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

  It’s common for them to have strong concerns for their children and equally strong, if not stronger, feelings that the other parent is falling down on the job. They know that life after divorce isn’t easy and truly want advice about how to make things better and easier. But there are no easy solutions. Things that can make a significant difference in the child’s life always involve sacrifice and change on the part of one or both parents. They require flexibility in both parents in deference to the child’s concerns. These changes are required at precisely the time when the parents, depleted from the travails of separating and setting up a new life, are at their lowest ebb. Who wants to cooperate at a time like this? Who wants to make more sacrifices? In an ideal world, what’s good for parents should be good for children. Happy, successful parents should produce happy, successful children. This is an axiom of our culture, but it breaks down in the complexity of real-life families. Some very happy, competent parents have children who feel excluded from their orbit—forever on the outskirts of deep affection. And when families come apart, the needs of every member diverge. What feels good for the divorced parents may not satisfy the needs of the children at all. It is at this point that many divorced parents draw the line and harden their hearts. Often they lose touch with their children and expect them to be little adults. “He has to compromise, too,” one newly separated mother of a five-year-old told me when her therapist suggested that she not move in with her boyfriend right away. “I apologized to her for causing her to grow up in a divorced family,” a father of a three-year-old told me seriously. “Now we all have to move on with our lives. She has to do it, too.” Although Paula knew firsthand what it was like to grow up in a single-parent household and could fully appreciate her son’s feelings, she’s constrained like her mother and millions of divorced parents by the economic realities of life. “I try to spend time with Racer. It’s not easy. And I’m exhausted. Once I graduate there are no part-time jobs out there that I can live on. So I’m looking at working full-time.” She added grimly, “Racer will be lonely and angry just like I was. But what can I do?” At the end of our interview Paula became reflective . “I’ve covered a lot of topics,” she said. “When I look back now on what kids need I realize all I didn’t have. I was lost for so long and I could easily have just stayed high and self-destructed. There must have been something that kept me going, and maybe it is something I got from my parents. I guess they loved me even though they didn’t show it.

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

  A friend or a relative might say something about how they supported the death penalty—just not for Walter—and he would find himself shaken. All I could tell him was that it would get better. — After a few months, Walter very much wanted to return to the place he’d spent his whole life. It made me nervous, but he went ahead and put a trailer on property he owned in Monroe County and resettled there. He returned to logging work while we made plans to file a civil lawsuit against everyone involved in his wrongful prosecution and conviction. Most people released from prison after being proved innocent receive no money, no assistance, no counseling—nothing from the state that wrongly imprisoned them. At the time of Walter’s release, only ten states and the District of Columbia had laws authorizing compensation to people who have been wrongly incarcerated. The number has since grown, but even today almost half of all states (twenty-two) offer no compensation to the wrongly imprisoned. Many of the states that do authorize some monetary aid severely limit the amount of compensation. No matter how many years an innocent person has been wrongly incarcerated, New Hampshire caps compensation at $20,000; Wisconsin has a $25,000 cap; Oklahoma and Illinois limit the total amount an innocent person can recover to under $200,000, even if the person has spent decades in prison. While other states have caps of more than a million dollars, and many have no cap at all, several states impose onerous eligibility requirements. In some jurisdictions, if the person lacks the support of the prosecuting attorney who wrongly convicted him, compensation will be denied. At the time Walter was set free, Alabama was not among the handful of states that provided aid to innocent people released from prison. The Alabama legislature could pass a special bill granting compensation to a person wrongly convicted, but that almost never happened. A local legislator introduced a bill seeking compensation on Walter’s behalf that prompted the local press to report that Walter was seeking $9 million. The proposed legislation, of which Walter had no prior knowledge, went nowhere. But the news coverage about the possible $9 million payoff outraged people in Monroeville who still questioned his innocence and titillated some of Walter’s friends and family, a few of whom started soliciting him aggressively for financial help. One woman even filed a paternity suit falsely claiming that Walter was the father of her child, a child that was born less than eight months after Walter’s release. DNA tests confirmed that he was not the father. Walter at times expressed frustration that people didn’t believe him when he told them he had received nothing. We pressed ahead in our efforts to get compensation for him through a lawsuit, but there were obstacles.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It is quite the oddest place, with the balcony which is like a tiny garden, & inside a high, cool studio with steps going up to a kitchen on one side, & to a bedroom on the other. Beyond the studio you can climb out on to a roof where Sandy apparently sunbathes naked with his friends & where there is a fine view of the old Wren church with its bulbous spire. We had some American cocktails with all sorts of muck in them & got frightfully drunk. Later on a friend of his came up (he had his own key). He is called Otto Henderson, an artist, & apparently very well in with Cocteau & the Parisian world. I fear I showed I knew nothing about it all. He, I gather, is a keen practitioner of Sandy’s bare-bum sun-worship, as his mother, who is Danish, comes from a family of pioneering nudists. He was very interested to hear about the tribesmen of Kordofan, & wanted to know how they went on when they became amorously excited. He is a striking-looking fellow, with thick fair hair, shifting eyes & huge lyrical moustaches. His clothes, on another, wd have been enough to incite nudism—a boisterously checked jacket, bright yellow trousers & a bowtie with dogs on it. I rather liked him, but I was sorry not to have Sandy to myself. We all went on to a dingy little chophouse, the idea of which, apparently, was to reintroduce me to the epitome of English culture. Between us we made a thoroughly English nuisance of ourselves, & Sandy & Otto regaled me with the news of London life, Otto showing a thorough familiarity with all our old friends & treating me as if we had been at school together. Timmy Carswell has married, ‘extremely well’ Otto assured me. I felt a little pang, and a little gloom, too, which I dashed away with some more of the sour red wine we’d ordered. Sandy—who at the House had really I suppose been madly in love with Tim—cursed him obscenely & teetered into maudlin reminiscence. I sat back and looked around the restaurant while this was going on, though I cdn’t avoid remembering Tim and his angelic beauty at 15. It was not nice to think of female fingernails doodling over his smooth man’s body.

