Relief

Passages

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

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• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  It may then work different and worse effects later on. Thus vengeful brooding may replace a burst of indignation; a dry heat may consume the frame of one who fain would weep, or he may, as Dante says, turn to stone within; and then tears or a storming fit may bring a grateful relief. This is when the current is strong enough to strike into a pathological path when the normal one is dammed. When this is so, an immediate outpour may be best. But here, to quote Prof. Bain again: "There is nothing more implied than the fact that an emotion may be too strong to be resisted, and me only waste our strength in the endeavor. If we are really able to stem the torrent, there is no more reason for refraining from the attempt than in the case of weaker feelings. And undoubtedly the habitual control of the emotions is not to be attained without a systematic restraint, extended to weak and strong." When we teach children to repress their emotional talk and display, it is not that they may feel more—quite the reverse. It is that they may think more; for, to a certain extent, whatever currents are diverted from the regions below, must swell the activity of the thought-tracts of the brain. In apoplexies and other brain injuries we get the opposite condition—an obstruction, namely, to the passage of currents among the thought-tracts, and with this an increased tendency of objects to start downward currents into the organs of the body. The consequence is tears, laughter, and temper-fits, on the most insignificant provocation, accompanying a proportional feebleness in logical thought and the power of volitional attention and decision,—just the sort of thing from which we try to wean our child. It is true that we say of certain persons that "they would feel more if they expressed less." And in another class of persons the explosive energy with which passion manifests itself on critical occasions seems correlated with the way in which they bottle it up during the intervals. But these are only eccentric types of character, and within each type the law of the last paragraph prevails. The sentimentalist is so constructed that 'gushing' is his or her normal mode of expression.

• From A Sexplanation (2021)

  This is what I tell people, they're just thoughts. You know, people mistake fantasies with wishes. So if I fantasize about rape, which is a very common fantasy, by the way, then it must mean that I somehow want to be raped. But that's not the case at all. It's a fantasy and in fantasy, you're the director. You choose the script, you're in control. And there's nothing wrong with these thoughts. But yet people question that, right? Just as you did, it's like, oh, that must be sick. And the reason why people think that is because nobody talks about that. How often do you get together with the guys and say, I had this thought, what do you think? We can be attracted to things that are taboo without ever, ever, ever thinking in our heads it's something we would do. -Great, I love that, thank you, I already- -I'm glad I made you feel better. -I feel relieved already, yeah. It seems like a lot of our judgments and thoughts and morality when it comes to sexuality is like just a factor of our time or place or upbringing. Is there anything that, you know, we can hold onto so that we can not just rely on what our parents say or what the government says? -Right. -You know, is there a model for sexuality? -Well, the first thing is know thyself. -And it sounds like not only do you have to know yourself, you have to be open and honest about that. -Well, you need to be open and honest about yourself. And when it comes to sexuality, that's sometimes really difficult to do. You know, I'm thinking of a particular client who was into infantilism. It's where he liked to wear diapers and he hid that. He got married, he completely hid it away. And it caused so much anxiety that he finally felt he had to tell his wife because, I have to come clean. I can't hold this in anymore, I need to sing. And he was hoping and praying that she would be okay with it and that she would even kind of fulfill that fantasy. Well, it destroyed their marriage. It totally broke apart what was there. And then eventually he found somebody who was okay with the diaper fetish. He didn't have to hide it anymore, but I worked with him to be able to accept it. And this is part of that process of learning about yourself. I've talked to so many people over the years with so many different variations of sexuality who are perfectly wonderfully nice individuals and I'm gonna judge them based on their sexual preference? I have a hard time with that. [Alex] So if there's nothing inherently wrong with masturbating, watching porn, letting your mind run wild with taboo fantasies, why the hell did I torture myself over these impulses?

