Pharmacdon

“Luther’s breakthrough had a dazzling, corrosive simplicity to it. The power of those twin principles, “faith alone” and “Scripture alone,” lay in the word “alone.” There is nothing and no one else other than God incarnate in Jesus Christ worth attending to. Being a Christian means throwing yourself abjectly, unreservedly, on Christ’s mercy. Living a Christian life means living Christ’s life—that is, abandoning all security and worldly ambitions to follow him “through penalties, deaths and hell.” It is only then that we may find peace. That ravishing paradox is at the heart of Protestantism. It is a further paradox that such a profoundly personal insight should have such an impact on the outside world.”
― Alec Ryrie, Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World

“They were convinced that Britain, once confronted with the loss of Southern cotton, would ally itself with the Confederacy—the “cotton is king” thesis famously articulated in the U.S. Senate by James Henry Hammond. Russell tried to persuade them otherwise, with no success. “I found this was the fixed idea everywhere. The doctrine of ‘cotton is king,’ to them is a lively all powerful faith without distracting heresies or schisms.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“The shirtsleeved bald bartender was tall and fat, looking like a retired cop who'd gone to seed the day his papers had come through. At the bar, muttering together about sports and politics—other people's victories and defeats—were nine or ten shabbily dressed guys who were older than their teeth.”
― Richard Stark, Backflash

“The room was full of law. Apparently somebody on Younger’s force had invited the state police to attend after all; the pack of technical men, with their cameras and chalk, powders and notebooks and little white envelopes, all seemed to professional, too sleek, too quiet and efficient to be any part of the local law.
The local law was three dough-faced farm hands in rumpled blue uniforms, standing around the room looking for traffic to direct.”
― Richard Stark, The Jugger