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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.
-Gilbert K. Chesterton
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And My Haunting Instinct

Gilbert K. Chesterton
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.
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Two
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Colour
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Rights
Liberty
Authority
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Ideas
Nine
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Law
America
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Russia
Government
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Lasts
Lists
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Expectancy
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Leaving
Insane
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Humorous
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Life Is
Human Life
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Gentleman
Dining
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Literature
World
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.
School
Men
Doe
There Is Something To Be Said For Every Error; But, Whatever May Be Said For It, The Most Important Thing To Be Said About It Is That It Is Erroneous.
Mistake
Errors
Important
Men Can Construct A Science With Very Few Instruments, Or With Very Plain Instruments; But No One On Earth Could Construct A Science With Unreliable Instruments. A Man Might Work Out The Whole Of Mathematics With A Handful Of Pebbles, But Not With A Handful Of Clay Which Was Always Falling Apart Into New Fragments, And Falling Together Into New Combinations. A Man Might Measure Heaven And Earth With A Reed, But Not With A Growing Reed.
Fall
Men
Work Out
The Full Potentialities Of Human Fury Cannot Be Reached Until A Friend Of Both Parties Tactfully Intervenes.
Party
Anger
Rage
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.
Attitude
Learning
Mean
The Real Argument Against Aristocracy Is That It Always Means The Rule Of The Ignorant. For The Most Dangerous Of All Forms Of Ignorance Is Ignorance Of Work.
Real
Ignorance
Mean
Happiness Is Not Only A Hope, But Also In Some Strange Manner A Memory ... We Are All Kings In Exile.
Kings
Memories
Strange
For Good Or Evil, A Line Has Been Passed In Our Political History; And Something That We Have Known All Our Lives Is Dead. I Will Take Only One Example Of It: Our Politicians Can No Longer Be Caricatured.
Humor
Evil
Political
Many Clever Men Like You Have Trusted To Civilization. Many Clever Babylonians, Many Clever Egyptians, Many Clever Men At The End Of Rome. Can You Tell Me, In A World That Is Flagrant With The Failures Of Civilisation, What There Is Particularly Immortal About Yours?
Clever
Men
Rome
Life Is Serious All The Time, But Living Cannot Be. You May Have All The Solemnity You Wish In Your Neckties, But In Anything Important (such As Sex, Death, And Religion), You Must Have Mirth Or You Will Have Madness.
Sex
Wish
Important
The Highest And Noblest Thing That History Can Be Is A Good Story.
Stories
Good Story
Highest
Science Boasts Of The Distance Of Its Stars; Of The Terrific Remoteness Of The Things Of Which It Has To Speak. But Poetry And Religion Always Insist Upon The Proximity, The Almost Menacing Closeness Of The Things With Which They Are Concerned. Always The Kingdom Of Heaven Is "at Hand."
Stars
Distance
Science
Against A Dark Sky All Flowers Look Like Fireworks. There Is Something Strange About Them, At Once Vivid And Secret, Like Flowers Traced In Fire In The Phantasmal Garden Of A Witch.
Flower
Dark
Garden
There Is, Therefore, About All Complete Conviction A Kind Of Huge Helplessness.
Kind
Conviction
Huge
When A Woman Puts Up Her Fists To A Man She Is Putting Herself In The Only Posture In Which He Is Not Afraid Of Her.
Men
Fists
Posture
...but This Is The Real Objection To That Torrent Of Modern Talk About Treating Crime As Disease, About Making Prison Merely A Hygienic Environment Like A Hospital, Of Healing Sin By Slow Scientific Methods. The Fallacy Of The Whole Thing Is That Evil Is A Matter Of Active Choice Whereas Disease Is Not.
Real
Healing
Evil
The Determining Bulk Of Scotch People Had Heard Of Golf Ever Since They Had Heard Of God And Often Considered The Two As Of Equal Importance.
Golf
Scotch
Two
For The Mass Of Men The Idea Of Artistic Creation Can Only Be Expressed By An Idea Unpopular In Present Discussions - The Idea Of Property... Property Is Merely The Art Of The Democracy... One Would Think, To Hear People Talk, That The Rothschilds And The Rockefellers Were On The Side Of Property. But Obviously They Are The Enemies Of Property; Because They Are Enemies Of Their Own Limitations.
Art
Men
Thinking
Poets Do Not Go Mad, But Chess Players Do.
Player
Mad
Chess
O God Of Earth And Altar, Bow Down And Hear Our Cry, Our Earthly Rulers Falter, Our People Drift And Die; The Walls Of Gold Entomb Us, The Swords Of Scorn Divide, Take Not Thy Thunder From Us, But Take Away Our Pride.
Wall
Pride
People
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.
Christmas
Velvet
December
Surely We Cannot Take An Open Question Like The Supernatural And Shut It With A Bang, Turning The Key Of The Madhouse On All The Mystics Of History. You Cannot Take The Region Of The Unknown And Calmly Say That, Though You Know Nothing About It, You Know All The Gates Are Locked. We Do Not Know Enough About The Unknown To Know That It Is Unknowable.
Keys
Bangs
Enough
The Supreme Adventure Is Being Born
Adventure
Born
Supreme
I Need Not Pause To Explain That Crime Is Not A Disease. It Is Criminology That Is A Disease.
Needs
Disease
Crime
The Martyr Endured Tortures To Affirm His Belief In Truth But He Never Asserted His Disbelief In Torture.
Belief
Torture
Martyr
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.