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

  Two years later (851) he resigned his abbotship. He had been reluctant to take the position, and had found it by no means pleasant. Its duties were so multiform and onerous that he had little or no time for study; besides, his strict discipline made his monks restive. But perhaps a principal reason for retiring was the fact that one of his monks, Ratramnus, had ventured to criticize, publicly and severely, his position upon the Eucharist; thus stirring up opposition to him in his own monastery. Immediately upon his resignation, Radbertus went to the neighboring abbey of St. Riquier, but shortly returned to Corbie, and took the position of monk under the new abbot. His last days were probably his pleasantest. He devoted himself to the undisturbed study of his favorite books and to his beloved literary labors. On April 26, 865,1349 he breathed his last. He was buried in the Chapel of St. John. In the eleventh century miracles began to be wrought at his tomb. Accordingly he was canonized in 1073, and on July 12th of that year his remains were removed with great pomp to St. Peter’s Church at Corbie. The fame of Paschasius Radbertus rests upon his treatise on The body and blood of the Lord,1350 which appeared in 831, and in an improved form in 844. His arguments in it and in the Epistle to Frudegard1351 on the same subject have already been handled at length in this volume.1352 His treatise on The birth by the Virgin,1353 i.e. whether Christ was born in the ordinary manner or not, has also been sufficiently noticed.1354 Besides these Radbertus wrote, 1. An Exposition of the Gospel of Matthew.1355 He explained this Gospel in his sermons to the monks. At their request, he began to write out his lectures, and completed four of the twelve books before his election as abbot, but was then compelled to lay the work aside. The monks at St. Riquier’s requested its continuance, and it finally was finished. The special prefaces to each book are worth attentive reading for their information concerning the origin and progress of the commentary, and for the views they present upon Biblical study in general. As the prologue states, the principal sources are Jerome, Ambrose, Augustin, Chrysostom, Gregory the Great, and Bede.1356 Of these, Jerome was most used. His excerpts are not always literal. He frequently alters and expands the expressions.1357 Radbertus was particular to mark on the margin of his pages the names of the authors drawn upon, but in transcribing his marks have been obliterated. His interpretation is rather more literal than was customary, in his day, and he enlivens his pages with allusions to passing events, dwelling especially upon the disorders of the time, the wickedness of the clergy and monks, the abuses of the confessional, and the errors of the Adoptionists, Claudius of Turin and of Scotus Erigena. He also frequently quotes classic authors.1358 2.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  The predicament of practical reason resembles the most primitive co nt e x t in which I acquire factual knowledge, that of perception. My confiden ce in my awareness of m y perceptual surroundings rests in large part on the qui t e inarticulate sense I have of enjoying a sure perceptual purchase on thin gs, a s ense which enframes all my particular perceivings. A typical response wh en we encounter some thing surp ri s in g, unsettl i ng, o r seem ingly wro n g i s to sto p , shake our heads, concentra te, se t ourselves to comm and a good view , an d Ethics of Inarticulacy • 7 J l ook ag a in. All these manoe uvre s , which we often d o without focally a tt e n din g to them, draw on ou r implicit know-how about getting g oo d p e r c e ptu al purchase When we the n loo k a g ain, we give great er credence to th is s ec o n d perception, not because we have discovered tha t these man oeu v r e s w or k as tricks, but precisely beca1,1se we have the sense tha t we now have a b e tt er pri se on the situation. Our sense that the transition w as a purchase i m p rov ing one is what underlies our p r esent confidence. Th e ide a that we ought to prescind altogether from thi s background c o n fi denc e of purchase is as unjustified as the corresponding demand in the mo r al fi eld that we step outside moral intuitions. This w ould mean checking th e trustw orthiness of this confidence a g ainst somethin g else. But this. s o me thing else would have to be quite outside the perceivable, and thus gi ves u s an imp ossible task. Classical epistemology was always threate n ing to drive in to this cul-de-sac and therefore fall into the despair o f s cepticism. Of cou r se, in one case as in the othe r , our confidence on a parti cu la r occasion ma y be misplaced. B u t we discover this only by shifting out of one purchase int o a nother, more adequate one. My blithe, unthinking assurance that I know the pa th gives way to my careful and attentive grip on my sur r oundings after I trip.

• From A Sexplanation (2021)

