Sadness

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 Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I think soggy was the word he used to describe Britten’s music for it.’ I thought this was extremely interesting, and my grandfather looked pleased, as if he had belatedly discovered the use of something he had dutifully been carrying about for years. I felt matters had subtly changed, an admission been made. But then that ‘understandable’ dislike of Britten and Pears—there was a little phrase I might myself take on through life, wanting to forget it or to disprove the unpleasant truth it hinted at. I tilted out the last of the champagne and watched James talking to his host. I seemed to see him as a boy, a shy but exemplary sixth-former reporting to a master. The open score on the sill of the box was like a book in a portrait codifying some special accomplishment, the entry to a world of sensibility where he had found himself when young, and to which, hard-working and solitary, he must still have access. I was smiling reflectively, perhaps irritatingly, at him as we were joined by Barton Maggs, one of the most assiduous and proprietary opera-goers in London and abroad, on his interval tour of the nobs. ‘Oh dear, oh dear—Denis, Will …’ He nodded upswept, sandy eyebrows at us. ‘Do you know James Brooke? Professor Maggs …’ He discharged a further nod at James. He seemed to be out of breath, getting round everybody in time, and his weight was emphasised by a too tight and youthful seersucker suit and white moccasins on small womanly feet. ‘Fair to middling, I’d say, wouldn’t you?’ he proposed. ‘We were just saying how good we thought it was.’ Maggs had no sense of humour and no awareness either that we would instinctively treat him with irony. ‘Oh dear—it’s funny, isn’t it, I always think how funny, there not being any women in it. Some people claim not to notice.’ He looked around as if anything might happen. ‘You couldn’t have women in it, though, could you. I mean, it takes place on a ship. ’ I felt that just about summed it up. My grandfather engaged with it drolly. ‘Still, I think you want a sort of Buttercup figure, don’t you, Barty—selling tobacco and peppermints to the crew …’ ‘Perhaps Captain Vere’s sisters and his cousins and his aunts could be brought in,’ I said. ‘I’m sure they’d quell any mutiny.’ ‘Oh yes, h’m. I do miss hearing a good soprano though,’ he said, and looked almost bereft, as if Britten had let him down in not providing the display of palpitating femininity that so many homosexuals crave.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Any starter at all, sir?’ My mind recoiled from Brown Windsor soup to prawn cocktail to melon. ‘No, I think I’ll just have the trout—with peas and potatoes.’ ‘Bring a bottle of hock, too, Raymond,’ my host requested; ‘cheapest you’ve got.’ And the moment the boy turned away, added, ‘Delightful child, isn’t he. Quite a little Masaccio, wouldn’t you say? Nothing compared to Derek, mind you, but I like to see a nice little bumba when I’m eating.’ I smiled and felt oddly bashful; and the boy was pretty ordinary. I also felt a guest’s obligation to charm, and was aware that I was giving nothing. How loaded dirty talk is between strangers, seeming to imply some sexual rapport between them, removing barriers which in this case I was interested in preserving. ‘Do you live in London all the time?’ I asked him partyishly. He thought about this: ‘I do, though I’m often elsewhere—in my thoughts. At my age it doesn’t matter where you live. Passent les jours, passent les semaines , as the Frenchman said. I blank a lot, you know. Do you blank?’ ‘You mean, just let your mind go blank? Yes, I suppose I do. Or at least, I like letting my mind wander.’ ‘There you are. You see, I’ve had such an interesting life and now it’s so bloody dull and everyone’s dead and I can’t remember what I’m saying and all that sort of thing.’ He seemed to lose his thread. ‘What is it you think about mostly?’ ‘Ooh, you know …’ he muttered broodily. I crudely assumed he meant sex. ‘I’m eighty-three,’ he said, as if I had asked him. ‘And how old are you?’ ‘Twenty-five,’ I said with a laugh, but he looked sad. ‘When I was your age,’ he said, ‘I was hard at work. When I stopped working you hadn’t even been born.’ His eyes seemed to unveil in the curious way they had, and to concentrate on my face—or rather on my head, which he held in his gaze as if in his hands; it was with the appraisal of a connoisseur that he pronounced his expert, cupidinous sentence: ‘Youth!’ One younger yet arrived at this point, with wine. It was a very inferior stuff, though Nantwich knocked it back with enthusiasm. Then ‘Ah, here is Abdul!’ he exclaimed.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  In Varna there were no jobs, he said, and in Sofia what jobs there were were shut off to him, since he had no address he could give to employers, and no way to get an address without work. This was the end of our exchange, which colored the remainder of the evening, for the rest of which there would be no more innuendo from Mitko (innuendo that I had received ambivalently, to his visible confusion) and during which in other respects as well his mood was subdued, as was my own. At one and the same time, I wanted to repair the damage I had done and sensed with relief the possibility of extricating myself from an entanglement that had become more intricate than I could bear. It seemed to me there was no attitude toward Mitko I could take that would let me be at once sufficiently compassionate and sufficiently free, so that I wavered between eagerness and distance, an ambivalence that I knew, though it was especially acute with Mitko, characterized all of my relationships, casual and profound. When we stood up from the table, I told Mitko I would walk with him to the metro, making clear that this once, at least, we wouldn’t be having sex. I was relieved to make this clear, to find I was able to make it clear, but I still didn’t feel at ease with myself or with him, and the mood was heavy as we walked. I had asked C. to come too; I thought he would help my resolve, and I didn’t want to be alone when I saw Mitko off, but he kept his distance, walking a few steps behind us. Finally I asked Mitko if he was all right, unable to bear his silence anymore. He looked away from me, toward the traffic on the boulevard, and said Iskam da zhiveya normalno , I want to live a normal life. I was silent for a moment, torn between a terrible sadness and my desire for escape. And then, watching his face, I don’t want to be one of your clients, I said. He turned to me in surprise, saying But you aren’t a client, you’re a friend, but I waved this objection away.