As the wife of a state Supreme Court justice in Arkansas put it, "My husband has been a Methodist all his life, but if it comes to choosing between being a Methodist and an American, he'll be an American every time." But this was not the issue, quite. In this case the choice was between being a good Methodist and a good American, and being a tribal religionist. But the theological problem of churches without discipline comes into stark outline in the quotation. Inadequately trained for membership, admitted without preparatory training, without the proper instruments of voluntary discipline, many members have never had the discontinuity between life in Christ and life in the world brought home to them. Here the ordinary members are less at fault than the leadership of the churches, who -- though sworn to uphold the form of sound words and doctrine -- neglect catechetical instruction and concentrate solely on the acquisition of more new members at any price.

We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology however frank and open our behaviour we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbors through Him.

There is no arguing with him, for if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.

A Locanian having plucked all the feathers off from a nightingale and seeing what a little body it had, "surely," quoth he, "thou art all voice and nothing else."

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

E'en in mid-harvest, while the jocund swain Pluck'd from the brittle stalk the golden grain, Oft have I seen the war of winds contend, And prone on earth th' infuriate storm descend, Waste far and wide, and by the roots uptorn, The heavy harvest sweep through ether borne, As light straw and rapid stubble fly In dark'ning whirlwinds round the wintry sky.

Got no check books, got no banks. Still I'd like to express my thanks - I got the sun in the mornin' and the moon at night.

To be in love is merely to be in a perpetual state of anesthesia--to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

The worst is not So long as we can say 'This is the worst.'

In the end, everything is a gag.

The postman always rings twice.

You can fool some of the people some of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.

The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city ... Gas-filled, noisy and hazardous, our streets have become the most inhumane landscape in the world.

There is at bottom only one genuinely scientific treatment for all diseases, and that is to stimulate the phagocytes.

Now blooms the lily by the bank, The primrose down the brae; The hawthorn's budding in the glen, The milkwhite is the slae.

Noting is more difficult than competing with a myth.