of jackets that had their sleeves threaded onto two poles cut from an ash tree

I was born a Saxon, but raised by Danes, my daughter had married a Norseman, my dearest friend was Irish, my woman was a Saxon, the mother of my children had been Danish, my gods were pagan, and my...

"It is hard to force obedience," he said, "without encouraging resentment."

A bastard son must fight his own way in the world. Osferth knew that.

But Ubba? Only the gods tell him what to do, and you should beware of men who take their orders from the gods.

Instinct is everything.

My chalice intoxicates me.

How wearisome to let one's existence become something absolutely dependent on someone else's feelings; to have no option but to feel, to love a little too, whether or not it is reciprocated.

Our soul and the sky and the earth are enough for us. Wanting more is to lose this and to be unhappy.

However, when you're about to write something, knowing beforehand that it's sure to be imperfect, a failure, that is the most spiritually tormenting and humiliating of feelings. I not only feel that...

To live is to not think.

It was a skill useful to lawyers, and no man in all English history was more the lawyer than Coke. He personified a profession considered both so influential and so dubious that in 1372 the House of...

The believer who doesn't live in the confidence of God's sovereignty will lack God's peace and be left to the chaos of a troubled heart. But our confident trust in the Lord will allow us to thank Him...

The real Holy Spirit is not an electrifying current of ecstatic energy, a mind-numbing babbler of irrational speech, or a cosmic genie who indiscriminately grants self-centered wishes for health and...

God help us! We have turned the holy fire of God into a circus sideshow - and naive Christians are buying this without realizing that such shenanigans are actually blasphemous.21

As Philip Jenkins explains, "At its worst, the gospel of prosperity permits corrupt clergy to get away with virtually anything. Not only can they coerce the faithful to pay their obligations through a...

A true leader not only demands submission; he is an example of submission by submitting to the Lord and to those in authority over him. Everything

Christ is the focus of the entire Bible, and you need to study it to know what He is like. Too often we study the Bible for the sake of theological arguments or to answer questions. Those things are...

So my argument in this book is this: we should not be more loyal to an idea, a doctrine, or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people. If the teachings of the church are harming the...

Sometimes help comes from unexpected places.

Reading was like visiting distant friends.

After 1688 the state began to rely more on talent and less on political appointees, and developed a powerful infrastructure to run the country.

Shakespeare's lines are a nursery of titles for other, better writers: Pale Fire, Exit Ghost, Infinite Jest, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Sound and the Fury, Unnatural Acts, The Quick...

I'm just going to try to save the woman I love, and that's as good as the world to me.

Tommy had been dealing with more than a few adjustments since he'd come west from his hometown of Incontinence, Indiana - not the least of which had been finding a girlfriend, who, while smart, sexy,...

Indeed, it was an extremely skillful beta male who discovered fire, although, as expected, an alpha male almost immediately snatched it away from him {alphas failed in the discovery of fire, but since...

It turned out that the watchdogs could be trained, particularly if you only told them to do things they were going to do anyway. «Come, Alvin. Good boy. Now, poop. Excellent.»

Pursuit of material gain is ultimately empty when measured against eternity;

"You whoreson scalawag!" said I. "You flesh-turd dropped stinking from the poxy arsehole of a hare-lipped harlot!"

Blessed are the meek, for to them we shall say "Beautiful boys."