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An Event Is Not Any More Intrinsically Intelligible Or Unintelligible Because Of The Pace At Which It Moves. For A Man Who Does Not Believe In A Miracle, A Slow Miracle Would Be Just As Incredible As A Swift One. The Greek Witch May Have Turned Sailors To Swine With A Stroke Of The Wand. But To See A Naval Gentleman Of Our Acquaintance Looking A Little More Like A Pig Every Day, Till He Ended With Four Trotters And A Curly Tail, Would Not Be Any More Soothing. It Might Be Rather More Creepy And Uncanny.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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An Event Is Not

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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An Event Is Not Any More Intrinsically Intelligible Or Unintelligible Because Of The Pace At Which It Moves. For A Man Who Does Not Believe In A Miracle, A Slow Miracle Would Be Just As Incredible As A Swift One. The Greek Witch May Have Turned Sailors To Swine With A Stroke Of The Wand. But To See A Naval Gentleman Of Our Acquaintance Looking A Little More Like A Pig Every Day, Till He Ended With Four Trotters And A Curly Tail, Would Not Be Any More Soothing. It Might Be Rather More Creepy And Uncanny.

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But Perhaps God Is Strong Enough To Exult In Monotony. It Is Possible That God Says Every Morning, "do It Again" To The Sun.; And Every Evening, "do It Again" To The Moon. It May Not Be Automatic Monotony That Makes All Daisies Alike; It May Be That God Makes Every Daisy Separately, But Has Never Gotten Tired Of Making Them. It May Be That He Has The Eternal Appetite Of Infancy; For We Have Sinned And Grown Old, And Our Father Is Younger Than We.

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

There Is No Such Thing As Education. The Thing Is Merely A Loose Phrase For The Passing On To Others Of Whatever Truth Or Virtue We Happen To Have Ourselves. It Is Typical Of Our Time That The More Doubtful We Are About The Value Of Philosophy, The More Certain We Are About The Value Of Education. That Is To Say, The More Doubtful We Are About Whether We Have Any Truth, The More Certain We Are (apparently) That We Can Teach It To Our Children.

The Modern Habit Of Saying "this Is My Opinion, But I May Be Wrong" Is Entirely Irrational. If I Say That It May Be Wrong, I Say That Is Not My Opinion. The Modern Habit Of Saying "every Man Has A Different Philosophy; This Is My Philosophy And It Suits Me" – The Habit Of Saying This Is Mere Weak-mindedness. A Cosmic Philosophy Is Not Constructed To Fit A Man; A Cosmic Philosophy Is Constructed To Fit A Cosmos. A Man Can No More Possess A Private Religion Than He Can Possess A Private Sun And Moon.

Modern Broad-mindedness Benefits The Rich; And Benefits Nobody Else.

You Cannot Grow A Beard In A Moment Of Passion.

It Has Been Often Said, Very Truly, That Religion Is The Thing That Makes The Ordinary Man Feel Extraordinary; It Is An Equally Important Truth That Religion Is The Thing That Makes The Extraordinary Man Feel Ordinary.

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 Modern Mind Will Accept Nothing On Authority, But Will Accept Anything On No Authority. Say That The Bible Or The Pope Says So And It Will Be Dismissed Without Further Examination. But Preface Your Remark With "i Think I Heard Somewhere," Or, Try But Fail To Remember The Name Of Some Professor Who Might Have Said "such-and-such," And It Will Be Immediately Accepted As An Unshakable Fact.

I Would Give A Woman Not More Rights, But More Privileges. Instead Of Sending Her To Seek Such Freedom As Notoriously Prevails In Banks And Factories, I Would Design Specially A House In Which She Can Be Free.

All Conservatism Is Based Upon The Idea That If You Leave Things Alone You Leave Them As They Are. But You Do Not. If You Leave A Thing Alone You Leave It To A Torrent Of Change.

They Say Travel Broadens The Mind, But You Must Have The Mind.

There Are No New Ideas About Female Education.

The Mind Moves By Instincts, Associations And Premonitions And Not By Fixed Dates Or Completed Processes. Action And Reaction Will Occur Simultaneously: Or The Cause Actually Be Found After The Effect. Errors Will Be Resisted Before They Have Been Properly Promulgated: Notions Will Be First Defined Long After They Are Dead.