  [fire roaring] [explosions resound] [people screaming] [cork pops] [crowd cheering] [Barry] Great, that's a good subject. [Nan] I've had interviewers and other people say to me like, "Why study sex and pleasure? Shouldn't you be studying something important like cancer?" And our response to them, which is kind of, felt bad that we had to make a response and sort of justify why we do this research is that, you know, as a clinician, I understand that pleasure is so important. People have a lot of anxiety, have trouble experiencing pleasure. Depression, one of the key hallmarks of depression is the inability to experience pleasure. I think what we've been able to show is that orgasm is a big brain event Sensory, motor, reward areas. So I think an orgasm a day might keep the doctor away. I think it's great for people. It's a workout for the body. It's a workout for the brain and feeling good is good for y. [Alex] I made a mess. -You did great. -Whew! -You're a little bit, you're a little disoriented. -Yeah, a little. [laughs] -But you did great. [Alex] I still feel like, I mean, yeah, it was a little awkward. -Yeah, well, but that's science. -Yeah. [laughs] [Alex] Is there anything you want people to take away from your research? -Well, we want to understand human sexuality. There's so little understood about it. We're getting basic information about it. And with that kind of information, we can hope to get some insights on to how to treat many different problems. -So what I'm hearing then is that we really don't understand much about sexuality. -Understanding the relationship between the brain and human sexuality is not even in the infancy stage. It's in the embryonic stage, it's before birth. So you're really making a great contribution to- -Oh, that's makes me feel a little better. -Knowledge about- -That does. -So maybe you're embarrassed but it's really very, very important basic information. So please come again. -All right. [laughs] All right, well, thanks again. -Okay, Alex. -Good luck with everything. -Pleasure, good luck to you. -All right, see you. -Okay. [Alex] Well I guess that's the rub. We don't know much about sex because we don't prioritize studying it. Now, at least I can walk away feeling good about a daily orgasm. But if I'm being honest, it's not so much the orgasm that worries me. It's what's going on in my min. My filthy, nasty mind. Do my fantasies make me a freak? In a moment of post-masturbatory clarity I realized there's a library that's bursting with loads of data to help me answer that question. ["Pornhub Theme"] Pornhub is among the 50 most visited websites in the world. Since we're never more honest than when we're alone with a search engine, we met with Mike, a Pornhub data scientist. However, Pornhub had never opened their doors to an interview before so they asked that Mike's face not appear on screen.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  I ask my young, white, male colleague to imagine that instead of saying that older people (gray hair and experience) are overrated, Halligan said that gay people are overrated, or women , or African-Americans , or Jews . Imagine Halligan saying, “We’re trying to build a culture specifically to attract and retain white people, because when it comes to technology, white people do a much better job than black people.” “But he didn’t say that!” my colleague responds. “He didn’t say anything about gays, or women, or black people!” As the Bible says: Jesus wept. In a way I almost feel relieved. I’m sick of HubSpot. I’m tired of trying to fit in. Now at least it’s over. It’s early December. I can enjoy the holidays and then in January start looking for a new job. But as the day wears on and the Facebook frenzy runs out of steam, I still never get a call or an email from HubSpot. There’s no word from Wingman or Cranium, nothing from Halligan or anyone in HR. The next day is a Friday, and again I stay home, and again I get no word from anyone. Over the weekend it dawns on me that they are not going to fire me—because they can’t fire me. No doubt they want to fire me. But how does that play out? The CEO of a company makes remarks in a newspaper that sound like he and his company discriminate on the basis of age. An older employee criticizes the CEO’s comments, and then gets fired for expressing his opinion. What happens next? Maybe the older employee makes a big stink in public. Maybe the old guy sues the company. Maybe the judge who presides over the case has gray hair, too. My knowledge of the law is based entirely on what I’ve learned by watching Law & Order , but my sense is that this gray-haired plaintiff might have a case. Even if he doesn’t, the company risks unleashing a shitstorm of bad publicity just as it’s trying to go public. They’re not going to fire me. They can’t, and they know it. The great irony is that posting that obnoxious comment has actually made me invulnerable. How can they ever fire me, without it looking as if they are punishing me for making those comments? “I can do anything I want,” I tell Sasha, who is clearly worried. “I could go into the office on Monday and climb up on Halligan’s desk, pull down my pants, and take a dump on the keyboard of his MacBook Air, and they still couldn’t fire me.” “Strictly speaking,” Sasha says, “I think that’s not true.” Of course she’s right. Dropping anchor anywhere in the office other than a toilet in the men’s room will definitely get me fired, not to mention arrested and sent for a psychiatric evaluation. Which is as it should be.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  It contains a stove (thanks to the fact hat it used to be Mr. Kugler’s laboratory) and a sink. This will be the kitchen and bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Van Daan, as well as the general living room, dining room and study for us all. A tiny side room is to be Peter van Daan’s bedroom. Then, just as in the front part of the building, there’s an attic and a loft. So there you are. Now I’ve introduced you to the whole of our lovely Annex! Yours, Anne FRIDAY, JULY 10, 1942 Dearest Kitty, I’ve probably bored you with my long description of our house, but I still think you should know where I’ve ended up; how I ended up here is something you’ll figure out from my next letters. But first, let me continue my story, because, as you know, I wasn’t finished. After we arrived at 263 Prinsengracht, Miep quickly led us through the long hallway and up the wooden staircase to the next floor and into the Annex. She shut the door behind us, leaving us alone. Margot had arrived much earlier on her bike and was waiting for us. Our living room and all the other rooms were so full of stuff that I can’t find the words to describe it. All the cardboard boxes that had been sent to the office in the last few months were piled on the floors and beds. The small room was filled from floor to cethng with linens. If we wanted to sleep in properly made beds that night, we had to get going and straighten up the mess. Mother and Margot were unable to move a muscle. They lay down on their bare mattresses, tired, miserable and I don’t know what else. But Father and I, the two cleaner-uppers in the family, started in right away. All day long we unpacked boxes, filled cupboards, hammered nails and straightened up the mess, until we fell exhausted into our clean beds at night. We hadn’t eaten a hot meal all day, but we didn’t care; Mother and Margot were too tired and keyed up to eat, and Father and I were too busy. Tuesday morning we started where we left off the night before. Bep and Miep went grocery shopping with our ration coupons, Father worked on our blackout screens, we scrubbed the kitchen floor, and were once again busy from sunup to sundown. Until Wednesday, I didn’t have a chance to think about the enormous change in my life. Then for the first time since our arrival in the Secret Annex, I found a moment to tell you all about it and to realize what had happened to me and what was yet to happen. Yours, Anne SATURDAY, JULY 11, 1942 Dearest Kitty, Father, Mother and Margot still can’t get used to the chiming of the Westertoren clock, which tells us the time every quarter of an hour.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  polite hints he hung around until ten o’clock. Miep and Jan Gies came at eleven. Miep, who’s worked for Father’s company since 1933, has become a close friend, and so has her husband Jan. Once again, shoes, stockings, books and underwear disappeared into Miep’s bag and Jan’s deep pockets. At eleven-thirty they too disappeared. I was exhausted, and even though I knew it’d be my last night in my own bed, I fell asleep right away and didn’t wake up until Mother called me at five-thirty the next morning. Fortunately, it wasn’t as hot as Sunday; a warm rain fell throughout the day. The four of us were wrapped in so many layers of clothes it looked as if we were going off to spend the night in a refrigerator, and all that just so we could take more clothes with us. No Jew in our situation would dare leave the house with a suitcase full of clothes. I was wearing two undershirts, three pairs of underpants, a dress, and over that a skirt, a jacket, a raincoat, two pairs of stockings, heavy shoes, a cap, a scarf and lots more. I was suffocating even before we left the house, but no one bothered to ask me how I felt. Margot stuffed her schoolbag with schoolbooks, went to get her bicycle and, with Miep leading the way, rode off into the great unknown. At any rate, that’s how I thought of it, since I still didn’t know where our hiding place was. At seven-thirty we too closed the door behind us; Moortje, my cat, was the only living creature I said good-bye to. According to a note we left for Mr. Goldschmidt, she was to be taken to the neighbors, who would give her a good home. The stripped beds, the breakfast things on the table, the pound of meat for the cat in the kitchen -- all of these created the impression that we’d left in a hurry. But we weren’t interested in impressions. We just wanted to get out of there, to get away and reach our destination in safety. Nothing else mattered. More tomorrow. Yours, Anne THURSDAY, JULY 9, 1942

