One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye; it transcends speech; it is the bodily symbol of identity.

Children should be like waffles--you should be able to throw the first one away.

Commemoration of Ethelburga, Abbess of Barking, 675 Most Christians would agree with C. S. Lewis when he says [of the doctrine of the Final Judgment], "There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power". But we cannot do so, for two reasons: first, because it enjoys the full support of Christ's own teaching; and second, because it makes a good deal of sense. If the gospel is extended to us for our acceptance, it must be possible also to reject and refuse it. The alternative would be for God to compel an affirmative response. It would be nice to be able to say that all will be saved, but the question arises, Does everyone want to be saved? What would love for God be like if it were coerced? There is a hell because God respects our freedom and takes our decisions seriously -- more seriously, perhaps, than we would sometimes wish. God wants to see hell completely empty; but if it is not, He cannot be blamed. The door is locked only on the inside. It is not Christians but the unrepentant who "want" it [to be locked].

No good man ever became suddenly rich.

Man's extremity is God's opportunity.

To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit. General knowledge are those knowledge that idiots possess.

Commemoration of Petroc, Abbot of Padstow, 6th century Pentecost From his baptism until his return to Galilee, Jesus lived in the company of the disciples of the Baptist. It was there that he received the first public witness of his Messianic role and found his first followers. The gospel was to be rooted in John's teaching of asceticism and regeneration. But we see from the start that the gospel of Jesus was to be quite different. To the baptism of water would be added the baptism of the Spirit, and the new message was to be addressed to all. The widening of the circle of hearers and converts, which had preoccupied John, was to expand still further with the gospel of Jesus. Of the hundreds of thousands of Jews, the Essenes only regarded as saved a few thousand elect. Jesus was soon to offer the Covenant of God to all men.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.

When asked what wines he liked to drink he replied, "That which belongs to another." - Laertius Diogenes,

Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend.

A nation rushing hastily too and fro, busily employed in idleness.

Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.

What we need is hatred. From it our ideas are born.

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.

The fireflies o'er the meadow In pulses come and go.

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit Beneath my shady roof; there thou mayest rest And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe, And all the daughters of the year shall dance! Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

May every young scientist remember... and not fail to keep his eyes open for the possibility that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important discovery. -Patrick Blackett.

Nothing could have saved the infant Church from melting away into one of those vague and ineffective schools of philosophic ethics except the stern and strict rule that is laid down here [Rev. 2:15, 16] by St. John. An easy-going Christianity could never have survived; only the most convinced, resolute, almost bigoted adherence to the most uncompromising interepretation of its own principles could have given the Christians the courage and self-reliance that were needed. For them to hesitate or to doubt was to be lost.