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 Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Of course, there are plenty of men looking for sexual variety on the beaches of Thailand as well, but since that just supports the standard narrative, it seems unimportant. Until it is. That tiger ain’t go crazy; that tiger went tiger! You know when he was really crazy? When he was riding around on a unicycle with a Hitler helmet on! C HRIS R OCK, talking about a circus tiger that attacked a trainer By temperament, which is the real law of God, many men are goats and can’t help committing adultery when they get a chance; whereas there are numbers of men who, by temperament, can keep their purity and let an opportunity go by if the woman lacks in attractiveness. M ARK T WAIN, Letters from the Earth A man we know—we’ll call him Phil—could be considered a living icon of male achievement. * In his early forties, handsome, he’s been married to Helen, a gorgeous, accomplished physician, for almost twenty years. They have three brilliant, beautiful daughters. Phil and a friend started a small software business in their late twenties and now, fifteen years later, they’ve both got more money than they’ll ever be able to spend. Until recently, Phil lived in a big, beautiful house on a hill overlooking a wooded valley. But Phil’s life was, as he puts it, “a disaster waiting to happen.” Disaster struck when Helen discovered the affair he’d been having with a work colleague. Unsurprisingly, she felt deeply betrayed and expressed her outrage by locking him out of the house, refusing even to let him see their children until the lawyers had finished their dismal task. Phil’s seemingly perfect life came crashing down around him. Comedian Chris Rock said, “A man is basically as faithful as his options.” Phil’s professional success, good looks, and charming personality generated a constant stream of sexual opportunity. Many male readers are probably thinking, “Of course he was sleeping with another woman—or two! Come on!” But if you’re a woman, you may be thinking, “Of course his wife and daughters locked the pig out!” Is there any way to reconcile these two opposed perspectives on this all-too-common situation? What could possibly motivate so many men who are otherwise demonstrably intelligent, loving, and cautious to risk so much for so little? Everything from the respect of their friends to the love of their children can be lost in the quest for something as transitory and ultimately meaningless as a casual sexual encounter. What are they thinking? We asked Phil. “At first,” he said, “the sex was fantastic. I hadn’t felt so alive in years. I thought I was in love with Monica [the other woman]. When I was with her, it was like everything was stronger, you know? Food tasted better, colors were richer, I had so much more energy.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Well, well….' XVII S TEPAN A RKADYEVITCH went upstairs with his pocket bulging with notes, which the merchant had paid him for three months in advance. The business of the forest was over, the money in his pocket; their shooting had been excellent, and Stepan Arkadyevitch was in the happiest frame of mind, and so he felt specially anxious to dissipate the ill-humour that had come upon Levin. He wanted to finish the day at supper as pleasantly as it had been begun. Levin certainly was out of humour, and in spite of all his desire to be affectionate and cordial to his charming visitor, he could not control his mood. The intoxication of the news that Kitty was not married had gradually begun to work upon him. Kitty was not married, but ill, and ill from love for a man who had slighted her. This slight, as it were, rebounded upon him. Vronsky had slighted her, and she had slighted him, Levin. Consequently Vronsky had the right to despise Levin, and therefore he was his enemy. But all this Levin did not think out. He vaguely felt that there was something in it insulting to him, and he was not angry now at what had disturbed him, but he fell foul of everything that presented itself. The stupid sale of the forest, the fraud practised upon Oblonsky and concluded in his house, exasperated him. 'Well, finished?' he said, meeting Stepan Arkadyevitch upstairs. 'Would you like supper?' 'Well, I wouldn't say no to it. What an appetite I get in the country! Wonderful! Why didn't you offer Ryabinin something?' 'Oh, damn him!' 'Still, how you do treat him!' said Oblonsky. 'You didn't even shake hands with him. Why not shake hands with him?' 'Because I don't shake hands with a waiter, and a waiter's a hundred times better than he is.' 'What a reactionist you are, really! What about the amalgamation of classes?' said Oblonsky. 'Anyone who likes amalgamating is welcome to it, but it sickens me.' 'You're a regular reactionist, I see.' 'Really, I have never considered what I am. I am Konstantin Levin, and nothing else.' 'And Konstantin Levin very much out of temper,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling. 'Yes, I am out of temper, and do you know why? Because—excuse me—of your stupid sale….' Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned good-humouredly, like one who feels himself teased and attacked for no fault of his own. 'Come, enough about it!' he said. 'When did anybody ever sell anything without being told immediately after the sale, "It was worth much more"? But when one wants to sell, no one will give anything…. No, I see you've a grudge against that unlucky Ryabinin.' 'Maybe I have. And do you know why?