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

  Besides, even if the Son of God were a creature, as Arius falsely teaches, He nevertheless excels all created spirits in beatitude, according to the heresiarch himself. But the beatitude of the angels is so great that they can suffer no sadness. Their happiness would not be true and complete if anything were wanting to their desires, since the very notion of beatitude requires that it be the ultimate and perfect good wholly satisfying all desire. Much less can the Son of God be subject to sadness or fear in His divine nature. Yet we read that He was sad: “He began to fear and to be heavy,” “and to be sad” (Mark 14:33; Matt. 26:37). And He Himself gave witness of His sorrow, saying, “My soul is sorrowful even unto death” (Mark 14:34). Sadness, assuredly, pertains not to the body, but to some substance capable of apprehension. Therefore, besides the Word and the body, there must have been in Christ another substance that could suffer sadness; and this we call the soul. Moreover, if Christ assumed what is ours for the purpose of cleansing us of sin, and if our greater need was to be cleansed in soul, from which sin arises and which is the subject of sin, we must conclude that He assumed not a body without a soul, but a body together with its soul, since the soul was the more important part for Him to assume. CHAPTER 205 THE ERROR OF APOLLINARIS IN REGARD TO THE INCARNATIONThese considerations also refute the error of Apollinaris,who at first followed Arius in refusing to admit any soul in Christ other than the Word of God. However, he did not follow Arius in teaching that the Son of God was a creature; for many things are narrated of Christ which cannot be ascribed to the body, and which are inadmissible in the Creator, such as sadness, fear, and the like. He was, then, at length driven to acknowledge the existence in Christ of some soul which gave sense life to the body and could be the subject of such passions. Yet this soul was without reason and intellect, and the Word Himself took the place of intellect and reason in the man Christ.