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  No kittens were growing inside, much less about to be born. Peter felt called upon to defend himself against my accusation. “Come with me. You can see for yourself. I was horsing around with the cat one day, and I could definitely see it was a ‘he.’ Unable to restrain my curiosity, I went with him to the warehouse. Boche, however, wasn’t receiving visitors at that hour, and was nowhere in sight. We waited for a while, but when it got cold, we went back upstairs. Later that afternoon I heard Peter go downstairs for the second time. I mustered the courage to walk through the silent house by myself and reached the warehouse. Boche was on the packing table, playing with Peter, who was getting ready to put him on the scale and weigh him. “Hi, do you want to have a look?” Without any preliminaries, he picked up the cat, turned him over on his back, deftly held his head and paws and began the lesson. “This is the male sexual organ, these are a few stray hairs, and that’s his backside.” The cat flipped himself over and stood up on his little white feet. If any other boy had pointed out the “male sexual organ” to me, I would never have given him a second glance. But Peter went on talking in a normal voice about what is otherwise a very awkward subject. Nor did he have any ulterior motives. By the time he’d finished, I felt so much at ease that I started acting normally too. We played with Boche, had a good time, chatted a bit and finally sauntered through the long warehouse to the door. “Were you there when Mouschi was fixed?” “Yeah, sure. It doesn’t take long. They give the cat an anesthetic, of course.” “Do they take something out?” “No, the vet just snips the tube. There’s nothing to see on the outside.” I had to get up my nerve to ask a question, since it wasn’t as “normal” as I thought. “Peter, the German word Geschlechtsteil means ‘sexual organ,’ doesn’t it? But then the male and female ones have different names.”

