Resentment

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 City of God

  118 The Price of Empire (Books 2–3) A fter beginning in Book 1 with the challenge of the problem of evil and the Christian response to it, in Book 2 Augustine turns to the larger task that will centrally occupy the work through the end of Book 10—namely, the dismantling of the pagan Romans’ sense of themselves, their overall worldview. He begins by striking right at the center of Rome’s self-understanding, its self-congratulatory story about how it got to be so awesome, why the Romans deserve their empire. Like all people who enjoy benefits throughout history—and I by no means exclude us today from this class of people—the Romans constructed elaborate stories justifying what they enjoyed. Augustine might even say the stories they told about the empire were just as ingenious as the empire itself. Augustine knows enough history to recognize that these stories are built on an unwarranted nostalgia for an idyllic time of simplicity and virtue deep in the Roman past. Indeed, anyone who knows what really happened in history, he says, will be utterly unsurprised by Rome’s current state. The success of the Roman Empire has little to do with noble virtues of simpler times and a lot to do with those earlier Romans’ luck, paranoia, ruthless greed, and the way they came to organize their lives and their city around the tremendous psychological dynamo of the libido dominandi, the lust to dominate. That is also the dominating lust. So, in Books 2 and 3, Augustine begins this analysis by discussing the moral evils that pagan Rome suffered from—corruption of character, distortion of desire, the misvaluing of different goods— all of which, he suggests, arise from the way the pagan Romans desired total domination of the world, captured in the ideas of Lecture 6 Transcript

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  A continuance in a place where everything reminded her of former delight, was exactly what suited her mind. In seasons of cheerfulness, no temper could be more cheerful than hers, or possess, in a greater degree, that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself. But in sorrow she must be equally carried away by her fancy, and as far beyond consolation as in pleasure she was beyond alloy. Mrs. John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended to do for his sisters. To take three thousand pounds from the fortune of their dear little boy would be impoverishing him to the most dreadful degree. She begged him to think again on the subject. How could he answer it to himself to rob his child, and his only child too, of so large a sum? And what possible claim could the Miss Dashwoods, who were related to him only by half blood, which she considered as no relationship at all, have on his generosity to so large an amount. It was very well known that no affection was ever supposed to exist between the children of any man by different marriages; and why was he to ruin himself, and their poor little Harry, by giving away all his money to his half sisters? “It was my father’s last request to me,” replied her husband, “that I should assist his widow and daughters.” “He did not know what he was talking of, I dare say; ten to one but he was light-headed at the time. Had he been in his right senses, he could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half your fortune from your own child.” “He did not stipulate for any particular sum, my dear Fanny; he only requested me, in general terms, to assist them, and make their situation more comfortable than it was in his power to do. Perhaps it would have been as well if he had left it wholly to myself. He could hardly suppose I should neglect them. But as he required the promise, I could not do less than give it; at least I thought so at the time. The promise, therefore, was given, and must be performed. Something must be done for them whenever they leave Norland and settle in a new home.” “Well, then, let something be done for them; but that something need not be three thousand pounds. Consider,” she added, “that when the money is once parted with, it never can return. Your sisters will marry, and it will be gone for ever. If, indeed, it could be restored to our poor little boy—” “Why, to be sure,” said her husband, very gravely, “that would make great difference. The time may come when Harry will regret that so large a sum was parted with. If he should have a numerous family, for instance, it would be a very convenient addition.” “To be sure it would.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  But Marianne for some time would give credit to neither. Edward seemed a second Willoughby; and acknowledging as Elinor did, that she had loved him most sincerely, could she feel less than herself! As for Lucy Steele, she considered her so totally unamiable, so absolutely incapable of attaching a sensible man, that she could not be persuaded at first to believe, and afterwards to pardon, any former affection of Edward for her. She would not even admit it to have been natural; and Elinor left her to be convinced that it was so, by that which only could convince her, a better knowledge of mankind. Her first communication had reached no farther than to state the fact of the engagement, and the length of time it had existed.—Marianne’s feelings had then broken in, and put an end to all regularity of detail; and for some time all that could be done was to soothe her distress, lessen her alarms, and combat her resentment. The first question on her side, which led to farther particulars, was,— “How long has this been known to you, Elinor? has he written to you?” “I have known it these four months. When Lucy first came to Barton Park last November, she told me in confidence of her engagement.” At these words, Marianne’s eyes expressed the astonishment which her lips could not utter. After a pause of wonder, she exclaimed— “Four months!—Have you known of this four months?” Elinor confirmed it. “What! while attending me in all my misery, has this been on your heart? And I have reproached you for being happy!” “It was not fit that you should then know how much I was the reverse!” “Four months!” cried Marianne again. “So calm! so cheerful! How have you been supported?” “By feeling that I was doing my duty.—My promise to Lucy, obliged me to be secret. I owed it to her, therefore, to avoid giving any hint of the truth; and I owed it to my family and friends, not to create in them a solicitude about me, which it could not be in my power to satisfy.” Marianne seemed much struck. “I have very often wished to undeceive yourself and my mother,” added Elinor; “and once or twice I have attempted it;—but without betraying my trust, I never could have convinced you.” “Four months! and yet you loved him!”

