Shame

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.

Page 183 of 267 · 20 per page

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  In the evening he used to send me to bed early: even before nine o’clock, though Vernon always let me stay up with him reading till eleven or twelve o’clock. One night I went up to my bedroom on the next floor, but returned almost at once to get a book and have a read in bed, which was a rare treat to me. I was afraid to go into the sitting-room; but crept into the dining-room where there were a few books, though not so interesting as those in the parlour; the door between the two rooms was ajar. Suddenly I heard my father say: “He’s a little Fenian.” “Fenian”, repeated Vernon in amazement, “really, Governor, I don’t believe he knows the meaning of the word; he’s only just eleven, you must remember.” “I tell you” broke in my father, “he talked of James Stephen, the Fenian Head-Centre, today with wild admiration. He’s a Fenian alright, but how did he catch it?” “I’m sure I don’t know”, replied Vernon, “he reads a great deal and is very quick: I’ll find out about it.” “No, no!” said my father, “the thing is to cure him: he must go to some school in England, that’ll cure him.” I waited to hear no more but got my book and crept upstairs; so because I loved the Fenian Head-Centre I must be a Fenian. “How stupid Father is”, was my summing up, but England tempted me, England—life was opening out. It was at the Royal School in the summer after my sex-experiences with Strangways and Howard that I first began to notice dress. A boy in the sixth form named Milman had taken a liking to me and though he was five years older than I was, he often went with Howard and myself for walks. He was a stickler for dress, said that no one but “cads” (a name I learned from him for the first time) and common folk would wear a made-up tie: he gave me one of his scarves and showed me how to make a running lover’s knot in it. On another occasion he told me that only “cads” would wear trowsers frayed or repaired. Was it Milman’s talk that made me self-conscious or my sex-awakening through Howard and Strangways? T couldn’t say; but at this time I had a curious and prolonged experience. My brother Vernon hearing me once complain of my dress, got me three suits of clothes, one in black with an Eton jacket for best and a tall hat and the others in tweeds: he gave me shirts, too, and ties, and I began to take great care of my appearance. At our evening parties the girls and young women (Vernon’s friends) were kinder to me than ever and I found myself wondering whether I really looked “nice” as they said.

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

  2. Its not being eaten uncooked shows us that we must not believe that Jesus is a mere man. Also, its not being cooked with water shows that we must not believe that Jesus was conceived or born like other men. Again, because they ate it cooked with fire, we must believe that the Incarnation of the Word and the consecration of His Body are worked by the power of the Holy Ghost. 3. They were commanded to eat the head of the lamb with the feet and the purtenance. From that we must believe that in this Sacrament, Christ is contained and received whole and undivided, with Godhead, Body, and Soul. (2) The second part of this type is the three accompaniments with which they were wont to eat the lamb: 1, wild lettuce; 2, unleavened bread; 3, the lamb’s blood. The wild lettuce signifies sorrow for sin; the unleavened bread signifies a pure intention with good works; the lamb’s blood signifies the memory and imitation of our Lord’s Passion, by which things the faithful soul ought to be ready. 1. St. Gregory says, ‘The wild lettuce is very bitter, and the flesh of the Paschal lamb is to be eaten with this, because we ought to have very great sorrow for our sins when we receive the Body of our Lord, that the bitterness of penance may take away all love of a sinful life.’ 2. St. Paul tells us not to feast with the old leaven, that is, in the corruption of pride, which is against God; nor with the leaven of malice, which is against our neighbour; nor with the leaven of wickedness, which is against ourselves; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, that is, in freedom from sin and in the truth of good works; so that we may strive always to live in newness of life, without any deceitfulness of the olden leaven. St. Gregory says, ‘He eats unleavened bread who does good works without that corruption of vain-glory which comes from the leaven of malice.’ ‘He eats bread without the leaven of malice who does works of mercy without admixture of sin, taking care not to gain wrongly what in a sense he gives rightly. This is the sacrifice of praise about which Scripture speaks. He offers a sacrifice of praise with leaven who brings to the Lord a sacrifice of that which he has gained by robbery in the leaven of wickedness.’ Now, the soul that ate leavened bread in the forbidden time had to perish from Israel. To eat leavened bread thus is to take delight in any filthiness of sin which we commit in ourselves.

