The place and function of rhetoric in the public life of the Empire had changed

The place and function of rhetoric in the public life of the Empire had changed: between the reign of Augustus and the end of the second century, every city in the Greek east that still had any vestige of democracy shed it on coming under the umbrella of Rome

A. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (1991), 76

In Paris do they always have the true answer?

"Therefore you don't have a single answer to your questions?"
"Adso, if I did I would teach theology in Paris."
"In Paris do they always have the true answer?"
"Never," William said, "but they are very sure of their errors."

U.Eco, The Name of the Rose (1980), 306

Bad Table manners have broken up more marriages than infidelity

Breaking with convention, I watched Gigi last night. There were some fantastic lines (the script is here). Here my favourites:

Aunt Alicia: Bad Table manners have broken up more marriages than infidelity

Aunt Alicia: [Learning] English? I supose we must. they refuse to learn French

Gigi: She is common
Gaston: Common? How do  you mean common? "Ordinary" common or "coarse" common?
Gigi: Ordinary ... and coarse

Gaston: Uncle! I'll tell you Europe is breeding a generation of vandals and ingrates. Children are coming into the world with ice-covered souls and hatchets in their hands! And before they have finished, they'll smash everything beautiful and decent.
Honore Lachaille: Have a piece of cheese

They don't make them like they used to

Geraint automatically sympathised with anyone who was not shouting

Geraint automatically sympathised with anyone who was not shouting. He admired Basil's self-restraint. He loved the sheen on his waistcoat and the sparkle of his studs. There was a mystery in correct dress. There was a mystery in money. He was sick of homespun and home-made. He had secreted a glass of champagne behind the black lacquer puppet-boxes, and thought it was delicious and complex, cold bubbles bursting on his tongue, the mist on the glass, the transparent gold liquid. Some people had this every day. Some people did not sleep under a leaky roof in an old mansion with a cold wind blowing through it, for the sake of mounds of clay and visions of glazed vessels. Money was freedom. Money was aesthetic. Money was Arab stallions, not rough cobs. Money was not being shouted at. (Even though Humphry was shouting at Basil.) Money was freedom. Money was life. Something like that, Geraint thought.

A.S. Byatt, The Children's book (2010), 59

In the city that made suicide an art

In the city [Vienna] that made suicide an art, [Otto] Weininger's was a masterpiece, and it made a posthumous bestseller of his doctoral thesis, a bizarre tract entitled Sex and Character

A. Ross, The rest is noise (2008), 41

Nature is what makes one human or not

Nature is what makes one human or not. Christ has a completely human nature. Therefore Christ is completely human. One indication of the misunderstanding is reference to person, hypostasis, as something we have: 'Did Christ have a human hypostasis? We do. Then, if he did not, how can we claim he is fully human?' But hypostasis is not something someone has. The hypostasis is the someone who has whatever is had. If the divine hypostasis, the Word, has all the qualities that constitute someone as human - a human nature - then the Word, a divine hypostasis, is a human being, and fully so.

D.Helminiak, The same Jesus: a contemporary christology (1986), 292
Quoted in G. O'Collins, Christology (2009), 256

Pour avoir des enfants, il faut être mariée

– Mais, Gertrude, pour avoir des enfants, il faut être mariée.

– Ne me dites pas cela, pasteur. Je sais que cela n’est pas vrai.

– Je t’ai dit ce qu’il était décent de te dire, protestai-je. Mais en effet les lois de la nature permettent ce qu’interdisent les lois des hommes et de Dieu.

A. Gide, la symphonie pastorale (1925), 88