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Well, yes! If that were all!' she said. 'Come, tell me what I ought to do to give you peace of mind? I am ready to do anything to make you happy,' he said, touched by her expression of despair; 'what wouldn't I do to save you from distress of any sort, as now, Anna!' he said. 'It's nothing, nothing!' she said. 'I don't know myself whether it's the solitary life, my nerves .. . Come, don't let us talk of it. What about the race? You haven't told me!' she inquired, trying to conceal her triumph at the victory, which had anyway been on her side. He asked for supper, and began telling her about the races; but in his tone, in his eyes, which became more and more cold, she saw that he did not forgive her for her victory, that the feeling of obstinacy with which she had been struggling had asserted itself again in him. He was colder to her than before, as though he were regretting his surrender. And she, remembering the words that had given her the victory, 'how I feel on the brink of calamity, how afraid I am of myself,' saw that this weapon was a dangerous one, and that it could not be used a second time. And she felt that beside the love that bound them together there had grown up between them some evil spirit of strife, which she could not exorcise from his, and still less from her own heart. XIII T HERE are no conditions to which a man cannot become used, especially if he sees that all around him are living in the same way. Levin could not have believed three months before that he could have gone quietly to sleep in the condition in which he was that day, that leading an aimless, irrational life, living too beyond his means, after drinking to excess (he could not call what happened at the club anything else), forming inappropriately friendly relations with a man with whom his wife had once been in love, and a still more inappropriate call upon a woman who could only be called a lost woman, after being fascinated by that woman and causing his wife distress—he could still go quietly to sleep. But under the influence of fatigue, a sleepless night, and the wine he had drunk, his sleep was sound and untroubled. At five o'clock the creak of a door opening waked him. He jumped up and looked round. Kitty was not in bed beside him. But there was a right moving behind the screen, and he heard her steps. 'What is it? .. .what is it?' he said, half-asleep. 'Kitty! What is it?' 'Nothing,' she said, coming from behind the screen with a candle in her hand.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She would have said Helsingfors, but would not repeat the word used by Vronsky. Voytov, who was buying the horse, came in. Anna got up and went out of the room. Before leaving the house, Vronsky went into her room. She would have pretended to be looking for something on the table, but ashamed of making a pretence, she looked straight in his face with cold eyes. 'What do you want?' she asked in French. 'To get the guarantee for Gambetta, I've sold him,' he said, in a tone which said more clearly than words, 'I've no time for discussing things, and it would lead to nothing.' 'I'm not to blame in any way,' he thought. 'If she will punish herself, tant pis pour elle.' But as he was going he fancied that she said something, and his heart suddenly ached with pity for her. 'Eh, Anna?' he queried. 'I said nothing,' she answered just as coldly and calmly. 'Oh nothing, tant pis then,' he thought, feeling cold again, and he turned and went out., As he was going out he caught a glimpse in the looking-glass of her face, white, with quivering lips. He even wanted to stop and to say some comforting word to her, but his legs carried him out of the room before he could think what to say. The whole of that day he spent away from home, and when he came in late in the evening the maid told him that Anna Arkadyevna had a headache and begged him not to go in to her. XXVI N EVER before had a day been passed in quarrel. Today was the first time. And this was not a quarrel. It was the open acknowledgment of complete coldness. Was it possible to glance at her as he had glanced when he came into the room for the guarantee?—to look at her, see her heart was breaking with despair, and go out without a word with that face of callous composure? He was not merely cold to her, he hated her because he loved another woman—that was clear. And remembering all the cruel words he had said, Anna supplied, too, the words that he had unmistakably wished to say and could have said to her, and she grew more and more exasperated. 'I won't prevent you,' he might say. 'You can go where you like. You were unwilling to be divorced from your husband, no doubt so that you might go back to him. Go back to him. If you want money, I'll give it you. How many roubles do you want?'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He had scarcely read this note, and frowned at its contents, when he heard below the ponderous tramp of the servants, carrying something heavy. Stepan Arkadyevitch went out to look. It was the rejuvenated Pyotr Oblonsky. He was so drunk that he could not walk upstairs; but he told them to set him on his legs when he saw Stepan Arkadyevitch, and clinging to him, walked with him into his room and there began telling him how he had spent the evening, and fell asleep doing so. Stepan Arkadyevitch was in very low spirits, which happened rarely with him, and for a long while he could not go to sleep. Everything he could recall to his mind, everything was disgusting; but most disgusting of all, as if it were something shameful, was the memory of the evening he had spent at Countess Lidia Ivanovna's. Next day he received from Alexey Alexandrovna a final answer, refusing to grant Anna's divorce, and he understood that this decision was based on what the Frenchman had said in his real or pretended trance. XXIII I N order to carry through any undertaking in family life, there must necessarily be either complete division between the husband and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be undertaken. Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them. Both Vronsky and Anna felt life in Moscow insupportable in the heat and dust, when the spring sunshine was followed by the glare of summer, and all the trees in the boulevards had long since been in full leaf, and the leaves were covered with dust. But they did not go back to Vozdvizhenskoe, as they had arranged to do long before; they went staying on in Moscow, though they both loathed it, because of late there had been no agreement between them. The irritability that kept them apart had no external cause, and all efforts to come to an understanding intensified it, instead of removing it. It was an inner irritation, grounded in her mind on the conviction that his love had grown less; in his, on regret that he had put himself for her sake in a difficult position, which she, instead of lightening, made still more difficult. Neither of them gave full utterance to their sense of grievance, but they considered each other in the wrong, and tried on every pretext to prove this to one another. In her eyes the whole of him, with all his habits, ideas, desires, with all his spiritual and physical temperament, was one thing—love for women, and that love, she felt, ought to be entirely concentrated on her alone.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Vronsky was eating his beefsteak when she came into the dining-room. 'You wouldn't believe how distasteful these rooms have become to me,' she said, sitting down beside him to her coffee. 'There's nothing more awful than these chambres garnies. There's no individuality in them, no soul. These clocks, and curtains, and, worst of all, the wall-papers— they're a nightmare. I think of Vozdvizhenskoe as the promised land. You're not sending the horses off yet?' 'No, they will come after us. Where are you going to? 'I wanted to go to Wilson's to take some dresses for her. So it's really to be tomorrow?' she said in a cheerful voice; but suddenly her face changed. Vronsky's valet came in to ask him to sign a receipt for a telegram from Petersburg. There was nothing out of the way in Vronsky's getting a telegram, but he said, as though anxious to conceal something from her, that the receipt was in his study, and he turned hurriedly to her. 'By tomorrow, without fail, I will finish it all.' 'From whom is the telegram?' she asked, not hearing him. 'From Stiva,' he answered reluctantly. 'Why didn't you show it to me? What secret can there be between Stiva and me?' Vronsky called the valet back, and told him to bring the telegram. 'I didn't want to show it you, because Stiva has such a passion for telegraphing: why telegraph when nothing is settled ?' 'About the divorce?' 'Yes; but he says he has not been able to come at anything yet. He has promised a decisive answer in a day or two. But here it is; read it.' With trembling hands Anna took the telegram, and read what Vronsky had told her. At the end was added: 'little hope; but I will do everything possible and impossible.' 'I said yesterday that it's absolutely nothing to me when I get, or whether I never get, a divorce,' she said, flushing crimson. 'There was not the slightest necessity to hide it from me.' 'So he may hide and does hide his correspondence with women from me,' she thought. 'Yashvin meant to come this morning with Voytov,' said Vronsky; 'I believe he's won from Pvevtsov all and more than he can pay, about sixty thousand.' 'No,' she said, irritated by his so obviously showing by this change of subject that he was irritated, 'why did you suppose that this news would affect me so, that you must even try to hide it? I said I don't want to consider it, and I should have liked you to care as little about it as I do.' 'I care about it because I like definiteness,' he said. 'Definitenessis not in the form but the love,' she said, more and more irritated, not by his words, but by the tone of cool composure in which he spoke. 'What do you want it for?' 'My God! love again,' he thought, frowning.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She saw in this a contemptuous reference to her occupations. And she bethought her of a phrase to pay him back for the pain he had given her. 'I don't expect you to understand me, my feelings, as anyone who loved me might, but simple delicacy I did expect,' she said. And he had actually flushed with vexation, and had said something unpleasant. She could not recall her answer, but at that point, with an unmistakable desire to wound her too, he had said— 'I feel no interest in your infatuation over this girl, that's true, because I see it's unnatural.' The cruelty with which he shattered the world she had built up for herself so laboriously to enable her to endure her hard life, the injustice with which he had accused her of affectation, of artificiality, aroused her. 'I am very sorry that nothing but what's coarse and material is comprehensible and natural to you,' she said, and walked out of the room. When he had come in to her yesterday evening, they had not referred to the quarrel, but both felt that the quarrel had been smoothed over, but was not at an end. Today he had not been at home all day, and she felt so lonely and wretched in being on bad terms with him that she wanted to forget it all, to forgive him, and be reconciled with him; she wanted to throw the blame on herself and to justify him. 'I am myself to blame. I'm irritable, I'm insanely jealous. I will make it up with him, and we'll go away to the country, there I shall be more at peace.' 'Unnatural!' She suddenly recalled the word that had stung her most of all, not so much the word itself as the intent to wound her with which it was said. 'I know what he meant; he meant—unnatural, not loving my own daughter, to love another person's child. What does he know of love for children, of my love for Seryozha, whom I've sacrificed for him? But that wish to wound me! No, he loves another woman, it must be so.' And perceiving that, while trying to regain her peace of mind, she had gone round the same circle that she had been round so often before, and had come back to her former state of exasperation, she was horrified at herself. 'Can it be impossible?" Can it be beyond me to control myself?' she said to herself, and began again from the beginning. 'He's truthful, he's honest, he loves me. I love him, and in a few days the divorce will come. What more do I want?