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The little kingdom of Judah was one of a handful of nations to retain a degree of independence after the Assyrian campaigns. The archaeological record shows that Jerusalem expanded dramatically at the end of the eighth century. 50 New suburbs were built to house the Israelite refugees from the north, and within a few years Jerusalem was transformed from a modest highland town of ten to twelve acres to a city of 150 acres of densely packed houses and public buildings. The countryside surrounding the city was also developed extensively. The refugees brought their own northern traditions to Judah, including, perhaps, the prophecies of Amos and Hosea, who had foretold the catastrophe of 722. The destruction of the kingdom of Israel was a painfully recent memory, and there was at this time a desire to preserve the northern traditions. Like other kings in the region, the kings of Judah began to assemble a royal library that probably included J and E, which may have been fused into a single text at this time. There was a longing to restore the united kingdom of David and Solomon, merging what remained of the kingdom of Israel with the resurgent kingdom of Judah. This desire was reflected in the reform of King Hezekiah, who succeeded his father in 715. 51 We have no contemporary account, but the biblical tradition suggests that Hezekiah wanted to centralize the cult, permitting worship only in the Jerusalem temple and abolishing the rural shrines. The reform was short-lived, and archaeologists show that the general public continued to worship other gods, but because of his religious reform, the biblical historians remember Hezekiah as one of the greatest kings of Judah. His foreign policy, however, was disastrous. In 705, the remarkable Assyrian king Sargon II died, leaving his untested son Sennacherib to succeed. In the ensuing turmoil, when it appeared that Assyria might not be able to control the peripheral territories, Hezekiah foolishly entered an anti-Assyrian coalition and began to prepare Jerusalem for war. In 701, Sennacherib arrived in Judah at the head of a formidable army, and began systematically to devastate the countryside. Finally his soldiers surrounded Jerusalem itself. It seemed that the city could not survive, but at the last moment there was a reprieve. The biblical author tells us that the “angel of Yahweh slew 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp and the army was forced to withdraw.” 52 We have no idea what happened. There may have been a sudden epidemic of plague in the Assyrian army, and the apparently miraculous deliverance seemed proof positive that Jerusalem was indeed inviolable.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  We agreed to meet in the office. I freshened up a bit and went down. “After all this, do you still dare go to the front attic?” he asked. I nodded, grabbed my pillow, with a cloth wrapped around it, and we went up together. The weather was gorgeous, and even though the air-raid sirens soon began to wail, we stayed where we were. Peter put his arm around my shoulder, I put mine around his, and we sat quietly like this until four o’clock, when Margot came to get us for coffee. We ate our bread, drank our lemonade and joked (we were finally able to again), and for the rest everything was back to normal. That evening I thanked Peter because he’d been the bravest of us all. None of us have ever been in such danger as we were that night. God was truly watching over us. Just think-the police were right at the bookcase, the light was on, and still no one had discovered our hiding place! “Now we’re done for!” I’d whispered at that moment, but once again we were spared. When the invasion comes and the bombs start falling, it’ll be every man for himself, but this time we feared for those good, innocent Christians who are helping us. “We’ve been saved, keep on saving us!” That’s all we can say. This incident has brought about a whole lot of changes. As of now, Dussel will be doing his work in the bathroom, and Peter will be patrolling the house between eight-thirty and nine-thirty. Peter isn’t allowed to open his window anymore, since one of the Keg people noticed it was open. We can no longer flush the toilet after nine-thirty at night. Mr. Sleegers has been hired as night watchman, and tonight a carpenter from the underground is coming to make a barricade out of our white Frankfurt bedsteads. Debates are going on left and right in the Annex. Mr. Kugler has reproached us for our carelessness. Jan also said we should never go downstairs. What we have to do now is find out whether Sleegers can be trusted, whether the dogs will bark if they hear someone behind the door, how to make the barricade, all sorts of things. We’ve been strongly reminded of the fact that we’re Jews in chains, chained to one spot, without any rights, but with a thousand obligations. We must put our feelings aside; we must be brave and strong, bear discomfort with- out complaint, do whatever is in our power and trust in God. One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we’ll be people again and not just Jews! Who has inflicted this on us? Who has set us apart from all the rest? Who has put us through such suffering? It’s God who has made us the way we are, but it’s also God who will lift us up again.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The Buddha always denied the existence of a supreme being, because an authoritative, overseeing deity could become another prop or fetter that would impede enlightenment. The Pali texts never mention brahman. The Buddha came from the republic of Sakka, far from the Brahminical heartlands, and may have been unfamiliar with the concept. But his rejection of God or gods was calm and measured. He simply put them peacefully out of his mind. To inveigh vehemently against these beliefs would have been an unskillful assertion of ego. The old gods sometimes played a part in his life. Mara, god of death, for example, sometimes appeared in the Pali texts as the tempter of the Buddha, advising him to take an easier path, almost as though he were an aspect of the Buddha’s own mind. Yet when the Buddha tried to give his disciples a hint of what nibbana was like, he often mixed negative with positive terms. Nibbana was the “extinction of greed, hatred and delusion”; it was “taintless,” “unweakening,” “undisintegrating,” “inviolable,” “non-distress,” and “unhostility.” It canceled out everything that we find unbearable. One of the most frequent epithets used to describe nibbana was “deathless.” But positive things could be said of nibbana too: it was “the Truth,” “the Subtle,” “the Other Shore,” “Peace,” “the Everlasting,” “the Supreme Goal,” “Purity, Freedom, Independence, the Island, the Shelter, the Harbour, the Refuge, the Beyond.” 92 It was the supreme goal of humans and gods alike, an incomprehensible serenity, and an utterly safe refuge. Many of these images are reminiscent of words later used by monotheists to describe their experience of the ineffable God. In finding nibbana, the Buddha had achieved his goal, but this was not the end of his life and mission. At first he had simply wanted to luxuriate in this transcendent peace. It occurred to him that he should, perhaps, spread the good news, but he rejected the idea as too exhausting and depressing. His dhamma was too difficult to explain. Far from wishing to give themselves up, most people positively relished their attachments and would not want to hear this message of self-abandonment. 93 But then the god Brahma (a popular manifestation of the brahman in the eastern Ganges) decided to intervene. In the Pali text, he seemed, like Mara, to represent an aspect of the Buddha’s own personality: at some buried level, Gotama realized that he simply could not neglect his fellow creatures. In a complete reversal of their usual roles, the god left his heaven, descended to earth, and knelt before the enlightened man. “Lord,” he prayed, “please teach the dhamma. Look down at the human race, which is drowning in pain, and travel far and wide to save the world.”

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  None of these creatures was aware of impending danger, because they were all programmed to hunt one another. Whether they willed it or not, they were involved in a chain of mutual destruction. No one could live a wholly isolated life—not even a hermit: Zhuangzi himself had been so busy taking aim at the magpie that he had not noticed the appearance on the scene of a gamekeeper, who angrily chased him out of the park. The incident made a great impression on Zhuangzi, and for three months he was depressed. He could now see that the Yangist creed was based on an illusion: it was impossible to protect yourself in the way Yangzi taught. We were conditioned to destroy and be destroyed, to eat and be eaten. We could not escape our destiny. Until we became reconciled to the endless process of destruction and dissolution, we would have no peace. After the incident in the park, Zhuangzi found that he looked at the world quite differently. He began to realize that everything was in flux and constantly in the process of becoming something else—yet we were always trying to freeze our thoughts and experiences and make them absolute. This was not how the Way of Heaven operated. Anything that tried to close itself off from the endless transformation of life in an attempt to become autonomous and self-contained was going against the natural rhythm of the cosmos. Once he had fully appreciated this, Zhuangzi felt an exhilarating freedom. He found that he was no longer afraid of death, because it was futile to try to preserve your life indefinitely. Death and life, joy and sorrow succeeded each other, like day and night. When he died and ceased to be “Zhuangzi,” nothing would change. He would remain what essentially he had always been: a tiny part of the endlessly mutating pageant of the universe. Zhuangzi sometimes used shock tactics to bring this truth home to friends and disciples. When Zhuangzi’s wife died, Huizi came to pay a condolence call, and was horrified to find him sitting cross-legged, singing rowdily, and bashing a battered old tub—flagrantly violating the dignified ceremonies of the mourning period. “She was your wife! She bore your children!” protested Huizi. “The least you can do is shed a tear for her!” Zhuangzi smiled. When she first died, he had mourned his wife like everybody else. But then he cast his mind back to the time before she was born, when she had simply been part of the endlessly churning qi, the raw material of the universe. One day there had been a wonderful change: the qi had mingled together in a new way, and suddenly, there was his dear wife!