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

  Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome and fat and well dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a bon-vivant, and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a 'tone-poet' and saint. But the thing is simply impossible. The millionaire's work would run counter to the saint's; the bon-vivant and the philanthropist would trip each other up; the philosopher and the lady-killer could not well keep house in the same tenement of clay. Such different characters may conceivably at the outset of life be alike possible to a man. But to make any one of them actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other selves thereupon become unreal, but the fortunes of this self are real. Its failures are real failures, its triumphs real triumphs, carrying shame and gladness with them. This is as strong an example as there is of that selective industry of the mind on which I insisted some pages back (p. 189 ff.). Our thought, incessantly deciding, among many things of a kind, which ones for it shall be realities, here chooses one of many possible selves or characters, and forthwith reckons it no shame to fail in any of those not adopted expressly as its own. I, who for the time have staked my all on being a psychologist, am mortified if others know much more psychology than I. But I am contented to wallow in the grossest ignorance of Greek. My deficiencies there give me no sense of personal humiliation at all. Had I 'pretensions' to be a linguist, it would have been just the reverse. So we have the paradox of a man shamed to death because he is only the second pugilist or the second oarsman in the world. That he is able to beat the whole population of the globe minus one is nothing; he has 'pitted' himself to beat that one; and as long as he doesn't do that nothing else counts. He is to his own regard as if he were not, indeed he is not. Yonder puny fellow, however, whom every one can beat, suffers no chagrin about it, for he has long ago abandoned the attempt to 'carry that line,' as the merchants say, of self at all. With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation.

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

  Motor aphasia is neither loss of voice nor paralysis of the tongue or lips. The patient's voice is as strong as ever, and all the innervations of his hypoglossal and facial nerves, except those necessary for speaking, may go on perfectly well. He can laugh and cry, and even sing; but he either is unable to utter any words at all; or a few meaningless stock phrases form his only speech; or else he speaks incoherently and confusedly, mispronouncing, misplacing, and misusing his words in various degrees. Sometimes his speech is a mere broth of unintelligible syllables. In cases of pure motor aphasia the patient recognizes his mistakes and suffers acutely from them. Now whenever a patient dies in such a condition as this, and an examination of his brain is permitted, it is found that the lowest frontal gyrus (see Fig. 11) is the seat of injury. Broca first noticed this fact in 1861, and since then the gyrus has gone by the name of Broca's convolution. The injury in right-handed people is found on the left hemisphere, and in left- handed people on the right hemisphere. Most people, in fact, are left-brained, that is, all their delicate and specialized movements are handed over to the charge of the left hemisphere. The ordinary right-handedness for such movements is only a consequence of that fact, a consequence which shows outwardly on account of that extensive decussation of the fibres whereby most of those from the left hemisphere pass to the right half of the body only. But the left-brainedness might exist in equal measure and not show outwardly. This would happen wherever organs on both sides of the body could be governed by the left hemisphere; and just such a case seems offered by the vocal organs, in that highly delicate and special motor service which we call speech. Either hemisphere can innervate them bilaterally, just as either seems able to innervate bilaterally the muscles of the trunk, ribs, and diaphragm. Of the special movements of speech, however, it would appear (from the facts of aphasia) that the left hemisphere in most persons habitually takes exclusive charge. With that hemisphere thrown out of gear, speech is undone; even though the opposite hemisphere still be there for the performance of less specialized acts, such as the various movements required in eating. It will be noticed that Broca's region is homologous with the parts ascertained to produce movements of the lips, tongue, and larynx when excited by electric currents in apes (cf. Fig. 6). The evidence is therefore as complete as it well can be that the motor incitations to these organs leave the brain by the lower frontal region.

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

  A man's fame, good or bad, and his honor or dishonor, are names for one of his social selves. The particular social self of a man called his honor is usually the result of one of those splittings of which we have spoken. It is his image in the eyes of his own 'set,' which exalts or condemns him as he conforms or not to certain requirements that may not be made of one in another walk of life. Thus a layman may abandon a city infected with cholera; but a priest or a doctor would think such an act incompatible with his honor. A soldier's honor requires him to fight or to die under circumstances where another man can apologize or run away with no stain upon his social self. A judge, a statesman, are in like manner debarred by the honor of their cloth from entering into pecuniary relations perfectly honorable to persons in private life. Nothing is commoner than to hear people discriminate between their different selves of this sort: "As a man I pity you, but as an official I must show you no mercy; as a politician I regard him as an ally, but as a moralist I loathe him;" etc., etc. What may be called 'club-opinion' is one of the very strongest forces in life. [258] The thief must not steal from other thieves; the gambler must pay his gambling-debts, though he pay no other debts in the world. The code of honor of fashionable society has throughout history been full of permissions as well as of vetoes, the only reason for following either of which is that so we best serve one of our social selves. You must not lie in general, but you may lie as much as you please if asked about your relations with a lady; you must accept a challenge from an equal, but if challenged by an inferior you may laugh him to scorn: these are examples of what is meant. (c) By the Spiritual Self, so far as it belongs to the Empirical Me, I mean a man's inner or subjective being, his psychic faculties or dispositions, taken concretely; not the bare principle of personal Unity, or 'pure' Ego, which remains still to be discussed. These psychic dispositions are the most enduring and intimate part of the self, that which we most verily seem to be. We take a purer self-satisfaction when we think of our ability to argue and discriminate, of our moral sensibility and conscience, of our indomitable will, than when we survey any of our other possessions. Only when these are altered is a man said to be alienatus a se. Now this spiritual self may be considered in various ways. We may divide it into faculties, as just instanced, isolating them one from another, and identifying ourselves with either in turn.