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Besides this, she realised that if even here in her own house she could hardly manage to look after her five children properly, they would be still worse off where she was going with them all. As it was, even in the course of these three days, the youngest was unwell from being given unwholesome soup, and the others had almost gone without their dinner the day before. She was conscious that it was impossible to go away; but, cheating herself, she went on all the same sorting out her things and pretending she was going. Seeing her husband, she dropped her hands into the drawer of the bureau as though looking for something, and only looked round at him when he had come quite up to her. But her face, to which she tried to give a severe and resolute expression, betrayed bewilderment and suffering. 'Dolly!' he said in a subdued and timid voice. He bent his head towards his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and humble, but for all that he was radiant with freshness and health. In a rapid glance she scanned his figure that beamed with health and freshness. 'Yes, he is happy and content!' she thought; 'while I . . . And that disgusting good nature, which everyone likes him for and praises—I hate that good nature of his,' she thought. Her mouth stiffened, the muscles of the cheek contracted on the right side of her pale, nervous face. 'What do you want?' she said in a rapid, deep, unnatural voice. 'Dolly!' he repeated, with a quiver in his voice. 'Anna is coming today.' 'Well, what is that to me? I can't see her!' she cried. 'But you must, really, Dolly….' 'Go away, go away, go away!' she shrieked, not looking at him, as though this shriek were called up by physical pain. Stepan Arkadyevitch could be calm when he thought of his wife, he could hope that she would come round, as Matvey expressed it, and could quietly go on reading his paper and drinking his coffee; but when he saw her tortured, suffering face, heard the tone of her voice, submissive to fate and full of despair, there was a catch in his breath and a lump in his throat, and his eyes began to shine with tears. 'My God! what have I done? Dolly! For God's sake! . . . You know . . .' He could not go on; there was a sob in his throat. She shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him. 'Dolly, what can I say? . . . One thing: forgive . . . Remember, cannot nine years of my life atone for an instant…' She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he would say, as it were beseeching him in some way or other to make her believe differently.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  To Konstantin Levin the country was good first because it afforded a field for labour, of the usefulness of which there could be no doubt. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country was particularly good, because there it was possible and fitting to do nothing. Moreover, Sergey Ivanovitch's attitude to the peasants rather piqued Konstantin. Sergey Ivanovitch used to say that he knew and liked the peasantry, and he often talked to the peasants, which he knew how to do without affectation or condescension, and from every such conversation he would deduce general conclusions in favour of the peasantry and in confirmation of his knowing them. Konstantin Levin did not like such an attitude to the peasants. To Konstantin the peasant was simply the chief partner in their common labour, and in spite of all the respect and the love, almost like that of kinship, he had for the peasant— sucked in probably, as he said himself, with the milk of his peasant nurse—still as a fellow-worker with him, while sometimes enthusiastic over the vigour, gentleness, and justice of these men, he was very often, when their common labours called for other qualities, exasperated with the peasant for his carelessness, lack of method, drunkenness, and lying. If he had been asked whether he liked or didn't like the peasants, Konstantin Levin would have been absolutely at a loss what to reply. He liked and did not like the peasants, just as he liked and did not like men in general. Of course, being a good-hearted man, he liked men rather than he disliked them, and so too with the peasants. But like or dislike 'the people' as something apart he could not, not only because he lived with 'the people', and all his interests were bound up with theirs, but also because he regarded himself as a part of 'the people', did not see any special qualities or failings distinguishing himself and 'the people', and could not contrast himself with them. Moreover, although he had lived so long in the closest relations with the peasants, as farmer and arbitrator, and what was more, as adviser (the peasants trusted him, and for thirty miles round they would come to ask his advice), he had not definite views of 'the people', and would have been as much at a loss to answer the question whether he knew 'the people' as the question whether he liked them. For him to say he knew the peasantry would have been the same as to say he knew men.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The sole difference lay in the fact that he was more busily occupied than ever. As in former years, at the beginning of the spring he had gone to a foreign watering-place for the sake of his health, deranged by the. winter's work that every year grew heavier. And just as always he returned in July and at once fell to work as usual with increased energy. As usual, too, his wife had moved for the summer to a villa out of town, while he remained in Petersburg. From the date of their conversation after the party at Princess Tverskoy's he had never spoken again to Anna of his suspicions and his jealousies, and that habitual tone of his of bantering mimicry was the most convenient tone possible for his present attitude to his wife. He was a little colder to his wife. He simply seemed to be slightly displeased with her for that first midnight conversation, which she had repelled. In his attitude to her there was a shade of vexation, but nothing more. 