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

  Even more important, as the child gets older the symbolic significance of the divorced father changes. He’s no longer the commanding presence in his child’s life—the loving protective figure who makes sure everyone is cared for. Because he’s no longer responsible for the welfare of the household, his image inevitably diminishes. Daddy may be good company or a bore, he may be loved or resented, but he has lost his big job. Henceforth he is judged by what transpires between himself and his child, not by virtue of his traditional role as father in situ. Whatever relationship father and child create, they must do it by themselves without the structure of the family to support either of them, without the comforting presence of just having each other around, and without the help of the mother who, in a good intact family, encourages the father-child relationship to take off and to grow. The average child in a functioning intact family turns to each parent as he wants or needs their attention or help. Children are very astute in figuring out what each parent is better at providing emotionally as well as in other spheres of knowledge. When children get hurt, they often call for their mothers. Even older children want comforting and holding when they’re in pain. When the same child feels lively and eager to do something new, she may well turn to her father. When my twelve-year-old daughter was hit by a car, she wanted her father to ride in the ambulance because she had greater confidence in his ability to take charge. Later on in the hospital, she wanted me to sit at her bedside all day to comfort her. What could be more natural? I’m reminded of Alice in Wonderland, who held pieces of a magic mushroom in each hand. One side made her smaller and the other taller. She could nibble away at will and change her height. Similarly, the child in an intact family is free to turn alternately to each parent to meet her changing needs and wishes as she grows. Young adolescent girls typically turn to their mothers. Six-year-old boys want to be with their dads. But in the divorced family the child has to tailor her needs and wishes to the parent who happens to be scheduled in her life at any given moment. Many children complain that when they’re with their moms they miss their dads and vice versa. Indeed they do. They cannot postpone their needs to fit the custody schedule until they’re much older.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxxviii) And He predicted these trials for another reason, viz. that they might not say that He had not foreseen them; That ye may remember that I told you of them, or that He had only spoken to please them, and given false hopes. And the reason is added, why He did not reveal these things sooner: And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you; because, that is, ye were in My keeping, and might ask when you pleased, and the whole battle rested upon Me. There was no need then to tell you these things at the first, though I myself knew them. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xciv. 1) In the other three Evangelists these predictions occur before the supper; John gives them after. Still if they relate them as given very near His Passion, that is enough to explain His saying, These things I said not unto you at the beginning. Matthew however relates these prophecies as given long before His Passion, on the occasion of His choosing the twelve. How do we reconcile this with our Lord’s words? By supposing them to apply to the promise of the Holy Spirit, and the testimony He would give amidst their suffering. This was what He had not told them at the beginning, and that because He was with them, and His presence was a sufficient consolation. But as He was about to depart, it was meet that He should tell them of His coming, by whom the love of God would be shed abroad in their hearts, to preach the word of God with boldness. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxxviii. 1) Or, He had foretold that they should suffer scourgings, but not that their death could be thought doing God service; which was the strangest thing of all. Or, He there told them what they would suffer from the Gentiles, here what from the Jews. 16:5–115. But now I go my way to him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? 6. But because I have said these tilings unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. 7. Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. 8. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9. Of sin, because they believe not on me; 10. Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; 11. Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It is probably the most awful of all the revelations this little life affords. We no longer walked about, as a friend of mine once put it, in a not too dissimilar context, in "friendly groups of five thousand." We were splitting up, and each of us was going for himself. Or, if not precisely for himself, his own way: some of us took to the needle, some returned to the family business, some made loveless marriages, some ceased fleeing and turned to face the demons that had been on the trail so long. The luckiest among us were these last, for they managed to go to pieces and then put themselves back together with whatever was left. This may take away one's dreams, but it delivers one to oneself. Without this coming together, the longed-for love is never possible, for the confused personality can neither give nor take. In my own case, I think my exile saved my life, for it in exorably confirmed something which Americans appear to have great difficulty accepting. Which is, simply, this: a man is not a man until he's able and willing to accept his own vision of the world, no matter how radically this vision departs from that of others. (When I say "vision," I do not mean "dream.") There are long moments when this country resem bles nothing so much as the grimmest of popularity contests. The best thing that happened to the "new" expatriates was their liberation, finally, fr om any need to be smothered by what is really nothing more (though it may be something less) than mother love. It need scarcely, I hope, be said that I have no interest in hurling gratuitous insults at American mothers; they are certainly helpless, if not entirely blameless; and my point has nothing to do with them. My point is involved with the great emphasis placed on public approval here, and the resulting and quite insane system of penalties and rewards. It puts a premium on mediocrity and has all but slaughtered any concept of excellence. This corruption begins in the private 668 OTHER ESSAYS lite and unfailingly flowers in the public life. Europeans refer to Americans as children in the same way that American Ne groes refer to them as children, and for the same reason: they mean that Americans have so little experience-experience re ferring not to what happens, but to who--that they have no key to the experience of others.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  However we shift the light which beats so fiercely on his head, or prove, by victorious social analysis, how his lot has changed, how we have both improved, our uneasiness refuses to be exorcized. And nowhere is this more apparent than in our literature on the subject-"problem" literature when written by whites, "protest" literature when written by Ne groes-and nothing is more striking than the tremendous dis parity of tone between the two creations. Kingsblood Royal bears, for example, almost no kinship to If He Hollers Let Him Go, though the same reviewers praised them both for what were, at bottom, very much the same reasons. These reasons may be suggested, far too briefly but not at all unjustly, by NOTES OF A NATIVE SON observing that the presupposition is in both novels exactly the same: black is a terrible color with which to be born into the world. �ow the most powerful and celebrated statement we have yet had of what it means to be a Negro in America is un questionably Richard Wright's Native Son. The feeling which pre\·ailed at the time of its publication was that such a novel, bitter, uncompromising, shocking, gave proof, by its very ex istence, of what strides might be taken in a free democracy; and its indisputable success, proof that Americans were now able to look full in the face without flinching the dreadful facts. Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud deco ration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle. Such a book, we felt with pride, could never have been written before-which was true. Nor could it be written today. It bears already the aspect of a landmark; for Bigger and his brothers have undergone yet another metamorphosis; they have been accepted in baseball leagues and by colleges hith erto exclusive; and they have made a most favorable appear ance on the national screen. We have yet to encounter, nevertheless, a report so indisputably authentic, or one that can begin to challenge this most significant novel. It is, in a certain American tradition, the story of an unre markable youth in battle with the force of circumstance; that force of circumstance which plays and which has played so important a part in the national fables of success or failure. In this case the force of circumstance is not poverty merely but color, a circumstance which cannot be overcome, against which the protagonist battles for his life and loses.