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

  Such a principle cannot then be the principle of his bodily selfishness any more than it is the principle of any other tendency he may show. So much for the bodily self-love. But my social self-love, my interest in the images other men have framed of me, is also an interest in a set of objects external to my thought. These thoughts in other men's minds are out of my mind and 'ejective' to me. They come and go, and grow and dwindle, and I am puffed up with pride, or blush with shame, at the result, just as at my success or failure in the pursuit of a material thing. So that here again, just as in the former case, the pure principle seems out of the game as an object of regard, and present only as the general form or condition under which the regard and the thinking go on in me at all. But, it will immediately be objected, this is giving a mutilated account of the facts. Those images of me in the minds of other men are, it is true, things outside of me, whose changes I perceive just as I perceive any other outward change. But the pride and shame which I feel are not concerned merely with those changes. I feel as if something else had changed too, when I perceived my image in your mind to have changed for the worse, something in me to which that image belongs, and which a moment ago I felt inside of me, big and strong and lusty, but now weak, contracted, and collapsed. Is not this latter change the change I feel the shame about? Is not the condition of this thing inside of me the proper object of my egoistic concern, of my self-regard? And is it not, after all, my pure Ego, my bare numerical principle of distinction from other men, and no empirical part of me at all? No, it is no such pure principle, it is simply my total empirical selfhood again, my historic Me, a collection of objective facts, to which the depreciated image in your mind 'belongs.' In what capacity is it that I claim and demand a respectful greeting from you instead of this expression of disdain? It is not as being a bare I that I claim it; it is as being an I who has always been treated with respect, who belongs to a certain family and 'set,' who has certain powers, possessions, and public functions, sensibilities, duties, and purposes, and merits and deserts.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Around eight in the evening, the hall would house an accumulation of greatcoats and overshoes. In a committee room, next to the library, at a long baize-covered table (where those beautifully pointed pencils had been laid out), my father and his colleagues would gather to discuss some phase of their opposition to the Tsar. Above the hubbub of voices, a tall clock in a dark corner would break into Westminster chimes; and beyond the committee room were mysterious depths—storerooms, a winding staircase, a pantry of sorts—where my cousin Yuri and I used to pause with drawn pistols on our way to Texas and where one night the police placed a fat, blear-eyed spy who went laboriously down on his knees before our librarian, Lyudmila Borisovna Grinberg, when discovered. But how on earth could I discuss all this with schoolteachers? 5The reactionary press never ceased to attack my father’s party, and I had got quite used to the more or less vulgar cartoons which appeared from time to time—my father and Milyukov handing over Saint Russia on a plate to World Jewry and that sort of thing. But one day, in the winter of 1911 I believe, the most powerful of the Rightist newspapers employed a shady journalist to concoct a scurrilous piece containing insinuations that my father could not let pass. Since the well-known rascality of the actual author of the article made him “non-duelable” (neduelesposobnïy, as the Russian dueling code had it), my father called out the somewhat less disreputable editor of the paper in which the article had appeared. A Russian duel was a much more serious affair than the conventional Parisian variety. It took the editor several days to make up his mind whether or not to accept the challenge. On the last of these days, a Monday, I went, as usual, to school. In consequence of my not reading the newspapers, I was absolutely ignorant of the whole thing. Sometime during the day I became aware that a magazine opened at a certain page was passing from hand to hand and causing titters. A well-timed swoop put me in possession of what proved to be the latest copy of a cheap weekly containing a lurid account of my father’s challenge, with idiotic comments on the choice of weapons he had offered his foe. Sly digs were taken at his having reverted to a feudal custom that he had criticized in his own writings. There was also a good deal about the number of his servants and the number of his suits. I found out that he had chosen for second his brother-in-law, Admiral Kolomeytsev, a hero of the Japanese war. During the battle of Tsushima, this uncle of mine, then holding the rank of captain, had managed to bring his destroyer alongside the burning flagship and save the naval commander-in-chief.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Then stealing up into the alcove where the princess was fast asleep, he got into bed to her without ceremony, re- gardless of her high birth and the obligations he was under to her, and without having in the first instance ob- tained her consent. The first intimation she had of his arrival was to find herself in his arms ; but being- astrons: woman she broke loose from his grasp, and, demanding who he was, made such good use of her hands and nails that he tried to stuff the quilt into her mouth for fear she should cry out. But he never could accomplish his purpose, for as she found that he was doing his best to dishonour her, she did her best to defend herself, and called out to her lady of honour, an aged and very pru- dent woman, who slept in the same room, and she has- tened in her shift to her mistress's aid. The gentleman, finding he was discovered, was so much afraid of being recognized that he hurried away through his trap-door as fast as he could, no less over- come at the plight in which he returned from his enter- prise than he had been keen-set and confident when he entered upon it. The candle was still burning on the table before his mirror, which showed his face all scratched and bitten, and the blood streaming from it over his fine shirt. " Thou art rightly served, per- nicious beauty ! " he said, apostrophising his own lacer- ated visage. " Thy vain promises set upon an impossi- ble enterprise, and one which, far from increasing my good fortune, will, perhaps, bring upon me a world of trouble. What will become of me if she knows that I have committed this folly in violation of my promise .'' The least that can happen to me will be to be banished from her presence. Why did I employ fraud to steal what my birth and my good looks might have obtained for me by lawful ways } Could I expect to make myself 38 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE INnel 4 master of her heart by violence ? Ought I not have waited till love put me in possession of it in recompense for my patience and my long service ? For without love all the merits and power of man are nothing."