'You would not be open with me,' he seemed to say, mentally addressing her; 'so much the worse for you. Now you may beg as you please, but I won't be open with you. So much the worse for you!' he said mentally, like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, 'Oh, very well then! you shall burn for this!' This man, so subtle and astute in official life, did not realise all the senselessness of such an attitude to his wife. He did not realise it, because it was too terrible to him to realise his actual position, and he shut down and locked and sealed up in his heart that secret place where lay hid his feelings towards his family, that is, his wife and son. He who had been such a careful father, had from the end of that winter become peculiarly frigid to his son, and adopted to him just the same bantering tone he used with his wife. 'Aha, young man!' was the greeting with which he met him. Alexey Alexandrovitch asserted and believed that he had never in any previous year had so much official business as that year.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She had unconsciously the whole evening done her utmost to arouse in Levin a feeling of love—as of late she had fallen into doing with all young men—and she knew she had attained her aim, as far as was possible in one evening, with a married and conscientious man. She liked him indeed extremely, and, in spite of the striking difference, from the masculine point of view, between Vronsky and Levin, as a woman she saw something they had in common, which had made Kitty able to love both. Yet as soon as he was out of the room, she ceased to think of him. One thought, and one only, pursued her in different forms, and refused to be shaken off. 'If I have so much effect on others, on this man, who loves his home and his wife, why is it he is so cold to me? . . . not cold exactly, he loves me, I know that! But something new is drawing us apart now. Why wasn't he here all the evening? He told Stiva to say he could not leave Yashvin, and must watch over his play. Is Yashvin a child? But supposing it's true. He never tells a lie. But there's something else in it if it's true. He is glad of an opportunity of showing me that he has other duties; I know that, I submit to that. But why prove that to me? He wants to show me that his love for me is not to interfere with his freedom. But I need no proofs, I need love. He ought to understand all the bitterness of his life for me here in Moscow. Is this life? I am not living, but waiting for an event, which is continually put off and put off. No answer again! And Stiva says he cannot go to Alexey Alexandrovitch. And I can't write again. I can do nothing, can begin nothing, can alter nothing; I hold myself in, I wait, inventing amusements for myself—the English family, writing, reading—but it's all nothing but a sham, it's all the same as morphine. He ought to feel for me,' she said, feeling tears of self-pity coming into her eyes. She heard Vronsky's abrupt ring and hurriedly dried her tears—not only dried her tears, but sat down by a lamp and opened a book, affecting composure. She wanted to show him that she was displeased that he had not come home as he had promised—displeased only, and not on any account to let him see her distress, and least of all, her self-pity. She might pity herself, but he must not pity her. She did not want strife, she blamed him for wanting to quarrel, but unconsciously put herself into an attitude of antagonism.

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

  We don't bestow it, the object draws it from us. The object has the initiative, not the mind. Derived attention, where there is no voluntary effort, seems also most plausibly to be a mere effect. The object again takes the initiative and draws our attention to itself, not by reason of its own intrinsic interest, but because it is connected with some other interesting thing. Its brain-process is connected with another that is either excited, or tending to be excited, and the liability to share the excitement and become aroused is the liability to 'preperception' in which the attention consists. If I have received an insult, I may not be actively thinking of it all the time, yet the thought of it is in such a state of heightened irritability, that the place where I received it or the man who inflicted it cannot be mentioned in my hearing without my attention bounding, as it were, in that direction, as the imagination of the whole transaction revives. Where such a stirring-up occurs, organic adjustment must exist as well, and the ideas must innervate to some degree the muscles. Thus the whole process of involuntary derived attention is accounted for if we grant that there is something interesting enough to arouse and fix the thought of whatever may be connected with it. This fixing is the attention; and it carries with it a vague sense of activity going on, and of acquiescence, furtherance, and adoption, which makes us feel the activity to be our own. This reinforcement of ideas and impressions by the pre-existing contents of the mind was what Herbart had in mind when he gave the name of apperceptive attention to the variety we describe. We easily see now why the lover's tap should be heard—it finds a nerve-centre half ready in advance to explode. We see how we can attend to a companion's voice in the midst of noises which pass unnoticed though objectively much louder than the words we hear. Each word is doubly awakened; once from without by the lips of the talker, but already before that from within by the premonitory processes irradiating from the previous words, and by the dim arousal of all processes that are connected with the 'topic' of the talk. The irrelevant noises, on the other hand, are awakened only once. They form an unconnected train. The boys at school, inattentive to the teacher except when he begins an anecdote, and then all pricking up their ears, are as easily explained.