Oscar Wilde Said That Sunsets Were Not Valued Because We Could Not Pay For Sunsets. But Oscar Wilde Was Wrong; We Can Pay For Sunsets. We Can Pay For Them By Not Being Oscar Wilde.

Individually, Men May Present A More Or Less Rational Appearance, Eating, Sleeping, And Scheming. But Humanity A A Whole Is Changeful, Mystical, Fickle, Delightful. Men Are Men, But Man Is A Woman.

But Whenever One Meets Modern Thinkers (as One Often Does) Progressing Toward A Madhouse, One Always Finds, On Inquiry, That They Have Just Had A Splendid Escape From Another Madhouse. Thus, Hundreds Of People Become Socialists, Not Because They Have Tried Socialism And Found It Nice, But Because They Have Tried Individualism And Found It Particularly Nasty.

I Would Look At The First Chapter Of Any New Novel As A Final Test Of Its Merits. If There Was A Murdered Man Under The Sofa In The First Chapter, I Read The Story. If There Was No Murdered Man Under The Sofa In The First Chapter, I Dismissed The Story As Tea-table Twaddle, Which It Often Really Was.

The True Soldier Fights Not Because He Hates What Is In Front Of Him, But Because He Loves What Is Behind Him.

It Is Cold Anarchy To Say That All Men Are To Meddle In All Men'smarriages. It Is Cold Anarchy To Say That Any Doctor May Seize Andsegregate Anyone He Likes. But It Is Not Anarchy To Say That A Fewgreat Hygienists Might Enclose Or Limit The Life Of All Citizens,as Nurses Do With A Family Of Children. It Is Not Anarchy, It Istyranny; But Tyranny Is A Workable Thing.

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.

Life Exists For The Love Of Music Or Beautiful Things.

Once Abolish The God, And The Government Becomes The God.

But Those Dealing In The Actual Manufacture Of Mind Are Dealing In A Very Explosive Material. The Material Is Not Merely The Clay Of Which Man Is Master, But The Truths Or Semblances Of Truth Which Have A Certain Mastery Over Man. The Material Is Explosive Because It Must Be Taken Seriously. The Men Writing Books Really Are Throwing Bombs.

There Are Some Desires That Are Not Desirable.

When We Reverence Anything In The Mature, It Is Their Virtues Or Their Wisdom, And This Is An Easy Matter. But We Reverence The Faults And Follies Of Children. We Should Probably Come Considerably Nearer To The True Conception Of Things If We Treated All Grown-up Persons, Of All Titles And Types, With Precisely That Dark Affection And Dazed Respect With Which We Treat The Infantile Limitations.

The Old Idea That The Joke Was Not Good Enough For The Company Has Been Superseded By The New Aristocratic Idea That The Company Was Not Worthy Of The Joke. They Have Introduced An Almost Insane Individualism Into That One Form Of Intercourse Which Is Specially And Uproariously Communal. They Have Made Even Levities Into Secrets. They Have Made Laughter Lonelier Than Tears.

Everyone Seems To Assume That The Unscrupulous Parts Of Journalism Will Be The Frivolous Or Jocular Parts. This Is Against All Ethical Experience. Jokes Are Generally Honest. Complete Solemnity Is Almost Always Dishonest. The Writer Of The Snippet Merely Refers To A Frivolous And Fugitive Fact In A Frivolous And Fugitive Way. The Writer Of The Leading Article Has To Write About A Fact He Has Known For 20 Minutes As Though He Has Studied It For 20 Years.

The Poets Have Been Mysteriously Silent On The Subject Of Cheese.

Do Not Look At The Faces In The Illustrated Papers. Look At The Faces In The Street.

In Truth The Church Is Too Unique To Prove Herself Unique. For Most Popular And Easy Proof Is By Parallel; And Here There Is No Parallel.

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

She Had Never Really Listened To Anyone In Her Life; Which, Some Said, Was Why She Had Survived.

You Can Never Have A Revolution In Order To Establish A Democracy. You Must Have A Democracy In Order To Have A Revolution.

Democracies Have

A Child's Instinct Is Almost Perfect In The Matter Of Fighting. The Child's Hero Is Always The Man Or Boy Who Defends Himself Suddenly And Splendidly Against Aggression.

People Talk Of The Pathos And Failure Of Plain Women; But It Is A More Terrible Thing That A Beautiful Woman May Succeed In Everything But Womanhood.