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (de Con. Ev. ii. c. 27.) Now this which Luke alone mentions, Ye cannot make the children of the bridegroom fast, is understood to refer to those very men who said that they would make the children of the Bridegroom mourn and fast, since they were about to kill the Bridegroom. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. Having granted to the children of the Bridegroom that it was not fitting that they should be troubled, as they were keeping a spiritual feast, but that fasting should be abolished among them, He adds as a direction, But the days shall come when the Bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast in those days. AUGUSTINE. (de Qu. Ev. ii. qu. 18.) As if He said, Then shall they be desolate, and in sorrow and lamentation, until the joy of consolation shall be restored to them by the Holy Spirit. AMBROSE. Or, That fast is not given up whereby the flesh is mortified, and the desires of the body chastened. (For this fast commends us to God.) But we cannot fast who have Christ, and banquet on the flesh and blood of Christ. BASIL. The children of the Bridegroom also cannot fast, i. e. refuse nourishment to the soul, but live on every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God. AMBROSE. But when are those days, in which Christ shall be taken away from us, since He has said, I will be with you alway, even unto the end of the world? But no one can take Christ away from you, unless you take yourself away from Him. BEDE. For as long as the Bridegroom is with us we both rejoice, and can neither fast nor mourn. But when He has gone away through our sins, then a fast must be declared and mourning be enjoined. AMBROSE. Lastly, it is spoken of the fast of the soul, as the context shews, for it follows, But he said, No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old. He calleth fasting an old garment, which the Apostle thought should be taken off, saying, Put off the old man with his deeds. (Col. 3:9.) In the same manner we have a series of precepts not to mix up the actions of the old and new man.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Dean Jagger pl ays the American Legion husband. (Years and years ago, Dean Jagger had ap peared in John Wexley's play about the Scottsboro Case, They Shall Not Die!: he played the young reporter whose love forces one of the poor white girls to retract her testimony that the black boys had raped her.) The family is the American family one has seen and seen and seen again on the American screen: the somewhat stolid, but, at bottom, strong, decent, and loving head of the family; the somewhat scatterbrained, but, at bottom, shrewd, loving, and tough wife and mother; and the children of this remark ably unremarkable couple. In My Son, Jo hn, there are two sons. One of them plays football, which is, lite rally, all that we ever learn about him. The other son, Jo hn, who does not, apparently, play football, has flown the family coop, and has a job in Washington, where he appears to be doing very well. But they don't see very much of him anymore, which causes the mother some distress: she misses her son, John, and this to a somewhat disquieting extent -the movie seems to feel, however, that this morbid worry about the lif e of her grown son is the normal reaction of any normal American mother. The mother's distress is considerably augmented by the ar rival of the FBI, in the personable person of Van Heflin, who arrives to ask the family discreet questions concerning their maverick relative. Though this FBI agent is the soul of tact and understanding, the mother eventually perceives the grav ity of the situation, and agrees to attempt to save her son. The salvation of her son depends on confession, for he is, indeed, a Communist agent: for the sake of her son's salva tion, she must, therefore, cooperate with the FBI. For, if her son does not confess, he is lost: he is anathema. The film concentrates on the struggle in the soul of the mother between mother love and her larger duty. At one point in the film, she cheers him on, exactly as though he were on the football field, urging him to make the touchdown and save the team.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. But how does He give the name of harvest to a work only just now at its beginning? the plough not yet put down, nor the furrows turned, He yet speaks of harvests, for His disciples might waver and say, How can we so small a number convert the whole world, how can foolish men reform the wise, naked men those that are armed, subjects their rulers? Lest they should be disturbed then by such thoughts, He calls the Gospel a harvest; as if He says, All things are ready, I send you to a gathering of fruits already prepared. Ye can sow and reap the same day. As then the husbandman goes out to harvest rejoicing, much more also and with greater cheerfulness must you go out into the world. For this is the true harvest, which shews the fields all prepared for you. GREGORY. (ubi sup.) But not without deep sorrow can we add, but the labourers are few. For although there are who would hear good things, they are wanting who should spread them. Behold the world is full of priests, but seldom is there found a labourer in God’s harvest, because we undertake indeed the priestly office, but we perform not its works. BEDE. Now as the great harvest is this whole multitude of believers, so the few labourers are the Apostles, and their followers who are sent to this harvest. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. (non occ. v. Tit. Bost.) As the large fields require many reapers, so also do the multitude of believers in Christ. Hence He adds, Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest. Now mark that when He said, Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into the harvest, He afterwards Himself performed it. He then is the Lord of the harvest, and by Him, and together with Him, God the Father rules over all. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 32. in Matt.) But he afterwards increased them greatly, not by adding to their number, but awarding to them power. He implies that it is a great gift to send labourers into the divine harvest, by His saying that the Lord of the harvest must be prayed to upon this account. GREGORY. (ubi sup.) Hereby also the people must be induced to pray for their pastors, that they may he able to work what is good for them, and that their tongue grow not lifeless in exhortation. For often for their own wickedness their tongue is tied. But often for the fault of the people it comes to pass that the word of preaching is withdrawn from their rulers. 10:3–43. Go your ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves. 4. Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes: and salute no man by the way.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Nevertheless it may have something in common with patience, for two reasons. First, because patience, like fortitude, endures certain evils for the sake of good, and if this good is awaited shortly, endurance is easier: whereas if it be delayed a long time, it is more difficult. Secondly, because the very delay of the good we hope for, is of a nature to cause sorrow, according to Prov. 13:12, “Hope that is deferred afflicteth the soul.” Hence there may be patience in bearing this trial, as in enduring any other sorrows. Accordingly longanimity and constancy are both comprised under patience, in so far as both the delay of the hoped for good (which regards longanimity) and the toil which man endures in persistently accomplishing a good work (which regards constancy) may be considered under the one aspect of grievous evil. For this reason Tully (De Invent. Rhet. ii) in defining patience, says that “patience is the voluntary and prolonged endurance of arduous and difficult things for the sake of virtue or profit.” By saying “arduous” he refers to constancy in good; when he says “difficult” he refers to the grievousness of evil, which is the proper object of patience; and by adding “continued” or “long lasting,” he refers to longanimity, in so far as it has something in common with patience. This suffices for the Replies to the First and Second Objections. Reply to Objection 3: That which is a long way off as to place, though distant from us, is not simply distant from things in nature, as that which is a long way off in point of time: hence the comparison fails. Moreover, what is remote as to place offers no difficulty save in the point of time, since what is placed a long way from us is a long time coming to us. We grant the fourth argument. We must observe, however, that the reason for the difference assigned by this gloss is that it is hard to bear with those who sin through weakness, merely because they persist a long time in evil, wherefore it is said that they are borne with longanimity: whereas the very fact of sinning through pride seems to be unendurable; for which reason those who sin through pride are stated to be borne with patience. OF PERSEVERANCE (FOUR ARTICLES)We must now consider perseverance and the vices opposed to it. Under the head of perseverance there are four points of inquiry: (1) Whether perseverance is a virtue? (2) Whether it is a part of fortitude? (3) Of its relation to constancy; (4) Whether it needs the help of grace? Whether perseverance is a virtue?Objection 1: It seems that perseverance is not a virtue. For, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. vii, 7), continency is greater than perseverance. But continency is not a virtue, as stated in Ethic. iv, 9. Therefore perseverance is not a virtue.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the culti vation of his talent-which attitude certainly has a great deal to support it. On the other hand, it is only because the world looks on his talent with such a frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important. So that any writer, looking back over even so short a span of time as I am here forced to assess, finds that the things which hurt him and the things which helped him cannot be divorced from each other; he could be helped in a certain way only because he was hurt in a certain way; and his help is simply to be enabled to move from one conundrum to the next-one is tempted to say that he moves from one disaster to the next. When one begins looking for influences one finds them by the score. I haven't thought much about my own, not enough anyway; I hazard that the King James Bible, the rhetoric of the store-f ront church, something ironic and violent and per petually understated in Negro speech-and something of Dickens' love for bravura-have something to do with me today; but I wouldn't stake my life on it. Likewise, innumer able people have helped me in many ways; but finally, I suppose, the most difficult (and most rewarding) thing in my lite has been the fact that I was born a Negro and was forced, therct(>re, to eff ect some kind of truce with this reality. (Truce, by the way, is the best one can hope for.) One of the difficulties about being a Negro writer (and this is not special pleading, since I don't mean to suggest that he has it worse than anybody else) is that the Negro problem is written about so widely. The bookshelves groan under the weight of information, and everyone therefore considers him self informed. And this information, furthermore, operates usually (generally, popularly) to reinforce traditional attitudes. AUTO BIOGR APH ICAL NOTES 7 Of traditional attitudes there are only two-For or Against and I, personally, find it difficult to say which attitude has caused me the most pain. I am speaking as a writer; from a social point of view I am perf ectly aware that the change from ill- will to good-will, however motivated, however imperfect, however expressed, is better than no change at all. But it is part of the business of the writer-as I see it-to examine attitudes, to go beneath the surface, to tap the source.