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

  πάλημα, τό, -- πάλη, fine meal, Nic. Al. 551. πᾶλημάτιον, τό, Dim. οἵ πάλημα, Ar. Fr. 548. παλήν, 6, Lycian for βαλήν, C. I. 4269. πάλγ. late post. form of πάλιν. Anth. P. 5. 182. Call. ib. 7. 520, append. 5257. 22; cf. Wer. Tryph. p. 417, Phryn. 284. 1112 πᾶλιγ-γέλως, wos, 6, mutual mockery, cited from Philo. πᾶλιγ-γενεσία, ἡ, new birth, new life, restoration, regeneration, of the world, τὰς ἐκπυρώσεις καὶ π. τοῦ κόσμου Philo 2. 501; παλιγγενεσίας ἡγεμόνες, of Noah and his sons, Ib. 1443 ἡ περιοδικὴ π. τῶν ὅλων M. Anton. 11.13 ἡ ἀνάκτησις καὶ π. τῆς πατρίδος Joseph. A. J. 11. 3,9: of persons, a renewal of life, return to life, εἰς 7. ὁρμᾶν Philo 1.159; of the transmigration of souls, Plut. 2.998 C, Clem. Al. 539; used by Cic. of his restoration after exile, Att. 6. 6 :—hence, in Christian writers, 1. the resurrection, Ev. Matth. 19. 28. 2. regeneration by baptism, διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγενεσίας Ep. Tit. 3. 5, cf. Luc. Musc. Enc. 7. πᾶλιγγενέσιος, ov, belonging to regeneration, Clem. Al. 219. πᾶλιγ-γενής, és, born again, Nonn. D. 2. 650. πᾶλίγ-γλωσσος, ov, like παλίλλογος 11. 2, contradictory, false, ayye- Ata Pind. N. 1. 88. II. of strange or foreign tongue, Id. I. 6. (5). 35. ae ov, bent or doubled back, κέλευθοι Tryph. 523; written παλίγναμπτος in Opp. C. 2. 305, H. 1. 54. πᾶλίγ-γνωστος, ov, learnt or known again, Hesych. πᾶλιγκἄπηλεύω, to be a παλιγκάπηλος, to sell over again, sell wares by retail, Dem. 1285. 6. πᾶλιγ-κάπηλος, 6, one who buys and sells again, a petty retailer, huckster, Ar. Pl. 1156; π. πονηρίας Dem. 784.93 cf. παλιμπράτης. πᾶλιγ-κινής, és, moved back, going back, Schol. Ap. Rh. 4.1315. πᾶλίγ-κλαστος, ov, refracted, crooked, Hesych. πᾶλιγκοταίνω, fut. yaw, of wounds, zo grow malignant again, break out afresh, Hipp. Fract. 760, 767, etc. πᾶλιγκότησις, ἡ, the breaking out again of a wound, Hipp. Fract. 772: —also wa&AtyKotta, ἡ, Id. Art. 830. πᾶλίγκοτος, ov, properly of wounds, growing malignant again, break- ing out afresh, π. παθήματα, like Lat. dolores recrudescentes, denwo excandescentes, Galen. 12. 204; Sup. -ὦτατος, Hipp. Art. 796, etc. :— so in Adv., αὐτῷ... παλιγκότως συνεφέρετο according to his old ill-luck fared it with him, Hdt. 4.156; φέρειν τὰ συμπίπτοντα μὴ π. to bear accidents not as if they were inveterate, Eur. Fr. 576. 11. metaph. of fresh outbreaks of passion, malignant, spiteful, inveterate, ἀλλά τις ovK ἔμμι παλιγκότων ὄργαν Sappho 773; KAnddves π. injurious, un- toward reports, Aesch. Ag. 863, 874: π. τύχη adverse fortune, Ib. 571; πῆμα Pind. O. 2.36; π. ὄψιν ἰδοῦσα Mosch. 4.92; τὰ π. λέγειν Antipho ap. Stob. 422. 7. 2. of persons, hostile, malignant, τινι Ar. Pax 390, cf. Theocr. 22. 58; of παλίγκοτοι adversaries, Pind. N. 4. fin., Aesch. Supp. 376. | (Commonly derived from πάλιν, κότος : but v. ἀλ- λόκοτος, νεόκοτος.) πᾶλίγ-κραυπνος, ον, very swift, Anth. Ρ. 15. 27. πᾶλίγ-κτιστος, ov, rebuilt, restored, Gloss. πᾶλίγ-κυρτος, ὁ, a fishing-net, Polyb. Fr. Gramm. 99. παλί-δορκος, ov, looking back, Aleman 139.

