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A Beetle May Or May Not Be Inferior To A Man - The Matter Awaits Demonstration; But If He Were Inferior By Ten Thousand Fathoms, The Fact Remains That There Is Probably A Beetle View Of Things Of Which A Man Is Entirely Ignorant. If He Wishes To Conceive That Point Of View, He Will Scarcely Reach It By Persistently Revelling In The Fact That He Is Not A Beetle.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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A Beetle May Or

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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A Beetle May Or May Not Be Inferior To A Man - The Matter Awaits Demonstration; But If He Were Inferior By Ten Thousand Fathoms, The Fact Remains That There Is Probably A Beetle View Of Things Of Which A Man Is Entirely Ignorant. If He Wishes To Conceive That Point Of View, He Will Scarcely Reach It By Persistently Revelling In The Fact That He Is Not A Beetle.

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The Martyr Endured Tortures To Affirm His Belief In Truth But He Never Asserted His Disbelief In Torture.

Liberty Has Produced Scepticism, And Scepticism Has Destroyed Liberty. The Lovers Of Liberty Thought They Were Leaving It Unlimited, When They Were Only Leaving It Undefined. They Thought They Were Only Leaving It Undefined, When They Were Really Leaving It Undefended.

The Fatal Metaphor Of Progress, Which Means Leaving Things Behind Us, Has Utterly Obscured The Real Idea Of Growth, Which Means Leaving Things Inside Us.

Boyhood Is A Most Complex And Incomprehensible Thing. Even When One Has Been Through It, One Does Not Understand What It Was. A Man Can Never Quite Understand A Boy, Even When He Has Been The Boy.

The Pure Modernist Is Merely A Snob; He Cannot Bear To Be A Month Behind The Fashion.

At Least Five Times, With The Arian And The Albigensian, With The Humanist Skeptic, After Voltaire And After Darwin, The Christian Faith Has To All Appearance, Gone To The Dogs? But, In Each Of These Five Cases, It Was The Dog That Died.

Christendom Has Had A Series Of Revolutions And In Each One Of Them Christianity Has Died. Christianity Has Died Many Times And Risen Again; For It Had A God Who Knew The Way Out Of The Grave.

But The Truth Is That It Is Only By Believing In God That We Can Ever Criticise The Government. Once Abolish The God, And The Government Becomes The God.

A Great Deal Of Contemporary Criticism Reads To Me Like A Man Saying, 'of Course I Do Not Like Green Cheese. I Am Very Fond Of Brown Sherry.

There Are No Words To Express The Abyss Between Isolation And Having One Ally.

You Cannot Grow A Beard In A Moment Of Passion.

I've Searched All The Parks In All The Cities - And Found No Statues Of Committees.

Blessed Is He That Expecteth Nothing, For He Shall Be Gloriously Surprised.

The Frenchman Works Until He Can Play. The American Works Until He Can’t Play; And Then Thanks The Devil, His Master, That He Is Donkey Enough To Die In Harness. But The Englishman, As He Has Since Become, Works Until He Can Pretend That He Never Worked At All.

Suppose, My Dear Chadd, Suppose It Is We Who Are The Idiots Because We Are Not Afraid Of Devils In The Dark?

As To The Doubt Of The Soul I Discover It To Be False: A Mood Not A Conclusion. My Conclusion Is The Faith. Corporate, Organized, A Personality, Teaching. A Thing, Not A Theory. It.

The Big Corporation Is Not In The Least Remarkable For Efficiency; It Is Only Too Big To Be Blamed For Its Inefficiency.

Were Patrick Henry To Return To Earth And Look Around On The Vast Economic Order Of The Day, He Might Revise His Observation And Merely Say ‘give Me Death’-the Alternative Being Manifestly Impossible Under Modern Conditions.

If The World Grows To Worldly, It Can Be Rebuked By The Church; But If The Church Grows To Worldly, It Cannot Be Adequately Rebuked For Worldlyness By The World.

The English Are No Nearer Than They Were A Hundred Years Ago To Knowing What Jefferson Really Meant When He Said That God Had Created All Men Equal.

If The Barricades Went Up In Our Streets And The Poor Became Masters, I Think The Priests Would Escape, I Fear The Gentlemen Would; But I Believe The Gutters Would Simply Be Running With The Blood Of Philanthropists.

A Modern Man May Disapprove Of Some Of His Sweeping Reforms, And Approve Others; But Finds It Difficult Not To Admire Even Where He Does Not Approve.

America Has A New Delicacy, A Coarse, Rank Refinement.