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  We hosted a premiere of the film at our office, and I invited Walter and Bo to address the audience. About seventy-five people from the community gathered in EJI’s meeting room, where we screened the film. Walter struggled. He was more terse than usual and looked at me frantically whenever someone asked him a question. I told him that he wouldn’t have to do any more presentations. His sister told me that he’d started wandering in the evenings and getting lost. He began drinking heavily, something he’d never done before. He told me that he was anxious all the time and that the alcohol calmed his nerves. Then one day he collapsed. He was at a hospital in Mobile when they reached me in Montgomery. I drove down to speak with his doctor, who told me that Walter had advancing dementia, likely trauma-induced, and that he would need constant care. The doctor also said the dementia would progress and that Walter would likely become incapacitated. We met with Walter’s family at our office and agreed that he should move to Huntsville to live with a relative who could provide consistent care. It worked for a while, but Walter became agitated there, and he was out of money, so he moved back to Monroeville, where his sister Katie Lee agreed to watch him. For a while, he did much better in Monroeville, but then his condition began to deteriorate again. Soon, Walter needed to be moved into the sort of facility that provided care for the elderly and infirm. Most places wouldn’t take him because he had been convicted of a felony. Even when we explained that he was wrongfully convicted and later proved innocent, we couldn’t get anyone to admit him. EJI now had a social worker on staff, Maria Morrison, who began working with Walter and his family to find a suitable placement for him. It was an extremely frustrating and maddening process. Maria eventually found a place in Montgomery that agreed to take Walter for a short stay—no longer than ninety days. He went there while we figured out what to do next. The whole thing made me incredibly sad. Our workload was increasing too quickly. I had just argued Joe Sullivan’s case at the U.S. Supreme Court, and I was anxiously awaiting that judgment. The Alabama Supreme Court had scheduled execution dates for several death row prisoners who had completed the appeals process. For years we’d been fearing what would happen when a sizable number of condemned prisoners exhausted their appeals. More than a dozen people were now vulnerable to execution dates, and we knew that it would be extremely difficult to block those executions given the current legal climate in Alabama, combined with the limits on federal court review in capital cases. I met with our staff, and we made the difficult decision to represent all of the people who were scheduled for execution and didn’t have counsel.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I drove from Montgomery through South Alabama to Florida and then along a tangle of wooded back roads to get to the Santa Rosa Correctional Facility in the town of Milton to meet Joe for the first time. Santa Rosa County borders the Gulf of Mexico at the western end of the Florida Panhandle and had long been known for agriculture. Between 1980 and 2000, the county’s population doubled in size as the coastal areas attracted beach homes and resort properties. Many affluent families left Pensacola for Santa Rosa County, and military families from nearby Eglin Air Force Base settled there. But there was another industry in town—incarceration. The Florida Department of Corrections built the prison to house 1,600 people in the 1990s, when America was opening prisons at a pace never before seen in human history. Between 1990 and 2005, a new prison opened in the United States every ten days. Prison growth and the resulting “prison-industrial complex”—the business interests that capitalize on prison construction—made imprisonment so profitable that millions of dollars were spent lobbying state legislators to keep expanding the use of incarceration to respond to just about any problem. Incarceration became the answer to everything—health care problems like drug addiction, poverty that had led someone to write a bad check, child behavioral disorders, managing the mentally disabled poor, even immigration issues generated responses from legislators that involved sending people to prison. Never before had so much lobbying money been spent to expand America’s prison population, block sentencing reforms, create new crime categories, and sustain the fear and anger that fuel mass incarceration than during the last twenty-five years in the United States. When I arrived at Santa Rosa, I didn’t encounter any staff who were people of color, although 70 percent of the men incarcerated there were black or brown. This was a bit unusual; I frequently saw black and brown correctional officers at other prisons. I was subjected to an elaborate admission process and given a beeper to activate if I was ever threatened or distressed while inside the prison. I was escorted to a forty-by-forty-foot room where more than two dozen incarcerated men sat sadly while uniformed correctional staff buzzed in and out.