• From The City of God

  254 Books That Matter: The City of God the world and to the realities beyond. It is superstitious and impious. And here he’s arguing against opponents that we call philosophers. And behind both is the basic claim that Christianity cannot provide the kind of happiness that we as humans always seek, because Christianity does not properly orient you to this world and the cosmos enframing it. It is, in short, escapist—it is a way of avoiding the facts about our world, not inhabiting them. That is the challenge. As to Christianity’s purported antipathy to patriotism: as I said before, this may seem like an easy argument for Augustine to win. I mean, we can all see the dangers of patriotism, right? It can easily become a form of national idolatry. But that’s not the most profound form of the challenge he must address. More profoundly, he’s arguing against civic thinkers who believe that concrete historical action in the world can do real and permanent good. Remember what I said much earlier in these lectures: this worry is one that is actually quite easy for us to share today, for Rome did not simply understand itself as one city among others, it understood itself as the vessel for values that transcended the city of Rome itself. And part of the psychological shell game it could play on its adherents was to suggest that its aims were never just its own parochial local aims but the aims of civilization itself. The belief, then, behind all of the formulations of patriotism that Rome had, went something like this: Whatever the brutality that it may from time to time display, Rome is finally a liberally-minded empire bringing a more humane way of life, composed at least of civilizing custom, a cosmopolitan way of living, and vast transcontinental trade. All of this may well actually work over time to make the whole world a more fit place for human habitation, and a more propitious context in which to live a truly flourishing life.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Certainly not; but if you observe, people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them; and she is very stout and healthy, and hardly forty. An annuity is a very serious business; it comes over and over every year, and there is no getting rid of it. You are not aware of what you are doing. I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities; for my mother was clogged with the payment of three to old superannuated servants by my father’s will, and it is amazing how disagreeable she found it. Twice every year these annuities were to be paid; and then there was the trouble of getting it to them; and then one of them was said to have died, and afterwards it turned out to be no such thing. My mother was quite sick of it. Her income was not her own, she said, with such perpetual claims on it; and it was the more unkind in my father, because, otherwise, the money would have been entirely at my mother’s disposal, without any restriction whatever. It has given me such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am sure I would not pin myself down to the payment of one for all the world.” “It is certainly an unpleasant thing,” replied Mr. Dashwood, “to have those kind of yearly drains on one’s income. One’s fortune, as your mother justly says, is not one’s own. To be tied down to the regular payment of such a sum, on every rent day, is by no means desirable: it takes away one’s independence.” “Undoubtedly; and after all you have no thanks for it. They think themselves secure, you do no more than what is expected, and it raises no gratitude at all. If I were you, whatever I did should be done at my own discretion entirely. I would not bind myself to allow them any thing yearly. It may be very inconvenient some years to spare a hundred, or even fifty pounds from our own expenses.” “I believe you are right, my love; it will be better that there should be no annuity in the case; whatever I may give them occasionally will be of far greater assistance than a yearly allowance, because they would only enlarge their style of living if they felt sure of a larger income, and would not be sixpence the richer for it at the end of the year. It will certainly be much the best way. A present of fifty pounds, now and then, will prevent their ever being distressed for money, and will, I think, be amply discharging my promise to my father.”

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

  “Dune, do you think you could show me your genitals? I’d like to get that on video.” Dune tapped his cigar. “A week ago if you’d have asked me if I’d bare my crotch for you, I would have said, Sure thing, right away. Now I’m a bit skittish. Everything has its price.” “The price is sometimes steep,” said Mindy. “You got that right, hot goddess. Lila’s got us all doing the fucky-fuck and the sucky-suck and the humpy and the squirty and the juicy-Lucy and the ooh, ah, ooh. Everything we do they keep track of, and they know what we want most, and they want to milk us till our money’s all gone and our balls ache, if we have balls, which I don’t at the present time. Because it’s the House of Holes, and is there anything worth paying court to more than a woman with a pretty face and two good titties and one hot switchy ass she wants to shove in your face? Hmm?” Mindy took that as a rhetorical question. “I’m more into men,” she said. “I like men. Sometimes I like smoky men in dirty suede.” “Course you do, Mindy,” he said. “You’re a lovely lusty woman and you want to be a part of this whole slumber party. You want an ‘experience.’ And you will have that at the House of Holes, believe me. If you haven’t already.” “I already got shrunk down and squirted out of a man’s urethra.” “Well, then, there you go.” Dune was tiring. “Listen, would you mind if I moved to the couch for a sec?” “No, go ahead,” said Mindy. “Let me just unclip your mike.” “I just need fifteen minutes of downtime. Thanks for dinner, thanks for the smoke.” He closed his eyes and was asleep almost immediately. Mindy watched him sleep. When he sat up an hour later, she had a second Winchester cigar ready for him. She said, “What was she like? The woman you switched with. You mind if I turn the camera back on?” Dune stretched. “Sure, turn the camera on. Are we rolling? Marcela was her name. She was nice, very friendly. She’d put in a request to do Dick for a Day.” “I’ve heard of Dick for a Day,” said Mindy, with interest. “Yes, now, Dick for a Day is not that involved because they can morph your clitty out for six, eight hours without too much bother, and it’ll go back good as new. But it turned out Marcela wanted something more like Dick for a Couple of Weeks, and that takes a full interplasmic transfer. That’s what it’s called, a ‘cross-crotchal interplasmic transfer.’ I’ll bet you want to know how they do that.” Mindy nodded that she did. “Well, you need a tweenella. That’s the person who is desi-gnated to put her hands on the two crotches that are going to be crossed. She completes the crotchal circuit.”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Except for her continued worry about her mother and an occasional mother’s “boyfriend who drives me up the wall,” Lisa enjoyed her adolescence. Unlike children living under strict court-ordered visiting schedules, she had lots of choices about what she could do and when. Her father called her every week to arrange what they would do, according to her preferences—which included not seeing him if other activities were more desirable. She had many girlfriends at high school and prided herself on her skill in making friends. She grew up slowly. In fact, she seemed to be holding back from involvement with boyfriends. Unlike many in her generation, she was in no hurry to have a sexual relationship. The one boy she fell in love with from afar, she said sadly, “didn’t like me back.” School was enjoyable for Lisa; she got good grades and did well in sports and dance. She avoided drugs and alcohol. “They just don’t interest me,” she announced. I asked Lisa, as I did all the youngsters, to draw on her own experience for any advice she might offer to parents and children in other divorced families. Lisa thought for several long minutes. Then she responded with a vehemence that took me by surprise: “Children should not hate their parents for the divorce. They should give their parents a chance.” She stopped suddenly, as if she had let the cat out of the bag. More gently, she added, “As for parents, they should not get mad at the kids. They should try to understand that it’s hard for the kids as well as for them.” I was surprised by her strong use of the word “hate” and with her recurring theme of anger. Obviously this sweet, shy fifteen-year-old had struggled with powerful feelings of resentment toward her parents. Her advice to parents also implied that her own suffering had not been appreciated. Instead it was kept under wraps, for fear they might disapprove. I remember the end of this interview when she talked happily about her future plans: “Marriage is a good thing if you love someone, but if you want a divorce you should get that also. I’d like to think that I won’t, but you never can tell.” Clearly these issues were hardly real at this point. But Lisa’s final statement was hopeful and very reassuring: “I want to go to college, get a good job, get married, and have kids. Also maybe do something in math, maybe computer engineering or science.” I was very taken with her spunkiness and self-confidence.

