Background Image

...

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

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

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.

Views: 9

Topic

More From Gilbert K. Chesterton

Because Our Expression Is Imperfect We Need Friendship To Fill Up The Imperfections.

The Full Potentialities Of Human Fury Cannot Be Reached Until A Friend Of Both Parties Tactfully Intervenes.

The Good Bishop Of Assisi Expressed A Sort Of Horror At The Hard Life Which The Little Brothers Lived At The Portiuncula, Without Comforts, Without Possessions, Eating Anything They Could Get And Sleeping Anyhow On The Ground. St. Francis Answered Him With That Curious And Almost Stunning Shrewdness Which The Unworldly Can Sometimes Wield Like A Club Of Stone. He Said, 'if We Had Any Possessions, We Should Need Weapons And Laws To Defend Them.

We Are Christians And Catholics Not Because We Worship A Key, But Because We Have Passed A Door; And Felt The Wind That Is The Trumpet Of Liberty Blow Over The Land Of The Living.

If We Could Destroy Custom At A Blow And See The Stars As A Child Sees Them, We Should Need No Other Apocalypse.

The Obvious Effect Of Frivolous Divorce Will Be Frivolous Marriage. If People Can Be Separated For No Reason They Will Feel It All The Easier To Be United For No Reason.

The Sort Of Man Who Admires Italian Art While Despising Italian Religion Is A Tourist And A Cad.

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.

When A Politician Is In Opposition He Is An Expert On The Means To Some End; And When He Is In Office He Is An Expert On The Obstacles To It.

Religious Liberty Might Be Supposed To Mean That Everybody Is Free To Discuss Religion. In Practice It Means That Hardly Anybody Is Allowed To Mention It.

A Man Imagines A Happy Marriage As A Marriage Of Love; Even If He Makes Fun Of Marriages That Are Without Love, Or Feels Sorry For Lovers Who Are Without Marriage.

And Pray Where In Earth Or Heaven Are There Prudent Marriages-might As Well Talk About Prudent Suicides.

Humor Can Get In Under The Door While Seriousness Is Still Fumbling At The Handle

One Elephant Having A Trunk Was Odd; But All Elephants Having Trunks Looked Like A Plot.

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.

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

Drink Because You Are Happy, But Never Because You Are Miserable. Never Drink When You Are Wretched Without It, Or You Will Be Like The Grey-faced Gin-drinker In The Slum; But Drink When You Would Be Happy Without It, And You Will Be Like The Laughing Peasant Of Italy. Never Drink Because You Need It, For This Is Rational Drinking, And The Way To Death And Hell. But Drink Because You Do Not Need It, For This Is Irrational Drinking, And The Ancient Health Of The World.

The Greatest Political Storm Flutters Only A Fringe Of Humanity. But An Ordinary Man And An Ordinary Woman And Their Ordinary Children Literally Alter The Destiny Of Nations.

It May Not Be Automatic Necessity That Makes All Daisies Alike; It May Be That God Makes Every Daisy Separately, But Has Never Gotten Tired Of Making Them

If An Editor Can Only Make People Angry Enough, They Will Write Half His Newspaper For Him For Nothing.

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

Were Meant To Be

Science In The Modern World Has Many Uses; Its Chief Use, However, Is To Provide Long Words To Cover The Errors Of The Rich.

A Naked Moon Stood In A Naked Sky.

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.

The Classes That Wash Most Are Those That Work Least.

Men Spoke Much In My Boyhood About Restricted Or Ruined Men Of Genius: And It Was Common To Say That Many A Man Was A Great Might-have-been. To Me It's A More Solid And Startling Fact That Any Man In The Street Is A Great Might-not-have-been.

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.

No Man's Really Any Good Till He Knows How Bad He Is, Or Might Be.

All But The Hard Hearted Man Must Be Torn With Pity For This Pathetic Dilemma Of The Rich Man, Who Has To Keep The Poor Man Just Stout Enough To Do The Work And Just Thin Enough To Have To Do It.

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.

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

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.

In Anything That Does Cover The Whole Of Your Life - In Your Philosophy And Your Religion - You Must Have Mirth. If You Do Not Have Mirth You Will Certainly Have Madness.

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

People In High Life Are Hardened To The Wants And Distresses Of Mankind As Surgeons Are To Their Bodily Pains.

