Remorse

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 Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Remember,” cried Willoughby, “from whom you received the account. Could it be an impartial one? I acknowledge that her situation and her character ought to have been respected by me. I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge—that because she was injured she was irreproachable, and because _I_ was a libertine, _she_ must be a saint. If the violence of her passions, the weakness of her understanding—I do not mean, however, to defend myself. Her affection for me deserved better treatment, and I often, with great self-reproach, recall the tenderness which, for a very short time, had the power of creating any return. I wish—I heartily wish it had never been. But I have injured more than herself; and I have injured one, whose affection for me (may I say it?) was scarcely less warm than hers; and whose mind—Oh! how infinitely superior!” “Your indifference, however, towards that unfortunate girl—I must say it, unpleasant to me as the discussion of such a subject may well be—your indifference is no apology for your cruel neglect of her. Do not think yourself excused by any weakness, any natural defect of understanding on her side, in the wanton cruelty so evident on yours. You must have known, that while you were enjoying yourself in Devonshire pursuing fresh schemes, always gay, always happy, she was reduced to the extremest indigence.” “But, upon my soul, I did _not_ know it,” he warmly replied; “I did not recollect that I had omitted to give her my direction; and common sense might have told her how to find it out.” “Well, sir, and what said Mrs. Smith?”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “You are very wrong, Mr. Willoughby, very blamable,” said Elinor, while her voice, in spite of herself, betrayed her compassionate emotion; “you ought not to speak in this way, either of Mrs. Willoughby or my sister. You had made your own choice. It was not forced on you. Your wife has a claim to your politeness, to your respect, at least. She must be attached to you, or she would not have married you. To treat her with unkindness, to speak of her slightingly is no atonement to Marianne—nor can I suppose it a relief to your own conscience.” “Do not talk to me of my wife,” said he with a heavy sigh; “she does not deserve your compassion. She knew I had no regard for her when we married. Well, married we were, and came down to Combe Magna to be happy, and afterwards returned to town to be gay. And now do you pity me, Miss Dashwood? Or have I said all this to no purpose? Am I,—be it only one degree,—am I less guilty in your opinion than I was before? My intentions were not always wrong. Have I explained away any part of my guilt?” “Yes, you have certainly removed something—a little. You have proved yourself, on the whole, less faulty than I had believed you. You have proved your heart less wicked, much less wicked. But I hardly know—the misery that you have inflicted—I hardly know what could have made it worse.” “Will you repeat to your sister when she is recovered, what I have been telling you?—Let me be a little lightened too in her opinion as well as in yours. You tell me that she has forgiven me already. Let me be able to fancy that a better knowledge of my heart, and of my present feelings, will draw from her a more spontaneous, more natural, more gentle, less dignified, forgiveness. Tell her of my misery and my penitence—tell her that my heart was never inconstant to her, and if you will, that at this moment she is dearer to me than ever.” “I will tell her all that is necessary to what may comparatively be called, your justification. But you have not explained to me the particular reason of your coming now, nor how you heard of her illness.”