• From The City of God

  423 Lecture 20 Transcript—Judgments, Last and Otherwise (Book 20) interest in the Last Judgment as a consummate example of their resentment at those who reject the idea that the meek will inherit the earth. Opponents have also taken Christian fascination with the end of the world as a deep hostility toward our current existence in this one. On the other side, there’s a long history of affirming that, as the German theologian Ernst Käsemann once put it, “Apocalyptic is the mother of theology.” By this he meant that early Christians’ expectations of the end of the world, continually frustrated, provoked believers into theological investigations as to why the delay had occurred, and what it might possibly mean; and from the question of the delay of the end others began to ask about the nature of that end and the logic behind our need to imagine the necessity of an end; and from all these questions spring most of the theological energies that have occupied the Christian world ever since. To ask about the apocalypse, then, is to ask indirectly about the legitimacy of theological speculation in the Christian life—its purpose and function in that life. Both of these points of view—skepticism about Christian apocalypticism and interest in how Christian theology goes about its eschatological and apocalyptic duties—gain interesting illumination from thinking about what Augustine says can, and cannot, be known and affirmed about the last things. For what he proposes that Christians can affirm about the last things is surprisingly minimal. By the end of this book, all Augustine will allow is that, in his words, and this is a quote from him, We have learned that the following things are going to happen [and he lists a few of the details, and then he says], But, how they are going to take place, and in what order, is something that the experience of the actual events will teach us then far more fully than any human intelligence can grasp them now. My own view, however, is that they are going to happen in the order in which I have listed them.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Lauretta having made an end of her story and all having commended the lady for that she had done aright and even as befitted her wretch of a husband, the king, to lose no time, turned to Fiammetta and courteously imposed on her the burden of the story-telling; whereupon she began thus, "Most noble ladies, the foregoing story moveth me to tell you, on like wise, of a jealous husband, accounting, as I do, all that their wives do unto such,--particularly whenas they are jealous without cause,--to be well done and holding that, if the makers of the laws had considered everything, they should have appointed none other penalty unto women who offend in this than that which they appoint unto whoso offendeth against other in self-defence; for that jealous men are plotters against the lives of young women and most diligent procurers of their deaths. Wives abide all the week mewed up at home, occupying themselves with domestic offices and the occasions of their families and households, and after they would fain, like every one else, have some solace and some rest on holidays and be at leisure to take some diversion even as do the tillers of the fields, the artisans of the towns and the administrators of the laws, according to the example of God himself, who rested from all His labours the seventh day, and to the intent of the laws, both human and Divine, which, looking to the honour of God and the common weal of all, have distinguished working days from those of repose. But to this jealous men will on no wise consent; nay, those days which are gladsome for all other women they make wretcheder and more doleful than the others to their wives, keeping them yet closelier straitened and confined; and what a misery and a languishment this is for the poor creatures those only know who have proved it. Wherefore, to conclude, I say that what a woman doth to a husband who is jealous without cause should certes not be condemned, but rather commended.