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

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

If A Man Called Christmas Day A Mere Hypocritical Excuse For Drunkenness And Gluttony, That Would Be False, But It Would Have A Fact Hidden In It Somewhere. But When Bernard Shaw Says The Christmas Day Is Only A Conspiracy Kept Up By Poulterers And Wine Merchants From Strictly Business Motives, Then He Says Something Which Is Not So Much False As Startling And Arrestingly Foolish. He Might As Well Say That The Two Sexes Were Invented By Jewellers Who Wanted To Sell Wedding Rings.

No Man Can Be Merry Unless He Is Serious.

You Never Know The Best About Men Until You Know The Worst About Them.

There Are Many Books Which We Think We Have Read When We Have Not. There Are, At Least, Many That We Think We Remember When We Do Not. An Original Picture Was, Perhaps, Imprinted Upon The Brain, But It Has Changed With Our Own Changing Minds. We Only Remember Our Remembrance.

An Artist Will Betray Himself By Some Sort Of Sincerity.

I Never Said A Word Against Eminent Men Of Science. What I Complain Of Is A Vague Popular Philosophy Which Supposes Itself To Be Scientific When It Is Really Nothing But A Sort Of New Religion And An Uncommonly Nasty One. When People Talked About The Fall Of Man, They Knew They Were Talking About A Mystery, A Thing They Didn't Understand. Now They Talk About The Survival Of The Fittest: They Think They Do Understand It, Whereas They Have Not Merely No Notion, They Have An Elaborately False Notion Of What The Words Mean.

The Average Woman Is At The Head Of Something With Which She Can Do As She Likes; The Average Man Has To Obey Orders And Do Nothing Else.

When We Look Upon Lives So Human And Yet So Small, We Feel As If We Ourselves Were Enlarged To An Embarrassing Bigness Of Stature. We Feel The Same Kind Of Obligation To These Creatures That A Deity Might Feel If He Had Created Something That He Could Not Understand.

The More We Are Proud That The Bethlehem Story Is Plain Enough To Be Understood By The Shepherds, And Almost By The Sheep, The More Do We Let Ourselves Go, In Dark And Gorgeous Imaginative Frescoes Or Pageants About The Mystery And Majesty Of The Three Magian Kings.

To Have A Right To Do A Thing Is Not At All The Same As To Be Right In Doing It.

Men Feel That Cruelty To The Poor Is A Kind Of Cruelty To Animals. They Never Feel That It Is An Injustice To Equals; Nay It Is Treachery To Comrades.

Leaving The Complications Of The Human Breakfast-table Out Of Account, In An Elemental Sense, The Egg Only Exists To Produce The Chicken. But The Chicken Does Not Exist Only In Order To Produce Another Egg. He May Also Exist To Amuse Himself, To Praise God, And Even To Suggest Ideas To A French Dramatist. Being A Conscious Life, He Is, Or May Be, Valuable In Himself.

People Decided That It Was Impossible To Achieve Any Of The Good Of Socialism, But They Comforted Themselves By Achieving All The Bad.

The Historic Glory Of America Lies In The Fact That It Is The One Nation That Was Founded Like A Church. That Is, It Was Founded On A Faith That Was Not Merely Summed Up After It Had Exited, But Was Defined Before It Existed.

So Far As A Man May Be Proud Of A Religion Rooted In Humility, I Am Very Proud Of My Religion; I Am Especially Proud Of Those Parts Of It That Are Most Commonly Called Superstition. I Am Proud Of Being Fettered By Antiquated Dogmas And Enslaved By Dead Creeds (as My Journalistic Friends Repeat With So Much Pertinacity), For I Know Very Well That It Is The Heretical Creeds That Are Dead, And That It Is Only The Reasonable Dogma That Lives Long Enough To Be Called Antiquated.

The Old Religionist Cried Out For His God. The New Religionist Cries Out For Some God To Be His.

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

Whenever You Remove Any Fence, Always Pause Long Enough To Ask Why It Was Put There In The First Place.

Islam Was Something Like A Christian Heresy. The Early Heresies Had Been Full Of Mad Reversals And Evasions Of The Incarnation, Rescuing Their Jesus From The Reality Of His Body Even At The Expense Of The Sincerity Of His Soul.

The Home Is Not The One Tame Place In The World Of Adventure. It Is The One Wild Place In The World Of Rules And Set Tasks.

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.

A Businessman Is The Only Man Who Is Forever Apologizing For His Occupation.

