If we are to be saved, it will not be by Romans but by saints. - Thomas Cahill

The [Greek] myths were... attempting—at a deeper level—to feel the intangible and say the unsayable.

Lacking cities, Ireland didn't quite see the point of bishops, and gradually these were replaced in importance by abbots and—in a development that would make any self-respecting Roman's blood run cold—abbesses.

Like fish who do not know they swim in water, we are seldom aware of the atmosphere of the times through which we move, how strange and singular they are. But when we approach another age, its alienness stands out before us, almost as if that were its most obvious quality...