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

  A. The first way of eating the Body of our Lord is the sacramental way only. Bad Christians eat in this way. Being in mortal sin, and thus receiving with polluted lips the adorable Body of Jesus, they shut up their souls by their uncleanness and their hardness, as if with mud and stone, against the inflowing of the virtue of His goodness. These eat and do not eat. They eat, indeed, because they receive the Lord’s Body sacramentally; and yet they do not eat, because they do not receive the spiritual virtue of the Sacrament, that is, salvation of soul. St. Gregory says, ‘In sinners and unworthy receivers there are indeed the true Flesh and the true Blood of Christ, that is, by presence and essence, but not with life-giving power.’ St. Augustin says, ‘He who is without Christ eats not His Flesh nor drinks His Blood; and if he daily receive the Sacrament of so great a thing, he receives it to judgment. He is without Christ who turns his heart away from Him and gives it up to sin. Such a one may be called wretched indeed, because so great a good as this comes to him often, and he neither receives nor perceives any spiritual gain.’ R. There are three kinds of persons among those who receive sacramentally only: (1) the malicious; (2) the deceitful; (3) the presumptuous. The first receive the Lord’s Body with a will to go on in sin. The second are hypocrites, who, seeming outwardly good and being inwardly bad, yet come to the Altar as if they were in a state of grace. The third are those who are bad in the highest degree, and yet dare presumptuously to go to Communion. We will consider the first two kinds in this Meditation, and the presumptuous in the next. (1) The first kind of bad communicants is the malicious. These draw near to God with their lips by receiving the Holy Sacrament, but their hearts are far from Him by their will to sin. Three great evils follow them: a, deepening of their sin; b, further separation from the grace of Christ; c, condemnation to unending punishment. a. St. Augustin says, ‘Because they have a will to go on sinning, I assert that they are darkened and not purified by receiving the Holy Eucharist.’ b. The longer they cherish their bad thoughts the worse they grow, and the more they are separated by them from God. c. St. Ambrose says in terrible words, ‘He is unworthy who comes to the Holy Eucharist with an indevout mind. He who abides in a will to sin is guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord; that is, he shall be punished as if he had slain Christ.’

