Numbers are like people; torture them enough and they'll tell you anything.

Commemoration of Mary Slessor, Missionary in West Africa, 1915 It is vain for bishops and pious bigwigs to discuss what dreadful things will happen if wild skepticism runs its course. It has run its course. It is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that will be revealed if once we see free thought begin. We have seen it end. It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself. You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves. You cannot fancy a more skeptical world than that in which men doubt whether there is a world. It might certainly have reached its bankruptcy more quickly and cleanly if it had not been feebly hampered by the application of indefensible laws of blasphemy or by the absurd pretense that modern England is Christian. But it would have reached the bankruptcy anyhow.

That which costs little is less valued.

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.

Sex is the question, no is the answer.

Continuing a short series on education: What are the gifts of biblical faith to the secular university? Education can receive from the Bible a faith concerning man far more realistic than the naive faith by which education has tried to live. Not man as "pure reason": his reason is not pure. Not man as incipient angel: he can turn any structure... to good or to demonic purpose. Not man with his steps on the highroad called evolution: he is relatively free and, therefore, can and does wreck any evolution unless some Grace constantly renews his onward journey. Not man who by his science is sure to fashion a "brave new world"; by science he can destroy the world. Not man as centrally and characteristically a reasonable creature who needs only that his mind shall be educated to build a reasonable world. Not man regarded in any naive faith, but man as potentially divine and potentially unworthy, who stands always in need of help from beyond the confines of the natural order. If education confronts this faith, education will know that the mind's adventure also, like all things human, stands in need of redemption; and it can then proceed with lowliness, and thus with the power and light which are the reward of the lowly.

it's better to find a whole worm in your apple than half a worm.

The mind is everything. What you think you become.

The church says that the Earth is flat, but I have seen the shadow on the moon and I have more faith in the shadow than in the church.

Poverty won't allow him to lift up his head; dignity won't allow him to bow it down.

The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn, to the sea, And Wickliff's dust shall spread abroad Wide as the waters be.

Attempt the end and never stand to doubt; Nothing's so hard, but search will find it out.

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought.

My vocation is more in composition really than anything else building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.

Revenge converts a little right into a great wrong.

By merit raised To that bad eminence.

He that hath a trade hath an estate; he that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honor.

Feast of Teresa of Avila, Mystic, Teacher, 1582 We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God; for, beholding His greatness, we realize our own littleness; His purity shows us our foulness; and by meditating upon His humility we find how very far we are from being humble.

At least when you are dead you will know what silence truly sounds like.

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds, if you cannot comprehend them.