“He kissed her back for about a second and a half, and then jumped the same way he had once jumped when a waiter had dropped a hot bowl of French onion soup in his lap. ‘Whoa,’ he said. Whoa, whoa, whoa. ‘’Yikes,’ he added”
Ecochondriacs, p. 92
Turned Up to Eleven
“’Any news?’ he said querulously. It sounded like someone was messing with his tremolo knob”
Ecochondriacs, p. 90
The Kind of Man to be Ordained
“We may set him apart from other men with what solemn ceremonies we may please, but he will be just like other men still, unless the power of the work to which he looks forward has entered into him during his careful preparation and made him different”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 50
Nobody Came to Watch You Meander
“The preacher must know where he is going”
Olford, Anointed Expository Preaching, p. 259
Don’t Ever Try to Build on Lies
“Son, I don’t want you to ever apologize to somebody just because they say to. If you owe them one, don’t make them ask. You should be there ahead of them. And if you don’t owe them one, then your apology is not anything with them. It is trying to put things back together on the foundation of a lie. And lies always collapse under any weight you try to put on them”
Ecochondriacs, p. 87
They Don’t Even Know Most of the Words
“Cody suddenly realized that his internal moral monitor, his robust conscience, was going to wake up any minute and start swearing at him like a machinist mate on a tramp steamer. That would not be good. That would be unsettling. Evangelical consciences don’t usually cuss like that”
Ecochondriacs, p. 81
And a Wet Sponge Won’t
“Nothing but fire kindles fire”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 47
Innocence Bumps Its Head
“‘But . . . what about academic freedom? . . . what about my arguments? . . . what about the truth?’
‘What did you get your doctorate in? Idealism? On hobbits dancing in meadows?’”
Ecochondriacs, p. 80
The Desire is Not the Call
“There is far too little discrimination in the selection of men who are to preach, and many men find their way into the preacher’s office who discover only too late that it is not their place”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, pp. 45-46
Not to Mention the Second Battle of Ai
“Trevor had taken the line that the Hebrew midwives were onto a good thing in lying to Pharaoh, that Rahab had done right by sending the pursuers galloping off in exactly the wrong direction, and that David was not offending against charity by pretending to be insane, much to the exasperation of Achish”
Ecochondriacs, p. 73