No group of people has been more unjustly maligned in the twentieth century than the Puritans. As a result, we approach the Puritans with an enormous baggage of culturally ingrained prejudice.

A Christian philosophy of literature begins with the same agenda of issues that any philosophy of literature addresses. Its distinctive feature is that it relates these issues to the Christian faith.

In Puritan thinking, the Christian life was a heroic venture, requiring a full quota of energy.

The Puritans' sense of priorities in life was one of their greatest strengths. Putting God first and valuing everything else in relation to God was a recurrent Puritan theme.

William Perkins said, “The end of a man’s calling is not to gather riches for himself…but to serve God in the serving of man, and in the seeking the good of all men.

For the Puritans, the God-centered life meant making the quest for spiritual and moral holiness the great business of life.

Stressing the God-centered life can lead to an otherworldly withdrawal from everyday earthly life.

The secularization of Western culture was accompanied by the elevation of art to the position of a substitute religion to replace Christianity.

The goal of Bible translation is: be transparent to the original text - to see as clearly as possible what the biblical authors actually wrote.

When you think about Puritanism, you must begin by getting rid of the slang term 'Puritanism' as applied to Victorian religious hypocrisy. This does not apply to seventeenth-century Puritanism.

Literature incarnates its meanings as concretely as possible. The knowledge that literature gives of a subject is the kind of knowledge that is obtained by (vicariously) living through an experience.

We can all have plenty of lives, but there are limits. You never can tell what they are.

Keegan had never realized how absolute silence could be in the minutes before dawn. Maybe because the expectation of battle filled the air, not even birds sang.

When I was young, I thought confidence could be earned w/ perfection. Now I know that you don't earn it; you claim it.

Most people I know live their lives moving in a constant forward direction, the whole time looking backward.

When a fully qualified Mahayana disciple relies completely upon a fully qualified Mahayana Spiritual Guide the attainment of enlightenment is easy.

Every musician wants to do something which will hold up for a long time, and I guess we did it with 'Stairway to Heaven.'

Hope, and hopelessness, persist despite the facts.

Being still at least once a day will enhance your life.

For a moment the two of them looked at each other, wordless, as if they were asleep and their dreams had converged on common ground, a place where sound was alien.

Even if you know a character really well, there's no formula for what jokes will work and what won't.