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

  There’d be a lot of screaming and yelling and hitting. That was a sort of once-a-month routine. It would end with them disappearing into their bedroom or with Daddy storming out of the house and staying away for the rest of the night. We hated it when they went to their room because then their yelling would change into sounds of them having sex. We could hear them. Later, Dad would come out and tell us to get our own dinner. He’d take something to eat and disappear into his study for the rest of the night. We’d put ourselves to bed. It was so lonely and awful.” As Carol described these scenes, a heavy sadness fell over her small frame and her spirit seemed almost crushed. But she was not finished. “The worst times,” Carol said, crumbling a cookie on the plate in front of her, “was when they’d go for us. I was the favorite target. It only happened a few times a year but I remember every detail. They’d spot me or hear me in the kitchen making dinner and then they’d call me into the living room. Dad usually started it with a question about dinner or school that then escalated into a verbal attack by both of them. Before you knew it, they were hitting me. If I tried to say anything in self-defense, they hit me harder. I remember one time being chased into my bedroom, where my dad held me down and my mom slapped me over and over like she couldn’t stop.” Carol’s voice trailed off. I was stunned by her story. “And no one protected you? ” “My little sister used to come in my room and lie down beside me on the bed. She’d wrap her arms around my neck and pat my cheek. We’d lie there and hug each other. We were frightened our whole childhood. We never knew what to expect or when it would get real bad again.” Carol fell silent as the memories flooded her body and caused her throat to constrict. Unable to speak, she stared vacantly at the flowers, holding back her pain. I waited a good thirty seconds for her to regain her composure and leaned closer, “Carol, what an awful way to grow up.” She was stone still as the next words came out in a slow monotone, stripped of inflection because her emotions were on the brink. “The worst part wasn’t being hit.”

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

  Everybody seemed to be rushing to get the trial over with, and Walter couldn’t understand it. The State then called a white man, Ernest Welch, who said he was the “furniture man” who collected money at the McMillian house on the day they were having a fish fry—but it wasn’t the same day that Ronda Morrison was murdered. He said he remembered better than anyone when she was murdered because he was her uncle. He said that he had been so devastated that he went to the McMillian residence to collect money on a different day. The lawyers made their arguments, the jury retired, and less than three hours later they filed back into the courtroom. Stone-faced, one by one, they pronounced Walter McMillian guilty. Chapter Eight All God’s Children U NCRIED T EARS Imagine teardrops left uncried From pain trapped inside Waiting to escape Through the windows of your eyes “Why won’t you let us out?” The tears question the conscience “Relinquish your fears and doubts And heal yourself in the process.” The conscience told the tears “I know you really want me to cry But if I release you from bondage, In gaining your freedom you die.” The tears gave it some thought Before giving the conscience an answer “If crying brings you to triumph Then dying’s not such a disaster.” I AN E . M ANUEL, Union Correctional Institution T rina Garnett was the youngest of twelve children living in the poorest section of Chester, Pennsylvania, a financially distressed municipality outside of Philadelphia. The extraordinarily high rates of poverty, crime, and unemployment in Chester intersected with the worst-ranked public school system among Pennsylvania’s 501 districts. Close to 46 percent of the city’s children were living below the federal poverty level. Trina’s father, Walter Garnett, was a former boxer whose failed career had turned him into a violent, abusive alcoholic well known to local police for throwing a punch with little provocation. Trina’s mother, Edith Garnett, was sickly after bearing so many children, some of whom were conceived during rapes by her husband. The older and sicker Edith became, the more she found herself a target of Walter’s rage. He would regularly punch, kick, and verbally abuse her in front of the children. Walter would often go to extremes, stripping Edith naked and beating her until she writhed on the floor in pain while her children looked on fearfully. When she lost consciousness during the beatings, Walter would shove a stick down her throat to revive her for more abuse. Nothing was safe in the Garnett home. Trina once watched her father strangle her pet dog into silence because it wouldn’t stop barking. He beat the animal to death with a hammer and threw its limp body out a window. Trina had twin sisters, Lynn and Lynda, who were a year older than her.