• From The City of God

  365 Lecture 17 Transcript—Augustine’s Scriptural History (Books 15–17) inappropriate for relations with other persons, and all the more so when that person is God. Clearly, Augustine says, Cain’s sacrifice was self-interested, a kind of bit of technology. As Augustine puts it, They suppose that they are by this means purchasing God’s help, not in healing their base desires, but in fulfilling them. And this is the way of the earthly city, to worship a god or gods so that, with their aid, that city might reign in victory and earthly peace, not by the council of charity, but with lust for mastery. It’s hard not to imagine that as thinking about Rome for Augustine. This teaches us, he thinks, a crucial difference—the good use of the world to enjoy God versus the evil use of God to enjoy the world. But in instrumentalizing God for the world, the wicked instrumentalize even themselves as well. Hence Cain reveals the tragedy of the lust for domination. As Augustine says, A man will have the mastery of his sin if he does not place it over himself by defending it, but makes it subject to himself by repenting of it. Otherwise, he will indeed be its slave, and it will have the mastery of him, if he lends it his protection when it rises. Augustine even recognizes the need for history to be artistically composed and literarily constructed, as not every moment or event in history is as important as every other. So he allows that there might have been other people when Cain built the city; but in this moment, their stories are in the deep background, whereas Cain’s is in the foreground. The writer of the sacred history had no need, he says, to name all the men who might have then existed, but only those required by the plan of the work which he had undertaken. Insofar as history has a shape and a moral, some moments in it are necessarily going to be more meaningful than others.

• From The City of God

  289 Lecture 14—Fall of the Rebel Angels (Book 12) „ He unpacks his answer through a discussion of the angelic fall because the fall of the angels is a way to study the origin of evil in almost laboratory conditions. Angelic agency is not immured in the muck of the material world; the less our view is clouded by the dirt of materiality in which the roots of our agency are anchored, the more clearly we see its roots. „According to Augustine, evil is embedded within a framework of goodness. The existence of evil is intelligible only within God’s larger framework of Creation: To have being is the singular characteristic of goodness. Therefore, when we say something is evil, we mean ultimately that the thing tends toward non-being, which is contrary to God. „The good angels accepted God’s gift of creating them in gratitude, while the bad angels resented the conditions of the gift, and thereby resented their being itself. Thus the demons are, for Augustine, fundamentally fallen angels and therefore good. „Evil is a vacuity where something should be. The evil will is opposed to both God and its own nature, and we can only properly talk about a nature being evil as a way of its testifying to the good form that it should have retained. We recognize evil only by contrast to good, and by recognizing fault as fault, we necessarily praise what the nature as created was meant to be. „Evil is also inescapably secondary because it is a failed nothing. Its nihilism always carries with it the pathos of a nothing that should have been a something or a somebody. The secondariness of evil is also ironic, because its whole self-understanding as rebellion is meant to express a longing for autonomy, for separation from God, and that is the one thing it can never achieve. „Augustine is saying that for things to be less good than they ought to be, they must be able to vary in the degree to which they fulfill their cosmic destinies. This is a far cry from saying that

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

  Dennis moved his fingertip gently over her, and she began to get heavier. He had to set her down, and she got bigger and bigger, and then she was a naked smiling documentary filmmaker sitting on the floor in front of him. “You are so fucking sexual,” Dennis said. “Raugh!” They went to the restaurant and the gift shop and got a House of Holes T-shirt. Dennis wrote his number in Mindy’s address book. [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SW.jpg] Polly Visits the Hall of the Penises [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SX.jpg] Polly’s boyfriend Jeff said, “We can have a conversation about that if you want.” So they did. It was one of those “conversations” where both people are just steaming, just fuming, fighting each other for dear life—but even so they are doing everything they can to sound reasonable and fair-minded. The cause of the disagreement was that Jeff had liked a play they’d seen together and Polly hadn’t. Polly thought it was an hour and a half of insults, ill humor, and spurious profundities, while Jeff thought it was a work of cryptic, discombobulating genius. And what was worse, during the intermission Jeff had flirted openly with Polly’s friend Helena. The next morning when Polly woke up, she looked at Jeff in bed. His hair was curly—she’d always liked how thick and curly his hair was. But now his hair did nothing for her. Well, very little. What she was thinking was: If he liked that awful, awful play, then they were unsuited for each other. That was a Sunday, and they had a lot of laundry to do, so they went to the laundromat. Polly was trembly inside because she was pretty sure that she wanted to break up with Jeff, and he kind of knew a major thunderstorm was coming. But still they had laundry to do. So they were there sitting in the orange chairs, and Jeff was reading The Rooster, and Polly was looking around at people, as she did. Suddenly she saw a girl with long flaxen hair get in the dryer and close the door after herself. She thought, That’s odd. The girl didn’t reappear. Polly got up and looked in the dryer window. No girl. She went back to Jeff and she said, “Huh.” Jeff didn’t look up. He was reading a review of a rock concert. He never wanted to go to concerts, but he read all the reviews. “Jeff,” Polly said, “a girl just got in that dryer.” He looked up and frowned. “Will you please take a look?” They walked over and Jeff pulled open the dryer door. There was a pile of hot clothes inside—hot summery women’s clothes—and an oven mitt, and that was it. She noticed a little card taped next to the dryer’s controls. “HOH,” it said. “What’s ‘HOH’ stand for?” she asked Jeff. Jeff shrugged. “Hard of hearing? Water?” She said: “I’m not kidding, two seconds ago a girl with long straight hair climbed into this dryer.”