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Returning to one’s roots is known as stillness.36 Everything else returned to its origins, in the same way as the leaves fell to the roots of the tree, became compost, and reentered the cycle of life. The leaves had emerged from the unseen world, had become manifest for a while, and then returned to the dark. The enlightened sage ruler stood aloof from this flux. Once he had aligned himself with the unseen, he attained perfect wisdom and impartiality. He can identify himself with the Way, the poem concluded; “he can endure, and to the end of his days will meet with no danger.”37 Emptiness brought a release from the fear that pervaded the Daodejing. The ruler who dreaded annihilation was afraid of a chimera. We should not fear nothingness, because it was at the heart of reality. “The thirty spokes of the wheel share one hub,” Laozi pointed out, “but it is where there is nothing [the hole for the axle] that the efficacy of the cart lies.”38 So too, when making a pot, we kneaded the clay into an attractive shape, but the raison d’être of the vessel was the place where there was nothing. Laozi concludes: Thus we think we benefit from perceptible things But it is where we perceive nothing that true efficacy lies.39 It was the same with public policy. Once he had discovered the fertile Void within himself, the prince was ready to rule. He had attained a “kingliness” modeled on Heaven and the dao.40 The sage ruler must behave like Heaven, which pursued its own inscrutable course without interfering with the Ways of other creatures. This is the Way things ought to be, and this—not ceaseless, purposeful activism—would bring peace to the world. Everywhere rulers, politicians, and administrative officials were plotting and scheming. Many of the philosophers had done more harm than good. Mohists stressed the importance of analysis, strategy, and action. Confucians glorified the culture that, Laozi believed, had interrupted the flow of the dao. The Confucian heroes Yao, Shun, and Yu had constantly meddled with nature—by directing the flow of rivers, and setting fire to forests and mountains to create arable land. By imposing their rituals on society, Confucians had encouraged people to concentrate on a purely external spirituality. There was far too much goal-directed, yu wei activity; it was incompatible with the gentle, unassertive and spontaneous course of the Way, which let creatures alone: The way never acts, yet nothing is left undone. Should lords and princes be able to hold on to it, The myriad creatures will be transformed of their own accord. And, the Daoist ruler concluded: “If I cease to desire and remain still, the empire will be at peace of its own accord.”41

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

  Literature.—Potthast: Regest., pp. 1651–1922. Les Registres de Grégoire X. et Jean XXI., 3 vols., Paris, 1892–1898, de Nicolas III., Paris, 1904, d’Honorius IV., Paris, 1886, de Nicolas IV., Paris, 1880. Lives of the above popes in Muratori: Rer. Ital. scr., vol. III.—Mansi: Councils, XXIV.—Hefele, VI. 125 sqq.—Turinaaz, La patrie et la famille de Pierre de Tarantaise, pape sous le nom d’Innocent V., Nancy, 1882.—H. Otto: Die Beziehungen Rudolfs von Hapsburg zu Papst Gregor X., Innsbruck, 1895.—A. Demski: Papst Nicolas III., Münster, 1903, pp. 364.—R. Sternfeld: Der Kardinal Johann Gaëtan Orsini, Papst Nic. III., 1244–1277, Berlin, 1905, pp. 376. Reviewed at length by Haller in "Theol. Literaturzeitung," 1906, pp. 173–178.—H. Finke: Concilienstudien zur Gesch. des 13ten Jahrhunderts, Münster, 1891.—For Coelestin V., Finke: Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII., Münster, 1902; H. Schulz, Peter von Murrhone, 1894; and Celidonio, Vita di S. Pietro del Morrone, 1896.—The articles on the above popes in Wetzer-Welte and Herzog (Gregory X, by Mirbt, Coelestin V., Innocent V., Honorius IV., etc., by Hans Schulz).—The Histories of Gregorovius, Ranke, etc. The death of Clement IV. was followed by the longest interregnum the papacy has known, lasting thirty-three months, Nov. 29, 1268, to Sept. 1, 1271. It was due largely to the conflict between the French and Italian parties in the conclave and was prolonged in spite of the stern measures taken by the municipality of Viterbo, where the election occurred. Cardinals were even imprisoned. The new pope, Gregory X., archdeacon of Liège, was not an ordained priest. The news reached him at Acre while he was engaged in a pilgrimage. A man of peaceful and conciliatory spirit, he is one of the two popes of the thirteenth century who have received canonization. Pursuing the policy of keeping the empire and the kingdom of Southern Italy apart, and setting aside the pretensions of Alfonso of Castile,284 he actively furthered the election of Rudolf of Hapsburg to the imperial throne. The elevation of Rudolf inaugurated a period of peace in the relations of the papacy and the empire. Gregory X. had gained a brilliant victory. The emperor was crowned at Aachen, Oct. 24, 1273. The place of the Hohenstaufen was thus taken by the Austrian house of Hapsburg, which has continued to this day to be a reigning dynasty and loyal to the Catholic hierarchy. In the present century its power has been eclipsed by the Hohenzollern, whose original birth seat in Württemberg is a short distance from that of the Hohenstaufen.285 The establishment of peace by Rudolf’s election is celebrated by Schiller in the famous lines:286— "Then was ended the long, the direful strife, That time of terror, with no imperial lord."