Tradition Is Only Democracy Extended Through Time; It May Be Defined As An Extension Of The Franchise. 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 The Small And Arrogant Oligarchy Of Those Who Are Merely Walking About. All Democrats Object To Men Being Disqualified By Accident Of Birth; Tradition Objects To Their Being Disqualified By Accident Of Death. Democracy Tells Us Not To Neglect A Good Man's Opinion, Even If He Is Our Father.

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

Creative Thought

One May Understand The Cosmos, But Never The Ego; The Self Is More Distant Than Any Star.

It Is Assumed That The Skeptic Has No Bias; Whereas He Has A Very Obvious Bias In Favour Of Skepticism.

It Is Very Good For A Man To Talk About What He Does Not Understand; As Long As He Understands That He Does Not Understand It.

There Cannot Be A Nation Of Millionaires, And There Never Has Been A Nation Of Utopian Comrades; But There Have Been Any Number Of Nations Of Tolerably Contented Peasants.

Boys Like Romantic Tales; But Babies Like Realistic Tales-because They Find Them Romantic.

I Have No Right To Think For Myself. I Have No Right To Think At All.

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

It Is Not Only Possible To Say A Great Deal In Praise Of Play; It Is Really Possible To Say The Highest Things In Praise Of It. It Might Reasonably Be Maintained That The True Object Of All Human Life Is Play. Earth Is A Task Garden; Heaven Is A Playground.

One Can Hardly Think Too Little Of One's Self. One Can Hardly Think Too Much Of One's Soul.

The Party System Was Founded On One National Notion Of Fair Play. It Was The Notion That Folly And Futility Should Be Fairly Divided Between Both Sides.

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

A Society Is In Decay, Final Or Transitional, When Common Sense Really Becomes Uncommon.

I Have Formed A Very Clear Conception Of Patriotism. I Have Generally Found It Thrust Into The Foreground By Some Fellow Who Has Something To Hide In The Background. I Have Seen A Great Deal Of Patriotism; And I Have Generally Found It The Last Refuge Of The Scoundrel.

The Classes That Wash Most Are Those That Work Least.

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

The Reason That Angels Fly Is That They Take Themselves So Lightly.

The Reformer Is Always Right About What's Wrong. However, He's Often Wrong About What Is Right.

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.

Science Only Means Knowledge; And For [greek] Ancients It Did Only Mean Knowledge. Thus The Favorite Science Of The Greeks Was Astronomy, Because It Was As Abstract As Algebra. ... We May Say That The Great Greek Ideal Was To Have No Use For Useful Things. The Slave Was He Who Learned Useful Things; The Freeman Was He Who Learned Useless Things. This Still Remains The Ideal Of Many Noble Men Of Science, In The Sense They Do Desire Truth As The Great Greeks Desired It; And Their Attitude Is An External Protest Against Vulgarity Of Utilitarianism.

All We Know Of The Missing Link Is That He Is Missing - And He Won't Be Missed Either.

The Things We See Every Day Are The Things We Never See At All.

Thanks Are The Highest Form Of Thought.

The New School Of Art And Thought Does Indeed Wear An Air Of Audacity, And Breaks Out Everywhere Into Blasphemies, As If It Required Any Courage To Say A Blasphemy. There Is Only One Thing That It Requires Real Courage To Say, And That Is A Truism.

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.

Psychoanalysis Is A Science Conducted By Lunatics For Lunatics. They Are Generally Concerned With Proving That People Are Irresponsible; And They Certainly Succeed In Proving That Some People Are

I Said To Him, "shall I Tell You Where The Men Are Who Believe Most In Themselves? For I Can Tell You. I Know Of Men Who Believe In Themselves More Colossally Than Napoleon Or Caesar. I Know Where Flames The Fixed Star Of Certainty And Success. I Can Guide You To The Thrones Of The Super-men. The Men Who Really Believe In Themselves Are All In Lunatic Asylums.

Circumstances Break Men's Bones; It Has Never Been Shown That They Break Men's Optimism.

There Are No Words To Express The Abyss Between Isolation And Having One Ally. It May Be Conceded To The Mathematician That Four Is Twice Two. But Two Is Not Twice One; Two Is Two Thousand Times One.

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.

I Have Known Many Happy Marriages, But Never A Compatible One. The Whole Aim Of Marriage Is To Fight Through And Survive The Instant When Incompatibility Becomes Unquestionable. For A Man And A Woman, As Such, Are Incompatible.