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

  If we adopt the former course we meet with a controversial difficulty. The 'experience-philosophy' has from time immemorial been the opponent of theological modes of thought. The word experience has a halo of anti-super-naturalism about it; so that if anyone express dissatisfaction with any function claimed for it, he is liable to be treated as if he could only be animated by loyalty to the catechism, or in some way have the interests of obscurantism at heart. I am entirely certain that, on this ground alone, what I have ereloing [sic] to say will make this a sealed chapter to many of my readers. "He denies experience!" they will exclaim, "denies science; believes the mind created by miracle; is a regular old partisan of innate ideas! That is enough! we'll listen to such antediluvian twaddle no more." Regrettable as is the loss of readers capable of such wholesale discipleship, I feel that a definite meaning for the word experience is even more important than their company. 'Experience' does not mean every natural, as opposed to every supernatural, cause. It means a particular sort of natural agency, alongside of which other more recondite natural agencies may perfectly well exist. With the scientific animus of anti-supernaturalism we ought to agree, but we ought to free ourselves from its verbal idols and bugbears.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  However small Elinor’s general dependence on Lucy’s veracity might be, it was impossible for her on serious reflection to suspect it in the present case, where no temptation could be answerable to the folly of inventing a falsehood of such a description. What Lucy had asserted to be true, therefore, Elinor could not, dared not longer doubt; supported as it was too on every side by such probabilities and proofs, and contradicted by nothing but her own wishes. Their opportunity of acquaintance in the house of Mr. Pratt was a foundation for the rest, at once indisputable and alarming; and Edward’s visit near Plymouth, his melancholy state of mind, his dissatisfaction at his own prospects, his uncertain behaviour towards herself, the intimate knowledge of the Miss Steeles as to Norland and their family connections, which had often surprised her, the picture, the letter, the ring, formed altogether such a body of evidence, as overcame every fear of condemning him unfairly, and established as a fact, which no partiality could set aside, his ill-treatment of herself.—Her resentment of such behaviour, her indignation at having been its dupe, for a short time made her feel only for herself; but other ideas, other considerations, soon arose. Had Edward been intentionally deceiving her? Had he feigned a regard for her which he did not feel? Was his engagement to Lucy an engagement of the heart? No; whatever it might once have been, she could not believe it such at present. His affection was all her own. She could not be deceived in that. Her mother, sisters, Fanny, all had been conscious of his regard for her at Norland; it was not an illusion of her own vanity. He certainly loved her. What a softener of the heart was this persuasion! How much could it not tempt her to forgive! He had been blamable, highly blamable, in remaining at Norland after he first felt her influence over him to be more than it ought to be. In that, he could not be defended; but if he had injured her, how much more had he injured himself; if her case were pitiable, his was hopeless. His imprudence had made her miserable for a while; but it seemed to have deprived himself of all chance of ever being otherwise. She might in time regain tranquillity; but _he_, what had he to look forward to? Could he ever be tolerably happy with Lucy Steele; could he, were his affection for herself out of the question, with his integrity, his delicacy, and well-informed mind, be satisfied with a wife like her—illiterate, artful, and selfish?