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Mostly, Mother couldn’t hurt you. But I both could and did. The time I’m mostly thinking of, you were barely four, which—I would argue—is less like being a miniature person than like a dog or cat who can talk. Your father and I were coming to pieces, and not long after, you came to see me in the hospital. You remember the embossed smiley faces on my green slippers. You remember the red-haired woman so psychotic she once landed in four-point restraints just about the time you got there with your Ninja Turtle lunch box, and you could hear her howls. We had a picnic one summer afternoon when you visited, and the hospital grounds so evoked the playing fields where your father distinguished himself that you told your teachers at daycare that I was at a slumber party at Harvard. We both remember, albeit in varying tones of gray and black and shit brown, the misery I mired us in. That’s the story I want to tell: how I started getting drunk. How being drunk got increasingly hard, and being not drunk felt impossible. In Odyssean terms, I’d wanted to be a hero, but wound up—as Mother did—a monster. But because of you, I couldn’t die and couldn’t monster myself, either. So you were the agent of my rescue—not a good job for somebody barely three feet tall. Blameless, the Greek translators call it. That’s what Odysseus wished for his son, Telemachus: to live guilt free. As a teenager myself, reading how Odysseus boffed witches and fought monsters, I inked the word blameless on the bottom of my tennis shoe. And my favorite part was always when he came home after decades and no one knew him. As you get older, you look at me more objectively—or try to. As I become strange to you in some ways, you’ve become more familiar to yourself. Maybe you could loan me some of the shine in your young head to clear up my leftover dark spaces. Just as you’re blameless for the scorched parts of your childhood, I’m equally exonerated for my own mother’s nightmare. Maybe I can show you how I came to peace, how she and Daddy wound up as blameless in my story as you are. Before you left the other night, you added—in the form of afterthought—what was, to me, the most dramatic news I’d heard that night: after the tape of your grandmother, you’d read nearly fifty pages of my own memories. You added, I’m gonna use that and some footage of Grandma for my documentary class. I watched you disappear down the stairs and wanted to call you back but thought better of it. Your girlfriend was with you, and you were so loaded down with bags and equipment. And something about those orange boxers with their cartoon fish—they draw from me such a throat-clenching nostalgia for a younger version of you—an image at odds with the man you are. You’re disembarking now, I can see it. Maybe by telling you my story, you can better tell yours, which is the only way to get home, by which I mean to get free of us.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Through suffering we must subdue, break, and subordinate to the spirit our untamed flesh in order to assist hope, strengthen faith, and firm up the word.’ Replying to Luther’s attack on him for wearing peasant grey, Karlstadt mocked the reformer’s predilection for wearing ‘scarlet, satin, brocade, angora cloth, velvet, and gold tassels’ — a well-chosen barb, for Karlstadt knew how irritated Luther had been in 1519 at the Leipzig Debate where the citizens had given Eck the fine angora cloth which Luther had longed for.® Karlstadt, the former provost of All Saints who had once driven a hard bargain over how much his chaplain should pay him from the income of the Orlamiinde property, now wrote: “Would to God that I were a real peasant, field labourer, or craftsman, that I might eat my bread in obedience to God, i.e., in the sweat of my brow. Instead, I have eaten from the poor people’s labours whom I have given nothing in return. I had no right to this nor could I protect them in any way. Nonetheless, I took their labours into my house. If I could, I should like to return to them everything I took.’ In 1524 he was not only idealising peasant life: he was now also reaping the consequences of his theology for social relations, realising how as a priest he had been complicit in the exploitation of the poor. For him, the Reformation was becoming a movement of liberation of the common people. He was not alone. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans and Anna Luder, 1527. View of Wittenberg, 1536. On the far left the Elector’s castle is clearly visible. The twin towers in the centre are those of the city church, and the Augustinian monastery can be made out on the right. Lucas Cranach the Younger, 7he Conversion of Saul, 1547. The three castles at Mansfield can be seen in the background of this painting, each picked out ina different colour. Johann von Staupitz. Painted in 1522, this portrait shows a large, round-faced man with real physical presence, natural authority and a warm paternal manner. Luther's later antagonist Cochlaeus described Staupitz as ‘remarkable for the beauty and stature of his body’. ASIN) DOMINE- 15 O49 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Georg Spalatin, 1509. Pilgrimage of Friedrich the Wise to Jerusalem, painted shortly after the journey in 1493.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In 1537, for example, it was the turn of Johannes Agricola, one of Luther’s closest and most long-standing followers. Agricola came from the Harz region and had close ties with Luther’s friends and relatives in Mansfeld. Luther dubbed him “Mr. Eisleben” after his parish, the town where both men were born. They had fought the early battles of the Reformation shoulder to shoulder, Agricola acting as Luther’s secretary in the Leipzig Debate. He may even have lit the famous fire in 1520 at the Elster Gate where the bull was burned. Though Luther was a decade older, Agricola had married in 1520, five years before him, and he was among the first Luther told about the birth of his son Hans.28 Their children overlapped in age, and for many years the letters between them discussed their wives’ pregnancies and childcare.29 When Agricola’s wife fell ill, she came to Wittenberg to stay with Katharina, Agricola confiding to Luther that she was sick “in spirit, not body, and no apothecary can help.”30 Yet in 1528, at the height of the dispute with Karlstadt, Luther heard that Agricola was preaching the erroneous idea that faith could exist without good works, and wrote him a stern warning about dressing up such nonsense in fine rhetoric and Greek words: “watch out for Satan and your flesh.”31 A year later, however, when Agricola got into trouble with a collection of German proverbs, a book to which he would continue to add for the rest of his life, Luther was supportive once more. Concealed in this apparently harmless work were some disparaging remarks about Duke Ulrich of Württemberg, who had been ejected by the Swabian League and the Habsburgs, and had become a follower of the Reformation. Ludwig von Passavant, a nobleman in Ulrich’s entourage, noticed the remarks, and attacked Agricola very publicly.32 The hapless Agricola discovered he had alienated not only Ulrich, but Albrecht of Mansfeld and Philip of Hesse to boot, major evangelical princes. Luther’s response was robust: He counseled the younger man to stick to his guns and upbraided him for cravenly apologizing to Philip of Hesse: “I hear you just caved in to Philip of Hesse, gave him too humble an answer, which I was sorry about. You should now publish an Introduction where you answer the Graf [that is, Passavant], and include that you earlier humbly sought peace, but because they rage and do not want peace you are forced not to be humble but to fight for the matter according to justice, and you are sorry about your humility.”33 Still, the misjudgment dogged Agricola for years, and he had to be excluded from the 1537 Schmalkalden negotiations to try to reach a common front among evangelical theologians, because his presence might irritate Duke Ulrich, who by then had regained his duchy.

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

  Harry, in awe, opened the main gate of the tank enclosure, and Friggley shuffled down the road. Then, in a sudden flurry, more drama. The Pearloiner leapt out from a bush with a cackle and tried to snatch away several of Friggley’s clitorises and hide them in her freezing jar. A small tussle ensued, which Friggley easily won by clasping the Pearloiner in several of its wank-strong arms. “Don’t let her go!” said Rhumpa. She seized the precious clitty jar, remounted Friggley, and the curious trio lurched toward Lila’s office. [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SW.jpg] The Pearloiner Says She’s Sorry [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SX.jpg] The Pearloiner was sitting on the couch, staring forward remorsefully. She’d been crying. The icy jar of clits was on a side table, shedding a soft gray mist. Zilka and Cheyenne stood on the open pussyrug, stripped down to their bras. Friggley was tied by the balls outside. “It was a misguided passion,” the Pearloiner was saying. “There are better things to collect. I see that now. I’m truly sorry for my compulsive thieving.” She fished in the jar, finding the plastic bags with Zilka’s and Cheyenne’s clits in them. “Thank you, Madame Pearloiner,” said Lila. “Zilka and Cheyenne will fix your hair and dress you for the Sherry Cobbler and Farewell Handjob Festival. As a first step, we must forgive.” The two lovely almost-naked women washed and blow-dried the Pearloiner’s hair and dressed her in a white shirt and a flattering navy-blue linen jacket. They left her naked down below. “Now, Madame, you know what you must do,” said Lila. She put the clitorises in the Pearloiner’s open palms. “Cup their pussies and reinstate their joys. Only you can give back what you took away.” The Pearloiner cupped the women’s crotches and jiggled her hands rapidly, saying, “By the power and the authority of the federal Transportation Security Administration, Eastern Region, HQ, I hereby give you back your clits and humbly ask your forgiveness for being so greedy to possess them.” “Oh, ooochie,” moaned Zilka, feeling her tender stem re-connecting. Moments after, Cheyenne’s clitoris went live. Her face cleared, and she beamed. “Finally!” she said. “Now down on the pussyrug, you two,” said Lila. “You must fix the repairs in place by gently grinding your gorgeous twats against each other.” Zilka and Cheyenne scissored themselves together and humped and ground, clit to blissfully reanimated clit. “Sealing it with a crimson pussy kiss,” said the Pearloiner, visibly moved. Lila opened a drawer and pulled out a large smooth wooden dildo, which she handed to the Pearloiner. “Madame, put this handmade Dendro wherever you would like it to go,” she said. The Pearloiner threw her strong tanned legs open and steered the dildo deep into her fur. She shook her head. “It’s good, but it’s not what I need,” she said. “I need live dick.”