Thoughts On The Merits Of Work The Worst Of Work Nowadays Is What Happens To People When They Cease To Work.

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.

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.

Now, Among The Heresies That Are Spoken In This Matter Is The Habit Of Calling A Grey Day A "colourless" Day. Grey Is A Colour, And Can Be A Very Powerful And Pleasing Colour.... A Grey Clouded Sky Is Indeed A Canopy Between Us And The Sun; So Is A Green Tree, If It Comes To That. But The Grey Umbrellas Differ As Much As The Green In Their Style And Shape, In Their Tint And Tilt. One Day May Be Grey Like Steel, And Another Grey Like Dove’s Plumage. One May Seem Grey Like The Deathly Frost, And Another Grey Like The Smoke Of Substantial Kitchens.

It Is A Mathematical Fact That If A Line Be Not Perfectly Directed Towards A Point, It Will Actually Go Further Away From It As It Comes Nearer To It.

Students Of Popular Science... Are Always Insisting That Christianity And Buddhism Are Very Much Alike, Especially Buddhism. This Is Generally Believed, And I Believed It Myself Until I Read A Book Giving The Reasons For It.

All Men Are Ordinary Men; The Extraordinary Men Are Those Who Know It.

I Have Investigated The Dust-heaps Of Humanity, And Found A Treasure In All Of Them. I Have Found That Humanity Is Not Incidentally Engaged, But Eternally And Systematically Engaged, In Throwing Gold Into The Gutter And Diamonds Into The Sea.

Journalism Largely Consists Of Saying 'lord Jones Is Dead' To People Who Never Knew That Lord Jones Was Alive.

Well, If I Am Not Drunk, I Am Mad," Replied Syme With Perfect Calm; "but I Trust I Can Behave Like A Gentleman In Either Condition.

Men Invent New Ideals Because They Dare Not Attempt Old Ideals. They Look Forward With Enthusiasm, Because They Are Afraid To Look Back.

All Architecture Is Great Architecture After Sunset; Perhaps Architecture Is Really A Nocturnal Art, Like The Art Of Fireworks.

The World Will Never Starve For Want Of Wonders; But Only For Want Of Wonder.

We All Have A Little Weakness, Which Is Very Natural But Rather Misleading, For Supposing That This Epoch Must Be The End Of The World Because It Will Be The End Of Us. How Future Generations Will Get On Without Us Is Indeed, When We Come To Think Of It, Quite A Puzzle. But I Suppose They Will Get On Somehow, And May Possibly Venture To Revise Our Judgments As We Have Revised Earlier Judgments.

Do Not Be So Open-minded That Your Brains Fall Out.

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.

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.

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

Humour Is Meant, In A Literal Sense, To Make Game Of Man; That Is, To Dethrone Him From His Official Dignity And Hunt Him Like Game.

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.

Truth Must Necessarily Be Stranger Than Fiction, For Fiction Is The Creation Of The Human Mind And Therefore Congenial To It.

Excuse Me If I Enjoy Myself Rather Obviously! I Don't Often Have The Luck To Have A Dream Like This. It Is New To Me For A Nightmare To Lead Me To A Lobster. It Is Commonly The Other Way.

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.

Aristocracy: Government By The Badly Educated.

Silence Is The Unbearable Repartee.

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.

There Is No Logical Connection Between Flying And Laying Eggs.

Because A Girl Should Have Long Hair, She Should Have Clean Hair; Because She Should Have Clean Hair, She Should Not Have An Unclean Home; Because She Should Not Have An Unclean Home, She Should Have A Free And Leisured Mother; Because She Should Have A Free Mother, She Should Not Have An Usurious Landlord; Because There Should Not Be A Usurious Landlord, There Should Be A Redistribution Of Property; Because There Should Be A Redistribution Of Property, There Shall Be A Revolution.

One Must Somehow Find A Way Of Loving The World Without Trusting It; Somehow One Must Love The World Without Being Worldly.

The State Did Not Own Men So Entirely, Even When It Could Send Them To The Stake, As It Sometimes Does Now Where It Can Send Them To The Elementary School.

Youth Is The Period In Which A Man Can Be Hopeless. The End Of Every Episode Is The End Of The World. But The Power Of Hoping Through Everything, The Knowledge That The Soul Survives Its Adventures, That Great Inspiration Comes To The Middle-aged.

Fallacies Do Not Cease To Be Fallacies Because They Become Fashions.