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Nuns and monks should also let the bracing spirit of change invade their cloisters; they should throw out the rubble that had accumulated over the years and craft a new lifestyle that was in tune with the times. But this proved to be a monumentally complex task. Nuns had to decide what was essential in their rule, and then translate this into present-day idiom. But they themselves had been shaped by the old regime at a profound level, and many found that they could not think in any other way. They could modernize their clothes but they could not change the habits of their minds and hearts, which had been formed by a training that had been carefully designed in a different world and was meant to last a lifetime. For some, this was a time of great anguish. They saw a cherished way of life disappearing, yet nothing of equal value had emerged to take its place. I left the religious life in 1969, just ahead of a massive exodus of religious who left their convents and monasteries like flocks of migratory birds during the 1970s. The intense discussions surrounding the reforms had led them to call everything into question, even their own vocation. This, I believe, was a healthy development. The title of my first book, Through the Narrow Gate, comes from a text in Saint Matthew’s gospel in which Jesus tells his disciples that only a few find the narrow gate that leads to life. By the end of my seven years in the convent, I had come to the conclusion that only a very small number of people could live up to the demands of a life that requires the entire subjugation of the ego and a self-abandonment that—I realized sadly—was beyond me. I knew nuns who beautifully enshrined this ideal, but I realized that I was not of that caliber. I suspect that many of those who left during the seventies had also faced up to this hard truth. So I arrived at my convent at a difficult juncture, and would be one of the last people to be trained according to the old system. The reforms set in motion by the Vatican Council came just too late for me. And I experienced the traditional regime at its worst. A young nun in those days had to undergo a long period of intensive training. In my order, we spent the first nine months as postulants, wearing a sober black dress with a little white veil and practicing selected portions of the rule. The postulantship was a period of probation, designed to test our resolve, and about half of us dropped out.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I drove back to Montgomery and thought about how to expedite Walter’s release. I called Tommy Chapman and told him that I intended to file a motion to dismiss all charges against Walter in light of the appellate court’s ruling, and I hoped he would consider joining the motion or at least not oppose it. He sighed. “We should talk when this is all over. Once you file your motion, I’ll get back to you about whether I’ll join it. We certainly won’t oppose it.” A hearing on the motion was set. The State did, in fact, join our motion to dismiss the charges, and I didn’t expect the final hearing to last more than a few minutes. The night before, I’d driven down to Minnie’s to get a suit for Walter to wear at the hearing, since he would finally be able to walk out of court a free man. When I arrived at her house, she gave me a long hug. It looked like she had been crying and hadn’t slept. We sat down, and she told me again how happy she was that they were letting him out. But she looked troubled. Finally, she turned to me. “Bryan, I think you need to tell him that maybe he shouldn’t come back here. It’s just all been too much. The stress, the gossip, the lies, everything. He doesn’t deserve what they put him through, and it will hurt me to my heart the rest of my life what they did to him, and the rest of us. But I don’t think I can go back to the way things were.” “Well, you all should talk when he gets home.” “We want to have everybody over when he gets out. We want to cook some good food, and everybody will want to celebrate. But after that, maybe he should go to Montgomery with you.” I had already talked with Walter about not staying his first few nights in Monroeville, for security reasons. We had talked about him spending time with family members in Florida while we monitored the local reaction to his release. But I hadn’t discussed his future with Minnie. I kept urging Minnie to talk with Walter when he got home, but it was clear she didn’t have the heart for that. I drove back to Montgomery, sadly realizing that even as we stood on the brink of victory and what should have been a glorious release for Walter and his family, this nightmare would likely never be completely over for him. For the first time I fully reckoned with the truth that the conviction, the death sentence, and the heartbreak and devastation of this miscarriage of justice had created permanent injuries.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  The difficulties outside Antonio’s home were compounded by severe domestic abuse inside the home. From the time Antonio was in diapers, he endured abusive beatings by his father, who hit him with his hand, fist, belt, and extension cords, causing bruises and cuts; he also witnessed terrifying conflicts in which his parents would violently assault each other and threaten to kill one another. The violence was so bad that on more than one occasion Antonio called the police. He began experiencing severe nightmares from which he awoke screaming. Antonio’s depressed mother neglected him; when he cried, she just left him alone. The only activity she could recall ever attending for Antonio was his graduation from a Drug Abuse Resistance Education program in elementary school. “He was excited to take his picture with the police officer,” she would later say. “He wanted to be a police officer when he grew up.” In September 1999, a month after