• “Question everything but Scripture.” — Geoff Botkin

• “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” — C. S. Lewis

• “The cold water of persecution is often thrown on the church’s face to fetch her to herself when she is in a swoon of indolence or pride.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “I’m not lost.” — Frank Churchill

• “Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country.” — George Washington

• “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” — Sir Richard Steele

• “If you don’t fear God, you’ll fear everything.” — Dan Horn

• “The measure of a great teacher isn’t what he or she knows; it’s what the students know.” — John C. Maxwell

• “One proud, surly, lordly word, one needless contention, one covetous action, may cut the throat of many a sermon. Take heed to yourselves, lest your example contradict your doctrine.” — Richard Baxter

• “Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.” — Martin Luther

• “I will keep the ground that God has given me and perhaps in his grace, he will ignite me again. But ignite me or not, in his grace, in his power, I will hold the ground.” — John Knox

• “I find television very educational. Every time someone turns it on, I go in the other room and read a book.” — Groucho Marx

• “Drag and Drop for Windows users: DRAG your peecee off your desk, and DROP it in the trash.” — some forum member’s tagline

• “What is the best safeguard against false doctrine? The Bible regularly read, regularly prayed over, regularly studied.” — J. C. Ryle

• “Non-Christian investigators of nature are as successful as they are because they work with stolen capital.” — Cornelius Van Til

• “Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.” — Elias Boudinot

• “Paul’s life was a prophetic book for Jews to read and see how to be saved, so our lives should be an easy to read book for the lost on how they can easily be saved.” — Ken Ham

• “[N]ot one particle remains to man as a ground of boasting. The whole is of God.” — John Calvin (Institutes 2.3.6)

• “Man does not need to know exhaustively in order to know truly and certainly.” — Cornelius Van Til

• “True education is not giving in the answer, it’s in showing them how to find it.” — Kelly Crawford

• “We should never do what we cannot pray God to bless.” — James Smith

• “People will not look forward to posterity who will not look backward to their ancestors.” — Edmund Burke

• “Some people get an education without going to college; the rest get it after they get out.” — Mark Twain

• “The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, they simply make the best of everything they have.” — Unknown

• “I began my education at a very early age—in fact, right after I left college.” — Winston Churchill

• “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
 — Edmund Burke

• “[T]he ministry of Satan is employed to instigate the reprobate, whenever the Lord, in the course of his providence, has any purpose to accomplish in them...” — John Calvin (Institutes 2.4.5)

• “Even if you are on the right track, but just sit there, you will still get run over.” — Will Rogers

• “A ship in the harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are built for.” — John Shedd

• “Self-righteousness is being more aware of and irritated by the sins of others than you are conscious of and grieved by your own.” — Paul Tripp

• “I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something.” — Jackie Mason

• “TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they’ll have with twenty-six. Open your child’s imagination. Open a book.” — Unknown

• “A lot of men have a wishbone where they ought to have a backbone.” — Unknown

• “The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.” — St. Augustine

• “Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep, for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.” — Paxton Hood

• “People fall in private, long before they fall in public. The tree falls with a great crash, but the secret decay which accounts for it, is often not discovered until it is down on the ground.” — J. C. Ryle

• "When a Christian shuns fellowship with other Christians, the devil smiles. When he stops studying the Bible, the devil laughs. When he stops praying, the devil shouts for joy." — Corrie ten Boom

• “Thanks, modest girls. Appreciated by a male whose time studying the ground is proportional to each degree of rising temperature.” — Unknown

• “Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your own living room by people you wouldn’t have in your house.” — David Frost

• “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” 
— Martin Luther

• “Dreams don’t work unless you do.” — John C. Maxwell

• “People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.” — Thomas Sowell

• “The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.” — La Rochefoucauld

• “Luther once said, ‘The devil hates goose quills,’ and, doubtless, he has good reason, for ready writers, by the Holy Spirit’s blessing, have done his kingdom much damage.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “My dear friend, when grief presses you to the dust, worship there.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “When she married you, she gave you her life to spend. Are you spending your life wisely?” — Dan Horn

• “Heaven is eternity in the presence of God through a Mediator. Hell is eternity in the presence of God with no Mediator.” — Tony Reinke

• “The very familiarity of blessings sometimes makes us insensible to their value."— J. C. Ryle

About

Hi. I’m Kyle Shepherd. The eldest of nine children, I live with my family deep in the heart of Occupied Alabama, CSA. I love film scores, books, theology, British English, fonts, biblical law, fellowshipping, history (specifically, the War of Northern Aggression and the Age of Sail), typesetting, the colon (punctuation mark), poetry, trying to play music on the piano, and listening to lectures.—I love learning, excellence, beauty, variety, order. I cannot wait to be a daddy one day and lead my wife, my sons, and my daughters in a charge against the gates of hell, should the Lord have that in store for me.
 
I hope to use this blog as a place to post not only my own commentary on various topics, but also to pass on things I read, in the hope that they will edify you.
 
Finally, but most importantly, I am an undeserving sinner in need of grace every day. I have so far to go, but He which hath begun a good work will finish it. I can do nothing on my own strength and pray daily that Jesus will give me the strength to obey Him. Apart from him, I am nothing: I am completely at His mercy. How else can I say it?—and what more can I say?
 

“For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”

Romans 11:36

Here are some of the things I like.

 
 
MOVIES
Master and Commander
Gods and Generals
How to Train Your Dragon
Emma (2008)
Little Dorrit (2009)
The Hunt for Red October
Clear and Present Danger
The original Star Wars trilogy
Anne of Green Gables
Captain America
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The Village
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
North & South (2005)
Inception
Captain America
Megamind
Bleak House (2006)
The Patriot
Reclaiming the Blade
The Linotype Movie
The Runner from Ravenshead
Valkyrie
The Adventures of Tintin
Hugo
The Lord of the Rings
Batman Begins
 
MUSIC
George Frideric Handel
Lindsey Ray
Brian Crain
The Peacemaker, Backdraft, The Rock, Crimson Tide, Inception (Hans Zimmer)
Gods and Generals (John Frizzell, Randy Edelman)
Emma (Samuel Sim)
How to Train Your Dragon, Mars Needs Moms (John Powell)
Chicken Run (John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams)
Air Force One (Jerry Goldsmith)
The Red Baron (Stefan Hansen & Dirk Reichardt)
Lots of isolated classical pieces (besides Handel, no one composer)
Jon Schmidt & Steven Sharp Nelson
Fernando Ortega
The Adventures of Tintin (John Williams)
Keith and Kristyn Getty
The High Kings
 
BOOKS
The Holy Bible
The Institutes of Biblical Law (R.J. Rushdoony)
Institutes of the Christian Religion (John Calvin)
It’s (Not That) Complicated (Anna Sofia & Elizabeth Botkin)
Randy Alcorn’s “Ollie Chandler” books
Protocol Matters (Sandra Boswell)
The Civil War: A Narrative (Shelby Foote)
George Washington’s Sacred Fire (Peter A. Lillback)
The Three Hostages (John Buchan)
Little Dorrit (Charles Dickens)
By This Standard (Greg Bahnsen)
English Bible Translations: By What Standard? (William O. Einwechter)
Born-Again Dirt (Noah Sanders)
Reforming Marriage (Doug Wilson)
 
AUTHORS I HAVE RESPECT FOR (but still disagree with on varying levels)
Agatha Christie
G.A. Henty
R.M. Ballantyne
Jeff Shaara
Doug Wilson
C.S. Lewis
R.J. Rushdoony