You May Think A Crime Horrible Because You Could Never Commit It. I Think It Is Horrible Because I Could Commit It.

In The End It Will Not Matter To Us Whether We Wrote Well Or Ill; Whether We Fought With Flails Or Reeds. It Will Matter To Us Greatly On What Side We Fought.

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.

I Have Argued With Him On Almost Every Subject In The World, And We Have Always Been On Opposite Sides, Without Affectation Or Animosity... It Is Necessary To Disagree With Him As Much As I Do, In Order To Admire Him As I Do; And I Am Proud Of Him As A Foe Even More Than As A Friend.

Playing As Children Means Playing Is The Most Serious Thing In The World.

The Moderns Do Not Realize Modernity.

Any One Of The Strange Laws We Suffer Is A Compromise Between A Fad And A Vested Interest.

True Contentment Is A Thing As Active As Agriculture. It Is The Power Of Getting Out Of Any Situation All That There Is In It. It Is Arduous And It Is Rare.

Certain New Theologians Dispute Original Sin, Which Is The Only Part Of Christian Theology Which Can Really Be Proved.

When It Wishes Anything Done Which Is Really Serious, It Collects Twelve Of The Ordinary Men Standing Round. The Same Thing Was Done, If I Remember Right, By The Founder Of Christianity.

A Nation That Has Nothing But Its Amusements Will Not Be Amused For Long.

How Can It Be A Large Career To Tell Other People's Children About The Rule Of Three, And A Small Career To Tell One's Own Children About The Universe? How Can It Be Broad To Be The Same Thing To Everyone, And Narrow To Be Everything To Someone? No; A Woman's Function Is Laborious, But Because It Is Gigantic, Not Because It Is Minute. I Will Pity Mrs. Jones For The Hugeness Of Her Task; I Will Never Pity Her For Its Smallness.

It Is A Quaint Comment On The Notion That The English Are Practical And The French Merely Visionary, That We Were Rebels In Arts While They Were Rebels In Arms.

There Is No Great Harm In The Theorist Who Makes Up A New Theory To Fit A New Event. But The Theorist Who Starts With A False Theory And Then Sees Everything As Making It Come True Is The Most Dangerous Enemy Of Human Reason.

The Old Assumption Of The Approximate Impossibility Of War Really Rested On A Similar Assumption About The Impossibility Of Evil-and Especially Of Evil In High Places.

We Have All Forgotten What We Really Are. All That We Call Common Sense And Rationality And Practicality And Positivism Only Means That For Certain Dead Levels Of Our Life We Forget That We Have Forgotten. All That We Call Spirit And Art And Ecstasy Only Means That For One Awful Instant We Remember That We Forget.

A Feminist Is Someone Who Loathes Being A Woman And Who Dislikes The Chief Feminine Characteristics.

...but Nature Does Not Say That Cats Are More Valuable Than Mice; Nature Makes No Remark On The Subject. She Does Not Even Say That The Cat Is Enviable Or The Mouse Pitiable. We Think The Cat Superior Because We Have (or Most Of Us Have) A Particular Philosophy To The Effect That Life Is Better Than Death. But If The Mouse Were A German Pessimist Mouse, He Might Not Think That The Cat Had Beaten Him At All. He Might Think He Had Beaten The Cat By Getting To The Grave First.

We Make Our Friends; We Make Our Enemies; But God Makes Our Next Door Neighbour.

[consider] A Fence Or Gate Erected Across A Road] The More Modern Type Of Reformer Goes Gaily Up To It And Says, "i Don't See The Use Of This; Let Us Clear It Away." To Which The More Intelligent Type Of Reformer Will Do Well To Answer: "if You Don't See The Use Of It, I Certainly Won't Let You Clear It Away. Go Away And Think. Then, When You Can Come Back And Tell Me That You Do See The Use Of It, I May Allow You To Destroy It."

The Rolling Stone Rolls Echoing From Rock To Rock; But The Rolling Stone Is Dead. The Moss Is Silent Because The Moss Is Alive.

The Ordinary Scientific Man Is Strictly A Sentimentalist. He Is A Sentimentalist In This Essential Sense, That He Is Soaked And Swept Away By Mere Associations.

Art Consists Of Limitation. The Most Beautiful Part Of Every Picture Is The Frame.

