"a one-horse town on the way to Birmingham"

Former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan "came up with the following nugget during his speech at a college feast:  'We in Balliol should never take a narrow and provincial view of the universe.  We should imitate the genial tolerance of the sun which rises over Wadham and sets over Worcester'.  Ironic words, certainly.  But were they either spoken or heard ironically enough?  Kenny may be as surprised as Macmillan would have been to learn that for every person who imagines Oxford to be the centre of the world there are others who see it as a one-horse town on the way to Birmingham."

     Rupert Shortt, reviewing Anthony Kenny's Brief encounters:  notes from a philosopher's diary, in "Matter matters:  a prominent thinker recalls the great and the good," The times literary supplement no. 6031 (2 November 2018):  14 (14-15).

Yeah yeah yeah!

"The mid-century Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin was sometimes considered too arch for his own good.  My favourite anecdote about him comes from a lecture he once gave in New York.  'There are many languages in which a double negative can be used to mean a positive,' the visitor told his audience, 'but none in which a double positive can produce a negative.'  A well-timed heckle is usually attributed to Sidney Morgenbesser.  'Yeah, yeah.'"

     Rupert Shortt reviewing Anthony Kenny's Brief encounters:  notes from a philosopher's diary in "Matter matters:  a prominent thinker recalls the great and the good," The times literary supplement no. 6031 (2 November 2018):  14 (14-15).
     This is one of my favorite stories, too.  But of course the success of the heckle depends almost entirely upon tone.  Cf., for example, our modern (and very rapidly pronounced) "Yeah yeah yeah!"

Salvation from pusillanimity of spirit

"I waited for him that hath saved me from pusillanimity of spirit" (Douay-Rheims).
"expectabam eum, qui salvum me fecit a pusillanimitate spiritus" (Vulgata iuxta LXX).
"προσεδεχόμην τὸν σῴζοντά με ἀπὸ ὀλιγοψυχίας" (LXX).

     Ps 54:9.  The Hebrew (and Vulgata iuxta Hebraicum) is quite different.

"Each Christological or Trinitarian heresy contains the seeds of a Church-State relationship inimical to Christian thought and practice"

"Solovyov perceived an inner link between dogma and models of political and social order. For him, it was no surprise that the rash of Byzantine emperors who championed in turn Arian, Nestorian, Monophysite, Monothelite, and Iconoclast heresies, also raised themselves to quasi-divine status and considered the Church and matters of theology to be under their political jurisdiction. Each Christological or Trinitarian heresy contains the seeds of a Church-State relationship inimical to Christian thought and practice:

Heresy attacked the perfect unity of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ precisely in order to undermine the living bond between Church and State, and to confer upon the latter an absolute independence. Hence it is clear why the emperors of the Second Rome, intent on maintaining within Christendom the absolutism of the pagan Sate, were so partial to all the heresies, which were but manifold variations on a single theme."

     Andrew Kuiper, "Solovyov's Russia and the Catholic Church," Church life journal, 26 November 2018.  The quotation is said to come from p. 14 of Solovyov's Russia and the universal church.