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

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

But A Somewhat More Liberal And Sympathetic Examination Of Mankind Will Convince Us That The Cross Is Even Older Than The Gibbet, That Voluntary Suffering Was Before And Independent Of Compulsory; And In Short That In Most Important Matters A Man Has Always Been Free To Ruin Himself If He Chose.

A Teacher Who Is Not Dogmatic Is Simply A Teacher Who Is Not Teaching.

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

Daybreak Is A Never-ending Glory; Getting Out Of Bed Is A Never Ending Nuisance.

When Giving Treats To Friends Or Children, Give Them What They Like, Emphatically Not What Is Good For Them.

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.

Modern Man Is Educated To Understand Foreign Languages And Misunderstand Foreigners.

Of All Modern Notions, The Worst Is This: That Domesticity Is Dull. Inside The Home, They Say, Is Dead Decorum And Routine; Outside Is Adventure And Variety. But The Truth Is That The Home Is The Only Place Of Liberty, The Only Spot On Earth Where A Man Can Alter Arrangements Suddenly, Make An Experiment Or Indulge In A Whim. The Home Is Not The One Tame Place In A World Of Adventure; It Is The One Wild Place In A World Of Rules And Set Tasks.

In Truth, There Are Only Two Kinds Of People; Those Who Accept Dogma And Know It, And Those Who Accept Dogma And Don't Know It.

The Greenhorn Is The Ultimate Victor In Everything; It Is He That Gets The Most Out Of Life.

Progress Is Providence Without God. That Is, It Is A Theory That Everything Has Always Perpetually Gone Right By Accident. It Is A Sort Of Atheistic Optimism, Based On An Everlasting Coincidence Far More Miraculous Than A Miracle.

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

No Man Can Be Merry Unless He Is Serious.

The Universe Is The Most Extraordinary Masterpiece Ever Constructed By Nobody.

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.

I Don't Need A Church To Tell Me I'm Wrong Where I Already Know I'm Wrong; I Need A Church To Tell Me I'm Wrong Where I Think I'm Right

Very Few People In The World Would Care To Listen To The Real Defense Of Their Own Characters. The Real Defense, The Defense Which Belongs To The Day Of Judgment, Would Make Such Damaging Admissions, Would Clear Away So Many Artificial Virtues, Would Tell Such Tragedies Of Weakness And Failure, That A Man Would Sooner Be Misunderstood And Censured By The World Than Exposed To That Awful And Merciless Eulogy.

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?

I Am At One With My Duality.

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.

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

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.

Ivory May Not Be So White As Snow, But The Whole Arctic Continent Does Not Make Ivory Black.

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

In Every Serious Doctrine Of The Destiny Of Men, There Is Some Trace Of The Doctrine Of The Equality Of Men. But The Capitalist Really Depends On Some Religion Of Inequality. The Capitalist Must Somehow Distinguish Himself From Human Kind; He Must Be Obviously Above It Or He Would Be Obviously Below It.

When Fishes Flew And Forests Walked And Figs Grew Upon Thorn, Some Moment When The Moon Was Blood Then Surely I Was Born. With Monstrous Head And Sickening Cry And Ears Like Errant Wings, The Devil's Walking Parody On All Four-footed Things.

All Real Democracy Is An Attempt Like That Of A Jolly Hostess To Bring The Shy People Out.

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.

Reason Is Always A Kind Of Brute Force; Those Who Appeal To The Head Rather Than The Heart, However Pallid And Polite, Are Necessarily Men Of Violence. We Speak Of 'touching' A Man's Heart, But We Can Do Nothing To His Head But Hit It.

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

Realism Is Simply Romanticism That Has Lost Its Reason...that Is Its Reason For Existing.

Tea, Although An Orientalis A Gentleman At Least;cocoa Is A Cad And Coward,cocoa Is A Vulgar Beast.

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."

The Center Of Every Man's Existence Is A Dream. Death, Disease, Insanity, Are Merely Material Accidents, Like A Toothache Or A Twisted Ankle. That These Brutal Forces Always Besiege And Often Capture The Citadel Does Not Prove That They Are The Citadel.

The Chief Object Of Education Is Not To Learn Things But To Unlearn Things.

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.

When "everyone Knows" That Something Is So, It Is Always More Interesting And Often Illuminating To Assumeexactly The Opposite, And To See Where That Leads.