he turned thirteen, Antonio Nuñez was riding his bicycle near his home when a stranger shot him in his stomach, side, and arm. Antonio collapsed onto the street. His fourteen-year-old brother José heard him screaming and ran to his aid. José was shot in the head and killed when he responded to his little brother’s call for help. Antonio suffered serious internal injuries that hospitalized him for weeks. When Antonio was released from the hospital, his mother sent him to live with relatives in Las Vegas, where he tried to recover from the tragedy of José’s death. Antonio was relieved to be away from the dangers of South Central Los Angeles. He stayed out of trouble, was helpful and obedient at home, and spent evenings doing his homework with help from his cousin’s husband. He put the gangs and violence of South Central behind him and showed remarkable progress. But within a year, California probation authorities ordered him to return to Los Angeles because he was on probation following his adjudication as a ward of the court for a prior offense. In poor urban neighborhoods across the United States, black and brown boys routinely have multiple encounters with the police. Even though many of these children have done nothing wrong, they are targeted by police, presumed guilty, and suspected by law enforcement of being dangerous or engaged in criminal activity. The random stops, questioning, and harassment dramatically increase the risk of arrest for petty crimes. Many of these children develop criminal records for behavior that more affluent children engage in with impunity.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  5. That is the perfect good of happiness, which is absolutely free from admixture of evil, as that is perfect whiteness, which is absolutely unmingled with black. But it is impossible for man in the state of this life to be altogether free from evils,—not to say bodily evils, as hunger, thirst, cold and heat, but even from evils of the soul. There is no man living who is not at times disturbed by inordinate passions, who does not at times overstep the mean in which virtue consists, or fall short of it, who is not in some things deceived, or ignorant of what he wishes to know, or driven to weak surmises on points where he would like absolute certainty. 6. Man naturally shrinks from death, and is sad at the thought of it. Yet man must die, and therefore cannot be perfectly happy while here he lives. 7. Happiness consists, not in habit, but in activity: for habits are for the sake of acts. But it is impossible in this life to do any act continually. 8. The more a thing is desired and loved, the greater grief and sadness does its loss bring. But if final happiness be in this world, it will certainly be lost, at least by death; and it is uncertain whether it will last till death, since to any man there may possibly happen in this life diseases totally debarring him from any virtuous activity, such as insanity. Such happiness therefore must always have a natural pendent of sadness. But it may be replied that whereas happiness is the good of an intelligent nature, true and perfect happiness belongs to those in whom intelligent nature is found in its perfection, that is, in pure spirits; but in man it is found imperfectly by way of a limited participation. And this seems to have been the mind of Aristotle: hence, enquiring whether misfortunes take away happiness, after showing that happiness lies in virtuous activities, which are the most permanent things in this life, he concludes that they who enjoy such perfection in this life are “happy for men,” meaning that they do not absolutely attain happiness, but only in a human way. Now it is demonstrable that the aforesaid answer is not to the undoing of the arguments above alleged. For (a) though man is inferior in the order of nature to pure spirits, yet he is superior to irrational creatures; and therefore he must gain his final end in a more perfect way than they. But they gain their final end so perfectly as to seek nothing further. Thus the natural desire of dumb animals is at rest in the enjoyment of sensual delights. Much more must the natural desire of man be put to rest by his arrival at his last end. But that is impossible in this life: therefore it must be attained after this life.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Arm in arm they passed out through the heavy swing doors and into Stephen’s waiting motor. Burton smiled above the white favour in his coat; the crowd, craning their necks, were also smiling. Arrived back at the house, Stephen, Mary, and Burton must drink the health of the bride and bridegroom. Then Pierre thanked his employer for all she had done in giving his daughter so splendid a wedding. But when that employer was no longer present, when Mary had followed her into the study, the baker’s wife lifted quizzical eyebrows. ‘Quel type! On dirait plutôt un homme; ce n’est pas celle-là qui trouvera un mari!’ The guests laughed. ‘Mais oui, elle est joliment bizarre’; and they started to make little jokes about Stephen. Pierre flushed as he leaped to Stephen’s defence. ‘She is good, she is kind, and I greatly respect her and so does my wife—while as for our daughter, Adèle here has very much cause to be grateful. Moreover she gained the Croix de Guerre through serving our wounded men in the trenches.’ The baker nodded. ‘You are quite right, my friend—precisely what I myself said this morning.’ But Stephen’s appearance was quickly forgotten in the jollification of so much fine feasting—a feasting for which her money had paid, for which her thoughtfulness had provided. Jokes there were, but no longer directed at her—they were harmless, well meant if slightly broad jokes made at the expense of the bashful bridegroom. Then before even Pauline had realized the time, there was Burton strolling into the kitchen, and Adèle must rush off to change her dress, while Jean must change also, but in the pantry. Burton glanced at the clock. ‘Faut dépêcher vous, ’urry, if you’re going to catch that chemin de fer,’ he announced as one having authority. ‘It’s a goodish way to the Guard de Lions.’ 