Earnest Freethinkers Need Not Worry Themselves So Much About The Persecutions Of The Past. Before The Liberal Idea Is Dead Or Triumphant We Shall See Wars And Persecutions The Like Of Which The World Has Never Seen.

A Man Looking At A Hippopotamus May Sometimes Be Tempted To Regard A Hippopotamus As An Enormous Mistake; But He Is Also Bound To Confess That A Fortunate Inferiority Prevents Him Personally From Making Such Mistakes.

Whatever The Word "great" Means, Dickens Was What It Means.

The Riddles Of God Are More Satisfying Than The Solutions Of Man.

But I Was Frightfully Fond Of The Universe And Wanted To Address It By A Diminutive. I Often Did So; And It Never Seemed To Mind.

The Repetition In Nature May Not Be A Mere Recurrence; It May Be A Theatrical Encore.

One Can No More Have A Private Religion Than One Can Have A Private Sun Or A Private Moon.

Vigorous Organisms Talk Not About Their Processes, But About Their Aims.

[a Pacifist Is] The Last And Least Excusable On The List Of The Enemies Of Society.

Theology Is Only Thought Applied To Religion.

It Was The People Who Did Not Care Who Filled The World With Fire And Oppression. It Was The Hands Of The Indifferent That Lit The Faggots; It Was The Hands Of The Indifferent That Turned The Rack.

He Wondered Why The Pelican Was The Symbol Of Charity, Except It Was That It Wanted A Good Deal Of Charity To Admire A Pelican.

As An Explanation Of The World Materialism Has A Sort Of Insane Simplicity. It Has The Quality Of A Madman's Arguments; We Have At Once The Sense Of It Covering Everything And The Sense Of It Leaving Everything Out.

A Man Can Never Quite Understand A Boy, Even When He Has Been A Boy.

White... Is Not A Mere Absence Of Colour; It Is A Shining And Affirmative Thing, As Fierce As Red, As Definite As Black... God Paints In Many Colours; But He Never Paints So Gorgeously, I Had Almost Said So Gaudily, As When He Paints In White.

When People Impute Special Vices To The Christian Church, They Seem Entirely To Forget That The World (which Is The Only Other Thing There Is) Has These Vices Much More. The Church Has Been Cruel; But The World Has Been Much More Cruel. The Church Has Plotted; But The World Has Plotted Much More. The Church Has Been Superstitious; But It Has Never Been So Superstitious As The World Is When Left To Itself.

Around Every Corner Is Another Gift Waiting To Surprise Us, And It Will Surprise Us If We Can Achieve Control Over Our Natural Tendencies To Make Comparisons [to Things That Are Better Rather Than Things That Are Worse], To Take Things For Granted [rather Than Imagining How Much Worse Things Would Be If They Weren't There And So Feeling Grateful], And To Feel Entitled!

The Most Incredible Thing About Miracles Is That They Happen.

Over-civilization And Barbarism Are Within An Inch Of Each Other. And A Mark Of Both Is The Power Of Medicine-men.

[buddhism And Christianity] Are In One Sense Parallel And Equal; As A Mound And A Hollow, As A Valley And A Hill. There Is A Sense In Which That Sublime Despair Is The Only Alternative To That Divine Audacity. It Is Even True That The Truly Spiritual And Intellectual Man Sees It As Sort Of Dilemma; A Very Hard And Terrible Choice. There Is Little Else On Earth That Can Compare With These For Completeness. And He Who Does Not Climb The Mountain Of Christ Does Indeed Fall Into The Abyss Of Buddha.

That All War Is Physically Frightful Is Obvious; But If That Were A Moral Verdict, There Would Be No Difference Between A Torturer And A Surgeon. There Are Certain Intellectuals Who Are Too Bright To Be Content With Merely Praising Peace But Who Are Infuriated By Anybody Praising War. If No War Is Possible, All Criminality Has Its Chance

I Would Not Say That Old Men Grow Wise, For Men Never Grow Wise; And Many Old Men Retain A Very Attractive Childishness And Cheerful Innocence. Elderly People Are Often Much More Romantic Than Younger People, And Sometimes Even More Adventurous, Having Begun To Realize How Many Things They Do Not Know.

Catholicism Is Not Ritualism; It May In The Future Be Fighting Some Sort Of Superstitious And Idolatrous Exaggeration Of Ritual. Catholicism Is Not Asceticism; It Has Again And Again In The Past Repressed Fanatical And Cruel Exaggerations Of Asceticism. Catholicism Is Not Mere Mysticism; It Is Even Now Defending Human Reason Against The Mere Mysticism Of The Pragmatists.

The Comedy Of Man Survives The Tragedy Of Man.

I Am The Fool In This Story, And No Rebel Shall Hurl Me From My Throne.

