... take away your gown, and you dare not preach; take away your book, and you cannot preach; and take away your rich income, and you won't preach; while the only way to stop me is by cutting my tongue out. - Joseph Spoor 1813-69, Primitive Methodist preacher in North Yorkshire to an Anglican incumbent who objected to open air preaching in his parish.

'''those with bipolar disorder can exude personal magnetism during their manic episodes.- Peter Aldhous, Crossing the borderline: Fixing personality disorders, New Scientist,26 August 2011

As a typical adolescent, I was aware of two things about myself, though doubtless I could not have articulated them in these terms then. First, if there was a God, I was estranged from him. I tried to find him, but he seemed to be enveloped in a fog I could not penetrate. Secondly, I was defeated. I knew the kind of person I was, and also the kind of person I longed to be. Between the ideal and the reality there was a great gulf fixed. I had high ideals but a weak will. . . . [W]hat brought me to Christ was this sense of defeat and of estrangement, and the astonishing news that the historic Christ offered to meet the very needs of which I was conscious.- John Stott

In every rank, or great or small,
'Tis industry supports us all.- John Gay, Man, Cat, Dog, and Fly (l. 63)

At his most characteristic, medieval man was not a dreamer nor a wander. He was an organizer, a codifier, a builder of systems. He wanted ‘a place for everything and everything in the right place.’ Distinction, definition, tabulation were his delight. Though full of turbulent activities, he was equally full of the impulse to formalize them. War was (in intention) formalized by the art of heraldry and the rules of chivalry; sexual passion (in intention), by an elaborate code of love. Highly original and soaring philosophical speculation squeezes itself into a rigid dialectical pattern copied from Aristotle. Studies like Law and Moral Theology, which demand the ordering of every diverse particulars, especially flourish. - - - There was nothing which medieval people like better, or did better, than sorting out and tiding up. Of all modern inventions I suspect that they would most have admired the card index.- C S Lewis, Discard Image