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

  These two opposite classes of affection seem to be direct and elementary endowments of our nature. Associationists would have it that they are, on the other hand, secondary phenomena arising from a rapid computation of the sensible pleasures or pains to which our prosperous or debased personal predicament is likely to lead, the sum of the represented pleasures forming the self-satisfaction, and the sum of the represented pains forming the opposite feeling of shame. No doubt, when we are self-satisfied, we do fondly rehearse all possible rewards for our desert, and when in a fit of self-despair we forebode evil. But the mere expectation of reward is not the self-satisfaction, and the mere apprehension of the evil is not the self-despair, for there is a certain average tone of self-feeling which each one of us carries about with him, and which is independent of the objective reasons we may have for satisfaction or discontent. That is, a very meanly-conditioned man may abound in unfaltering conceit, and one whose success in life is secure and who is esteemed by all may remain diffident of his powers to the end. One may say, however, that the normal provocative of self-feeling is one's actual success or failure, and the good or bad actual position one holds in the world. "He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum, and said what a good boy am I." A man with a broadly extended empirical Ego, with powers that have uniformly brought him success, with place and wealth and friends and fame, is not likely to be visited by the morbid diffidences and doubts about himself which he had when he was a boy. "Is not this great Babylon, which I have planted?" [262] Whereas he who has made one blunder after another, and still lies in middle life among the failures at the foot of the hill, is liable to grow all sicklied o'er with self-distrust, and to shrink from trials with which his powers can really cope. The emotions themselves of self-satisfaction and abasement are of a unique sort, each as worthy to be classed as a primitive emotional species as are, for example, rage or pain. Each has its own peculiar physiognomical expression. In self-satisfaction the extensor muscles are innervated, the eye is strong and glorious, the gait rolling and elastic, the nostril dilated, and a peculiar smile plays upon the lips.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  One day my father sent for me and I went with a petty officer to his vessel in the harbor: my right ear had bled on to my collar. As soon as my father noticed it and saw the older scars, he got angry and took me back to the school and told Mrs. Frost what he thought of her, and her punishments. Immediately afterwards, it seems to me I was sent to live with my eldest brother Vernon, ten years older than myself, who was in lodgings with friends in Galway while going to the College. There I spent the next five years, which passed leaving a blank. I learned nothing in those years except how to play “tig”, “hide and seek”, “footer” and ball. I was merely a healthy, strong, little animal without an ache or pain or trace of thought. Then I remember an interlude at Belfast where Vernon and I lodged with an old Methodist who used to force me to go to church with him and drew on a little black skullcap during the Service, which filled me with shame and made me hate him. There is a period in life when every thing peculiar or individual, excites dislike and is in itself an offense. I learned here to “mitch” and lie simply to avoid school and to play, till my brother found I was coughing and having sent for a doctor, was informed that I had congestion of the lungs; the truth being that I played all day and never came home for dinner, seldom indeed before seven o’clock, when I knew Vernon would be back. I mention this incident because, while confined to the house, I discovered under the old Methodist’s bed, a set of doctor’s books with colored plates of the insides and the pudenda of men and women. I devoured all the volumes and bits of knowledge from them stuck to me for many a year. But curiously enough the main sex fact was not revealed to me then; but in talks a little later with boys of my own age. I learned nothing in Belfast but rules of games and athletics. My brother Vernon used to go to a gymnasium every evening and exercise and box. To my astonishment he was not among the best; so while he was boxing I began practicing this and that, drawing myself up till my chin was above the bar, and repeating this till one evening Vernon found I could do it thirty times running: his praise made me proud.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  21 Jackson and his supporters worked on a different image. During three successive presidential campaigns (1824, 1828, 1832), General Jackson was celebrated as “Old Hickory,” in sharp contrast to Crèvecoeur’s tame analogy of Americans as carefully cultivated plants. Rising up in the harsh hinterland of what was once the western extension of North Carolina, the Tennessean with the unbending will and rigid style of command was a perfect match for the tough, dense wood of Indian bows and hickory switches from which he acquired his nickname. 22 Jackson’s personality was a crucial part of his democratic appeal as well as the animosity he provoked. He was the first presidential candidate to be bolstered by a campaign biography. He was not admired for statesmanlike qualities, which he lacked in abundance in comparison to his highly educated rivals John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay. His supporters adored his rough edges, his land hunger, and his close identification with the Tennessee wilderness. As a representative of America’s cracker country, Jackson unquestionably added a new class dimension to the meaning of democracy. But the message of Jackson’s presidency was not about equality so much as a new style of aggressive expansion. In 1818, General Andrew Jackson invaded Florida without presidential approval; as president, he supported the forced removal of the Cherokees from the southeastern states and willfully ignored the opinion of the Supreme Court. Taking and clearing the land, using violent means if necessary, and acting without legal authority, Jackson was arguably the political heir of the cracker and squatter. • • • Over the two decades leading up to Andrew Jackson’s election as president, the squatter and cracker gradually became America’s dominant poor backcountry breed. Not surprisingly, it was their physical environment that most set them apart. In 1810, the ornithologist and poet Alexander Wilson traveled along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, cataloguing not only the sky-bound birds but also the earth-hugging squatters, whom he found to be an equally curious species. Writing for a Philadelphia magazine, Wilson identified their “grotesque log cabins” that scarred the otherwise picturesque wilderness. Weeds surrounded the cabins and huts that the naturalists happened upon. The land showed no sign of toil. Wilson described these questionable homes in mocking poetry as a “cavern’d ruin,” which “frown’d a fouler cave within.” The entire family slept on a single bed, or as Wilson put it, “where nightly kennel’d all.” Kittens crawled into a broken chest, a pig took shelter in a pot, and a leaky roof let in the rain. The squatter patriarch stared from beneath his tattered hat, wearing a shirt “defiled and torn,” his “face inlaid with dirt and soot.”