Even In An Empire Of Atheists The Dead Man Is Always Sacred.

As Long As The Vision Of Heaven Is Always Changing, The Vision Of Earth Will Be Exactly The Same. No Ideal Will Remain Long Enough To Be Realized, Or Even Partly Realized. The Modern Young Man Will Never Change His Environment; For He Will Always Change His Mind.

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.

I Do Not Feel Any Contempt For An Atheist, Who Is Often A Man Limited And Constrained By His Own Logic To A Very Sad Simplification.

It Is Unpardonable Conceit Not To Laugh At Your Own Jokes. Joking Is Undignified; That Is Why It Is So Good For One's Soul. Do Not Fancy You Can Be A Detached Wit And Avoid Being A Buffoon; You Cannot. If You Are The Court Jester You Must Be The Court Fool.

The Outer Ring Of Christianity Is A Rigid Guard Of Ethical Abnegations And Professional Priests; But Inside That Inhuman Guard You Will Find The Old Human Life Dancing Like Children And Drinking Wine Like Men; For Christianity Is The Only Frame For Pagan Freedom. But In The Modern Philosophy The Case Is Opposite; It Is Its Outer Ring That Is Obviously Artistic And Emancipated; Its Despair Is Within.

Men Always Talk About The Most Important Things To Perfect Strangers. In The Perfect Stranger We Perceive Man Himself; The Image Of A God Is Not Disguised By Resemblances To An Uncle Or Doubts Of Wisdom Of A Mustache.

I Believe What Really Happens In History Is This: The Old Man Is Always Wrong; And The Young People Are Always Wrong About What Is Wrong With Him. The Practical Form It Takes Is This: That, While The Old Man May Stand By Some Stupid Custom, The Young Man Always Attacks It With Some Theory That Turns Out To Be Equally Stupid.

Aristocracy: Government By The Badly Educated.

When You Break The Big Laws, You Do Not Get Liberty; You Do Not Even Get Anarchy. You Get The Small Laws.

The Great Misfortune Of The Modern English Is Not At All That They Are More Boastful Than Other People (they Are Not); It Is That They Are Boastful About Those Particular Things Which Nobody Can Boast Of Without Losing Them.

Happiness Is Not Only A Hope, But Also In Some Strange Manner A Memory ... We Are All Kings In Exile.

A Great City Is The Place To Escape The True Drama Of Provincial Life, And Find Solace In Fantasy.

I Have Little Doubt That When St. George Had Killed The Dragon He Was Heartily Afraid Of The Princess.

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.

The Sceptic Ultimately Undermines Democracy (1) Because He Can See No Significance In Death And Such Things Of A Literal Equality; (2) Because He Introduces Different First Principles, Making Debate Impossible: And Debate Is The Life Of Democracy; (3) Because The Fading Of The Images Of Sacred Persons Leaves A Man Too Prone To Be A Respecter Of Earthly Persons; (4) Because There Will Be More, Not Less, Respect For Human Rights If They Can Be Treated As Divine Rights.

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.

There Are Two Ways To Get Enough. One Is To Continue To Accumulate More And More. The Other Is To Desire Less.

There Is, Therefore, About All Complete Conviction A Kind Of Huge Helplessness.

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.

There Are Arguments For Atheism, And They Do Not Depend, And Never Did Depend, Upon Science. They Are Arguable Enough, As Far As They Go, Upon A General Survey Of Life; Only It Happens To Be A Superficial Survey Of Life.

When You Have Really Exhausted An Experience You Always Reverence And Love It.

The Modern World Is Filled With Men Who Hold Dogmas So Strongly That They Do Not Even Know They Are Dogmas.

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

The Wine They Drink In Paradise They Make In Haute Lorraine.

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

Wait And See Whether The Religion Of The Servile State Is Not In Every Case What I Say: The Encouragement Of Small Virtues Supporting Capitalism, The Discouragement Of The Huge Virtues That Defy It.

You Have Not Wasted Your Time; You Have Helped To Save The World. We Are Not Buffoons, But Very Desperate Men At War With A Vast Conspiracy.

A Thing May Be Too Sad To Be Believed Or Too Wicked To Be Believed Or Too Good To Be Believed; But It Cannot Be Too Absurd To Be Believed In This Planet Of Frogs And Elephants, Of Crocodiles And Cuttle-fish.

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.