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

  Then, in a sudden flurry, more drama. The Pearloiner leapt out from a bush with a cackle and tried to snatch away several of Friggley’s clitorises and hide them in her freezing jar. A small tussle ensued, which Friggley easily won by clasping the Pearloiner in several of its wank-strong arms. “Don’t let her go!” said Rhumpa. She seized the precious clitty jar, remounted Friggley, and the curious trio lurched toward Lila’s office. The Pearloiner Says She’s Sorry The Pearloiner was sitting on the couch, staring forward remorsefully. She’d been crying. The icy jar of clits was on a side table, shedding a soft gray mist. Zilka and Cheyenne stood on the open pussyrug, stripped down to their bras. Friggley was tied by the balls outside. “It was a misguided passion,” the Pearloiner was saying. “There are better things to collect. I see that now. I’m truly sorry for my compulsive thieving.” She fished in the jar, finding the plastic bags with Zilka’s and Cheyenne’s clits in them. “Thank you, Madame Pearloiner,” said Lila. “Zilka and Cheyenne will fix your hair and dress you for the Sherry Cobbler and Farewell Handjob Festival. As a first step, we must forgive.” The two lovely almost-naked women washed and blow-dried the Pearloiner’s hair and dressed her in a white shirt and a flattering navy-blue linen jacket. They left her naked down below. “Now, Madame, you know what you must do,” said Lila. She put the clitorises in the Pearloiner’s open palms. “Cup their pussies and reinstate their joys. Only you can give back what you took away.” The Pearloiner cupped the women’s crotches and jiggled her hands rapidly, saying, “By the power and the authority of the federal Transportation Security Administration, Eastern Region, HQ, I hereby give you back your clits and humbly ask your forgiveness for being so greedy to possess them.” “Oh, ooochie,” moaned Zilka, feeling her tender stem re-connecting. Moments after, Cheyenne’s clitoris went live. Her face cleared, and she beamed. “Finally!” she said. “Now down on the pussyrug, you two,” said Lila. “You must fix the repairs in place by gently grinding your gorgeous twats against each other.” Zilka and Cheyenne scissored themselves together and humped and ground, clit to blissfully reanimated clit. “Sealing it with a crimson pussy kiss,” said the Pearloiner, visibly moved. Lila opened a drawer and pulled out a large smooth wooden dildo, which she handed to the Pearloiner. “Madame, put this handmade Dendro wherever you would like it to go,” she said. The Pearloiner threw her strong tanned legs open and steered the dildo deep into her fur. She shook her head. “It’s good, but it’s not what I need,” she said. “I need live dick.”

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Finally I got up courage to return to the cemetery in the late afternoon. The shack was a smoking scab at the graveyard’s edge. Distraught and angry townsmen clumped together, muttering about ‘the beast and his half-witted bastard,’ and their audacity to abduct the Duchessa herself. How fortunate, they declared, that she had escaped with her honor, yet was able to expose their atrocities to her husband who had arrived to save her, in time. No, she was upset, and the doctors said she must stay indoors several weeks; no one was to see her. “I left the town; shortly afterwards, the country. “As I drifted east, I pondered on all this. Soon I was in countries where life meant much less than in Europe. The particularities by which coming and killing could link up surpassed all I had heretofore experienced. But still I pondered Catherine’s actions. During those periods which all of us who live this particular life must endure, when I lose all taste for women, she exemplifies that fantasy the bourgeois misogynist has predicated to justify his own inadequacy. But at other times, when concourse with my own sex revolts me, I see her more generously, and I realize that the actions of all of us were webbed by circumstance, bound by whatever forces move a Duke and Duchess, a grave digger and his son, a wanderer in an alien land. “She was generous enough to let me escape an easy hanging. “I return little enough by letting her escape my censure. “Toward the end of two years’ wanderings I stayed a double month in India, most of it in the house of Geana Liana, a woman not twenty-one, but in whose palatial establishment, inherited from a doting ‘uncle,’ acts were committed hourly by Indians and Europeans alike, night and day, that would make the deeds of the grave diggers, were they lights in the sky, fade—to take an image from Sappho—as the moon blinds out the near stars. Those talents I had begun to develop with the Count were brought to fruition there: I ministered deeds, envisioned more arduous ones, participated in many; often I helped the participants recuperate. “Geana herself, as I drank Turkish coffee and ate candied fruit on the balcony and she painted at my portrait, asked, ‘Jon? What do you want to do?’ Eyes winged with kohl, she smiled behind her veil. ‘You are a doctor who cannot heal anyone. You say you have studied the ways of different cultures, yet you are amazed at everything you see. Do you paint?’ “ ‘I draw a little—’ I had actually had a job as a medical illustrator for one term. “ ‘Tomorrow I will loan you paints and brushes. And you will paint a mural on the wall of the West Chamber with the white jade columns.’ “I painted the wall.

