“Today, after two thousand years, Christianity is the faith, at least nominally, of one-third of the earth’s population. . . . no other person in recorded history has influenced more people in as many conditions over so long a time as Jesus Christ. The shades and tones of his image seem to shift with the needs of men: the Jewish Messiah of the believing remnant, the Wisdom of the Greek apologist, the Cosmic King of the Imperial Church, the Heavenly Logos of the orthodox councils, the World Ruler of the papal courts, the monastic Model of apostolic poverty, the personal Savior of evangelical revivalists” (Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language (Rev. ed. by R.L. Hatchett), 517, 521).

“There’s something devastating about the simple, needle-sharp intelligence of a child.”
          — From the novel Cocktails with a Stranger

“History . . . is thought in action. The history of the future will be thought in action. We can fully share in the history of the past only be reading, or by hearing, about it” (Eric Partridge, English, 11).

“For mortals, nothing is worse than wandering (Odyssey 15.343)” (Silvia Montiglio in Wandering in Ancient Greek Culture, 1).

“Obviously, then, we must possess a store of words and we must understand those words; they are the tools of all our thinking” (Eric Partridge, English, 10).

“If a teacher cannot strike sparks from the anvil of young, impressionable, fresh and lively minds, then he should not be teaching. If he is so set upon his own ideas that he cannot, or will not, welcome the ideas of others, then he should not be teaching. If he cannot prepare for his pupils a plentiful supply of examples and exercises to supplement those example and exercises which the author of this or that Course has furnished, then he should not be teaching. As a teacher he would make an excellent undertaker. All those requisites which I have mentioned are well within the range of the averagely intelligent teacher” (Eric Partridge, English, 8).

“There are two things on which all interpretation of Scripture depends: the mode of ascertaining the proper meaning, and the mode of making known the meaning when it is ascertained.”
          — Saint Augustine, On Christian Teaching

“Given a sharp and eager mind, eloquence is picked up more readily by those who read and listen to the words of the eloquent than by those who follow the rules of eloquence.”
              — Saint Augustine, On Christian Teaching

“We learn wisdom primarily by dwelling in a community that worships the source of all wisdom and studies his Word and world” (Quentin Schultze, An Essential Guide to Public Speaking, 54).

“How primitive man comes upon a conception of God in a world where God does not exists is a conundrum to the mind of the evolutionary naturalist. . . . These religious conceptions demand an explanation, and Darwin pulls an answer out of a hat. He opts for psychological explanation, attempting to attribute man’s spiritual nature to another animal trait. According to Darwin, all notions about the cruder religions and the “more advanced” monotheistic religions (such as Christianity) come from “the same high mental faculties,” and God does not reveal Himself to man. Instead, the evolutionist must view man as alone in the universe, and therefore he will have to figure things out for himself. Darwin concludes that man is becoming more self-aware, more intelligent, more advanced, not because he submits to God’s revelation but because he is evolving into a higher creature. For Darwin, religion is just a phase as the human species evolves into a higher form” (Kevin Swanson, Apostate: The Men Who Destroyed the Christian West, 130-131).