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

  BEDE. He means the generation not only of the Jews, but also of all wicked men, by whom even now in His own body, that is, His Church, the Son of man suffers many things, and is rejected. But while He spake many things of His coming in glory, He inserts something also concerning His Passion, that when men saw Him dying, whom they had heard would be glorified, they might both soothe their sorrow for His sufferings by the hope of the promised glory, and at the same time prepare themselves, if they love the glories of His kingdom, to look without alarm upon the horrors of death. 17:26–3026. And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. 27. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. 28. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; 29. But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. 30. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. BEDE. The coming of our Lord, which He had compared to lightning flying swiftly across the heavens, He now likens to the days of Noah and Lot, when a sudden destruction came upon mankind. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 1, in Ep. 1. ad Thess.) For refusing to believe the words of warning they were suddenly visited with a real punishment from God; but their unbelief proceeded from self-indulgence, and softness of mind. For such as a man’s wishes and inclinations are, will also be his expectations. Therefore it follows, they eat and drank. AMBROSE. He rightly declares the deluge to have been caused by our sins, for God did not create evil, but our deservings found it out for themselves. Let it not however be supposed that marriages, or again meat and drink, are condemned, seeing that by the one succession is sustained, by the other nature, but moderation is to be sought for in all things. For whatsoever is more than this is of evil. BEDE. Now Noah builds the ark mystically. The Lord builds His Church of Christ’s faithful servants, by uniting them together in one, as smooth pieces of wood; and when it is perfectly finished, He enters it: as at the day of Judgment, He who ever dwells within His Church enlightens it with His visible presence. But while the ark is in building, the wicked flourish, when it is entered, they perish; as they who revile the saints in their warfare here, shall when they are crowned hereafter be smitten with eternal condemnation.

