“Now can we all agree that these crowds, as warmly affectionate toward John the Baptist as they might have been, and as doggedly committed to the honor of the rabbi Jesus as they were, were people who had not taken on board the full import of what the Scriptures had required of them? I mean, had you gone to one of their rallies, who knows what kind of flags might have been there? And did their presence in the mix in any way discredit what Jesus was up to? Not even a little bit.”

Mere Christendom, p. 53

“Character is hard. Character is built through difficulty. Character grows when you are out in the rain, picking up rocks. But personality grows, or thinks it does, when it is being flattered, stroked, cajoled, and otherwise lied to.”

Keep Your Kids, p. 50

“Character wants to deliver a product; personality wants to get a sale.”

Keep Your Kids, p. 49

“Everyone is growing up into something. No matter what the world says, our life is not static. You are either growing up into Christ, or you are growing up into Gollum—diseased, malicious, and bent. Those are the only options. You can’t just freeze the frame and say, ‘I want to stop right here and be sorry for myself forever.’”

Keep Your Kids, p. 49

“A number of you have been languishing out there for a while, listening to sermons from a man who, if he had been a character in The Pilgrim’s Progress, would have been the Rev. Rabbitheart.”

Mere Christendom, p. 49

“There I was, I will tell my great-grandchildren, sitting on a skittish horse, hands behind my back, rope around my neck, and a learned academic voice called out from the crowd, ‘Ya! What does someone like you know about Girard?’”

Mere Christendom, pp. 45-46

“Dad teaches his sons how to hit a ball and gathers his family around after dinner to read to them. Mom teaches her daughters how to make the family-favorite recipes. And yes, I know that the examples I just used are Platonic forms of gender stereotypes, and it would not be possible to tell you how sorry I am.”

Keep Your Kids, pp. 47-48