, and Grebel. He had a letter of commendation to Luther from Oecolampadius, but it is not likely that he went to Wittenberg, since there is no allusion to it either in his or in Luther’s letters. At the request of Ulrich, Duke of Würtemberg, he preached in Mömpelgard (Montbéliard), and roused a fierce opposition, which forced him soon to return to Strassburg. Here he found Le Fèvre and other friends from Meaux, whom the persecution had forced to flee.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  So I ask for what reason have you sent for me?” 30 Cornelius said, “Four days ago to this hour, I was praying in my house during the ninth hour (3:00–4:00 p.m.); and a man [dressed] in bright, dazzling clothing suddenly stood before me, 31 and he said, ‘Cornelius, your prayer has been heard, and your acts of charity have been remembered before God [so that He is about to help you]. 32 ‘Therefore send word to Joppa and invite Simon, who is also called Peter, to come to you. He is staying at the house of Simon the tanner by the sea.’ 33 “So I sent for you at once, and you have been kind enough to come. Now then, we are all here present before God to listen to everything that you have been instructed by the Lord [to say].” Gentiles Hear Good News 34 Opening his mouth, Peter said: “M ost certainly I understand now that God is not one to show partiality [to people as though Gentiles were excluded from God’s blessing], 35 but in every nation the person who fears God and does what is right [by seeking Him] is acceptable and welcomed by Him. 36 “You know the message which He sent to the sons of Israel, announcing i the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all— 37 you know the things that have taken place throughout Judea, starting in Galilee after the baptism preached by John— 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with great power; and He went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, because God was with Him. [Is 61:1–3 ; Luke 4:18–21 ] 39 “We are [personally] eyewitnesses of everything that He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem [in particular]. They also put Him to death by hanging Him on a cross; 40 God raised Him [to life] on the third day and caused Him to be plainly seen, 41 not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen and designated beforehand by God, that is, to us who ate and drank together with Him after He rose from the dead. [Luke 24:42 , 43 ; John 21:12–15 ] 42 “He commanded us to preach to the people [both Jew and Gentile], and to solemnly testify that He is the One who has been appointed and ordained by God as Judge of the living and the dead. 43 “All the prophets testify about Him, that through His name everyone who believes in Him [whoever trusts in and relies on Him, accepting Him as Savior and Messiah] receives forgiveness of sins.” 44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all those who were listening to the message [confirming God’s acceptance of Gentiles].

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Sir Malcolm decided to travel with Connie, and Duncan could come on with Hilda. The old artist always did himself well: he took berths on the Orient Express, in spite of Connie's dislike of _trains de luxe_, the atmosphere of vulgar depravity there is aboard them nowadays. However, it would make the journey to Paris shorter. Sir Malcolm was always uneasy going back to his wife. It was habit carried over from the first wife. But there would be a house-party for the grouse, and he wanted to be well ahead. Connie, sunburnt and handsome, sat in silence, forgetting all about the landscape. "A little dull for you, going back to Wragby," said her father, noticing her glumness. "I'm not sure I shall go back to Wragby," she said, with startling abruptness, looking into his eyes with her big blue eyes. His big blue eyes took on the frightened look of a man whose social conscience is not quite clear. "You mean you'll stay on in Paris a while?" "No! I mean never go back to Wragby." He was bothered by his own little problems, and sincerely hoped he was getting none of hers to shoulder. "How's that, all at once?" he asked. "I'm going to have a child." It was the first time she had uttered the words to any living soul, and it seemed to mark a cleavage in her life. "How do you know?" said her father. She smiled. "How _should_ I know!" "But not Clifford's child, of course?" "No! Another man's." She rather enjoyed tormenting him. "Do I know the man?" asked Sir Malcolm. "No! You've never seen him." There was a long pause. "And what are your plans?" "I don't know. That's the point." "No patching it up with Clifford?" "I suppose Clifford would take it," said Connie. "He told me, after last time you talked to him, he wouldn't mind if I had a child: so long as I went about it discreetly." "Only sensible thing he could say, under the circumstances. Then I suppose it'll be all right." "In what way?" said Connie, looking into her father's eyes. They were big blue eyes rather like her own, but with a certain uneasiness in them, a look sometimes of an uneasy little boy, sometimes a look of sullen selfishness, usually good-humoured and wary. "You can present Clifford with an heir to all the Chatterleys, and put another baronet in Wragby." Sir Malcolm's face smiled with a half-sensual smile. "But I don't think I want to," she said.