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

  Accordingly, if the suffering of Christ’s soul is regarded as arising from the body, the whole soul suffered when the body suffered. For the soul in its essence is the form of the body, and the faculties, too, are all rooted in the essence of the soul. Consequently, if the body suffers every power of the soul suffers in some way. But if the suffering of the soul is considered as arising from an object, not every power of Christ’s soul suffered, understanding suffering in the proper sense as connoting harm. For nothing that arose from the object of any of these powers could be harmful, since, as we saw above, the soul of Christ enjoyed the perfect vision of God. Thus the higher reason of Christ’s soul, which is immersed in the contemplation and meditation of eternal things, embraced nothing adverse or repugnant that could cause it to suffer any harm. But the sense faculties, whose objects are material things, could receive some injury from the suffering of the body; and so Christ experienced pain of sense when His body suffered. Furthermore, just as laceration of the body is felt by the senses to be injurious, so the inner imagination apprehends it as harmful; hence interior distress follows even when pain is not felt in the body. We assert that suffering of such distress was experienced by the soul of Christ. More than this: not the imagination alone, but also the lower reason apprehends objects harmful to the body; and so, as a result of such apprehension by the lower reason, which is concerned with temporal affairs, the suffering of sorrow could have place in Christ, so far as the lower reason apprehended death and other maltreatment of the body as injurious and as contrary to natural appetite. Moreover, in consequence of love, which makes two persons, as it were, one, a man may be afflicted with sadness not only on account of objects he apprehends through his imagination or his lower reason as harmful to himself, but also on account of objects he apprehends as harmful to others whom he loves. Thus Christ suffered sadness from His awareness of the perils of sin or of punishment threatening other men whom He loved with the love of charity. And so He grieved for others as well as for Himself.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Marlon flew up to Oakland to deliver the eulogy for seven teen-year-old Bobby Hutton, shot down, exactly, by the du tiful police, like a mad dog in the streets. The Oakland Police force was outraged, naturally, and I think they threatened to sue him, probably for defamation of character. The Grand Jur y had judged their shooting of an unarmed, black adoles cent as "justifiable homicide": the names of these jurors, many of whom can claim as their intimates eminent judges and lawyers, could scarcely have been found on the Master Panel if it were supposed that they were capable of bringing in any other verdict. (I went to Oakland to visit the house where Hutton was killed, and Cleaver wounded. The house where the Panthers were is wedged between two houses just like it. There are windows on either side of the house, facing the alley; facing TO BE BAPTIZED 4-35 the street, there is only an enormous garage door, fr om which, needless to say, no one could hope to shoot, and live. The house, particularly the basement, where the people were, looks like something fr om a search-and-destroy operation. The warehouse across the street, where the cops were, doesn't have a scratch on it: so much tor the official concept of a shoot-out. When I was there, there were flowers on a rock, marking the spot where Bobby fell: the people of the neigh borhood had made of the place a shrine.) I think it was in March, but it may have been somewhat earlier, that Martin Luther King came to town, to speak in a private dwelling in the Hollywood hills to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I had not seen Martin in quite some time, and I looked forward to seeing him in a setting where we might be able to talk a little bit before he had to dash otT and grab some sleep before catching the next plane. For years, most of us had seen each other only at airports, or, wearily, marching, marching. It always seems-unfairly enough, perhaps, in many cases incongruous and suspect when relatively wealthy and certainly very wordly people come together for the express purpose of declaring their allegiance to a worthy cause and with the in tention of parting with some of their money.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  And this meant, not only that I thus gave the world an alto gether murderous power over me, but also that in such a self destroying limbo I could never hope to write. One writes out of one thing only-one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art. The difficulty then, tor me, of being a Negro writer was the fact that I was, in effect, prohibited fr om examining my own experience too closely by the tremendous demands and the very real dangers of my social situation. I don't think the dilemma outlined above is uncommon. I do think, since writers work in the disastrously explicit me dium of language, that it goes a little way towards explaining why, out of the enormous resources of Negro speech and life, and despite the example of Negro music, prose written by Negroes has been generally speaking so pallid and so harsh. I have not written about being a Negro at such length because I expect that to be my only subject, but only because it was the gate I had to unlock befi>re I could hope to write about anything else. I don't think that the Negro problem in Amer ica can be even discussed coherently without bearing in mind its context; its context being the history, traditions, customs, the moral assumptions and preoccupations of the country; in short, the general social fabric. Appearances to the contrary, no one in America escapes its effects and everyone in America AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 9 bears some responsibility for it. I believe this the more firmly because it is the overwhelming tendency to speak of this problem as though it were a thing apart. But in the work of Faulkner, in the general attitude and certain specific passages in Robert Penn \Varren, and, most significantly, in the advent of Ralph Ellison, one sees the beginnings-at least-of a more genuinely penetrating search. Mr. Ellison, by the way, is the first Negro novelist I have ever read to utilize in language, and brilliantly, some of the ambiguity and irony of �egro life. About my interests: I don't know if I have any, unless the morbid desire to own a sixteen-millimeter camera and make experimental movies can be so classified. Othem·ise, I lm·e to eat and drink-it's my melancholy conviction that I've scarcely e\·er had enough to eat (this is because it's impossible to eat enough ifyou're worried about the next meal)-and I love to argue with people who do not disagree with me too pro foundly, and I lm·e to laugh.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But I think we NOTES FOR A HYPOTH ETICAL NOVEL 225 ought to bring ourselves up short because we don't need an other version of A Tree GroJVs in Brooklyn and we can do without another version of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. This hypothetical book is aiming at something more implacable than that. Because no matter how ridiculous this may sound, that unseen prisoner in Germany is going to have an effect on the lives of these people. Two Italians are going to be exe cuted presently in Boston, there's going to be something called the Scottsboro case which will give the Communist party hideous opportunities. In short, the social realities with which these people, the people I remember, whether they knew it or not, were really contending can't be left out of the novel without falsifying their experience. And-this is very im portant-this all has something to do with the sight of that tormented, falling down, drunken, bleeding man I mentioned at the beginning. Who is he and what does he mean? Well, then I remember, principally I remember, the boys and girls in the streets. The boys and girls on the streets, at school, in the church. I remember in the beginning I only knew Negroes except for one Jewish boy, the only white boy in an all-Negro elementary school, a kind of survivor of an other day in Harlem, and there was an Italian fruit vendor who lived next door to us who had a son with whom I fought every campaign of the ltalian-Ethiopian war. Because, remem ber that we're projecting a novel, and Harlem is in the course of changing all the time, very soon there won't be any white people there, and this is also going to have some effect on the people in my story. Well, more people now. There was a boy, a member of our church, and he backslid, which means he achieved a sex life and started smoking cigarettes, and he was therefore rejected from the community in which he had been brought up, be cause Harlem is also reduced to communities. And I've always believed that one of the reasons he died was because of this rejection. In any case, eighteen months after he was thrown out of the church he was dead of tuberculosis. And there was a girl, who was a nice girl. She was a niece of one of the deaconesses. In fact, she was my girl. We were very young then, we were going to get married and we were always singing, praying and shouting, and we thought we'd 226 NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME live that way fi:>rever. But one day she was picked up in a nightgown on Lenox Avenue screaming and cursing and they carried her away to an institution where she still may be.