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Jan nailed a pinewood board over the gap in the door and went off again with Miep to inform the police of the break-in. Miep had also found a note under the ware- house door from Sleegers, the night watchman, who had noticed the hole and alerted the police. Jan was also planning to see Sleegers. So we had half an hour in which to put the house and ourselves to rights. I’ve never seen such a transformation as in those thirty minutes. Margot and I got the beds ready downstairs, went to the bathroom, brushed our teeth, washed our hands and combed our hair. Then I straightened up the room a bit and went back upstairs. The table had already been cleared, so we got some water, made coffee and tea, boiled the milk and set the table. Father and Peter emptied our improvised potties and rinsed them with warm water and powdered bleach. The largest one was filled to the brim and was so heavy they had a hard time lifting it. To make things worse, it was leaking, so they had to put it in a bucket. At eleven o’clock Jan was back and joined us at the table, and gradually everyone began to relax. Jan had the following story to tell: Mr. Sleegers was asleep, but his wife told Jan that her husband had discovered the hole in the door while making his rounds. He called in a policeman, and the two of them searched the building. Mr. Sleegers, in his capacity as night watchman, patrols the area every night on his bike, accompanied by his two dogs. His wife said he would come on Tuesday and tell Mr. Kugler the rest. No one at the police station seemed to know anything about the break-in, but they made a note to come first thing Tuesday morning to have a look. On the way back Jan happened to run into Mr. van Hoeven, the man who supplies us with potatoes, and told him of the break-in. “I know,” Mr. van Hoeven calmly replied. “Last night when my wife and I were walking past your building, I saw a gap in the door. My wife wanted to walk on, but I peeked inside with a flashlight, and that’s when the burglars must have run off. To be on the safe side, I didn’t call the police. I thought it wouldn’t be wise in your case. I don’t know anything, but I have my suspicions.” Jan thanked him and went on. Mr. van Hoeven obviously suspects we’re here, because he always delivers the potatoes at lunchtime. A decent man! It was one o’clock by the time Jan left and we’d done the dishes. All eight of us went to bed. I woke up at quarter to three and saw that Mr. Dussel was already up. My face rumpled with sleep, I happened to run into Peter in the bathroom, just after he’d come downstairs.

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

  The decree was fortified by a few Scripture passages about the Cherubim (Ex. 25:17–22; Ezek. 41:1, 15, 19; Heb. 9:1–5), and a large number of patristic testimonies, genuine and forged, and alleged miracles performed by images.547 A presbyter testified that he was cured from a severe sickness by a picture of Christ. Bishop after bishop, even those who had been members of the Synod of 754, renounced his iconoclastic opinions, and large numbers exclaimed together: "We all have sinned, we all have erred, we all beg forgiveness." Some professed conscientious scruples, but were quieted when the Synod resolved that the violation of an oath which was contrary to the law of God, was no perjury. At the request of one of the Roman delegates, an image was brought into the assembly, and reverently kissed by all. At the conclusion, the assembled bishops exclaimed unanimously: "Thus we believe. This is the doctrine of the apostles. Anathema upon all who do not adhere to it, who do not salute the images, who call them idols, and who charge the Christians with idolatry. Long life to the emperors! Eternal memory to the new Constantine and the new Helena! God protect their reign! Anathema upon all heretics! Anathema especially upon Theodosius, the false bishop of Ephesus, as also upon Sisinnius and Basilius! The Holy Trinity has rejected their doctrines." Then follows an anathema upon other distinguished iconoclasts, and all who do not confess that Christ’s humanity has a circumscribed form, who do not greet the images, who reject the ecclesiastical traditions, written or unwritten; while eternal memory is given to the chief champions of image-worship, Germanus of Constantinople, John of Damascus, and George of Cyprus, the heralds of truth. 548 The decrees of the Synod were publicly proclaimed in an eighth session at Constantinople in the presence of Irene and her son, and, signed by them; whereupon the bishops, with the people and soldiers, shouted in the usual form: "Long live the Orthodox queen-regent." The empress sent the bishops home with rich presents.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  There’s a time and a place for both, but how can I be sure that I’ve chosen the right time? Yours, Anne M. Frank TUESDAY, MAY 2, 1944 Dearest Kitty, Saturday night I asked Peter whether he thinks I should tell Father about us. After we’d discussed it, he said he thought I should. I was glad; it shows he’s sensible, and sensitive. As soon as I came downstairs, I went with Father to get some water. While we were on the stairs, I said, “Father, I’m sure you’ve gathered that when Peter and I are together, we don’t exactly sit at opposite ends of the room. Do you think that’s wrong?” Father paused before answering: “No, I don’t think it’s wrong. But Anne, when you’re living so close together, as we do, you have to be careful.” He said some other words to that effect, and then we went upstairs. Sunday morning he called me to him and said, “Anne, I’ve been thinking about what you said.” (Oh, oh, I knew what was coming!) “Here in the Annex it’s not such a good idea. I thought you were just friends. Is Peter in love with you?” “Of course not,” I answered. “Well, you know I understand both of you. But you must be the one to show restraint; don’t go upstairs so often, don’t encourage him more than you can help. In matters like these, it’s always the man who takes the active role, and it’s up to the woman to set the limits. Outside, where you’re free, things are quite different. You see other boys and girls, you can go outdoors, take part in sports and all kinds of activities. But here, if you’re together too much and want to get away, you can’t. You see each other every hour of the day-all the time, in fact. Be careful, Anne, and don’t take it too seriously!