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  I watched Christina watch the video, a look of amusement playing across her face. She was twenty, though looked and sounded several years younger, and a junior at a public university on the West Coast. The walls of the room in which we sat were painted a deep purple; Indian print bedspreads were tacked to the ceilings and covered the mattress. A plate with the remains of a vegetarian burrito lay on the floor by the door. If I didn’t know better, I could’ve sworn I’d time-tripped back to 1980. Just last week, Christina told me, the residents of the house had engaged in a spirited debate (one that brought up nostalgia for my own college days) over whether women should be free to walk around topless in the common areas. “It sparked this long conversation about how women’s breasts have been objectified and sexualized by the media,” she said, “and how in our house we should be able to express our bodies and be safe.” Naturally, the decision was ultimately determined by consensus. Earnestly naked girls in cooperative student housing may seem a long way from Pam Stenzel’s chastity rants, but Christina grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado, one of the most conservative cities in America and home to so many fundamentalist Christian organizations that it has been dubbed the Evangelical Vatican. Christina herself was not raised in that tradition—she’s Catholic—but the “sex education” she received at her small parochial school was essentially identical, encapsulated by one word: don’t. Rather than a Health Class, human sexuality was covered in tenth-grade Theology. The curriculum consisted mostly of scary statistics about the inevitability of pregnancy and disease for those who engaged in premarital sex and of the perils of abortion. Students were directed to memorize Bible passages interpreted as condemning homosexuality and advocating chastity. Watching Stenzel’s videos in that class was an annual event, Christina recalled, a kind of rite of passage among her classmates, similar to the way watching gruesome films of incinerated accident victims once was for those who took Driver’s Ed. Stenzel, who is based about an hour away from Colorado Springs, even lectured in person at an assembly at Christina’s school. She was greeted with the anticipation and hoopla of a rock star. Even at the time, Christina said, she suspected Stenzel’s presentation was “biased,” and a little cheesy, but she didn’t necessarily consider it inaccurate. And she never questioned the value of remaining “pure” until marriage. On-screen, Stenzel was still talking: “Once it’s gone, it’s gone,” she warned. “It takes that long”—she snapped her fingers—“to throw it away. It takes a lot of integrity to wait.” There was more applause, and then the video ended. We were quiet for a moment. “Are you still planning to save yourself for marriage?” I asked Christina. She laughed and shook her head. “Oh, no,” she said. “It’s too late for that.” Cashing in the “V Card”

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  Afterwards Elena remembered nothing of this trip except a sensation of tremendous bodily warmth, as if she had drunk a whole bottle of the very choicest Burgundy, and a feeling of great anger at the discovery of a secret which it seemed to her was criminally withheld from all people. She discovered first of all that she had never known the sensations described by Lawrence, and second, that this was the nature of her hunger. But there was another truth she was now fully aware of. Something had created in her a state of perpetual defense against the very possibilities of experience, an urge for flight which took her away from the scenes of pleasure and expansion. She had stood many times on the very edge, and then had run away. She herself was to blame for what she had lost, ignored. It was the submerged woman of Lawrence’s book that lay coiled within her, at last exposed, sensitized, prepared as if by a multitude of caresses for the arrival of someone. A new woman emerged from the train at Caux. This was not the place she would have liked to begin her journey. Caux was a mountain top, isolated, looking down upon Lake Geneva. It was spring, the snow was melting, and as the little train panted up the mountain, Elena felt irritation about its slowness, the slow gestures of the Swiss, the slow movements of the animals, the static, heavy landscape, while her moods and her feelings were rushing like newborn torrents. She did not plan to stay very long. She would rest until her new book was ready to be published. From the station she walked to a chalet that looked like a fairy tale house, and the woman who opened the door looked like a witch. She stared with coal-black eyes at Elena, and then asked her to come in. It seemed to Elena that the whole house was built for her, with doors and furniture smaller than usual. It was no illusion, for the woman turned to her and said, “I cut down the legs of my tables and chairs. Do you like my house? I call it Casutza—‘little house,’ in Roumanian.” Elena stumbled on a mass of snow shoes, jackets, fur hats, capes and sticks near the entrance. These things had overflowed from the closet and were left there on the floor. The dishes from breakfast were still on the table. The witch’s shoes sounded like wooden shoes as she walked up the stairs. She had the voice of a man, and a small black rim of hair around her lips, like an adolescent’s mustache. Her voice was intense, heavy.