if by whiskey...

 If when you say whiskey you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it. 

But. 

If when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

- from a 1952 speech by Noah “Soggy” Sweat, a Mississippi state representative, while the state legislature was considering easing prohibition

Exercise your power of concentration

“Let each hour of the day have its allowed duty, and cultivate that power of concentration which grows with its exercise, so that the attention neither flags nor wavers, but settles with bull-dog tenacity on the subject before you. Constant repetition makes a good habit fit easily in your mind, and by the end of the session you may have gained that most precious of all knowledge—the power of work.”
- Sir William Osler, Aequanimitas: With Other Addresses to Medical Students, Nurses and Practitioners of Medicine (chapter 18)

cited by Cal Newport

Godly friends are walking sermons

Godly friends are walking sermons.

- Richard Sibbes

Skepticism and the word of God

“Last eve I paused beside the blacksmith’s door,
And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime;
Then looking in, I saw upon the floor,
Old hammers, worn with beating years of time.

“‘How many anvils have you had,’ said I,
‘To wear and batter all these hammers so?’
‘Just one,’ said he, and then with twinkling eye,
‘The anvil wears the hammers out, you know.’

“And so, I thought, the Anvil of God’s Word
For ages skeptic blows have beat upon;
Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard,
The Anvil is unharmed, the hammers gone.”

—attributed to John Clifford

Only love can teach

'The chief impression that I internalized from his lectures arose from his offensive haughtiness. He treated his listeners like despicable peons. He convinced me of the principle that to throw out love is to despoil the business of teaching--only genuine love can really educate.'

- Adolf Schlatter (Werner Neuer, Adolf Schlatter: A Biography of Germany's Premier Biblical Theologian, p.44).

"Why Lies Digest Well"

As Flannery O’Connor once put it, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” But a falsehood, as Chesterton notes, is engineered precisely so that the listeners would in fact be able to stomach it.

- Doug Wilson, European Brain Snakes

Ruthless masters

Beyond question it is a happier thing to be the slave of a man than of a lust for [every lust] lays waste men's hearts with the most ruthless dominion.

- Augustine, City of God, Book 19, chap 15