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

  However, although the love of our fellow men pertains in a certain way to the higher reason, inasmuch as our neighbor is loved out of charity for God’s sake, the higher reason in Christ could not experience sorrow on account of the defects of His fellow men, as it can in us. For, since Christ’s higher reason enjoyed the full vision of God, it apprehended all that pertains to the defects of others as contained in the divine wisdom, in the light of which the fact that a person is permitted to sin and is punished for his sin, is seen to be in accord with becoming order. And so neither the soul of Christ nor of any of the blessed who behold God can be afflicted with sadness by the defects of their neighbors. But the case is otherwise with wayfarers who do not rise high enough to perceive the plan of wisdom. Such persons arc saddened by the defects of others even in their higher reason, when they think that it pertains to the honor of God and the exaltation of the faith that some should be saved who nevertheless are damned. Thus, with regard to the very things for which He was suffering in sense, imagination, and lower reason, Christ was rejoicing in His higher reason, so far as He referred them to the order of divine wisdom. And since the referring of one thing to another is the proper task of reason, we generally say that Christ’s reason, if it is considered as nature, shrank from death, meaning that death is naturally abhorrent, but that if it is considered as reason, it was willing to suffer death. Just as Christ was afflicted with sadness, so He experienced other passions that stem from sadness, such as fear, wrath, and the like. Fear is caused in us by those things whose presence engenders sorrow, when they are thought of as future evils; and when we are grieved by someone who is hurting us, we become angry at him. Such passions existed otherwise in Christ than in us. In us they frequently anticipate the judgment of reason, and sometimes pass the bounds of reason. In Christ they never anticipated the judgment of reason, and never exceeded the moderation imposed by reason; His lower appetite, which was subject to passion, was moved just so far as reason decreed that it should be moved. Therefore Christ’s soul could desire something in its higher part that it shrank from in its lower part, and yet there was no conflict of appetites in Him or rebellion of the flesh against the spirit, such as occurs in us owing to the fact that the lower appetite exceeds the judgment and measure of reason. In Christ this appetite was moved in accord with the judgment of reason, to the extent that He permitted each of His lower powers to be moved by its own impulse, in keeping with propriety.

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

  I couldn’t understand why his trial records made no reference to mental illness, but after the George Daniel case, nothing surprised me. When I returned to my office, we began a deeper investigation into Mr. Jenkins’s background. What we found was heartbreaking. His father had been murdered before he was born, and his mother had died of a drug overdose when he was a year old. He’d been in foster care since he was two years old. His time in foster care had been horrific; he’d been in nineteen different foster homes before he turned eight. He began showing signs of intellectual disability at an early age. He had cognitive impairments that suggested some organic brain damage and behavioral problems that suggested schizophrenia and other serious mental illness. When he was ten, Avery lived with abusive foster parents whose rigid rules kept him in constant turmoil. He couldn’t comply with all of the requirements imposed on him, so he was frequently locked in a closet, denied food, and subjected to beatings and other physical abuse. When his behavior didn’t improve, his foster mother decided to get rid of him. She took him out into the woods, tied him to a tree, and left him there. He was found, in very poor health, by hunters three days later. After recovering from serious medical problems relating to his abandonment, he was turned over to authorities, who placed him back into foster care. By the time he was thirteen, he had started abusing drugs and alcohol. By fifteen, he was having seizures and experiencing psychotic episodes. At seventeen, he was deemed incapable of management and was left homeless. Avery was in and out of jail until he turned twenty, when in the midst of a psychotic episode he wandered into a strange house, thinking he was being attacked by demons. In the house, he brutally stabbed to death a man he’d believed to be a demon. His lawyers did no investigation of Mr. Jenkins’s history prior to trial, and he was quickly convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The prison would not let me bring Mr. Jenkins a milkshake. I tried to explain this to him, but at the start of every visit, he’d ask me if I’d brought one. I’d tell him that I would keep trying—I had to, just to get him to focus on anything else. Months later, we were finally scheduled to go to court with the evidence about his profound mental illness, material that should have been presented at trial. We contended that his attorneys had failed to provide effective assistance of counsel at trial when they didn’t uncover Avery’s history or present his disabilities as relevant to his criminal culpability and sentence.