The Whole Object Of Travel Is Not To Set Foot On Foreign Land; It Is At Last To Set Foot On One's Own Country As A Foreign Land.

Modern Nature-worship Is All Upside Down. Trees And Fields Ought To Be The Ordinary Things; Terraces And Temples Ought To Be Extraordinary. I Am On The Side Of The Man Who Lives In The Country And Wants To Go To London.

With Every Step Of Our Lives We Enter Into The Middle Of Some Story Which We Are Certain To Misunderstand.

There Is Always In The Healthy Mind An Obscure Prompting That Religion Teaches Us Rather To Dig Than To Climb; That If We Could Once Understand The Common Clay Of Earth We Should Understand Everything. Similarly, We Have The Sentiment That If We Could Destroy Custom At A Blow And See The Stars As A Child Sees Them, We Should Need No Other Apocalypse. This Is The Great Truth Which Has Always Lain At The Back Of Baby-worship, And Which Will Support It To The End.

To Be Simple Is The Best Thing In The World.

Architecture Is The Alphabet Of Giants; It Is The Largest Set Of Symbols Ever Made To Meet The Eyes Of Men. A Tower Stands Up Like A Sort Of Simplified Stature, Of Much More Than Heroic Size.

The Trouble With Always Trying To Preserve The Health Of The Body Is That It Is So Difficult To Do Without Destroying The Health Of The Mind.

The Academic Mind Reflects Infinity, And Is Full Of Light By The Simple Process Of Being Shallow And Standing Still.

Modern Toleration Is Really A Tyranny. It Is A Tyranny Because It Is A Silence.

Bigotry May Be Roughly Defined As The Anger Of Men Who Have No Opinions.

What We Suffer From Today Is Humility In The Wrong Place...the Old Humility Was A Spur That Prevented A Man From Stopping; Not A Nail In His Boot That Prevented Him From Going On. For The Old Humility Made A Man Doubtful About His Efforts, Which Made Him Work Harder. But The New Humility Makes A Man Doubtful About His Aims, Which Will Make Him Stop Working Altogether.

The Act Of Defending Any Of The Cardinal Virtues Has Today All The Exhilaration Of A Vice.

Making The Landlord And The Tenant The Same Person Has Certain Advantages, As That The Tenant Pays No Rent, While The Landlord Does A Little Work.

Classic Literature Is Still Something That Hangs In The Air Like A Song.

Why Are We Not Grateful To God For Filling Our Stockings With Legs?

It Is The Mark Of Our Whole Modern History That The Masses Are Kept Quiet With A Fight. They Are Kept Quiet By The Fight Because It Is A Sham-fight; Thus Most Of Us Know By This Time That The Party System Has Been Popular Only In The Sense That A Football Match Is Popular.

With All That We Hear Of American Hustle And Hurry, It Is Rather Strange That Americans Seem To Like To Linger On Longer Words.

Literature And Fiction Are Two Entirely Different Things. Literature Is A Luxury; Fiction Is A Necessity.

Progress Is The Mother Of Problems.

The Power Which Makes A Man Able To Entertain A Good Impulse Is The Same As That Which Enables Him To Make A Good Gun; It Is Imagination.

Poets Do Not Go Mad, But Chess Players Do.

A Strange Fanaticism Fills Our Time: The Fanatical Hatred Of Morality, Especially Of Christian Morality.

Grey Is A Colour That Always Seems On The Eve Of Changing To Some Other Colour.

Not Only Is Suicide A Sin, It Is The Sin. It Is The Ultimate And Absolute Evil, The Refusal To Take An Interest In Existence; The Refusal To Take The Oath Of Loyalty To Life. The Man Who Kills A Man, Kills A Man. The Man Who Kills Himself, Kills All Men. As Far As He Is Concerned He Wipes Out The World.

The True Savage Is A Slave, And Is Always Talking About What He Must Do; The True Civilised Man Is A Free Man, And Is Always Talking About What He May Do.

We Are All In The Same Boat, In A Stormy Sea, And We Owe Each Other A Terrible Loyalty.

The Poor Have Sometimes Objected To Being Governed Badly; The Rich Have Always Objected To Being Governed At All.

...there Is In Life An Element Of Elfin Coincidence Which People Reckoning On The Prosaic May Perpetually Miss. As It Has Been Well Expressed In The Paradox Of Poe, Wisdom Should Reason On The Unforeseen.

Every High Civilization Decays By Forgetting Obvious Things.

Misers Get Up Early In The Morning; And Burglars, I Am Informed, Get Up The Night Before.