• From The City of God

  Yet He does not dismiss him without counsel, holy, just, and good. "Fret not thyself," He says, "for unto thee shall be his turning, and thou shall rule over him. "Over his brother, does He mean? Most certainly not. Over what, then, but sin? For He had said, "Thou hast sinned," and then He added, "Fret not thyself, for to thee shall be its turning, and thou shall rule over it. " [788]And the "turning" of sin to the man can be understood of his conviction that the guilt of sin can be laid at no other man's door but his own. For this is the health-giving medicine of penitence, and the fit plea for pardon; so that, when it is said, "To thee its turning," we must not supply "shall be," but we must read, "To thee let its turning be," understanding it as a command, not as a prediction. For then shall a man rule over his sin when he does not prefer it to himself and defend it, but subjects it by repentance; otherwise he that becomes protector of it shall surely become its prisoner. But if we understand this sin to be that carnal concupiscence of which the apostle says, "The flesh lusteth against the spirit," [789] among the fruits of which lust he names envy, by which assuredly Cain was stung and excited to destroy his brother, then we may properly supply the words "shall be," and read, "To thee shall be its turning, and thou shalt rule over it. "For when the carnal part which the apostle calls sin, in that place where he says, "It is not I who do it, but sin that dwelleth in me," [790] that part which the philosophers also call vicious, and which ought not to lead the mind, but which the mind ought to rule and restrain by reason from illicit motions,--when, then, this part has been moved to perpetrate any wickedness, if it be curbed and if it obey the word of the apostle, "Yield not your members instruments of unrighteousness unto sin," [791] it is turned towards the mind and subdued and conquered by it, so that reason rules over it as a subject. It was this which God enjoined on him who was kindled with the fire of envy against his brother, so that he sought to put out of the way him whom he should have set as an example. "Fret not thyself," or compose thyself, He says:withhold thy hand from crime; let not sin reign in your mortal body to fulfill it in the lusts thereof, nor yield your members instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. "For to thee shall be its turning," so long as you do not encourage it by giving it the rein, but bridle it by quenching its fire. "And thou shalt rule over it;" for when it is not allowed any external actings, it yields itself to the rule of the governing mind and righteous will, and ceases from even internal motions. There is something similar said in the same divine book of the woman, when God questioned and judged them after their sin, and pronounced sentence on them all,--the devil in the form of the serpent, the woman and her husband in their own persons. For when He had said to her, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shall thou bring forth children," then He added, "and thy turning shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. " [792]What is said to Cain about his sin, or about the vicious concupiscence of his flesh, is here said of the woman who had sinned; and we are to understand that the husband is to rule his wife as the soul rules the flesh. And therefore, says the apostle, "He that loveth his wife, loveth himself; for no man ever yet hated his own flesh. " [793]This flesh, then, is to be healed, because it belongs to ourselves:is not to be abandoned to destruction as if it were alien to our nature. But Cain received that counsel of God in the spirit of one who did not wish to amend. In fact, the vice of envy grew stronger in him; and, having entrapped his brother, he slew him. Such was the founder of the earthly city. He was also a figure of the Jews who slew Christ the Shepherd of the flock of men, prefigured by Abel the shepherd of sheep:but as this is an allegorical and prophetical matter, I forbear to explain it now; besides, I remember that I have made some remarks upon it in writing against Faustus the Manichaean. [794]

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Accordingly, the good lady, having thus bethought herself and belike more than once, to give effect privily to these considerations, clapped up an acquaintance with an old woman who showed like Saint Verdiana, that giveth the serpents to eat, and still went to every pardoning, beads in hand, nor ever talked of aught but the lives of the Holy Fathers or of the wounds of St. Francis and was of well nigh all reputed a saint, and whenas it seemed to her time, frankly discovered to her her intent. 'Daughter mine,' replied the beldam, 'God who knoweth all knoweth that thou wilt do exceeding well, and if for nought else, yet shouldst thou do it, thou and every other young woman, not to lose the time of your youth, for that to whoso hath understanding, there is no grief like that of having lost one's time. And what a devil are we women good for, once we are old, save to keep the ashes about the fire-pot? If none else knoweth it and can bear witness thereof, that do and can I; for, now that I am old, I recognize without avail, but not without very sore and bitter remorse of mind, the time that I let slip, and albeit I lost it not altogether (for that I would not have thee deem me a ninny), still I did not what I might have done; whereof whenas I remember me, seeing myself fashioned as thou seest me at this present, so that thou wouldst find none to give me fire to my tinder,[286] God knoweth what chagrin I feel. With men it is not so; they are born apt for a thousand things, not for this alone, and most part of them are of much more account old than young; but women are born into the world for nothing but to do this and bear children, and it is for this that they are prized; the which, if from nought else, thou mayst apprehend from this, that we women are still ready for the sport; more by token that one woman would tire out many men at the game, whereas many men cannot tire one woman; and for that we are born unto this, I tell thee again that thou wilt do exceeding well to return thy husband a loaf for his bannock, so thy soul may have no cause to reproach thy flesh in thine old age. Each one hath of this world just so much as he taketh to himself thereof, and especially is this the case with women, whom it behoveth, much more than men, make use of their time, whilst they have it; for thou mayst see how, when we grow old, nor husband nor other will look at us; nay, they send us off to the kitchen to tell tales to the cat and count the pots and pans; and what is worse, they tag rhymes on us and say,

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

  Ruzty said, “I’m sorry.” She looked at his eyes, which traveled to her ass. Then she caught sight of his remarkably solid but curved piece of equipment. She made a tiny hissing sound and said, “Oh, might as well go ahead anyway. Fuck me, horny sailor.” Ruzty’s dick bounced with gladness. Henriette gnawed the sheet and waited. She felt his cock helmet finding the sloppy gates. Then impulsively she turned onto her back. “Take me where I can see you,” she said. He sank over her, and she led him inside, forcing his cock to unbend. She gave him the Cook’s tour of her innerness. His backbone worked lithely; his bottom, swiveling, rose and fell. Henriette straightened her knees, so that her feet were up in the air, running. She laughed because it felt so good, and she said, “Ruzty, you are a swervy-dicked master of the fuck! Don’t stop! Fill my bitchgroove!” He squeezed her very hard to him and breathed in her hair and shuddered out everything he had into her. “I give you everything,” he said. Later in the shower, Henriette remembered this and got on her knees and said, “Oh, Ruzty, oh, Ruzty,” and came. The Pearloiner Says She’s Sorr y T he Pearloiner was sitting on the couch, staring forward remorsefully. She’d been crying. The icy jar of clits was on a side table, shedding a soft gray mist. Zilka and Cheyenne stood on the open pussyrug, stripped down to their bras. Friggley was tied by the balls outside. “It was a misguided passion,” the Pearloiner was saying. “There are better things to collect. I see that now. I’m truly sorry for my compulsive thieving.” She fished in the jar, finding the plastic bags with Zilka’s and Cheyenne’s clits in them. “Thank you, Madame Pearloiner,” said Lila. “Zilka and Cheyenne will fix your hair and dress you for the Sherry Cobbler and Farewell Handjob Festival. As a first step, we must forgive.” The two lovely almost-naked women washed and blow-dried the Pearloiner’s hair and dressed her in a white shirt and a flattering navy-blue linen jacket. They left her naked down below . “Now, Madame, you know what you must do,” said Lila. She put the clitorises in the Pearloiner’s open palms. “Cup their pussies and reinstate their joys. Only you can give back what you took away.” The Pearloiner cupped the women’s crotches and jiggled her hands rapidly, saying, “By the power and the authority of the federal Transportation Security Administration, Eastern Region, HQ, I hereby give you back your clits and humbly ask your forgiveness for being so greedy to possess them.” “Oh, ooochie,” moaned Zilka, feeling her tender stem re-connecting.