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  “It’s such a relative thing,” Christina mused. “Where I came from is so different than where you came from, so what sex means to me is so different. If a year ago I’d had sex with two people, I wouldn’t have been okay with that. But now I am. So I think the ‘meaningful’ has to be a sliding definition both for each person and over time. And I think . . . I think I don’t care anymore about someone’s number. I mean, for safe sex, yes, but in terms of feeling like they’re a morally better or worse person . . . I used to think the checklist of whether or not you were a good person was about ‘are you drinking, are you smoking, are you having sex, are you loose in these ways’? That’s not my checklist at all anymore. Because everyone has so much more depth and so many more dimensions than that. “And I don’t think I want to set lines for myself anymore, either,” she added. “Because you’ll be disappointed when you cross them. I have to trust myself to know what feels good and natural and what doesn’t.” Caitlin was messing with Christina’s computer and had cued up another Pam Stenzel video. This one was called “Definition of Sex.” Stenzel was still pacing in front of the “High Cost of Free Love” sign, spieling like a Catskills tummler. She talked about a girl she’d met who’d had a “radical hysterectomy” at eighteen; her cervical cancer was diagnosed in ninth grade, caused by her contracting HPV in seventh. (While she warned, correctly, that condoms can’t fully protect against HPV, Stenzel neglected to mention there is a vaccine, offered by pediatricians when children are eleven, that will. Nor did she mention that regular pap smears will effectively screen for abnormalities.) Then she began to talk once again about virginity. “I’m now going to give you the medical definition of ‘sex,’” she said. (And right there a viewer should have been suspicious, since, as I’ve said, there actually isn’t one.) “This is the medical line over which you can’t step, and if you have ever stepped over this line, you have risked disease and you need to get tested, and don’t you DARE! Don’t you DARE tell anyone you’re a virgin! Here is the line over which you can’t step. Absolutely no genital contact of any kind. That’s hand-to-genital, mouth-to-genital, genital-to-genital. Oral sex, which is mouth-to-genital, is sex. Hence the name ‘oral sex.’ And if you have had oral sex, you are not a virgin and don’t you dare tell anyone you are.”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The spring would come sweeping across Castle Morton, bring- ing strong, clean winds to the open common. The spring would come sweeping across the whole valley, from the Cotswold Hills right up to the Malverns; bringing daffodils by their hundreds and thousands, bringing bluebells to the beech wood down by the lakes, bringing cygnets for Peter the swan to protect; bring- ing sunshine to warm the old bricks of the house — but she would not be there any more in the spring. In summer the roses would not be her roses, nor the luminous carpet of leaves in the autumn, nor the beautiful winter forms of the beech trees: ‘ And on eve- nings in winter these lakes are quite frozen, and the ice looks like slabs of gold in the sunset, when you and I come and stand here in the winter. . . . ° No, no, not that memory, it was too much — ‘when you and I come and stand here in the winter. . . .’ Getting up, she wandered about the room, touching its kind and familiar objects; stroking the desk, examining a pen, grown rusty from long disuse as it lay there; then she opened a little drawer in the desk and took out the key of her father’s locked book-case. Her mother had told her to take what she pleased - she would take one or two of her father’s books. She had never examined this special book-case, and she could not have told why she suddenly did so. As she slipped the key into the lock and turned it, the action seemed curiously automatic. She began to take out the volumes slowly and with listless fingers, scarcely glancing at their titles. It gave her something to do, that was all— she thought that she was trying to distract her attention. Then she noticed that on a shelf near the bottom was a row of books stand- ing behind the others; the next moment she had one of these in her hand, and was looking at the name of the author: Krafft Ebing — she had never heard of that author before. All the same she opened the battered old book, then she looked more closely, 232 THE WELL OF LONELINESS for there on its margins were notes in her father’s small, scholarly hand and she saw that her own name appeared in those notes — She began to read, sitting down rather abruptly. For a long time she read; then went back to the book-case and got out another of those volumes, and another. . . . The sun was now setting be- hind the hills; the garden was growing dusky with shadows. In the study there was little light left to read by, so that she must take her book to the window and must bend her face closer over the page; but still she read on and on in the dusk.