He May Be Mad, But There's Method In His Madness. There Nearly Always Is Method In Madness. It's What Drives Men Mad, Being Methodical.

One Sees Great Things From The Valley; Only Small Things From The Peak.

When People Begin To Ignore Human Dignity, It Will Not Be Long Before They Begin To Ignore Human Rights.

By All Men Bond To Nothing, Being Slaves Without A Lord, By One Blind Idiot World Obeyed, Too Blind To Be Abhorred.

The Primary Paradox Of Christianity Is That The Ordinary Condition Of Man Is Not His Sane Or Sensible Condition; That The Normal Itself Is An Abnormality.

People That Insist Upon Drinking And Driving, Are Putting The Quart Before The Hearse.

Anyone Who Is Not An Anarchist Agrees With Having A Policeman At The Corner Of The Street; But The Danger At Present Is That Of Finding The Policeman Half-way Down The Chimney Or Even Under The Bed.

We Should Thank God For Beer And Burgundy By Not Drinking Too Much Of Them.

Boys Like Romantic [fairy] Tales; But Babies Like Realistic Tales - Because They Find Them Romantic...this Proves That Even Nursery Tales Only Echo An Almost Prenatal Leap Of Interest And Amazement. These Tales Say That Apples Were Golden Only To Refresh The Forgotten Moment When We Found That They Were Green. They Make Rivers Run With Wine Only To Make Us Remember, For One Wild Moment, That They Run With Water.

Sometimes He Even Embarrassed The Company By Phrases Suggesting That There Was Some Difference Between A Liberal And A Conservative.

It Is Better To Speak Wisdom Foolishly Like The Saints Than To Speak Folly Wisely Like The Deans.

Love Is Not Blind; That Is The Last Thing That It Is. Love Is Bound; And The More It Is Bound The Less It Is Blind.

The Best Kind Of Giving Is Thanksgiving.

Variability Is One Of The Virtues Of A Woman. It Avoids The Crude Requirement Of Polygamy. So Long As You Have One Good Wife You Are Sure To Have A Spiritual Harem".

If A Man Would Make His World Large, He Must Be Always Making Himself Small.

I Did Try To Found A Little Heresy Of My Own; And When I Had Put The Last Touches To It, I Discovered That It Was Orthodoxy.

To Hurry Through One's Leisure Is The Most Unbusiness-like Of Actions.

If Christianity Should Happen To Be True - That Is To Say, If Its God Is The Real God Of The Universe - Then Defending It May Mean Talking About Anything And Everything.

What Is The Good Of Telling A Community That It Has Every Liberty Except The Liberty To Make Laws? The Liberty To Make Laws Is What Constitutes A Free People.

If You Spell A Word Wrong You Have Some Temptation To Think It Wrong.

The Function Of The Imagination Is Not To Make Strange Things Settled, So Much As To Make Settled Things Strange.

What Affects Men Sharply About A Foreign Nation Is Not So Much Finding Or Not Finding Familiar Things; It Is Rather Not Finding Them In The Familiar Place.

It Seems To Me,' Said The Other, 'that You Are Simply Seeking A Pretext To Insult The Marquis.' By George!' Said Syme Facing Round And Looking At Him, 'what A Clever Chap You Are!

Precisely Because Our Political Speeches Are Meant To Be Reported, They Are Not Worth Reporting. Precisely Because They Are Carefully Designed To Be Read, Nobody Reads Them.

Political Speeches

Christianity Has Not Been Tried And Found Wanting; It Has Been Found Difficult And Not Tried.

The Philosophy Of This World May Be Founded On Facts, But Its Business Is Run On Spiritual Impressions And Atmospheres.

The Original Quality In Any Man Of Imagination Is Imagery.

The Books That Influence The World Are Those That It Has Not Read.

Be Careful How You Suggest Things To Me. For There Is In Me A Madness Which Goes Beyond Martyrdom, The Madness Of An Utterly Idle Man.

Business, Especially Big Business, Is Now Organized Like An Army. It Is, As Some Would Say, A Sort Of Mild Militarism Without Bloodshed; As I Say, A Militarism Without The Military Virtues.

While Once It Was The Rank And File That Cheered With All The Partisan Passions At Their Heights, Today It Is The Party Leaders Who Are Cheering Themselves; And All By Themselves. The Mob That Is Their Audience Is In One Vast Universal Trance, Thinking About Something Else.

Nothing Is Certain By Uncertainty.

A Man Will Not Roll In The Snow For A Stream Of Tendency By Which All Things Fulfill The Law Of Their Being. He Will Not Go Without Food In The Name Of Something, Not Ourselves, That Makes For Righteousness. He Will Do Things Like This, Or Pretty Nearly Like This, Under Quite A Different Impulse. He Will Do These Things When He Is In Love.