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  In what has now become our regular little routine, Trotsky comes over to my desk, pulls up a chair, leans close to me, and in a voice that’s just above a whisper, starts complaining about something I said to him earlier in the day, which he says felt like an insult. This time I cut him off. “Look,” I say, “are you trying to make me quit? Because if so, it’s working. You’ve been riding me ever since I came back to work, or since before that even. You’re constantly giving me shit, and being hostile to me, and I don’t understand why. But I really wish you would stop.” He sits back. After a moment he says, “You know what? You’re right.” To my amazement, Trotsky admits that he has been hounding me. He even explains why he’s doing it. He says it’s because I unfriended him on Facebook, back in August. He knows it’s silly, but he felt insulted by this. I explain that after the fiasco over my Spinner joke, I severed my Facebook connections with everyone from HubSpot—not just him. I want to put a big space between my personal life and my work life. “I’m only using Facebook to post pictures of my kids and talk to my friends,” I say. Trotsky says he understands. He says he knows he can be thin-skinned and that he has a short temper. He gets offended too easily, and when he does he tends to go cold on people and write them off. Maybe that’s what has happened here, he says. “I’m going to get off your back,” he says. “I’ll give you some space.” Remarkably, he does—for a few days. But then he comes back, having found a way to turn my complaint against me. “You know,” he says, sidling up to me one day, like Lumbergh, the smarmy boss in Office Space , “now that you’re being all defensive, this is causing a problem, because now you’re putting up a wall, and this makes it harder for me to do my job and be your manager. If I try to give you feedback, I’m worried that you’ll say I’m being hostile, or that I’m harassing you. Do you see what I’m saying?” Yes, I do: He’s saying that when I told him to stop harassing me, I was being hostile to him . I have to admit, it’s a good play on his part. My friend, the former C-level executive, the person who previously suggested I talk things over with Trotsky over coffee, now gives me new advice: Get out. “There aren’t any other options,” she says. “The guy has it in for you.” As if to add insult to injury, one day in a meeting of the entire content team Trotsky announces that he has come up with a big, bold idea. He is going to launch a new publication—a high-end online magazine, with feature articles aimed at investors and CEOs.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Bedouin allies did not have to convert to Islam but swore merely to fight the ummah’s enemies: Muhammad must be one of the few leaders in history to build an empire largely by negotiation. 19 In March 628, during the month of the hajj, Muhammad announced, to everybody’s astonishment, that he intended to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, which, since pilgrims were forbidden to carry weapons, meant riding unarmed into enemy territory. 20 About a thousand Muslims volunteered to accompany him. The Quraysh dispatched their cavalry to attack the pilgrims, but their Bedouin allies guided them by a back route into the sanctuary of Mecca, where all violence was forbidden. Muhammad then ordered the pilgrims to sit beside the Well of Hudaybiyyah and wait for the Quraysh to negotiate. He knew that he had put them in an extremely difficult position: if the guardians of the Kabah killed pilgrims on sacred ground, they would lose all credibility in the region. Yet when the Qurayshi envoy arrived, Muhammad agreed to conditions that seemed to throw away every advantage the ummah had gained during the war. His fellow pilgrims were so horrified that they almost mutinied, yet the Quran would praise the truce of Hudaybiyyah as a “manifest victory.” While the Meccans had behaved with typical jahili belligerence when they tried to slaughter the unarmed pilgrims, God had sent down the “spirit of peace” ( sakina ) upon the Muslims. 21 Muhammad’s first biographer declared that this nonviolent victory was the turning point for the young movement: during the next two years “double or more than double as many entered Islam as ever before,” 22 and in 630 Mecca voluntarily opened its gates to the Muslim army. Our main source for Muhammad’s life is the Quran, the collection of revelations that came to the Prophet during the twenty-three years of his mission. The official text was standardized under Uthman, the third caliph, some twenty years after Muhammad’s death. But it had originally been transmitted orally, recited aloud, and learned by heart; as a result, during and after the Prophet’s life, the text remained fluid, and people would have remembered and dwelled on different parts they had heard. The Quran is not a coherent revelation: it came to Muhammad piecemeal in response to particular events, so as in any scripture, there were inconsistencies—not least about warfare. Jihad (“struggle”) is not one of the Quran’s main themes: in fact, the word and its derivatives occur only forty-one times, and only ten of these refer unambiguously to warfare. The “surrender” of islam requires a constant jihad against our inherent selfishness; this sometimes involves fighting ( qital ), but bearing trials courageously and giving to the poor in times of personal hardship was also described as jihad.