ellauri095.html on line 135: A short fellow of 5’2 or 3”, he was enthusiastic, had a high-pitched voice, loved to sketch and write poems, was close to his family, and had warm, lifelong friends from Oxford, fellow Jesuits, and Irish families. For recreation he visited art exhibitions and old churches, and enjoyed holidays with his family, friends, and fellow Jesuits in Switzerland, Holland, the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Man, Whitby on the North Sea, Wales, Scotland, and the West of Ireland. During these holidays, he loved to hike and swim. His passions were nature (especially trees), ecology, beauty, poetry, art, his family and friends, his country, his religion, and his God. His curse was a lifelong “melancholy” (his word) which in 1885 in Dublin became deep depression and a sense of lost contact with God.
ellauri095.html on line 238: The decision to convert estranged Hopkins from his family and from a number of acquaintances. After graduating in 1867, he was provided by Newman with a teaching post at the Oratory in Birmingham. While there he began to study the violin. On 5 May 1868 Hopkins firmly "resolved to be a religious." Less than a week later, he made a bonfire of his poetry and gave it up almost entirely for seven years. Fortunately he did not burn his Bridges like Savonarola. He also felt a call to enter the ministry and decided to become a Jesuit. He paused first to visit Switzerland, which officially forbade Jesuits to enter.
ellauri095.html on line 499: Hopkins had been attracted to asceticism since childhood. At Highgate, for instance, he argued that nearly everyone consumed more liquids than the body needed, and, to prove it, he wagered that he could go without liquids for at least a week. He persisted until his tongue was black and he collapsed at drill. He won not only his wager but also the undying enmity of the headmaster Dr. John Bradley Dyne. On another occasion, he abstained from salt for a week. His continuing insistence on extremes of self-denial later in life struck some of his fellow Jesuits as more appropriate to a Victorian Puritan than to a Catholic.
ellauri184.html on line 781: The characters in the book are fascinating; my Jesuits friends and I laughed and enjoy this book. There were no doubts in our head by the end of the book. We did not feel like it shook our religion or affected the way we perceived God. This book was after all under fiction so everyone that is easily offended stay away from this book and stop complaining about blasphemy and crying around like little kids. Saramago is a Nobel price winner and foremost a grown man that is entitled to his own opinions. This one of his finest, if not the best, of his book in my opinion, a must read. Of course he is dead by now.
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