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

  When King Sennacherib … slew many of the children of Israel, Tobias buried their bodies. But when it was told the king he commanded him to be slain, and took away all his substance. But Tobias, fleeing naked away with his son and with his wife, lay hid, for many loved him. Tob. 1:21–23. c. For the crown; Behold David is hid in the hill of Hachila. 1 Kings 26:1. 2. Bodily beauty; a. By poorness of dress; I have sewn sackcloth upon my skin, and have covered my flesh with ashes. Job 16:16. He said to her, That man is my master: but she quickly took her cloak and covered herself. Gen. 24:65. If a woman be not covered, let her be shorn. But if it be a shame to a woman to be shorn or made bald, let her cover her head.… Therefore ought the woman to have a power over her head because of the Angels. 1 Cor. 11:6, 10. b. By austerities; God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world. Gal. 6:14. c. By perseverance in good; Thou hast made his soul to waste away like a spider. Ps. 38:12. The yoke and the thong bend a stiff neck, and continual labours bow a slave. Ecclus. 33:27. Do not consider me that I am brown, because the sun hath altered my colour. Cantic. 1:5. There is no beauty in him nor comeliness; and we have seen him, and there was no sightliness that we should be desirous of him. Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity; and his look was, as it were, hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not. Is. 53:2, 3. 3. The intention of good works; The kingdom of Heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in a field: which a man having found hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field. St. Matt. 13:44. a. Alms-deeds; When thou dost an alms-deed sound not a trumpet before there, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets, that they may be honoured by men. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward. But when thou dost alms let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth; that the alms may be in secret; and thy Father who seeth in secret will repay thee. St. Matt. 6:2–4.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  There could be no such thing as objective journalism. Agee opened the book by wondering out loud how a Harvard-educated, middle-class man like himself could write about poor whites without turning them into objects of pity or disgust. He did not want to be a mere gawker. How could he “pry intimately into the lives of an undefended and appallingly damaged group of human beings, an ignorant and helpless rural family, for the purpose of parading the nakedness, disadvantage and humiliation of these lives before another group of human beings, in the name of science, of ‘honest journalism’”? Was it possible to convey the “cruel radiance of what is”? Probably not. 57 So Agee experimented with different strategies, offering detailed descriptions of material objects: shoes, overalls, the sparse arrangement of furnishings in the tenant's home. With a meticulous attention to detail, he tried in words to imitate the camera’s “ice-cold” vision. In another of his departures from conventional reporting, he interspersed what he imagined were the unspoken thoughts of the poor tenant with the uncensored insults he had heard from the landlord. Inside the mind of the tenant, he voiced disbelief: how did he get “trapped,” how did he become “beyond help, beyond hope”? He gave his subjects real feelings, descriptive laments. The landlord’s cruelty comes through his laughter over Agee’s enjoyment of the tenants’ “home cooking.” The landlord curses a poor cropper as a “dirty son-of-a-bitch” who had bragged that he hadn’t bought his family a bar of soap in five years. A woman in one of the tenant families was, in the landlord’s words, the “worst whore” in this part of this country—second only to her mother. The whole bunch were, to the owner, “the lowest trash you can find.” 58 There was a method to Agee’s madness. In this strangely introspective, deeply disturbing narrative, the author tries to force readers to look beyond conventional ways of seeing the poor. Instead of blaming them, he asks his audience to acknowledge their own complicity. The poor are not dull or slow- witted, he insists; they have merely internalized a kind of “anesthesia,” which numbs them against the “shame and insult of discomforts, insecurities, and inferiorities.” The southern middle class deserves the greater portion of shame, and especially those who excused their own callous indifference with the line, “They are ‘used’ to it.” 59 Despite its subsequent literary success, Agee’s unsettling text reached few readers in 1941. For its part, Odum’s work came under attack for speaking above (rather than to) the poor tenant farmer. One of Odum’s most outspoken critics was the Vanderbilt University English professor and poet Donald Davidson, who was also hostile to the TVA, which he saw as evidence of northern meddling. As one of the contributors to I’ll Take My Stand, Davidson defended the old agrarian ideal of the South.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  One day my father sent for me and I went with a petty officer to his vessel in the harbor: my right ear had bled on to my collar. As soon as my father noticed it and saw the older scars, he got angry and took me back to the school and told Mrs. Frost what he thought of her, and her punishments. Immediately afterwards, it seems to me I was sent to live with my eldest brother Vernon, ten years older than myself, who was in lodgings with friends in Galway while going to the College. There I spent the next five years, which passed leaving a blank. I learned nothing in those years except how to play “tig”, “hide and seek”, “footer” and ball. I was merely a healthy, strong, little animal without an ache or pain or trace of thought. Then I remember an interlude at Belfast where Vernon and I lodged with an old Methodist who used to force me to go to church with him and drew on a little black skullcap during the Service, which filled me with shame and made me hate him. There is a period in life when every thing peculiar or individual, excites dislike and is in itself an offense. I learned here to “mitch” and lie simply to avoid school and to play, till my brother found I was coughing and having sent for a doctor, was informed that I had congestion of the lungs; the truth being that I played all day and never came home for dinner, seldom indeed before seven o’clock, when I knew Vernon would be back. I mention this incident because, while confined to the house, I discovered under the old Methodist’s bed, a set of doctor’s books with colored plates of the insides and the pudenda of men and women. I devoured all the volumes and bits of knowledge from them stuck to me for many a year. But curiously enough the main sex fact was not revealed to me then; but in talks a little later with boys of my own age. I learned nothing in Belfast but rules of games and athletics. My brother Vernon used to go to a gymnasium every evening and exercise and box. To my astonishment he was not among the best; so while he was boxing I began practicing this and that, drawing myself up till my chin was above the bar, and repeating this till one evening Vernon found I could do it thirty times running: his praise made me proud.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " Pour cetts fois, la Reine de Navarre D'un c'etoit moi naif autant que rare, Entretiendra dans ces vers le lectear.'' Fifth day.] QUEEN- OF NA VARRE. 397 there is no greater pain than to love and not to be loved." '• In order to be loved," said Parlamente, " one should turn to those who love ; but very often those women who will not love are the most loved, and those men love most who are the least loved." " That reminds me," said Oisille, " of a tale which I had not intended to introduce among good ones." " Pray tell it us," said Simontault. " I will do so with pleasure," replied Oisille. NOVEL XLVI. A sanctimonious Cordelier attempts to debauch the wife of a judge, and actually ravishes ayoung lady, whose mother had foolishly authorized him to chastise her for 1} ing too late in bed. In Angouleme, where Count Charles, father of King Francis, often resided, there was a Cordelier named De Vale, who was esteemed a learned man and a great preacher. One Advent he preached in the town before the count, and was so admired that those who knew him eagerly invited him to dinner. Among these was the Judge of Exempts of the county, who had married a handsome and virtuous wife, of whom the Cordelier was dying for love, though he had not the boldness to tell her so ; she, however, perceived it, and held him and his passion in disdain. One day he observed her going up to the garret all alone, and thinking to surprise her, he went up after her : but on hearing his steps she turned round, and asked him whither he was going. " I am 398 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE [JVozW 46^ coming after you," he replied. " I have a secret to tell vou." " Don't come after me, good father," said the judge's wife, " for I do not choose to talk with such as you in secret, and if you come another step higher you shall repent of it." The friar, seeing her alone, took no heed of her words, and ran up ; but she, being a woman of spirit, as soon as he was at the top gave him a kick in the belly, saying, " Down, down, sir," and sent him rolling from the top to the bottom. The poor friar was so much ashamed of his discomfiture that he forgot his hurt, and ran out of the town as fast as he could, for he was sure she would not conceal the matter from her husband. No more she did, nor from the count and countess, so that the Cordelier durst not appear again in their presence.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  He was very quick and throwing his head aside, escaped the full force of the blow; still the seam of the new ball grazed his cheek-bone and broke the skin: everyone stood amazed: only people who know the strength of English conventions can realise the sensation. Jones himself did not know what to do but took out his handkerchief to mop the blood, the skin being just broken. As for me, I walked away by myself. I had broken the supreme law of our schoolboy honor: never to give away our dissensions to a master, still less to boys and masters from another school; I had sinned in public, too, and before everyone; I’d be universally condemned. The truth is, I was desperate, dreadfully unhappy, for since the breakdown of the fags’ revolt the lower boys had drawn away from me and the older boys never spoke to me if they could help it and then it was always as “Pat.” I felt myself an outcast and was utterly lonely and miserable as only despised outcasts can be. I was sure, too, I should be expelled and knew my father would judge me harshly; he was always on the side of the authorities and masters. However, the future was not to be as gloomy as my imagination pictured it. The Mathematical Master was a young Cambridge man of perhaps six and twenty, Stackpole by name: I had asked him one day about a problem in algebra and he had been kind to me. On returning to the school this fatal afternoon about six, I happened to meet him on the edge of the playing field and by a little sympathy he soon drew out my whole story. “I want to be expelled. I hate the beastly school”, was my cry. All the charm of the Irish schools was fermenting in me: I missed the kindliness of boy to boy and of the masters to the boys; above all the imaginative fancies of fairies and “the little people” which had been taught us by our nurses and though only half believed in; yet enriched and glorified life,—all this was lost to me. My head in especial, was full of stories of Banshees and fairy queens and heroes, half due to memory, half to my own shaping, which made me a desirable companion to Irish boys and only got me derision from the English. “I wish I had known that you were being fagged”, Stackpole said when he had heard all, “I can easily remedy that”, and he went with me to the schoolroom and then and there erased my name from the fags’ list and wrote in my name in the First Mathematical Division. “There”, he said with a smile, “you are now in the Upper School where you belong. I think”, he added, “I had better go and tell the Doctor what I’ve done. Don’t be down-hearted, Harris”, he added, “it’ll all come right.”

