When I’ve learned enough to really live, I’ll be old enough to die.

In our kind of culture anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its novelty, it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.
—Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

There are those who desire to acquire knowledge for its own value—and this is a base vanity. But there are others who desire to have it to edify others—and this is charity. And there are others who desire it so that they may be edified—and this is wisdom.
—Bernard of Clairvaux, The Song of Solomon

Only happy people can learn. Only happy people can teach. Our religion should put a sparkle in our eyes and a tone in our voice, and a spring in our step that bears witness of our faith and confidence in the goodness of God.

The work of the Holy Spirit in communicating God’s truth to man is now seen to have two stages. The first and objective stage is “revelation,” the disclosure of the truth in Scripture. The second and subjective stage may be called “illumination,” the enlightenment of our minds to comprehend the truth disclosed in Scripture. Each process is indispensable. Without revelation we have no truth to perceive; without illumination no faculty with which to perceive it.
Understanding the Bible Expanded Edition Copyright © 1972, 1976, 1984, 1999 by John Stott