• From The City of God

  In like manner the Lord, speaking by the same prophet, says, "And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and mercy; and they shall look upon me because they have insulted me, and they shall mourn for Him as for one very dear, and shall be in bitterness as for an only-begotten. " [1486]To whom but to God does it belong to destroy all the nations that are hostile to the holy city Jerusalem, which "come against it," that is, are opposed to it, or, as some translate, "come upon it," as if putting it down under them; or to pour out upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and mercy? This belongs doubtless to God, and it is to God the prophet ascribes the words; and yet Christ shows that He is the God who does these so great and divine things, when He goes on to say, "And they shall look upon me because they have insulted me, and they shall mourn for Him as if for one very dear (or beloved), and shall be in bitterness for Him as for an only-begotten. "For in that day the Jews--those of them, at least, who shall receive the spirit of grace and mercy--when they see Him coming in His majesty, and recognize that it is He whom they, in the person of their parents, insulted when He came before in His humiliation, shall repent of insulting Him in His passion:and their parents themselves, who were the perpetrators of this huge impiety, shall see Him when they rise; but this will be only for their punishment, and not for their correction. It is not of them we are to understand the words, "And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and mercy, and they shall look upon me because they have insulted me;" but we are to understand the words of their descendants, who shall at that time believe through Elias. But as we say to the Jews, You killed Christ, although it was their parents who did so, so these persons shall grieve that they in some sort did what their progenitors did. Although, therefore, those that receive the spirit of mercy and grace, and believe, shall not be condemned with their impious parents, yet they shall mourn as if they themselves had done what their parents did. Their grief shall arise not so much from guilt as from pious affection. Certainly the words which the Septuagint have translated, "They shall look upon me because they insulted me," stand in the Hebrew,"They shall look upon me whom they pierced. " [1487]And by this word the crucifixion of Christ is certainly more plainly indicated. But the Septuagint translators preferred to allude to the insult which was involved in His whole passion. For in point of fact they insulted Him both when He was arrested and when He was bound, when He was judged, when He was mocked by the robe they put on Him and the homage they did on bended knee, when He was crowned with thorns and struck with a rod on the head, when He bore His cross, and when at last He hung upon the tree. And therefore we recognize more fully the Lord's passion when we do not confine ourselves to one interpretation, but combine both, and read both "insulted" and "pierced. "

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  Here is Paul’s story: when they were living in Caesarea of Cappadocia, his elder brother assaulted their mother. She was going at dawn to the baptistry to curse him when a demon in the form of their uncle appeared to her and asked her where she was going. She told him, and he persuaded her to curse her whole family. She tore her hair, bared her breast, and prayed that all of them be made exiles. The elder brother came down with a persistent case of the shakes, and the others in the family fell victim to the same penalty within a year. The mother, full of remorse, hanged herself. “All of us went abroad, unable to bear our shame, and left our common homeland behind to scatter through the world.” Some of the ten brothers followed the eldest to the shrine of Lawrence in Ravenna and were cured, or so Paul was told. Paul was the sixth and wandered the earth with his sister (next in age), going wherever he had heard of miracles. “I did not fail to visit Uzalis in Africa, where the blessed martyr Stephen was said to do great things quite often. But it’s three months now, just on the first of January, that my sister and I—she’s here with me, suffering the same illness—were instructed by a clear and vivid vision.” They saw a venerable man, white-haired and striking in appearance, who promised them good health within three months. You yourself, Augustine, appeared to my sister in a vision and told us to come here. We arrived fifteen days ago and I have prayed daily in the shrine of Stephen. But on Easter Sunday, as the others who were here have seen, while I was praying with many tears and hanging on to the altar rail, I suddenly collapsed. I took leave of my senses and had no idea where I was. After a little while, I got up again and found that the trembling had left my body. Deeply grateful for this blessing from god, I offered this libellus, in which I report what you may not know about our calamities and my recovery. I hope you will pray for my sister and give thanks for what has happened to me.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  “I’d like to know why things happen. I wanna get clean.” He sat for a while looking down into his beer bottle and then he went on. “That stuff I was into last year was such bullshit. If there really is an Everywhere Spirit, he oughta be plenty pissed off at me for that.” Kuch was talking about the way he’d acted last wrestling season and on into the spring. He’d wear nothing to school but a pair of deerskin pants and vest and some coyote teeth on a leather thong—in the dead of winter! He’d sit cross-legged on the floor and eat lunch with his hands. And he’d dance and sing and warcry before, during, and after all his matches. I never figured he was being pretentious exactly, because he was sincere. And he really did look like a noble savage. He was heavily tanned from going half-naked all the time and he was in incredible shape from fasting and working out for wrestling. He glowed with suntan and belief and his braided hair hung down to his ass. He was just overzealous, and looking back, I guess he didn’t have his beliefs too well in hand. I feel able to comment on pretension because I pulled some similar shit when I was going through my “I’m-going-to-be-a-doctor” phase. I wrote a monograph on the clitoris and submitted it to the school paper. Thurston Reilly, the editor, figured it for a public service feature and printed it right away. Thurston was expelled from school just seconds after the papers hit the halls, and I joined him a few seconds later. That was the point at which the David Thompson Explorer lost its editorial freedom. Kuch was out of school at the time, too. He had refused a directive from the vice principal to wear more clothes. He was threatening to attack the vice principal’s house, rape his wife, and cut his nuts off and use the scrotum for a medicine bag. They let us back in before Kuch had finished his research on tanning human hide. Kuch talked on slowly. I popped another beer. “I’m gonna try to use this whole next season like the Plains Indians used their sweat lodge,” he said. “And when the season’s over, I’m gonna keep a decent diet and try to keep a straight head through the spring races. And when summer comes, I oughta be ready to go somewhere quiet and sit and learn something.” “Who’ll you get to talk about the vision with?” I asked. “I’ll get you, if you’re still around. But it doesn’t matter, really. There’s no sense in tryin’ to do it right. Hell, I’m no fuckin’ Indian. There probably aren’t even any Indians left who could do it right. Where’d they go to find a shield maker or a medicine man?” He popped a final beer and rummaged among the bones for a meaty rib. “Why wait till next summer?” “That’s just the thing,” Kuch replied.