3 That evening the old house seemed curiously thoughtful and curiously sad after all the merry-making. David’s second white bow had come untied and was hanging in two limp ends from his collar. Pauline had gone to church to light candles; Pierre, together with Pauline’s niece who would take Adèle’s place, was preparing dinner. And the sadness of the house flowed out like a stream to mingle itself with the sadness in Stephen. Adèle and Jean, the simplicity of it . . . they loved, they married, and after a while they would care for each other all over again, renewing their youth and their love in their children. So orderly, placid and safe it seemed, this social scheme evolved from creation; this guarding of two young and ardent lives for the sake of the lives that might follow after.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  It chanced one day, he being come thus well nigh to the beginning of May and the weather being very fair, that, having entered into thought of his cruel mistress, he bade all his servants leave him to himself, so he might muse more at his leisure, and wandered on, step by step, lost in melancholy thought, till he came [unwillingly] into the pine-wood. The fifth hour of the day was well nigh past and he had gone a good half mile into the wood, remembering him neither of eating nor of aught else, when himseemed of a sudden he heard a terrible great wailing and loud cries uttered by a woman; whereupon, his dulcet meditation being broken, he raised his head to see what was to do and marvelled to find himself among the pines; then, looking before him, he saw a very fair damsel come running, naked through a thicket all thronged with underwood and briers, towards the place where he was, weeping and crying sore for mercy and all dishevelled and torn by the bushes and the brambles. At her heels ran two huge and fierce mastiffs, which followed hard upon her and ofttimes bit her cruelly, whenas they overtook her; and after them he saw come riding upon a black courser a knight arrayed in sad-coloured armour, with a very wrathful aspect and a tuck in his hand, threatening her with death in foul and fearsome words. This sight filled Nastagio's mind at once with terror and amazement and after stirred him to compassion of the ill-fortuned lady, wherefrom arose a desire to deliver her, an but he might, from such anguish and death. Finding himself without arms, he ran to take the branch of a tree for a club, armed wherewith, he advanced to meet the dogs and the knight. When the latter saw this, he cried out to him from afar off, saying, 'Nastagio, meddle not; suffer the dogs and myself to do that which this wicked woman hath merited.' As he spoke, the dogs, laying fast hold of the damsel by the flanks, brought her to a stand and the knight, coming up, lighted down from his horse; whereupon Nastagio drew near unto him and said, 'I know not who thou mayst be, that knowest me so well; but this much I say to see that it is a great felony for an armed knight to seek to slay a naked woman and to set the dogs on her, as she were a wild beast; certes, I will defend her as most I may.'

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

  marriage bond indissoluble. The Council of Gangra found it necessary to oppose the notion that marriage is inconsistent with salvation, and to exhort wives to remain with their husbands. In the same way monasticism came into conflict with love of kindred, and with the relation of parents to children; misinterpreting the Lord’s command to leave all for His sake. Nilus demanded of the monks the entire suppression of the sense of blood relationship. St. Anthony forsook his younger sister, and saw her only once after the separation. His disciple, Prior, when he became a monk, vowed never to see his kindred again, and would not even speak with his sister without closing his eyes. Something of the same sort is recorded of Pachomius. Ambrose and Jerome, in full earnest, enjoined upon virgins the cloister life, even against the will of their parents. When Hilary of Poictiers heard that his daughter wished to marry, he is said to have prayed God to take her to himself by death. One Mucius, without any provocation, caused his own son to be cruelly abused, and at last, at the command of the abbot himself, cast him into the water, whence he was rescued by a brother of the cloister.300 Even in the most favorable case monasticism falls short of harmonious moral development, and of that symmetry of virtue which meets us in perfection in Christ, and next to him in the apostles. It lacks the finer and gentler traits of character, which are ordinarily brought out only in the school of daily family life and under the social ordinances of God. Its morality is rather negative than positive. There is more virtue in the temperate and thankful enjoyment of the gifts of God, than in total abstinence; in charitable and well-seasoned speech, than in total silence; in connubial chastity, than in celibacy; in self- denying practical labor for the church. than in solitary asceticism, which only pleases self and profits no one else. Catholicism, whether Greek or Roman, cannot dispense with the monastic life. It knows only moral extremes, nothing of the healthful mean. In addition to this, Popery needs the monastic orders, as an absolute monarchy needs large standing armies both for conquest and defence. But evangelical Protestantism, rejecting all distinction of a twofold morality, assigning to all men the same great duty under the law of God, placing the essence of religion not in outward exercises, but in the heart, not in separation from the world and from society, but in purifying and sanctifying the world by the free spirit of the gospel, is death to the great monastic institution. § 33. Position of Monks in the Church.