There Are No Wise Few. Every Aristocracy That Has Ever Existed Has Behaved, In All Essential Points, Exactly Like A Small Mob.

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.

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 Great Saint May Be Said To Mix All His Thoughts With Thanks. All Goods Look Better When They Look Like Gifts.

To Say That A Man Is An Idealist Is Merely To Say That He Is A Man.

Too Much Capitalism Does Not Mean Too Many Capitalists, But Too Few Capitalists.

Adventure Is The Champagne Of Life, But I Prefer My Champagne And My Adventures Dry.

Lying In Bed Would Be An Altogether Perfect And Supreme Experience If Only One Had A Colored Pencil Long Enough To Draw On The Ceiling.

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

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.

There Are No New Ideas About Female Education.

Stated Baldly, Charity Certainly Means One Of Two Things–pardoning Unpardonable Acts, Or Loving Unlovable People.

The Diseased Pride [of Artistic Individualists] Was Not Even Conscious Of A Public Interest, And Would Have Found All Political Terms Utterly Tasteless And Insignificant. It Was No Longer A Question Of One Man One Vote, But Of One Man One Universe.

Man Seems To Be Capable Of Great Virtues But Not Of Small Virtues; Capable Of Defying His Torturer But Not Of Keeping His Temper.

All Science, Even The Divine Science, Is A Sublime Detective Story. Only It Is Not Set To Detect Why A Man Is Dead; But The Darker Secret Of Why He Is Alive.

I Am A Bad Reporter Because Everything Seems To Me Worth Reporting; And A Bad Reviewer Because Every Sentence In Every Book Suggests A Separate Essay.

The Family Is The Test Of Freedom; Because The Family Is The Only Thing That The Free Man Makes For Himself And By Himself.

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

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.

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.

If Man Is Not The Image Of God, Then He Is A Disease Of The Dust.

The Truth Is That It Is Our Attitude Towards Children That Is Right, And Our Attitude Towards Grown-up People That Is Wrong.

In Catholicism, The Pint, The Pipe And The Cross Can All Fit Together.

Somehow One Can Never Manage To Be An Atheist.

The Devil's Walking Parody; On All Four-footed Things.

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.

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?

Then I Only Wondered Who Put The Toys In The Stocking; Now I Wonder Who Put The Stocking By The Bed, And The Bed In The Room, And The Room In The House, And The House On The Planet, And The Great Planet In The Void.

The Great Gaels Of Ireland Are The Men That God Made Mad, For All Their Wars Are Merry, And All Their Songs Are Sad.

He Walked By Instinct Along One White Road, On Which Early Birds Hopped And Sang, And Found Himself Outside A Fenced Garden. There He Saw The Sister Of Gregory, The Girl With The Gold-red Hair, Cutting Lilac Before Breakfast, With The Great Unconscious Gravity Of A Girl.

If You Argue With A Madman, It Is Extremely Probable That You Will Get The Worst Of It; For In Many Ways His Mind Moves All The Quicker For Not Being Delayed By The Things That Go With Good Judgment.

Christian Inspirational

Posting A Letter And Getting Married [sic] Are Among The Few Things Left That Are Entirely Romantic; For To Be Entirely Romantic, A Thing Must Be Irrevocable

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

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

Monotony Has Nothing To Do With A Place; Monotony, Either In Its Sensation Or Its Infliction, Is Simply The Quality Of A Person. There Are No Dreary Sights; There Are Only Dreary Sight Seers.

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

The Prophet And The Quack Are Alike Admired For A Generation, And Admired For The Wrong Reasons.

There Is No Such Thing On Earth As An Uninteresting Subject; The Only Thing That Can Exist Is An Uninterested Person.

Artistic Temperament

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

I Regard Golf As An Expensive Way Of Playing Marbles.

I Represent The Jolly Mass Of Mankind. I Am The Happy And Reckless Christian.

To Be Simple Is The Best Thing In The World.

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

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.

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.

There Is A Law Written In The Darkest Of The Books Of Life, And It Is This: If You Look At A Thing Nine Hundred And Ninety-nine Times, You Are Perfectly Safe; If You Look At It The Thousandth Time, You Are In Frightful Danger Of Seeing It For The First Time.

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. Thus Some Scientists Care For Truth; And Their Truth Is Pitiless. Thus Some Humanitarians Only Care For Pity; And Their Pity (i Am Sorry To Say) Is Often Untruthful.