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

  ὥφελε .. Aesch. Pr. 48, etc.; also, as in Ep., εἴθ᾽ ὥφελες .. Soph. ΕἸ. 1021; εἴθ᾽ ὥφελεν .. Ar. Nub. 41, etc.; εἰ yap ὥφελον .. Id. Eccl. 380, Plat. Rep.432 Ὁ; ὡς ὥφελες .. Ar. Ran. 955; withnegat., μήποτ᾽ ὥφελον Soph. Ph. 969, Eur. Alc. 880, Dem. 322. 3; ὡς μήποτ᾽ ὥφελον... Eur. Ion 286; μηδὲ viv ὥφελον Dem. 539. 25 ;—so in Hdt. without augm., εἶδον .. τὸ μὴ ἰδέειν ὄφελον 1. 111, cf. 3.65; and in a few lyr. passages of Att. Poets, εἴθ᾽ ὄφελε .. Aesch. Pers. 915; ὄφελε .. Soph. Aj. 1192; μήποτ᾽ ὄφελον .. Eur. Med. 1413 :—the form ὥφειλον in this sense may be allowed in late Poets, as Q. Sm. 5. 194, ὧς μὴ ὦφειλες ἱκέσθαι ; but in Hes. Op. 172, ὥφελλον should prob. be restored (v. sub init.), and in Eur. 1. A. 1291, ὥφελεν :—Call. has it with Indic., ὥφελε μηδ᾽ ἐγένοντο θοαὶ νέες Epigr. 18. 1, cf. Q. Sm. το. 378, etc.:—c. acc. et ‘inf, ὦμοι ἐγών, ὄφελόν pe .. ὀλέσθαι Orph. Arg. 1164:—in N.'T. even with 2nd pers. of Verb, ὄφελον ἐβασιλεύσατε τ Ep. Cor. 4.8, cf. 2 Cor. 11. 1, Galat. 5. 12, Rev. 3. 5. III. impers. ὀφείλει, Lat. oportet, c. acc. et inf., Pind. N. 2.9; ὥφελλε oportuit, Ap. Rh. 3. 678. ὀφέλλω (A), Ep. for ὀφείλω, 4. v. sub init. ὀφέλλω (B), Ep. inf. -ἐμεν Od. 15. 21: impf. ὥφελλον 16.174, ὄφ-- Theocr. 25.120: Aeol. aor. opt. ὀφέλλειεν Il. τό. 651, Od. 2. 334: (from 4/OPEA, whence also ὄφελος, v. ὀφείλω init.) :—old Ep. Verb, to increase, enlarge, elevate, strengthen, στόνον, πόνον, ἀνδρὸς ἐρωήν, δέμας, ἥβην, μένος, ἀρετήν Hom.; ὃς ἀνέμου .. κύματ᾽ ὀφέλλει the force of the wind raises high the waves, Il. 15. 3833 μῦθον dd. to multiply words, 16. 631; ὕβριν ὀφ. to increase or add to insult, Hes. Op. 211; πόλεμον καὶ δῆριν op. Ib. 14, cf. 33; ὄφρ᾽ ἂν ᾿Αχαιοὶ υἱὸν ἐμὸν τίσωσιν, ὀφέλλωσί τί ἕ τιμῇ may advance him in honour, Il. 1. 510; οἶκον o@. to advance it, make it thrive, Od. 15. 21, Hes. Op. 493; πεδίον σὺν θεῶν τιμαῖς dp. Pind. P. 4. 464:—Pass., οἶκος ὀφέλλεται it waxes great, prospers, Od. 14. 233; λήιον .. ὀφελλόμενον Διὸς ὄμβρῳ Theocr. 17. 78; τὰ τῶν θύραθεν .. ὀφέλλεται Aesch. Theb. 193; ἀραγ- pos ἐν πύλαις ὀφέλλεται increases, waxes louder, Ib. 249. ὀφέλλω (C), to heap up, bring together : and so, to sweep, τὴν στέγην Hippon. 42;—hence ὄφελμα, τό, a broom, Ib., cf. Eust. 1887. 34, Hesych.; also ὄφελτρον, τό, Id.; and ὀφελτρεύω, Zo sweep, Lyc. 1165. ὄφελμα, τό, (ὀφέλλω B) increase, advantage, Soph. Fr. 926.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Like, get phone numbers of ladies and pick one for a sobriety coach you can call every day till you can get a grip. So I pick a lady in an A-line denim skirt and penny loafers, and maybe because her society lockjaw accent has the cadence of my mother-in-law’s, I never call before I pick up a drink—when she could talk me out of it—only after. How does Warren miss all this? Maybe he conks out, or maybe I’m a sneaky bitch. I wake one night on the back stair landing, choking on bile that’s erupted from my throat while passed out. Feeling my way up the unlit stairwell, I see at the top my pajama’ed boy, his frayed polar bear tucked under his arm, and around him is glowing some pale blue corona from a source I can’t name, and his eyes are acetylene torches. I hoist him in my arms and feel his soft arms around my neck, and he pats my cheek and says, Are you okay, Mommy? I lie that I am, and after I’ve settled him in his brand new big-boy bed, he corkscrews his way back into a dream. Then I stay all night propped against the wall, watching the light sift over him as if grated from the moon. Get a fucking grip, you drunk bitch, the sober part of me says. The two halves seldom war anymore, because they’re never in my head at the same time. They’ve worked out some system of shifts: the sober voice only gets in during periods I’m drowning in remorse; the drunk voice is otherwise resident as I hurtle toward a drink. The next night I humbly return to the shit-brown chair, trying to read the Boy Scout aphorisms hung from the wall, and I promise myself the first woman who makes me laugh, I’ll get her number and call her the second I get up tomorrow. Doing it alone is not working. The speaker’s named Joan—an elegant pageboyed social theorist at Harvard whose unlikely outlaw stint in Alaska involved going to the bar one night in subzero weather wearing a tutu under her arctic parka, just to stir things up. Since the night I woke up after puking, I’ve become semi-teachable, and I tell her that I’m ready to hear suggestions. She says, Do some volunteer work. So I start scrubbing coffee urns with the black marine, who tells me that, yes, even if I consider dosing the coffee with cyanide, the act of making it still constitutes spiritual progress. Joan also urges me to start praying to some half-baked higher power whose existence I argue against. No way, I say. Never happen, no offense.