Experience Which Was Once Claimed By The Aged Is Now Claimed Exclusively By The Young.

There Are Two Kinds Of People In The World, The Conscious Dogmatists And The Unconscious Dogmatists. I Have Always Found Myself That The Unconscious Dogmatists Were By Far The Most Dogmatic.

A Radical Generally Meant A Man Who Thought He Could Somehow Pull Up The Root Without Affecting The Flower. A Conservative Generally Meant A Man Who Wanted To Conserve Everything Except His Own Reason For Conserving Anything.

That Is The One Eternal Education: To Be Sure Enough That Something Is True That You Dare To Tell It To A Child.

Tradition Means Giving Votes To The Most Obscure Of All Classes, Our Ancestors. It Is The Democracy Of The Dead. Tradition Refuses To Submit To That Arrogant Oligarchy Who Merely Happen To Be Walking Around.

The Aesthete Aims At Harmony Rather Than Beauty. If His Hair Does Not Match The Mauve Sunset Against Which He Is Standing, He Hurriedly Dyes His Hair Another Shade Of Mauve. If His Wife Does Not Go With The Wall-paper, He Gets A Divorce.

Atheism Is Too Theological.

The Believers In Miracles Accept Them (rightly Or Wrongly) Because They Have Evidence For Them. The Disbelievers In Miracles Deny Them (rightly Or Wrongly) Because They Have A Doctrine Against Them.

'my Country, Right Or Wrong' Is A Thing No Patriot Would Ever Think Of Saying Except In A Desperate Case. It Is Like Saying 'my Mother, Drunk Or Sober.'

If You Attempt An Actual Argument With A Modern Paper Of Opposite Politics, You Will Have No Answer Except Slanging Or Silence.

Here Ends Another Day, During Which I Have Had Eyes, Ears, Hands And The Great World Around Me. Tomorrow Begins Another Day. Why Am I Allowed Two?

It Is Really Not So Repulsive To See The Poor Asking For Money As To See The Rich Asking For More Money. And Advertisement Is The Rich Asking For More Money.

Jokes Are Generally Honest. Complete Solemnity Is Always Dishonest.

Wit Is A Sword; It Is Meant To Make People Feel The Point As Well As See It.

The Thing That Cannot Be Defined Is The First Thing; The Primary Fact.

You!" He Cried. "you Never Hated Because You Never Lived. I Know What You Are All Of You, From First To Last--you Are The People In Power! You Are The Police--the Great, Fat Smiling Men In Blue And Buttons! You Are The Law, And You Have Never Been Broken. But Is There A Free Soul Alive That Does Not Long To Break You, Only Because You Have Never Been Broken?

The Cause Which Is Blocking All Progress Today Is The Subtle Scepticism Which Whispers In A Million Ears That Things Are Not Good Enough To Be Worth Improving. If The World Is Good We Are Revolutionaries, If The World Is Evil We Must Be Conservatives. These Essays, Futile As They Are Considered As Serious Literature, Are Yet Ethically Sincere, Since They Seek To Remind Men That Things Must Be Loved First And Improved Afterwards.

A Man Cannot Have The Energy To Produce Good Art Without Having The Energy To Wish To Pass Beyond It.

On The Third Day The Friends Of Christ Coming At Daybreak To The Place Found The Grave Empty And The Stone Rolled Away. In Varying Ways They Realized The New Wonder; But Even They Hardly Realized That The World Had Died In The Night. What They Were Looking At Was The First Day Of A New Creation, With A New Heaven And A New Earth; And In A Semblance Of The Gardener God Walked Again In The Garden, In The Cool Not Of The Evening But Of The Dawn.

There Are No Boring Subjects, Only Disinterested Minds.

Hell Is God's Great Compliment To The Reality Of Human Freedom And The Dignity Of Human Choice.

Dogma Is Actually The Only Thing That Cannot Be Separated From Education. It Is Education. A Teacher Who Is Not Dogmatic Is Simply A Teacher Who Is Not Teaching. There Are No Uneducated People; Only Most People Are Educated Wrong. The True Task Of Culture Today Is Not A Task Of Expansion, But Of Selection-and-rejection. The Educationist Must Find A Creed And Teach It.

It Is The Simple Truth That Man Does Differ From The Brutes In Kind And Not In Degree; And The Proof Of It Is Here; That It Sounds Like A Truism To Say That The Most Primitive Man Drew A Picture Of A Monkey And That It Sounds Like A Joke To Say That The Most Intelligent Monkey Drew A Picture Of A Man. Something Of Division And Disproportion Has Appeared; And It Is Unique. Art Is The Signature Of Man.