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  O, I was awesome to behold! Myself a leopard, wild and bold. His flaming rage, his yells were mine —a subdued caterwauling sounded behind me; it might have come from young Rzhevuski, with whom I used to attend dancing classes, or Alec Nitte who was to win some renown a year or two later for poltergeist phenomena, or one of my cousins. Gradually, as Lenski’s reedy voice went on and on, I became aware that, with a few exceptions—such as, perhaps, Samuel Rosoff, a sensitive schoolmate of mine—the audience was secretly scoffing at the performance, and that afterward I would have to cope with various insulting remarks. I felt a quiver of acute pity for Lenski—for the meek folds at the back of his shaven head, for his pluck, for the nervous movements of his pointer, over which, in cold, kittenish paw-play, the colors would sometimes slip, when he brought it too close to the screen. Toward the end, the monotony of the proceedings became quite unbearable; the flustered operator could not find the fourth slide, having got it mixed up with the used ones, and while Lenski patiently waited in the dark, some of the spectators started to project the black shadows of their raised hands upon the frightened white screen, and presently, one ribald and agile boy (could it be I after all—the Hyde of my Jekyll?) managed to silhouette his foot, which, of course, started some boisterous competition. When at last the slide was found and flashed onto the screen, I was reminded of a journey, in my early childhood, through the long, dark St. Gothard Tunnel, which our train entered during a thunderstorm, but it was all over when we emerged, and then Blue, green and orange, wonderstruck With its own loveliness and luck, Across a crag a rainbow fell And captured there a poised gazelle.