The Object Of A New Year Is Not That We Should Have A New Year. It Is That We Should Have A New Soul And A New Nose; New Feet, A New Backbone, New Ears, And New Eyes. Unless A Particular Man Made New Year Resolutions, He Would Make No Resolutions. Unless A Man Starts Afresh About Things, He Will Certainly Do Nothing Effective.

Family Is The Theatre Of The Spiritual Drama, The Place Where Things Happen, Especially The Things That Matter.

If I Had Only One Sermon To Preach It Would Be A Sermon Against Pride.

The Idea Of Private Property Universal But Private, The Idea Of Families Free But Still Families, Of Domesticity Democratic But Still Domestic, Of One Man One House - This Remains The Real Vision And Magnet Of Mankind. The World May Accept Something More Official And General, Less Human And Intimate. But The World Will Be Like A Broken-hearted Woman Who Makes A Humdrum Marriage Because She May Not Make A Happy One; Socialism May Be The World's Deliverance, But It Is Not The World's Desire.

Catholic Doctrine And Discipline May Be Walls; But They Are The Walls Of A Playground.

We Are Talking About An Artist; And For The Enjoyment Of The Artist The Mask Must Be To Some Extent Moulded On The Face. What He Makes Outside Him Must Correspond To Something Inside Him; He Can Only Make His Effects Out Of Some Of The Materials Of His Soul.

A Citizen Can Hardly Distinguish Between A Tax And A Fine, Except That The Fine Is Generally Much Lighter.

The Whole Curse Of The Last Century Has Been What Is Called The Swing Of The Pendulum; That Is, The Idea That Man Must Go Alternately From One Extreme To The Other. It Is A Shameful And Even Shocking Fancy; It Is The Denial Of The Whole Dignity Of The Mankind. When Man Is Alive He Stands Still. It Is Only When He Is Dead That He Swings.

It Is The Test Of A Good Religion Whether You Can Joke About It.

Childlike Faith

The Fact Is That Purification And Austerity Are Even More Necessary For The Appreciation Of Life And Laughter Than For Anything Else. To Let No Bird Fly Past Unnoticed, To Spell The Stones And Weeds, To Have The Mind A Storehouse Of Sunset, Requires A Discipline In Pleasure And An Education In Gratitude.

By Experts In Poverty I Do Not Mean Sociologists, But Poor Men.

Your Next-door Neighbor Is Not A Man; He Is An Environment. He Is The Barking Of A Dog; He Is The Noise Of A Piano; He Is A Dispute About A Party Wall; He Is Drains That Are Worse Than Yours, Or Roses That Are Better Than Yours.

To The Humble Man, And To The Humble Man Alone, The Sun Is Really A Sun; To The Humble Man, And To The Humble Man Alone, The Sea Is Really A Sea.

I Am Not Absentminded. It Is The Presence Of Mind That Makes Me Unaware Of Everything Else.

Presence Of Mind

Employers Will Give Time To Eat, Time To Sleep; They Are In Terror Of A Time To Think.

The Modern Materialists Are Not Permitted To Doubt; They Are Forbidden To Believe.

You Don't Want To Be So Open Minded That Your Brains Fall Out!

Comforts That Were Rare Among Our Forefathers Are Now Multiplied In Factories And Handed Out Wholesale; And Indeed, Nobody Nowadays, So Long As He Is Content To Go Without Air, Space, Quiet, Decency And Good Manners, Need Be Without Anything Whatever That He Wants; Or At Least A Reasonably Cheap Imitation Of It.

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

The Dignity Of The Artist Lies In His Duty Of Keeping Awake The Sense Of Wonder In The World.

A Great Man Is Not A Man So Strong That He Feels Less Than Other Men; He Is A Man So Strong That He Feels More.

Gratitude Is Happiness Doubled By Wonder.

The Most Poetical Thing In The World Is Not Being Sick.

The Disadvantage Of Men Not Knowing The Past Is That They Do Not Know The Present.

The New Community Which The Capitalists Are Now Constructing Will Be A Very Complete And Absolute Community; And One Which Will Tolerate Nothing Really Independent Of Itself.

The Humorous Look Of Children Is Perhaps The Most Endearing Of All The Bonds That Hold The Cosmos Together.

Earth Will Grow Worse Till Men Redeem It, And Wars More Evil, Ere All Wars Cease.