The Poor Complain That They Are Governed Badly. The Rich Complain That They Are Governed At All.

The Only Defensible War Is A War Of Defense.

The Modern World Is Not Evil; In Some Ways The Modern World Is Far Too Good. It Is Full Of Wild And Wasted Virtues. When A Religious Scheme Is Shattered (as Christianity Was Shattered At The Reformation), It Is Not Merely The Vices That Are Let Loose. The Vices Are, Indeed, Let Loose, And They Wander And Do Damage. But The Virtues Are Let Loose Also; And The Virtues Wander More Wildly, And The Virtues Do More Terrible Damage. The Modern World Is Full Of The Old Christian Virtues Gone Mad. The Virtues Have Gone Mad Because They Have Been Isolated From Each Other And Are Wandering Alone.

Whatever Else May Be Said Of Man, This One Thing Is Clear: He Is Not What He Is Capable Of Being.

Modern Intelligence Won't Accept Anything On Authority. But It Will Accept Anything Without Authority.

Being 'contented' Ought To Mean In English, As It Does In French, Being Pleased. Being Content With An Attic Ought Not To Mean Being Unable To Move From It And Resigned To Living In It; It Ought To Mean Appreciating All There Is In Such A Position.

Evil Always Wins Through The Strength Of Its Splendid Dupes; And There Has In All Ages Been A Disastrous Alliance Between Abnormal Innocence And Abnormal Sin.

Saint George He Was For England, And Before He Killed The Dragon He Drank A Pint Of English Ale Out Of An English Flagon.

The Wisest Thing In The World Is To Cry Out Before You Are Hurt. It Is No Good To Cry Out After You Are Hurt; Especially After You Are Mortally Hurt. People Talk About The Impatience Of The Populace; But Sound Historians Know That Most Tyrannies Have Been Possible Because Men Moved Too Late. It Is Often Essential To Resist A Tyranny Before It Exists.

[v]ariety Of Climate Should Always Go With Stability Of Abode.... An Englishman’s House Is Not Only His Castle; It Is His Fairy Castle. Clouds And Colours Of Every Varied Dawn And Eve Are Perpetually Touching And Turning It From Clay To Gold, Or From Gold To Ivory. There Is A Line Of Woodland Beyond A Corner Of My Garden Which Is Literally Different On Every One Of The Three Hundred And Sixty-five Days. Sometimes It Seems As Near As A Hedge, And Sometimes As Far As A Faint And Fiery Evening Cloud.

Every Sane Man Recognises That Unlimited Liberty Is Anarchy, Or Rather Is Nonentity. The Civic Idea Of Liberty Is To Give The Citizen A Province Of Liberty; A Limitation Within Which A Citizen Is A King.

A Good Moslem King Was One Who Was Strict In Religion, Valiant In Battle, Just In Giving Judgment Among His People, But Not One Who Had The Slightest Objection In International Matters To Removing His Neighbour's Landmark.

There Is But An Inch Of Difference Between A Cushioned Chamber And A Padded Cell.

Happiness Is A Mystery, Like Religion, And Should Never Be Rationalised.

The First Two Facts Which A Healthy Boy Or Girl Feels About Sex Are These: First That It Is Beautiful And Then That It Is Dangerous.

It Isn't That They Can't See The Solution. It's That They Can't See The Problem. They Can't See The Problem If They Are Looking In The Wrong Place. They Can't See The Problem If They Have Blinders On - For 'none Are So Blind As Those That Will Not See'.

There Are An Infinity Of Angles At Which One Falls, Only One At Which One Stands.

And My Haunting Instinct That Somehow Good Was Not Merely A Tool To Be Used, But A Relic To Be Guarded, Like The Goods From Crusoe's Ship--even That Had Been The Wild Whisper Of Something Originally Wise, For, According To Christianity, We Were Indeed The Survivors Of A Wreck, The Crew Of A Golden Ship That Had Gone Down Before The Beginning Of The World.

The Modern World Has Far Too Little Understanding Of The Art Of Keeping Young. Its Notion Of Progress Has Been To Pile One Thing On Top Of Another, Without Caring If Each Thing Was Crushed In Turn. People Forgot That The Human Soul Can Enjoy A Thing Most When There Is Time To Think About It And Be Thankful For It. And By Crowding Things Together They Lost The Sense Of Surprise; And Surprise Is The Secret Of Joy.

And Noah He Often Said To His Wife When He Sat Down To Dine, "i Don't Care Where The Water Goes If It Doesn't Get Into The Wine."