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

  πλεονᾶχός, dv, manifold, κατὰ πλεόναχον τρόπον Diog. L. 10. 87; τοῦ πλεονάχου τρόπου Ib. g5:—elsewhere only used as Ady. πλεοναχῶς, in various ways, Arist. An. Post. 1. 33,6, Eth. N. 4. 4, 4., 5. 1, 6, Epicur. ap. Diog. L. 10. 78, 80, etc. πλεονεκτέω, fut. -ἥσω Thuc. 4. 62, etc., but —joopa Plat. Lach. 192 E. Prose verb, to be πλεονέκτης, to have or claim more than one's due, mostly in bad sense, ¢o get or have too much, to be greedy, grasping, arrogant, Hdt. 8. 112, Plat., etc.; opp. to ἐλαττοῦσθαι, Arist. Rhet. I. 4, 9 :—also to gain or have some advantage, without any bad sense, δυνάμει τινὶ πλ. Thuc. 4.62, 86; πολὺ ἐπλεονέκτει ὁ Πελοπίδας παρὰ τῷ Πέρσῃ Xen. Hell. 7. 1, 34, cf. 2. 3, 16, Arist. Rhet. 2. 17, 5: mA. ἀπό τινὸς Polyb. 6. 56, 2: often with a neut. Adj., 7A. τι, τοῦτο, τοιαῦτα etc., Thuc. 4. 61, etc. 2. c. gen. rei, to have or claim more than another, to have or claim a larger share, τῶν ὠφελίμων Id. 6. 39; τοῦ ἡλίου, τοῦ ψύχους, τῶν πόνων Xen. Cyr. 1. 6, 25, cf. Oec. 7, 26; δόξης, χάριτος Arist. Eth. N. 5. 9, 9 and 12. II. c. gen. pers. to have or gain the advantage over, τῶν ἐχθρῶν Plat. Rep. 362 B, etc.; (παρά τινος Xen. Cyr. 1.6, 32, Arist. Pol. 4. 5. 4); τινί in a thing, Xen. Cyr. 4. 3, 21, etc.; κατά τι Plat. Euthyphro 15 A; περί τι Id. Lach. 183 A ;—also, mA. τῶν νόμων to lord it over the laws, Id. Legg. 691 A; mA. τῆς εὐηθείας ὑμῶν to take advantage of your simpleness, Dem. 1434. fin. Au. acc, pers. to overreach, defraud, πλεονέκτει μηδένα Menand. Monost. 259, cf. Dion. H. 9.7, Diod. 12. 46, 1 Ep. Thess. 4. 6, 2 Ep. Cor. 7. 2, Plut. Marcell. 29, Luc. Amor. 27, Dio Ο. 52. 37: but this sense of the Pass. occurs in the best Att., to be overreached, Thuc. 1. 77; ὑπό τινος Xen, Mem. 3. 5, 25 πλεονεκτεῖσθαι χιλίαις δραχμαῖς to be defrauded in or ef 1000 drachmae, Dem. 1035. 26. πλεονέκτημα, τό, an advantage, gain, privilege, Plat. Legg. 709 C, Dem. 63. 1., 245. 13, etc.: in pl. gains, successes, ἐν τοῖς πολέμοις Xen, Eq. Mag. 5.11. II. an act of overreaching, selfish trick, Dem. 533. 28., 1218. 29., 1490. 13, Arist. Pol. 5. 10, 10. πλεονέκτης, Ov, ὅ, --ὁ πλέον ἔχων, one who has or claims more than his due, greedy, grasping, arrogant, Thuc. 1. 40, etc. :—as Adj., λόγος mA. a greedy, arrogant speech, Hdt. 7. 158; Sup. πλεονεκτίστατος, v. |. for κλεπτίστατος, Xen. Mem. 1. 2, 12. 2. ἐν παντὶ πλεονέκτην τῶν πολεμίων making gain from their losses, Id. Cyr. 1. 6, 27. πλεονεκτητέον, verb. Adj. one must take more than one’s share, Plat. Gorg. 490 C.

• From American Religious History (2001)

  1. The “Americanism” crisis, including a papal condemnation in 1899, warned them against too much assimilation. 2. The seminary library of Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago was modeled on the University of Virginia on the outside but the Roman Barberini Palace on the inside. 3. Cardinal Mundelein issued an “English only” order for all Catholic schools, winning praise from the city’s civic and religious leaders. 4. A shrewd businessman and manager, he sold shares in himself that kept their value in the Great Depression years. II. Anti-Catholic prejudice among Protestants persisted far into the 20th century. A. Al Smith, Democratic presidential candidate in 1928, proved unacceptable to many southern evangelicals, who normally voted Democratic. B. The image of sinister Catholics shown in Thomas Nast’s old cartoons persisted. C. The Legion of Decency threatened an organized boycott of all Hollywood films that did not meet its stringent criteria and led to the creation of the Hays Office. D. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Paul Blanshard argued that Catholicism posed the same kind of threat to the republic as Communism. E. In the 1960 election, John F. Kennedy, the Catholic Democratic candidate, denied the allegation that if elected, he would be subservient to Vatican directives. 1. Organized Protestant groups and celebrities, such as Norman Vincent Peale, campaigned against Kennedy. 2. In a speech to the Houston Ministerial Association, Kennedy told the city’s Protestant ministers that no religious authorities would dictate policy to him. 3. No major party since 1960 has nominated a Catholic candidate for president. III. The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) transformed numerous time- honored Catholic customs. A. Services were held in English instead of Latin. ©2001 The Teaching Company. 76