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

  Reply to Objection 3: The manifestation of his sins to the confusion of the sinner is a result of his neglect in omitting to confess them. But that the sins of the saints be revealed cannot be to their confusion or shame, as neither does it bring confusion to Mary Magdalen that her sins are publicly recalled in the Church, because shame is “fear of disgrace,” as Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii), and this will be impossible in the blessed. But this manifestation will bring them great glory on account of the penance they did, even as the confessor hails a man who courageously confesses great crimes. Sins are said to be blotted out because God sees them not for the purpose of punishing them. Reply to Objection 4: The sinner’s confusion will not be diminished, but on the contrary increased, through his seeing the sins of others, for in seeing that others are blameworthy he will all the more acknowledge himself to be blamed. For that confusion be diminished by a cause of this kind is owing to the fact that shame regards the esteem of men, who esteem more lightly that which is customary. But then confusion will regard the esteem of God, which weighs every sin according to the truth, whether it be the sin of one man or of many. Whether all merits and demerits, one’s own as well as those of others, will be seen by anyone at a single glance?Objection 1: It would seem that not all merits and demerits, one’s own as well as those of others, will be seen by anyone at a single glance. For things considered singly are not seen at one glance. Now the damned will consider their sins singly and will bewail them, wherefore they say (Wis. 5:8): “What hath pride profited us?” Therefore they will not see them all at a glance. Objection 2: Further, the Philosopher says (Topic. ii) that “we do not arrive at understanding several things at the same time.” Now merits and demerits, both our own and those of others, will not be visible save to the intellect. Therefore it will be impossible for them all to be seen at the same time. Objection 3: Further, the intellect of the damned after the resurrection will not be clearer than the intellect of the blessed and of the angels is now, as to the natural knowledge whereby they know things by innate species. Now by such knowledge the angels do not see several things at the same time. Therefore neither will the damned be able then to see all their deeds at the same time.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  there was no one, great or small, but was bent on taking part in this hunt. The poor friars, seeing such a multi- tude coming after them, hid themselves each on his island, as Adam did from the sight of God when he had eaten the apple. Half dead with shame and the fear of punishment, they were caught and led away prisoners, amid the jeers and hootings of men and women. " These good fathers," said one, " preach chastity to us and want to foul our wives." " They dare not touch money," said the husband, "but they are ready enough to handle women's thighs, which are far more dangerous." " They are sepulchres," said others, " whitened without, but full of rottenness within." " By their fruits you shall know the nature of these trees." In short, all the passages of Scripture against hypocrites were cast in the teeth of the poor prisoners. At, last the warden came to the rescue. They were given up to him at his request, upon his assuring the magistrate that he would punish them more severely than secular justice itself could do, and that, by way of reparation to the offended parties, they should say as many masses and prayers as might be de- sired. As he was a worthy man, they were chaptered in such a manner that they never afterwards passed over the river without crossing themselves, and beseeching God to keep them out of all temptation. If this boatwoman had the wit to trick two such bad men, what should they do who have seen and read of so many fine examples } If women who know nothing, who scarcely hear two good sermons in a year, and have no time to think of anything but earning their bread, do yet carefully guard their chastity, what ought not others of their sex to do who, having their livelihood secured, have nothing to do but to read the Holy Scrip- tures, hear sermons, and exercise themselves in all sorts 46 THE HEPTAMERON OP THE [Hove/ s of virtues ? This is the test by which it is known that the heart is truly virtuous, for the more simple and un- enlightened the individual, the greater are the works of God's spirit. Unhappy the lady who does not carefully preserve the treasure which does her so much honour when well kept, and so much dishonour when she keeps it ill ! " It strikes me, Geburon," said Longarine, " that it does not need much virtue to refuse a Cordelier. On the contrary, I should rather think it impossible to love such people." " Those who are not accustomed to have such lovers as you have," replied Geburon, " do not think so con- temptuously of Cordeliers. They are well-made, strap- ping fellows, can talk like angels, and are for the most part importunate as devils. Accordingly, the grisettes who escape out of their hands may fairly be called virtuous."