Unique
Church
Easy
For The Only Courage Worth Calling Courage Must Necessarily Mean That The Soul Passes A Breaking Point And Does Not Break.
Mean
Point Break
Soul
Either Criticism Is No Good At All (a Very Defensible Position) Or Else Criticism Means Saying About An Author The Very Things That Would Have Made Him Jump Out Of His Boots.
Mean
Criticism
Boots
The Worst Moment For An Atheist Is When He Feels A Profound Sense Of Gratitude And Has No One To Thank.
Gratitude
Atheist
Worst Moments
Modern Broad-mindedness Benefits The Rich; And Benefits Nobody Else.
Benefits
Morality
Rich
[marxism Will] In A Generation Or So [go] Into The Limbo Of Most Heresies, But Meanwhile It Will Have Poisoned The Russian Revolution.
War
Revolution
Generations
Whatever Else May Be Said Of Man, This One Thing Is Clear: He Is Not What He Is Capable Of Being.
Men
May
Said
The Central Idea Of Poetry Is The Idea Of Guessing Right, Like A Child.
Children
Ideas
Guessing
I Believe In Preaching To The Converted; For I Have Generally Found That The Converted Do Not Understand Their Own Religion.
Believe
Found
Preaching
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.
Educational
People
Leaving
Political Economy Means That Everybody Except Politicians Must Be Economical.
Mean
Political
Politician
I've Searched All The Parks In All The Cities - And Found No Statues Of Committees.
Inspirational
Cities
Parks
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.
Men
Weather
Done
The Family Is The Test Of Freedom; Because The Family Is The Only Thing That The Free Man Makes For Himself And By Himself.
Family
Freedom
Men
The Grinding Power Of The Plain Words Of The Gospel Story Is Like The Power Of Mill-stones, And Those Who Can Read Them Simply Enough Will Feel As If Rocks Had Been Rolled Upon Them.
Rocks
Stories
Stones
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.
Rights
Giving
House
Cruelty Is, Perhaps, The Worst Kid Of Sin. Intellectual Cruelty Is Certainly The Worst Kind Of Cruelty.
Kids
Intellectual
Literature
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.
Girl
Mother
Home
Angels Can Fly Because They Take Themselves Lightly.
Inspirational
Inspiring
Peace
Fairy Tales Do Not Give The Child His First Idea Of Bogey. What Fairy Tales Give The Child Is His First Clear Idea Of The Possible Defeat Of Bogey. The Baby Has Known The Dragon Intimately Ever Since He Had An Imagination. What The Fairy Tale Provides For Him Is A St. George To Kill The Dragon.
Baby
Children
Dragons
There Is No Such Thing On Earth As An Uninteresting Subject; The Only Thing That Can Exist Is An Uninterested Person. Nothing Is More Keenly Required Than A Defence Of Bores. When Byron Divided Humanity Into The Bores And Bored, He Omitted To Notice That The Higher Qualities Exist Entirely In The Bores, The Lower Qualities In The Bored, Among Whom He Counted Himself. The Bore, By His Starry Enthusiasm, His Solemn Happiness, May, In Some Sense, Have Proved Himself Poetical. The Bored Has Certainly Proved Himself Prosaic.
Boredom
Humanity
Quality
The Scientific Facts, Which Were Supposed To Contradict The Faith In The Nineteenth Century, Are Nearly All Of Them Regarded As Unscientific Fictions In The Twentieth Century.
Fiction
Facts
Century
A Crown Of Roses Is Also A Crown Of Thorns.
Rose
Crowns
Thorns
The Poor Have Sometimes Objected To Being Governed Badly; The Rich Have Always Objected To Being Governed At All.
Political
Politics
Poverty
That Young Man With The Long, Auburn Hair And The Impudent Face - That Young Man Was Not Really A Poet; But Surely He Was A Poem.
Men
Hair
Long
And We Were Angry And Poor And Happy, And Proud Of Seeing Our Names In Print.
Names
Proud
Poor
The Lunatic Is The Man Who Lives In A Small World But Thinks It Is A Large One; He Is The Man Who Lives In A Tenth Of The Truth, And Thinks It Is The Whole. The Madman Cannot Conceive Any Cosmos Outside A Certain Tale Or Conspiracy Or Vision.
Men
Thinking
Vision
By Experts In Poverty I Do Not Mean Sociologists, But Poor Men.
Mean
Men
Poverty
Man Is Always Something Worse Or Something Better Than An Animal; And A Mere Argument From Animal Perfection Never Touches Him At All. Thus, In Sex No Animal Is Either Chivalrous Or Obscene. And Thus No Animal Invented Anything So Bad As Drunkeness - Or So Good As Drink.
Sex
Animal
Men
It Is The Beginning Of All True Criticism Of Our Time To Realize That It Has Really Nothing To Say, At The Very Moment When It Has Invented So Tremendous A Trumpet For Saying It.
Power
Criticism
Speech
With Any Recovery From Morbidity There Must Go A Certain Healthy Humiliation.
Get Well
Recovery
Healthy
The Essence Of All Pantheism, Evolutionism, And Modern Cosmic Religion Is Really This Proposition: That Nature Is Our Mother. Unfortunately, If You Regard Nature As A Mother, You Discover She Is A Step-mother.
Mother
Essence
Steps
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.
Sunset
Oscars
Pay
I Still Hold. . .that The Suburbs Ought To Be Either Glorified By Romance And Religion Or Else Destroyed By Fire From Heaven, Or Even By Firebrands From The Earth.
Fire
Romance
Heaven
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.
War
Fighting
Storm
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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