It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.

A. Burgess, Earthly Powers (1980), 1

Can you explain the Trinity to me?

[Mayor] 'Can you explain the Trinity to me? It was more than they could do in Salamanca.'

[Monsignor Quixote] 'I can try.'
'Try then.'
'You see these bottles?'
'Of course.'
'Two bottles equal in size. The wine they contained was of the same substance and it was born at the same time. There you have God the Father and God the Son and there, in the half bottle, God the Holy Ghost. Same substance. Same birth. They’re inseparable. Whoever partakes of one partakes of all three.'
'I was never even in Salamanca able to see the point of the Holy Ghost. He has always seemed to me a bit redundant.'
'We were not satisfied with two bottles, were we? That half bottle gave us the extra spark of life we both needed. We wouldn’t have been so happy without it.'
....

'May God forgive me,' Father Quixote said,  'for I have sinned.'
'It was only a joke, father. Surely your God does understand a joke.'
'I have been guilty of heresy,' Father Quixote replied. 'I think - perhaps - I am unworthy to be a priest.'
'What have you done?'
'I have given wrong instruction. The Holy Ghost is equal in all respect to the Father and the Son, and I have represented Him by this half bottle.'
'Is that a serious error, father?'
'It is anathema. It was condemned expressly at I forget which Council. A very early Council. Perhaps it was Nicaea.'
'Don’t worry, father. The matter is easily put right. We will throw away and forget this half bottle and I will bring a whole bottle from the car.'

G. Greene, Monisgnor Quixote (1982), 51-53

I didn't understand the value and meaning of education

The look on his face is a complete shock. I didn't understand the value and meaning of education, the hardship and stress it causes most parents and children. I've never thought of education like that. School was always a place I managed to escape, not a thing to be treasured. Setting aside the stock was merely something I did because Frankie specifically mentioned college and I wanted to help. When I saw what it meant to him, however, I was the one who got educated.

A. Agassi, Open (2009), 230-1

Have you never discussed philosophy with them?

'Have you never discussed philosophy with them?'
'No. We're not Germans.'

J. Le Carre, The spy who came in from the cold (1963), 138

Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas

As for Tom, the fact that he had 'some woman in New York' was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1926), 27

Forza Italia!

(History repeating edition)

Forza Italia!, which is suspected of Neo-Fascist leanings. My contacts in Benevento dismiss it with scorn as just another maniac right-wing movement backed by the landlords and the rural mafia, run in this case by  a half-demented latifundista who proclaims himself a reincarnation of Garibaldi.

N. Lewis, Naples '44 (1978), 176

Heresy may advertise the existence of bad theology

Heresy may advertise the existence of bad theology. But it also indicates that men are thinking.

G.L. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics (1940), 3