• From An Anomalous Jew: Paul Among Jews, Greeks, and Romans (2016)

  Robinson, Ignatius of Antioch and the Parting of the Ways (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009). 175 AN ANOMALOUS JEW John Chrysostom, while serving as presbyter in Antioch, could bitterly de- nounce Jews and judaizing Christians in his Adversus Judaeos homilies (386-87 CE), most likely because of his disdain for Christian participation in Jewish rituals and gatherings.”° By the time of Ignatius in the early second century, there were indeed two distinct and recognizable communities of “Jews” and “Christians,” but there was no absolute barrier between the two groups. Thus, there is no evidence for a “parting” between the Christians and Jews in Antioch in the 40s CE.” The picture we have of the Antiochene church, then, is one that is thoroughly enmeshed within Jewish communal life in the city. However, potential fracture lines are apparent, given the possibility of rivalry for Gentile adherents, controversial beliefs like faith in a crucified and risen Messiah, disputations over their partially realized eschatology, the prev- alence of a Messiah-centered interpretation of Scripture, cultic veneration of Jesus, diminished concern for Gentile impurity, and a diluted zeal for the obligations of Torah for Gentiles. What Was the Problem in Antioch? The fracas in Antioch occurred because Cephas (i.e., Simon Peter) and a co- hort of Jewish Christ-believers including Barnabas separated from table fel- lowship with Christ-believing Gentiles. The questions are, (1) Why did Cephas do this? and, (2) What did Paul find so objectionable? Those are the matters that I explore below, but before I do so, it is first necessary to identify the key contexts, personalities, and events of the incident at Antioch. The Main Protagonists It is worth considering recent events in the lives of Paul, Barnabas, Peter, and James as the background to the incident at Antioch. 20. See Robert L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004); Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen, John Chrysostom (New York: Routledge, 2000), 148-66. 21. While I think it is legitimate to speak of a “parting of the ways” between Jews and Chris- tians in terms of the development of two distinct self-identities, theologies, and communities in Antioch by the time of Ignatius, we are not thereby committed to the view that a parting requires absolute partition, isolation, and hostility. The ways that have parted can still have theological overlaps, experience wide-ranging socioreligious interaction, and exhibit attitudes to one another including hostility and amicability.

• 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 The City of God

  136 Books That Matter: The City of God ›Complicating this freedom was that it was as a zero-sum game: I can have it only if I dominate you. The Romans believed true political freedom involved hegemonia, domination or command over others: Their liberty was defined in crucial part by the fact that they held other people in bondage. Political Legitimacy „Augustine offers a three-pronged attack on the nature of a polity; on the role of the stories that polity tells itself; and on what motivates political actors, whether individual people, communities, nations, or empires. „First he attacks the ontology—that is, the idea of what constitutes a state and thus what counts as a political community. He denies Cicero’s vision of the nature of a city as a common sense of justice, insisting it is not justice but love and, more crassly, appetite that makes a nation move. ›This notion radically expands, in ways that do not cast a good light on the noble self-presentations of states, the kind of communities that are counted as political communities. ›It means that political communities are organizations of humans with some generally encompassing common purpose organized to achieve that purpose and allow the members of the community to live as they wish. ›It evacuates states’ claims for a moral legitimacy that marks them out as special and affirms Augustine’s statement that kingdoms without justice are little more than large criminal gangs—in Latin latrocinia, or rackets. „Augustine doesn’t mean simply that political structures are basically protection rackets, though he most definitely means at least that. More broadly, he means that you can understand both states and criminal gangs as working out of a particular logic. Part 137 Lecture 7—Augustine’s Political Vision (Book 4) of the logic is appetitive: That is, human communities—in this case, states and gangs—are brought together by positive ends; even in their aversions, they are driven by cupidity: desire for wealth, glory, immortality, power, the status of gods. Augustine gives three examples. ›Alexander the Great comes face to face with a pirate and demands to know how he dares to molest the seas. The pirate replies, “We share a common practice. But because I do it with a small boat, I am labeled a pirate and a thief; while you, with a great navy, molest the whole earth and you are labeled an emperor.”

• From The City of God

  Chapter 28. --That the Law of Moses Must Be Spiritually Understood to Preclude the Damnable Murmurs of a Carnal Interpretation. In the succeeding words, "Remember the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded to him in Horeb for all Israel," [1468] the prophet opportunely mentions precepts and statutes, after declaring the important distinction hereafter to be made between those who observe and those who despise the law. He intends also that they learn to interpret the law spiritually, and find Christ in it, by whose judgment that separation between the good and the bad is to be made. For it is not without reason that the Lord Himself says to the Jews, "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. " [1469]For by receiving the law carnally without perceiving that its earthly promises were figures of things spiritual, they fell into such murmur ings as audaciously to say, "It is vain to serve God; and what profit is it that we have kept His ordinance, and that we have walked suppliantly before the face of the Lord Almighty? And now we call aliens happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up. " [1470]It was these words of theirs which in a manner compelled the prophet to announce the last judgment, in which the wicked shall not even in appearance be happy, but shall manifestly be most miserable; and in which the good shall be oppressed with not even a transitory