• From Fragments (7)

  Completely he befogged his mind And did him of his senses blind. FORLORN (75) I am all forlorn; For my friends I mourn. A WOMAN'S MISERY (76) Ah, me! how wretchedly I fare; Of every ill I have a share. 76 Alcaeus RELIEF (77) Thou from my grief Gavest me relief. A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY (78) For thy house thou now hast caused All its honor to be lost. IN THE NICK OF TIME (79) He from ruin them defended When their lives seemed well-nigh ended. BLESSED WHO WIN YOU (8o) Those who have won you at the gods' behest, Their lot for all eternity is blessed. ONLY THE NOBLE (8i) You as well as we, Whoever noble be. 77 Lyric SottffS of the Greeks MIGRATING DUCKS (82) From the ends of the earth and the Ocean Came these birds in violent commotion. They are ducks with bright-colored rings On their necks and far-stretched wings. AUTUMN'S BLOOM (83) The delicate bloom Which doth in tender autumn come. GENTLE WINDS (84) Blasts not by winter chilled, But gentle winds and mild. BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE SKY (85) The parts that far above us lie, Between the earth and snowy.sky. THE COTTABUS GAME (86) Many splashing drops Fly from Tean cups. 78 PYTHERMUS P5rthermus of Teos, a countryman and predeces- sor of Anacreon, is said by Athenaeus to have intro- duced the Ionian key. He is mentioned as being chiefly a composer of drinking-songs (skolia). The following fragment is quoted as being from him: Nothing then was all the rest; Gold showed itself by far the best. 79 ANACREON The third and last greater poet among the Greek ; monodists was Anacreon of Teos, an Ionian city on j the coast of Asia Minor. The first part of his life was contemporaneous with the reign of Cyrus, \ the founder of the Persian empire, the attacks of whose satrap Harpagus on the Greek cities of the coast (545 B. c.) caused a general emigration of , Tcans to Abdera in Thrace, and among them was ' Anacreon. During his stay here is to be placed ■ his military life, from which he won little glory — he too, like Alcaeus, lost his shield in flight, and jestingly mentions the fact in an ode (no. 47). From here he accepted the invitation of Polycrates,'^,^ the tyrant of Samos, to come to his brilliant court, \ and there he remained in high favor until the mur- / der of Polycrates by the Persian satrap Oroetes (522 B.C.). That Anacreon owed his popularity not only to his ability to entertain the tyrant and his frivolous court by his light and graceful song, but ^Iso had a deeper influence, is shown by his presence, recorded by Herodotus, at the interview between the tyrant and the envoy of Oroetus. From Samos Anacreon was pompously taken to Athens in 80 1 Anacreon

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Perhaps because she heard the too-naked tone of entreaty behind my words, she instantly fell silent, as though frightened. I was making every possible effort to keep her from noticing how the blood was draining from my face. The moment for parting stood waiting eagerly. A vulgar blues was being kneaded into time. We were caught up motionless within the sound of the sentimental voice issuing from the loud-speaker. Sonoko and I looked at our wrist watches almost at the same instant. . . . It was time. As I got up, I stole one more glance toward those chairs in the sun. The group had apparently gone to dance, and the chairs stood empty in the blazing sunshine. Some sort of beverage had been spilled on the table top and was throwing back glittering, threatening reflections. Table of Contents CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Betty Wright McEntire was awakened after midnight by a frantic phone call from Brenda. “She told me to meet her at a McDonald’s halfway between Salt Lake and American Fork, where she and Allen lived,” Betty remembers. “I asked what was wrong, and she goes, ‘I just need to talk to you.’ So I got out of bed and drove down there. “When I got to the McDonald’s she told me, ‘I’m leaving him.’ I said, ‘What?! I had no idea things were that bad.’ She said, ‘Well, I’ve been secretly saving some money, and I’m going to go live with Grandpa and Grandma in Montana. I’ll get a job there and take care of the baby on my own.’ ” But immediately after this meeting with her sister, Brenda changed her mind and stayed with Allen, which raises the question, Why? Especially after she had been so resolute in urging Dianna Lafferty to leave Ron. “How come Brenda didn’t split? Because she loved Allen,” Betty explains, “and she wasn’t one to quit. He was the father of her baby girl. She wanted it to work. She really thought she could save him from his brothers. She was a very determined woman.” Betty makes a painful confession, however. When Brenda confided to her at McDonald’s under the cruel fluorescent glare that she was leaving Allen, Betty reflexively admonished, “But you can’t! You’re married now. If things are bad, you just need to work them out!” At the time, Betty says, she didn’t have “a clue that he was beating her, and I didn’t know any of the stuff about the School of the Prophets; we only learned about it after her death, when we read her journals. My mom and dad were always there for her, but she didn’t tell us what was really going on. Because if there was any way my dad would have known, he would have driven down and taken her and the baby back to Idaho, where they would have been safe, no question.” One Sunday morning about two months after Brenda met Betty in the middle of the night at McDonald’s, LaRae Wright, the women’s mother, says she received a very disturbing phone call from Brenda: “She was in a panic. She said, ‘Things aren’t going well with Allen. Can I come home?’ We said, ‘Of course!’ Well, then we didn’t hear back from her, so I called her that evening and she said, ‘We’ve worked things out.’ So she didn’t come to Idaho, after all. I don’t know what was going on, but she never came home.”