Instead Of Looking At Books And Pictures About The New Testament I Looked At The New Testament. There I Found An Account, Not In The Least Of A Person With His Hair Parted In The Middle Or His Hands Clasped In Appeal, But Of An Extraordinary Being With Lips Of Thunder And Acts Of Lurid Decision, Flinging Down Tables, Casting Out Devils, Passing With The Wild Secrecy Of The Wind From Mountain Isolation To A Sort Of Dreadful Demagogy; A Being Who Often Acted Like An Angry God — And Always Like A God.

When You With Velvets Mantled O'er, Defy December's Tempests Frore, Oh! Spare One Garment From Your Store, To Clothe The Poor At Christmas.

A Turkey Is More Occult And Awful Than All The Angels And Archangels. In So Far As God Has Partly Revealed To Us An Angelic World, He Has Partly Told Us What An Angel Means. But God Has Never Told Us What A Turkey Means. And If You Go And Stare At A Live Turkey For An Hour Or Two, You Will Find By The End Of It That The Enigma Has Rather Increased Than Diminished.

In Real Life The People Who Are Most Bigoted Are The People Who Have No Convictions At All.

[capitalism Is] That Commercial System In Which Supply Immediately Answers To Demand, And In Which Everybody Seems To Be Thoroughly Dissatisfied And Unable To Get Anything He Wants.

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

The Man Who Lives In A Small Community Lives In A Much Larger World... The Reason Is Obvious. In A Large Community We Can Choose Our Companions. In A Small Community Our Companions Are Chosen For Us.

The Whole Point Of The Eugenic Pseudo-scientific Theories Is That They Are To Be Applied Wholesale, By Some More Sweeping And Generalizing Money Power Than The Individual Husband Or Wife Or Household. Eugenics Asserts That All Men Must Be So Stupid That They Cannot Manage Their Own Affairs; And Also So Clever That They Can Manage Each Other's.

Civilization Has Run On Ahead Of The Soul Of Man, And Is Producing Faster Than He Can Think And Give Thanks.

If Prosperity Is Regarded As The Reward Of Virtue It Will Be Regarded As The Symptom Of Virtue.

He Is Only A Very Shallow Critic Who Cannot See An Eternal Rebel In The Heart Of The Conservative.

The Best Kind Of Giving Is Thanksgiving.

Most Americans ... Have A Sort Of Permanent Intoxication From Within, A Sort Of Invisible Champagne.

I Would Rather A Boy Learnt In The Roughest School The Courage To Hit A Politician, Or Gained In The Hardest School The Learning To Refute Him - Rather Than That He Should Gain In The Most Enlightened School The Cunning To Copy Him.

He Can Only Get Away From Death By Continually Stepping Within An Inch Of It.

Research Is The Search Of People Who Don't Know What They Want.

[marxism Will] In A Generation Or So [go] Into The Limbo Of Most Heresies, But Meanwhile It Will Have Poisoned The Russian Revolution.

Always Be Comic In A Tragedy. What The Deuce Else Can You Do?

We Actually Love Ourselves More Than We Love Joy.

The One Stream Of Poetry Which Is Continually Flowing Is Slang.

The Most Important Fact About The Subject Of Education Is That There Is No Such Thing. Education Is Not A Subject And It Does Not Deal In Subjects. It Is Instead The Transfer Of A Way Of Life.

We All Feel The Riddle Of The Earth Without Anyone To Point It Out. The Mystery Of Life Is The Plainest Part Of It. The Clouds And Curtains Of Darkness, The Confounding Vapors, These Are The Daily Weather Of This World.

The Wise Old Fairy Tales Never Were So Silly As To Say That The Prince And The Princess Lived Peacefully Ever Afterwards. The Fairy Tales Said That The Prince And Princess Lived Happily Ever Afterwards; And So They Did. They Lived Happily, Although It Is Very Likely That From Time To Time They Threw The Furniture At Each Other.

Marxism: The Theory That All The Important Things In History Are Rooted In An Economic Motive, That History Is A Science, A Science Of The Search For Food.

Most Americans Are Born Drunk, And Really Require A Little Wine Or Beer To Sober Them. They Have A Sort Of Permanent Intoxication From Within, A Sort Of Invisible Champagne. Americans Do Not Need To Drink To Inspire Them To Do Anything, Though They Do Sometimes, I Think, Need A Little For The Deeper And More Delicate Purpose Of Teaching Them How To Do Nothing.

The Aim Of Life Is Appreciation; There Is No Sense In Not Appreciating Things; And There Is No Sense In Having More Of Them If You Have Less Appreciation Of Them.

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