I still held fast to my determination to become a minister; it still seemed to me that that was my duty. I had pledged myself, in my prayers I had given my word to God. How could I therefore break my vow?
There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.
A review was published in Nature, very scathing, essentially calling me incompetent, though they didn't use that word. I am putting a reply on my Web site in a few days, where I go through their arguments, paragraph by paragraph.
Whatever life may really be, it is to us an abstraction: for the word is a generalised term to signify that which is common to all animals and plants, and which is not directly operative in the inorganic world.
If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives, and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description.
So no one should rely on television either for their knowledge of music or for news. There's just more going on. It's an adjunct to the written word, which I think is still the most important thing.
Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
I've grown so much since 1996. I think that was the turning point of when I started to go to church every Sunday and not just because you're supposed to. But because you enjoy going and listening to the Word and being excited about it.
The crime of book purging is that it involves a rejection of the word. For the word is never absolute truth, but only man's frail and human effort to approach the truth. To reject the word is to reject the human search.