No Sceptical Philosopher Can Ask Any Questions That May Not Equally Be Asked By A Tired Child On A Hot Afternoon.

Marriage Is A Duel To The Death Which No Man Of Honour Should Decline.

For They (capitalists) Hold As Their Chief Heresy, In A Coarser Form, The Fundamental Falsehood That Things Are Not Made To Be Used But Made To Be Sold. All The Collapse Of Their Commercial System In Their Own Time Has Been Due To That Fallacy Of Forcing Things On A Market Where There Was No Market; Of Continually Increasing The Power Of Supply Without Increasing The Power Of Demand; Of Briefly, Of Always Considering The Man Who Sells The Potato And Never Considering The Man Who Eats It.

In The Fairy Tale, An Incomprehensible Happiness Rests Upon An Incomprehensible Condition. A Box Is Opened And All Evils Fly Out. A Word Is Forgotten And Cities Perish. A Lamp Is Lit And Love Flies Away. An Apple Is Eaten And The Hope Of God Is Gone.

The Oligarchic Character Of The Modern English Commonwealth Does Not Rest, Like Many Oligarchies, On The Cruelty Of The Rich To The Poor. It Does Not Even Rest On The Kindness Of The Rich To The Poor. It Rests On The Perennial And Unfailing Kindness Of The Poor To The Rich.

Education Is The Period During Which You Are Being Instructed By Somebody You Do Not Know, About Something You Do Not Want To Know.

'as You Have Made Your Bed, So You Must Lie On It'; Which Again Is Simply A Lie. If I Have Made My Bed Uncomfortable, Please God I Will Make It Again.

Latter-day Scepticism Is Fond Of Calling Itself Progressive; But Scepticism Is Really Reactionary. Scepticism Goes Back; It Attempts To Unsettle What Has Already Been Settled. Instead Of Trying To Break Up New Fields With Its Plough, It Simply Tries To Break Up The Plough.

Reason Is Itself A Matter Of Faith. It Is An Act Of Faith To Assert That Our Thoughts Have Any Relation To Reality At All.

The Coming Peril Is The Intellectual, Educational, Psychological And Artistic Overproduction, Which, Equally With Economic Overproduction, Threatens The Well-being Of Contemporary Civilisation. People Are Inundated, Blinded, Deafened, And Mentally Paralysed By A Flood Of Vulgar And Tasteless Externals, Leaving Them No Time For Leisure, Thought, Or Creation From Within Themselves.

Mr. Mccabe Thinks That I Am Not Serious But Only Funny, Because Mr. Mccabe Thinks That Funny Is The Opposite Of Serious. Funny Is The Opposite Of Not Funny And Nothing Else.

The Word Good Has Many Meanings.

Unfortunately, 19th-century Scientists Were Just As Ready To Jump To The Conclusion That Any Guess About Nature Was An Obvious Fact, As Were 17th-century Sectarians To Jump To The Conclusion That Any Guess About Scripture Was The Obvious Explanation . . . . And This Clumsy Collision Of Two Very Impatient Forms Of Ignorance Was Known As The Quarrel Of Science And Religion.

Madness Does Not Come By Breaking Out, But By Giving In; By Settling Down In Some Dirty, Little, Self-repeating Circle Of Ideas; By Being Tamed.

Without Education We Are In A Horrible And Deadly Danger Of Taking Educated People Seriously.

I Like The Cyclostyle Ink; It Is So Inky. I Do Not Think There Is Anyone Who Takes Quite Such A Fierce Pleasure In Things Being Themselves As I Do. The Startling Wetness Of Water Excites And Intoxicates Me: The Fieriness Of Fire, The Steeliness Of Steel, The Unutterable Muddiness Of Mud. It Is Just The Same With People.... When We Call A Man "manly" Or A Woman "womanly" We Touch The Deepest Philosophy.

A Man Was Meant To Be Doubtful About Himself, But Undoubting About The Truth; This Has Been Exactly Reversed.

Were Meant To Be

A Man Running After A Hat Is Not Half So Ridiculous As A Man Running After A Woman.

Forms Of Expression Always Appear Turgid To Those Who Do Not Share The Emotions They Represent.

A Beetle May Or May Not Be Inferior To A Man - The Matter Awaits Demonstration; But If He Were Inferior By Ten Thousand Fathoms, The Fact Remains That There Is Probably A Beetle View Of Things Of Which A Man Is Entirely Ignorant. If He Wishes To Conceive That Point Of View, He Will Scarcely Reach It By Persistently Revelling In The Fact That He Is Not A Beetle.

Contemporary Society Has Become Dry, Not For Lack Of Wonders But For Lack Of Wonder.