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

  pet-ayyilw, to pour from one vessel into another, Diosc. 1. 62:—Pass., μεταγγισθεῖσα ἡ ψυχή, of the Pythag. metempsychosis, Eust. rogo. 32; so, 6 ἐξ ἀλόγων ἢ εἰς ἄλογα μεταγγισμός Hierocl. in Phot. Bibl. 172. 23. Metayertvimyv, ὥνος, 6, the second month of the Athen. year, answer- ing to the Boeot. Πάνεμος, and Lacon. Καρνεῖος, the latter half of August and first of September, Antipho 146. 26, Arist. H. A. 5. 17, 1, cf. Plut. Popl. 14. (Said to be from μετά, γείτων, because then people jiitted and changed their neighbours.) Hence ᾿Απόλλων Metayettvios = Kapvetos, Lysim. ap. Harp.; petayettvia, τά, = μετοίκια, Plut. 2.601 B. petayevns, ἔς, born after, 6 μεταγενής the youngest, Menand. Ἔμπ. 1: Comp. petayevéorepos, Diod. 12. 11, Luc. Salt. 80; of μεταγενέστεροι posterity; Diod. 11. 14. 2. of later time, μεταγενέστεροι συγγρα- pets Dion. H. de Thuc. 9. μεταγεννάω, fut. ἤσω, to restore to life, revive, Joseph. A. J. 11. 3, 3. petaylyvopar, later - γίνομαι [1] :—to happen after, v. sub μεταπαυ- own. 2. to be transferred, carried away, LXX (2 Macc. 2. 1). μεταγιγνώσκω, Ion. and later -- γινώσκω : fut. --γνώσομαι : aor. μετέ- yvov. To find out after, i.e. too late, ἄταν .. μεταγνούς Aesch. Supp. IIo. IL. to change one’s mind, to repent, absol., Hdt. 1. 40, 86; μετέγνων ἔγνων δὲ .. changed my mind and determined .. , Id. 7.15; μετα- γνοὺς ὀρθῶς ἂν βουλεύσαιτο Antipho 140.17, cf. Thuc. 4.92, Plat. Phaedr. 231 A; οὔκουν ἔνεστι καὶ μεταγνῶναι πάλιν Soph. Ph. 1270. 2. c. acc. rei, to change one’s mind about a thing, to repent of, μετέγνων καὶ τὰ πρόσθ᾽ εἰρημένα Eur. Med. 64; μ. τὰ προδεδογμένα to alter or repeal a previous decree, Thuc. 3. 40, cf. Luc. Nero 4. 3. c. inf. to change one’s mind so as to do something different, τὸ παντότολμον φρονεῖν μετέγνω Aesch. Ag. 221; ἐν δὲ τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ μετέγνωσαν Kep- κυραίοις ξυμμαχίαν μὲν μὴ ποιήσασθαι Thuc. I. 44; μετ. ws.., to change one’s mind and think that .., Xen. Cyr. 5. 5, 40. Cf. μεταβου- λεύω τι, μεταλαμβάνω III, μετανοέω. “ μεταγλωττίζω, to interpret, Ms. ap. Pasin. Cod. Taur: 1. p. 473. μεταγλωττιστή, οὔ, ὃ, an interpreter, Byz. μετάγνοια, 7, -- μετάνοια, repentance, remorse, Soph. El. 581. peTayvoun, 7, change of mind: defection, App. Civ. 5. 122. μετάγνωσις, ἡ, change of mind or purpose, Hdt. 1. 87, Dem. 1466. 23. μεταγομφόω, to change as if into nails, Nicet. Ann. 199 Ὁ. petaypappatife, to alter the letters, Tzetz.: -ἰσμός, ov, 6, Galen, μεταγρᾶφεύς, ews, 6, a transcriber, copyist, Tzetz. μεταγρἄφή. 7, a transcribing, Julian. Ep. 9. 2. a borrowing from one person to pay another, Lat. versura, Plut. 2. 831 A. μεταγρᾶφικός, 7, dv, of or for transcription, Tzetz.