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

  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. A few weeks later, I found myself deeply distressed. I was worried about the execution dates that were set for every other month in Alabama. I was worried about what the U.S. Supreme Court would do with all of the children condemned to die in prison, now that it had the issue to consider. I was worried about our funding and whether we had enough staff and resources to meet the demands of our expanding docket. I was worried about several clients who were struggling. When I got to the Montgomery nursing home to see Walter a week after he’d arrived there, I felt like I had been worrying all day. Walter sat in a common room with older, heavily medicated people watching TV. It was jarring to see him sitting in a hospital gown among people so compromised and infirm.

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

  Reply to Objection 1: The inclination of reason would prevail in human nature in the state of integrity. But in corrupt nature the inclination of concupiscence prevails, because it is dominant in man. Hence man is more prone to bear evils for the sake of goods in which the concupiscence delights here and now, than to endure evils for the sake of goods to come, which are desired in accordance with reason: and yet it is this that pertains to true patience. Reply to Objection 2: The good of a social virtue [*Cf. [3402]FS, Q[61], A[5]] is commensurate with human nature; and consequently the human will can tend thereto without the help of sanctifying grace, yet not without the help of God’s grace [*Cf. [3403]FS, Q[109], A[2]]. On the other hand, the good of grace is supernatural, wherefore man cannot tend thereto by a natural virtue. Hence the comparison fails. Reply to Objection 3: Even the endurance of those evils which a man bears for the sake of his body’s health, proceeds from the love a man naturally has for his own flesh. Hence there is no comparison between this endurance and patience which proceeds from a supernatural love. Whether patience is a part of fortitude?Objection 1: It seems that patience is not a part of fortitude. For a thing is not part of itself. Now patience is apparently the same as fortitude: because, as stated above ([3404]Q[123], A[6]), the proper act of fortitude is to endure; and this belongs also to patience. For it is stated in the Liber Sententiarum Prosperi [*The quotation is from St. Gregory, Hom. xxxv in Evang.] that “patience consists in enduring evils inflicted by others.” Therefore patience is not a part of fortitude. Objection 2: Further, fortitude is about fear and daring, as stated above ([3405]Q[123], A[3]), and thus it is in the irascible. But patience seems to be about sorrow, and consequently would seem to be in the concupiscible. Therefore patience is not a part of fortitude but of temperance. Objection 3: Further, the whole cannot be without its part. Therefore if patience is a part of fortitude, there can be no fortitude without patience. Yet sometimes a brave man does not endure evils patiently, but even attacks the person who inflicts the evil. Therefore patience is not a part of fortitude. On the contrary, Tully (De Invent. Rhet. ii) reckons it a part of fortitude.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  450 Lecture 67: Charles Dickens Charles Dickens Lecture 67 Yet even at the height of his fame, Dickens never forgot the sufferings and humiliations of his childhood. Born in Portsmouth in 1812 as the fi rst son of a naval clerk, he went to school in Chatham and then in London as his father was transferred from one naval of fi ce to another. But at the age of 12, when his father was jailed for debt at the Marshalsea prison, he had to leave school and go to work in a shoe-blacking factory putting labels on bottles. T hough Dickens’s many novels treat various parts of the world, including France and America, as well as England, the center of his fi ctional universe is the city of London. And his cast of characters includes fi gures from virtually every station in life, with a particular focus on children raised in poverty and hardship, as he himself was, but yearning for the advantages of gentility. In Great Expectations, Dickens tells the story of a sensitive boy named Pip, who is being raised by his tyrannical sister; early on, however, Pip learns that a mysterious benefactor will enable him to become a gentleman and thus—he thinks—to marry a beautiful young woman he has met. In a variety of ways, the novel shows how this fairytale dream of wealth and romance collides with reality and compels Pip to recognize painful truths: the truth of his own identity and the true natures of Miss Havisham and Estella, both of whom he has miserably misjudged. As Great Expectations shows, Dickens never forgot the sufferings and humiliations of his childhood. Though formally schooled in his early years, he had to go to work in a factory at the age of 12 when his father was imprisoned for debt. The work fi lled his soul with “secret agony.” The memory of that agony prompted him to conceive the story of Pip. As a common laborer working in a blacksmith shop, Pip—the hero of Great Expectations—yearns for the beautiful Estella but fears she will despise him. The hardships of Dickens’s life, his methods of publishing, and the subject matter of his novels all sharply contrast him with Jane Austen. Unlike Jane Austen, who was largely home-schooled in comfortable circumstances,