• From American Religious History (2001)

  commercial success fanned neighbors’ resentment, which intensified when rumors that Mormon leaders practiced polygamy began to spread. The rumors were justifiedSmith and his fellow leaders had multiple wives. In 1844, Smith preached that God had an actual physical body and other doctrines that some of his followers found difficult to accept. Before he could elaborate these new theories, he was killed by a lynch mob in Carthage, Illinois, the event that prompted his successor, Brigham Young, to take the Mormon “saints” on their Great Migration to Utah. Billy Sunday (1862–1935). Fundamentalist revival preacher in the tradition of Charles Grandison Finney and a specialist in urban revivals for plain farmers and working-class people. Raised in an Iowa orphanage, Sunday became a professional baseball player for Chicago and Pittsburgh teams but was won away at the age of twenty-nine by a call to evangelize for the YMCA. Always emotional, colorful, and entertaining, he carried his old baseball stunts into the revival tent and sometimes slid up to the lectern as though stealing second base, declaring: “The Devil says I’m out, but the Lord says I’m safe!” One of his books was Burning Truths from Billy’s Bat (1914). Despite his theological premillennialism, according to which unaided human action could not delay or avert the coming catastrophe, Sunday preached a fiery brand of anti-German patriotism during World War I and criticized liberal Protestants for succumbing to German critical theories. Intellectuals were often the butt of his jokes and social criticisms. He was an ardent temperance man and on the 1920 day that Prohibition came into effect, he preached a mock funeral for “John Barleycorn,” predicting (quite wrongly as it turned out) that most of the worst sins and miseries of America would now disappear. Sunday was satirized by novelist Sinclair Lewis in Babbitt, where he appears as “Mike Monday.” George Whitefield (1714–1770). Son of a tavern-keeper, Church of England preacher, and friend of John Wesley, who galvanized the Great Awakening in the American colonies during the 1740s. Whitefield began preaching on behalf of an orphanage he had established in Georgia but soon became famous for spellbinding outdoor oratory and so, takes his place as the first in a long line of revivalists whose reputation spread far beyond the bounds of his particular denomination. Eschewing the solemn written sermons of his contemporaries, Whitefield, who had originally hoped to be an actor, memorized and dramatized his sermons, which led audiences to feel he spoke directly to their spiritual needs. The famous English actor ©2001 The Teaching Company. 121

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  The Caecilianist church in Hippo in the 390s was to all appearances a poor place. The community was substantially smaller than the Donatist community in the same city, and its bishop, the aging Valerius, was a Greek-speaker from across the water. (The choice of Valerius suggests that local talent must have been unable to carry the day at the time of his election.) We have already discussed the landscape and architecture and the likelihood that the grand basilica whose traces we see did not at the outset belong to Augustine’s community. The Donatist church in Hippo was not only larger but more enthusiastic. In the years since the Macarian persecution, the majority church had flourished throughout Africa. The time of direct repression after Macarius ended in 361 with the accession of the emperor Julian, who refused to go along with the Christianizing tendencies of his predecessors. Whatever his own religious practices and ideas, Julian was bent on leveling the playing field among religions and then tipping it against the Christian state church he resented.401 Accordingly he took various steps that infuriated the Caecilianists of Africa and the orthodox everywhere. The majority church in Africa accordingly rebounded and entered its last phase of growth and prosperity, a phase that lasted through the 390s, until Augustine and his colleagues could begin to undermine their opponents’ tranquility. Many cities in this period looked like Hippo: a small Caecilianist community holding on by its thumbs in the face of majority hostility and even ostracism. Donatist history thus consisted of two long periods of preeminence (312–47 and 361–98) interrupted by this one wave of persecution. If we try to estimate the state of affairs in Africa when Augustine comes on the ecclesiastical scene, we must realize how normal Donatist predominance seemed to all sides, even if it was not everywhere welcome. The world looked very different for the members of the different communities. At Hippo, the revival of Donatist hopes under Julian was something Augustine recalled with horror and stories of violence and abuse. The Donatist bishop Faustinus had ordered the local bakers not to bake bread for the Caecilianists.402 By the 390s, relations between the communities were at least somewhat more mannerly, no doubt because the Donatists had little to fear. But angry encounters erupted, such as this one Augustine reports:

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  Consentius is in other ways a good example of what Augustine was up against in promulgating his ideas. The two fell into correspondence because Consentius wanted advice about lying—that is, wanted to be told that it was all right to lie for a good cause. Augustine tried six ways from Sunday to tell Consentius that it is never all right to lie (Augustine’s position was firm on this point254), but we are indebted to Consentius for what is in many ways the funniest story (Evelyn Waugh before his time) of late-antique Christian heresy-hunting. In a letter to Augustine, Consentius tells of sending an orthodox spy from Minorca to the mainland of Spain to infiltrate the “Priscillianists” there.255 The spy is about as successful as one would expect a half-trained FBI agent to be on attempting to infiltrate a communist cell in Ogallala, Nebraska, in the 1950s, when the “cell” turned out to be three local schoolteachers and a librarian who enjoyed sharing copies of the New Republic and talking about them at coffee hour after church on Sunday. Every appearance of success is reported back to headquarters, but we have to doubt whether the object of the infiltration is what the secret agent thinks it is. When the matter finally comes into the open, Consentius is dismayed that the Spanish bishops who take up the matter are far less seriously moved than he thinks they ought to be, and his indignation is marked throughout his long letter to Augustine. The story is funny and maddening and relevant here only as a marker of the pastoral difficulty Augustine faced as author and letter writer. None of Augustine’s several interventions and none of his books made the slightest positive impression on his great fan Consentius. VIAUGUSTINE IN PUBLICAugustine’s background and upbringing had prepared him for the public life of a late Roman gentleman. He lived up to the type in most respects. Without a sustained day-to-day portrait of his life, we make do with the glimpses we get from scattered moments in his career. AUGUSTINE IN CHURCH

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  Meanwhile, one day in 396 or 397, Augustine came together in the up-country town of Thubursicu with the Donatist bishop there, Fortunius.423 It may have been the best forum Augustine could find for a confrontation at that moment. The appeal was less than completely dignified. The crowd was there, Augustine tells us, “more to gawk at our quarreling, more or less as if they were going to the theater.” The crowd wouldn’t keep still or listen properly, but Augustine and Fortunius persisted in their efforts for several hours. They tried and failed to get a transcript made by notarii; the letter we have summarizing the events is all they could manage. The event ended inconclusively with talk of a rematch at a neutral site, a villa in the country where neither side had a church. But the tissue of encounters between members of the two communities was infinitely complicated. By chance we hear from Augustine of a Caecilianist churchgoer who has met a Donatist priest.424 It seems the priest had written a pamphlet and given his acquaintance a copy; it was a pamphlet written at the instruction of an angel no less, an angel who described how the religious life of the city should be arranged. Augustine responded indignantly, mocking the idea that it might have been an angel and insisting that Christianity must be a religion for the whole world, not just a particular community. As always, his argument has greater impact for cosmopolitans like ourselves; but it would be less persuasive for somebody who lived in a world bounded by material horizons and defined by a single city or town, for whom an angel might very well trump a smooth-talking bishop. A COLD WAR HEATS UP Opportunity played into the hands of Augustine and his colleagues soon enough. A local chieftain in Africa in 398, Gildo, was in revolt against the government of the adolescent emperor Honorius across the sea in Italy. The majority church in Africa saw prudent advantage in collaborating with him, and the powerful Donatist bishop Optatus of Timgad threw in with Gildo. (Timgad was a wealthy farming city whose ruins are impressive evidence of the ambitiousness and scale of the city, which was situated far from the coast and was a hotbed of Donatism.) When that rebellion was crushed, the Roman government was unhappy with the part played by the church and engaged in some fairly heavy-handed retaliation, closing churches and exiling clerics.

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  The fussing continued: Did Marcellinus say that this was more an ecclesiastical matter than a legal one? Could we agree, Emeritus asks, that the rules of the day will be purely those of the scriptures? Marcellinus passes that one by and turns to the Caecilianists, who ask to have a manifesto (mandatum) of theirs read. The Donatists demur, not wanting the debate to begin with a lengthy Caecilianist screed, but the Caecilianists insist that they can only answer the question about procedure by introducing their document. Another Caecilianist, Fortunatianus of Sicca, intervenes to push for the Donatists to name their delegates. A distinguished crew will represent the Caecilianists (names given in order of seniority in office): Aurelius of Carthage, Alypius of Tagaste, Augustine of Hippo, Vincent of Culusi, Fortunatus of Constantine, Fortunatianus of Sicca, and Possidius of Calama. Marcellinus approves the documents submitted by the Caecilianists and asks that the names of the principal signers be read out, then asks how many signatures in all their declaration bears: 266 is the answer. Petilian leaps to the challenge. Where are these 266 bishops? Ah, Aurelius says, the judge asked for only seven to appear here. But who knows how authentic all these signatures are? asks Petilian. Lesser clergy could have signed and not real bishops. He insists on a formal count. Marcellinus lets himself be drawn into a discussion of how you would do this: Are there two bishops in every town, where one from each side could recognize the other? This gives Petilian room to complain of Caecilianist practice. I have an opponent in my own town of Constantine, he says, but then they have set up another bishop still in part of my territory, so it seems they have two to my one. The purpose of a count would be to reveal the real nature of the Caecilianist numbers game. The Caecilianists oppose, but realize they are defending a difficult position. Aurelius insists that if all came in the resulting crowd would produce tumult. Augustine chimes in for the first time, supporting the suggestion that only disputed names be invited to enter. But Emeritus craftily observes that the Donatist bishops have been present all day, sitting quietly in prayer, making no disruption. Ah, says Aurelius, but when there’s another crowd to blame for the uproar, it will be different. So, says Emeritus, you’re saying that it will be bringing in the Caecilianists that causes trouble! With that zinger, the quarrel is effectively over, and after a few more exchanges, Marcellinus yields. The idea is that each bishop will be summoned against his name, identified, and then dismissed.