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

  μετάμειψις, 7, exchange: alteration, Schol. Aesch. Pr. 670. μεταμέλει, impf. μετέμελε: fut. - μελήσει: aor. μετεμέλησε: (μέ- Aw): I. impers. it repents me, rues me, Lat. poenitet me :— Construction : 1. c. dat. pers. et gen. rei, ὑμῖν μεταμελησάτω τῶν πεπραγμένων Lys, 186. 12, cf. Plat. Phaedr. 231 A, Xen. Cyr. 8. 3, 32; 2. oftener, the thing one repents of is in part. agreeing with the dat., μετεμέλησέ of τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον μαστιγώσαντι it repented him of having scourged it, Hdt. 7. 54, cf. 1. 130., 3. 36, 140, Antipho 140. 18; μεταμέλει μοι οὕτως ἀπολογησαμένῳ I repent of having so defended myself, Plat. Apol. 38 E :—so, μ. μοι ὅτι... Xen. Cyr. 5. 3, 6. 3. often absol., μ. μοι it repents me, Ar. Pl. 358, Antipho 140. 33 :—some- times it is so used as to be undistinguishable from μεταμέλομαι 3, ξυνέβη ὑμῖν πεισθῆναι μὲν ἀκεραίοις μεταμέλειν δὲ κακουμένοις to adopt a measure when your forces are unbroken, and ¢o repent when in distress, Thuc. 2. 61; μεταλαμβάνειν ταὐτὰ καὶ μεταμέλειν Plat. Prot. 356 ΤΣ 4. part. neut. μεταμέλον absol., since it repented him, τῶν ἀνη- λωμένων αὐτοῖς μ. Isocr. 382 C, cf. Plat. Phaedo 113 E. 11. seldom with a nom., to cause repentance or sorrow, τῷ ᾿Αρίστωνι μετέ- pere τὸ εἰρημένον (for τοῦ εἰρημένου) Hat. 6. 63; τοῖσι .. ἡγεομένοισι τὰ πεπρηγμένα μετέμελε οὐδέν Id. 9. 1; ws αὐτοῖσι μεταμέλῃ πόνος Aesch, Eum. 771 (nowhere else in Trag., and this line is suspected) ; οἶμαι δέ σοι ταῦτα peTapeAnoew Ar. Nub. 1114.—Cf. μεταμέλομαι. μεταμέλεια, 7, change of purpose, regret, repentance, μεταμέλειαν λαμβάνειν Eur. Fr. 1065; and in pl., μεταμελείας A. Thuc. 1. 343 μ. περί τινος Id. 3. 37; μόνη σιὠπη μ. οὐ φέρει Menand. Incert. 153; ἐμπιμπλάναι τινα μεταμελείας Plat. Legg. 727 Ο; μ. γίγνεται τοῦ - πεπραγμένου Ib. 866 Ε ; ὁ ἐν μ.--ὖ μεταμελόμενος, Arist. Eth. N. 3.1. 13; μ. ἔχει με = μεταμέλει μοι, Xen.Cyr. 5. 3, 7:—Ion.—ty, Vit. Hom. 19. μεταμελητικός, 7. dv, full of regrets, always repenting, Arist. Eth. N. 7.7, 2; μεταμελείας μεστός, acc. to Plat. Rep. 577 E. μεταμελητός, 7, dv, repented of, Hesych. 5. v. πεδαγρετόν.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  I recall I paused before Tossi, the great Moroccan, sprawled drunk across the chair arm, his workman’s pants at mid-shin, hands loose across a cock he boasted always stiff, even when he slept. I squatted between his knees and nuzzled him. I often gave him the same service Benny gives me—” (He gestured where the naked boy slept with the dog.) “—and Olaf or Pietro, the big blond Italian, would do for Tossi what you and the fishermen did for me. But Tossi grunted and pushed me away. Had he wakened I would have taken him with me. But he didn’t. The probable fate of the others? I’m sure the police apprehended them later. The money and the prestige of the Count held the law off us. Without him we were vulnerable. I knew that. So I left my favorite, drunken and doomed, without regret. Such departures are strange, and very easy. “You have asked me about the woman? Here she makes her first entrance into my wanderings. Let me introduce her by explaining that I moved down through Italy, keeping to smaller towns. A week from Zurich round me living with a grave digger and his son. Where the mother had gone, or, in truth, if there was actually blood between man and boy, I never knew for sure. The father, whose acquaintance I made in a narrow street lit by half a moon at midnight, had raised the child to his own tastes. They disinterred dead women, carried them to their shack—a print of the Virgin was tacked over the fire, and the roof leaked after any more than an hour’s rain steady—where, with dirty fingers, and stained teeth, father and son would bruise and tear the cold mouth, breasts, buttocks, and box. Though liking to lick, lip, and tongue the cool and putrid corpses, they preferred to give up their juice in something warm, wet and responding, while they groveled, growled and bit. Often they would perform this service for one another (reluctantly claimed the father), one on his knees, hugging the hips of the other, who lowered over the figure on the table flickering under the candles. But their real pleasure was to indulge the yellowing, lardy lumps together while somebody else—male or female, it was no matter—crouched for them. Often I saw their clotted hands meet, while man and boy exchanged congealed kisses, tongueing a bit of fat between them. “I met Guido, the grave digger, as I say, in a dark street. His black eyes followed mine, pulled me around.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  If current trends continue, one of every three black American males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, as can one of every six Latino males—compared to one of every seventeen white males.”1 The sin of racism has had a devastating impact on African Americans and had led to both explicit racial discrimination and in effect the construction of two distinct criminal justice systems (“one for wealthy people and another for poor people and minorities”).2 As God’s people, we must embrace repentance and change. These are the right responses to racism, sexism, greed, and other forms of social and personal sin. But what is repentance? Repentance involves key changes in people, groups, and communities. It includes our minds, hearts, and wills. Repentance can be personal, but it can also be corporate. Repentance includes a metanoia , a change of mind and a turning around. Scripture says, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord” (Acts 3:19 ). Acts 20:21 further says, “I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.” Repentance means that we change our ways and turn toward God. There are individual sins and corporate/community sins. As individuals we sin by ourselves and come to God for forgiveness. We are very aware of our individual sins, as we commit them personally. Corporate sins are committed by society and institutions that we as individuals become complicit in. We fail to speak up against institutional sins such as racism, sexism, and injustice in the criminal justice system. We therefore need to repent of our social sins as well. Repentance is a four-stage process. The first stage is conviction . We recognize that one or more of our attitudes and behaviors are wrong. They are broken and sinful, and they can damage us and others. This conviction of sin grips our hearts and minds. The second stage is contrition . We lament, regret, and mourn our mistakes and sins. We feel sorrow and remorse for these attitudes and behaviors, for their effect on people and on the earth, and for their offensiveness to God. Contrition is a godly sorrow that moves us to action. The third stage is commitment . We decide to turn away from our sin and commit to new, God-honoring, and redemptive attitudes, postures, and behaviors. This is changing our minds, changing our attitudes, changing our purpose, changing our desires, and changing our ways. The fourth stage is change . We practice a new way of being in the world. This is the way of repentance, righteousness, humility, justice, love, and reconciliation. Godly sorrow leads to faith, hope, and love. Why Do We Need to Repent?We live in a broken world. This brokenness not only hurts us, it also hurts those around us.