"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.

"Drawe me to mercie"

Have mercie, Lord have mercie:  for I know | How much I nede thy mercie in this case. | The horror of my gilt doth dayly growe, | And growing weares my feble hope of grace. | I fele and suffer in my thralled breast | Secret remorse and gnawing of my heart. | I fele my sinne, my sinne that hath opprest | My soule with sorrow and surmounting smart. | Drawe me to mercie:  for so oft as I | Presume to mercy to direct my sight, | My Chaos and my heape of sinne doth lie, | Between me and thy mercies shining light. | What ever way I gaze about for grace, | My filth and fault are ever in my face.

     Anne Vaughan Locke, from A meditation of a penitent sinner, vvriten in maner of a paraphrase vpon the 51. Psalme of Dauid, in Sermons of John Calvin, vpon the songe that Ezechias made after he had been sicke (1560), as quoted by David Marno, in Death be not proud:  the art of holy attention (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 2016), 118.

Drop the book without scruple

"When contemplation makes us drop the book from our hands, there is nothing more for us to do than to let it fall without worry."

"Quand le recueillement nous fait tomber le livre des mains, il n’y a qu’à le laisser tomber sans scrupule."

     François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon, Maxims of the saints 20.True, trans. Chad Helms, Classics of Western spirituality (New York:  Paulist Press, 2006), 262.  I was put onto this by Dictionnaire de spiritualité, sv Lectio divina et lecture spirituelle III (col. 502), by André Boland.  French from the critical edition of 1911, ed. A. Chérel, p. 242, here.

"envy of Joyce"

"In a sense, I guess I did read my way into the Church. But I didn’t reason my way. I was drawn in large measure by envy of Joyce, who had been raised in a Catholic Church that had spiritual and imaginative power, and that went on haunting him after he had left. I couldn’t imagine writing an autobiographical novel to compare with Joyce’s Portrait, about a young woman who grew up singing 'On Eagle’s Wings.'"

     Julia Yost, as interviewed by Matthew Schmitz in "A conversation between two converts," First things, 12 November 2018, an excerpt from the book Mind, heart, and soul: intellectuals and the path to Rome, ed. Robert P. George and R. J. Snell (TAN Books, 2018).