The Darwinian Movement Has Made No Difference To Mankind, Except That, Instead Of Talking Unphilosophically About Philosophy, They Now Talk Unscientifically About Science.

Shouldn't Atheist Have An Equal Obligation To Explain Pleasure In A World Of Randomness. Where Does Pleasure Come From?

All The Exaggerations Are Right, If They Exaggerate The Right Thing.

A Fad Or Heresy Is The Exaltation Of Something Which Even If True, Is Secondary Or Temporary In Its Nature Against Those Things Which Are Essential And Eternal, Those Things Which Always Prove Themselves True In The Long Run. In Short, It Is The Setting Up Of The Mood Against The Mind.

Odd, Isn't It, That A Thief And A Vagabond Should Repent, When So Many Who Are Rich And Secure Remain Hard And Frivolous, And Without Fruit For God Or Man?

Ingratitude Is Surely The Chief Of The Intellectual Sins Of Man. He Takes His Political Benefits For Granted, Just As He Takes The Skies And The Seasons For Granted.

But We Are The People Of England; And We Have Not Spoken Yet. Smile At Us, Pay Us, Pass Us. But Do Not Quite Forget.

I Always Like A Dog So Long As He Isn't Spelled Backward.

I Was Planning To Go Into Architecture. But When I Arrived, Architecture Was Filled Up. Acting Was Right Next To It, So I Signed Up For Acting Instead.

The Full Value Of This Life Can Only Be Got By Fighting; The Violent Take It By Storm. And If We Have Accepted Everything We Have Missed Something - War. This Life Of Ours Is A Very Enjoyable Fight, But A Very Miserable Truce.

Whether A Man Chooses To Tell The Truth In Long Sentences Or Short Jokes Is A Problem Analogous To Whether He Chooses To Tell The Truth In French Or In German.

Once Remove The Old Arena Of Theological Quarrels, And You Will Throw Open The Whole World To The Most Horrible, The Most Hopeless, The Most Endless, The Most Truly Interminable Quarrels; The Untheological Quarrels.

He Had Found The Thing Which The Modern People Call Impressionism, Which Is Another Name For That Final Scepticism Which Can Find No Floor To The Universe.

The Real Trouble With This World Of Ours Is Not That It Is An Unreasonable World, Nor Even That It Is A Reasonable One. The Commonest Kind Of Trouble Is That It Is Nearly Reasonable, But Not Quite. ... It Looks Just A Little More Mathematical And Regular Than It Is; Its Exactitude Is Obvious, But Its Inexactitude Is Hidden; Its Wilderness Lies In Wait.

When We Were Children We Were Grateful To Those Who Filled Our Stockings At Christmas Time. Why Are We Not Grateful To God For Filling Our Stockings With Legs?

Mr. Blatchford Says That There Was Not A Fall But A Gradual Rise. But The Very Word "rise" Implies That You Know Toward What You Are Rising. Unless There Is A Standard You Cannot Tell Whether You Are Rising Or Falling. But The Main Point Is That The Fall Like Every Other Large Path Of Christianity Is Embodied In The Common Language Talked On The Top Of An Omnibus. Anybody Might Say, "very Few Men Are Really Manly." Nobody Would Say, "very Few Whales Are Really Whaley."

If You Do Not Understand A Man You Cannot Crush Him. And If You Do Understand Him, Very Probably You Will Not.

The Triangle Of Truisms, Of Father, Mother And Child, Cannot Be Destroyed; It Can Only Destroy Those Civilizations Which Disregard It.

It [feminism] Is Mixed Up With A Muddled Idea That Women Are Free When They Serve Their Employers But Slaves When They Help Their Husbands.

I Am Myself So Exceedingly Nordic, As Far As Physical Constitution Is Concerned, That I Can Enjoy Almost Any Weather Except What Is Called Glorious Weather. At The End Of A Few Days, I Am Left Wondering How The Men Of The Mediterranean Ever Managed To Do Almost All The Most Active And Astonishing Things That Have Been Done.

...it's Natural To Believe In The Supernatural. It Never Feels Natural To Accept Only Natural Things.

What Embitters The World Is Not Excess Of Criticism, But Absence Of Self-criticism.

I Will Not Call It My Philosophy; For I Did Not Make It. God And Humanity Made It; And It Made Me.

All Good Men Are International. Nearly All Bad Men Are Cosmopolitan. If We Are To Be International We Must Be National.

Internationalism

A Thing Constructed Can Only Be Loved After It Is Constructed; But A Thing Created Is Loved Before It Exists.

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Michelangelo Antonioni

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Margaret Atwood

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