wretchedness, but shall enjoy unsullied and eternal felicity. For he had previously cited some similar expressions of those who said, "Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and such are pleasing to Him. " [1471]It was, I say, by understanding the law of Moses carnally that they had come to murmur thus against God. And hence, too, the writer of the 73d Psalm says that his feet were almost gone, his steps had well-nigh slipped, because he was envious of sinners while he considered their prosperity, so that he said among other things, How doth God know, and is there knowledge in the Most High? and again, Have I sanctified my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency? [1472]He goes on to say that his efforts to solve this most difficult problem, which arises when the good seem to be wretched and the wicked happy, were in vain until he went into the sanctuary of God, and understood the last things. [1473]For in the last judgment things shall not be so; but in the manifest felicity of the righteous and manifest misery of the wicked quite another state of things shall appear. [1468] Mal. iv. 4. [1469] John v. 46. [1470] Mal. iii. 14, 15. [1471] Mal. ii. 17. [1472] In innocentibus. [1473] Ps. lxxiii.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  However small Elinor’s general dependence on Lucy’s veracity might be, it was impossible for her on serious reflection to suspect it in the present case, where no temptation could be answerable to the folly of inventing a falsehood of such a description. What Lucy had asserted to be true, therefore, Elinor could not, dared not longer doubt; supported as it was too on every side by such probabilities and proofs, and contradicted by nothing but her own wishes. Their opportunity of acquaintance in the house of Mr. Pratt was a foundation for the rest, at once indisputable and alarming; and Edward’s visit near Plymouth, his melancholy state of mind, his dissatisfaction at his own prospects, his uncertain behaviour towards herself, the intimate knowledge of the Miss Steeles as to Norland and their family connections, which had often surprised her, the picture, the letter, the ring, formed altogether such a body of evidence, as overcame every fear of condemning him unfairly, and established as a fact, which no partiality could set aside, his ill-treatment of herself.—Her resentment of such behaviour, her indignation at having been its dupe, for a short time made her feel only for herself; but other ideas, other considerations, soon arose. Had Edward been intentionally deceiving her? Had he feigned a regard for her which he did not feel? Was his engagement to Lucy an engagement of the heart? No; whatever it might once have been, she could not believe it such at present. His affection was all her own. She could not be deceived in that. Her mother, sisters, Fanny, all had been conscious of his regard for her at Norland; it was not an illusion of her own vanity. He certainly loved her. What a softener of the heart was this persuasion! How much could it not tempt her to forgive! He had been blamable, highly blamable, in remaining at Norland after he first felt her influence over him to be more than it ought to be. In that, he could not be defended; but if he had injured her, how much more had he injured himself; if her case were pitiable, his was hopeless. His imprudence had made her miserable for a while; but it seemed to have deprived himself of all chance of ever being otherwise. She might in time regain tranquillity; but he, what had he to look forward to? Could he ever be tolerably happy with Lucy Steele; could he, were his affection for herself out of the question, with his integrity, his delicacy, and well-informed mind, be satisfied with a wife like her—illiterate, artful, and selfish?

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “If he would only have done as well by himself,” said John Dashwood, “as all his friends were disposed to do by him, he might now have been in his proper situation, and would have wanted for nothing. But as it is, it must be out of anybody’s power to assist him. And there is one thing more preparing against him, which must be worse than all—his mother has determined, with a very natural kind of spirit, to settle that estate upon Robert immediately, which might have been Edward’s, on proper conditions. I left her this morning with her lawyer, talking over the business.” “Well!” said Mrs. Jennings, “that is her revenge. Everybody has a way of their own. But I don’t think mine would be, to make one son independent, because another had plagued me.” Marianne got up and walked about the room. “Can anything be more galling to the spirit of a man,” continued John, “than to see his younger brother in possession of an estate which might have been his own? Poor Edward! I feel for him sincerely.” A few minutes more spent in the same kind of effusion, concluded his visit; and with repeated assurances to his sisters that he really believed there was no material danger in Fanny’s indisposition, and that they need not therefore be very uneasy about it, he went away; leaving the three ladies unanimous in their sentiments on the present occasion, as far at least as it regarded Mrs. Ferrars’s conduct, the Dashwoods’, and Edward’s. Marianne’s indignation burst forth as soon as he quitted the room; and as her vehemence made reserve impossible in Elinor, and unnecessary in Mrs. Jennings, they all joined in a very spirited critique upon the party. CHAPTER XXXVIII. Mrs. Jennings was very warm in her praise of Edward’s conduct, but only Elinor and Marianne understood its true merit. They only knew how little he had had to tempt him to be disobedient, and how small was the consolation, beyond the consciousness of doing right, that could remain to him in the loss of friends and fortune. Elinor gloried in his integrity; and Marianne forgave all his offences in compassion for his punishment. But though confidence between them was, by this public discovery, restored to its proper state, it was not a subject on which either of them were fond of dwelling when alone. Elinor avoided it upon principle, as tending to fix still more upon her thoughts, by the too warm, too positive assurances of Marianne, that belief of Edward’s continued affection for herself which she rather wished to do away; and Marianne’s courage soon failed her, in trying to converse upon a topic which always left her more dissatisfied with herself than ever, by the comparison it necessarily produced between Elinor’s conduct and her own.