Limitation is a good discipline because it discourages inappropriate generalization, which distracts attention from the profound, particular complexity that characterizes anything at all.

The Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?

Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, it is fact that requires explanation.

I had been reading about [John] Calvin for years and had been studying the English Renaissance for many more years, and it had never occurred to me to think of them together. I learned that Calvin was the most widely read writer in England in Shakespeare's lifetime. He was translated and published in many editions.

I don't know exactly what covetous is, but in my experience it is not so much desiring someone else's virtue or happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it.

I listen to Bach a great deal. In general I like to listen to hymns and liturgical music.

To recognize our bias toward error should teach us modesty and reflection, and to forgive it should help us avoid the inhumanity of thinking we ourselves are not as fallible as those who, in any instance, seem most at fault. Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again.