It Never Occurred To Him To Be Spiritually Won Over To The Enemy. Many Moderns, Inured To A Weak Worship Of Intellect And Force, Might Have Wavered In Their Allegiance Under This Oppression Of A Great Personality. . . . But This Was A Kind Of Modern Meanness To Which Syme Could Not Sink Even In His Extreme Morbidity. Like Any Man, He Was Coward Enough To Fear Great Force; But He Was Not Coward Enough To Admire It.

Progress Is A Comparative Of Which We Have Not Settled The Superlative.

Progress Of Society

Truths Turn Into Dogmas The Minute They Are Disputed.

A Woman Uses Her Intelligence To Find Reasons To Support Her Intuition.

If You Happen To Read Fairy Tales, You Will Observe That One Idea Runs From One End Of Them To The Other--the Idea That Peace And Happiness Can Only Exist On Some Condition. This Idea, Which Is The Core Of Ethics, Is The Core Of The Nursery-tales.

We All Know That The 'divine Glory Of The Ego' Is Socially A Great Nuisance; We All Do Actually Value Our Friends For Modesty, Freshness, And Simplicity Of Heart. Whatever May Be The Reason, We All Do Warmly Respect Humility - In Other People.

Busy Editors Cannot Be Expected To Put On Their Posters, "mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," Or "mr. Jones, Of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They Cannot Announce The Happiness Of Mankind At All. They Cannot Describe All The Forks That Are Not Stolen, Or All The Marriages That Are Not Judiciously Dissolved. Hence The Complex Picture They Give Of Life Is Of Necessity Fallacious; They Can Only Represent What Is Unusual.

Even The Moon Is Only Poetical Because There Is A Man In The Moon.

Man In The Moon

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.

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.

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.

It Is Always The Secure Who Are Humble.

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.

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.

The Average Man Votes Below Himself; He Votes With Half A Mind Or A Hundredth Part Of One. A Man Ought To Vote With The Whole Of Himself, As He Worships Or Gets Married. A Man Ought To Vote With His Head And Heart, His Soul And Stomach, His Eye For Faces And His Ear For Music; Also (when Sufficiently Provoked) With His Hands And Feet. If He Has Ever Seen A Fine Sunset, The Crimson Color Of It Should Creep Into His Vote. The Question Is Not So Much Whether Only A Minority Of The Electorate Votes. The Point Is That Only A Minority Of The Voter Votes.

Literary Men Are Being Employed To Praise A Big Business Man Personally, As Men Used To Praise A King. They Not Only Find Political Reasons For The Commercial Schemes That They Have Done For Some Time Past They Also Find Moral Defences For The Commercial Schemers... I Do Resent The Whole Age Of Patronage Being Revived Under Such Absurd Patrons; And All Poets Becoming Court Poets, Under Kings That Have Taken No Oath.

Youth Is Always Too Serious, And Just Now It Is Too Serious About Frivolity.

It Is True That There Is A Thing Crudely Called Charity, Which Means Charity To The Deserving Poor; But Charity To The Deserving Is Not Charity At All, But Justice. It Is The Undeserving Who Require It, And The Ideal Either Does Not Exist At All, Or Exists Wholly For Them.

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.

Right Is Right Even If Nobody Does It. Wrong Is Wrong Even If Everybody Is Wrong About It.

The Unconscious Democracy Of America Is A Very Fine Thing. It Is A True And Deep And Instinctive Assumption Of The Equality Of Citizens, Which Even Voting And Elections Have Not Destroyed.

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.

Doing Nothing Is Sometimes One Of The Highest Of The Duties Of Man.

Man Is More Himself, Man Is More Manlike, When Joy Is The Fundamental Thing In Him, And Grief The Superficial. Melancholy Should Be An Innocent Interlude, A Tender And Fugitive Frame Of Mind; Praise Should Be The Permanent Pulsation Of The Soul.

The Most Unfathomable Schools And Sages Have Never Attained To The Gravity Which Dwells In The Eyes Of A Baby Of Three Months Old. It Is The Gravity Of Astonishment At The Universe, And Astonishment At The Universe Is Not Mysticism, But A Transcendent Common-sense. The Fascination Of Children Lies In This: That With Each Of Them All Things Are Remade, And The Universe Is Put Again Upon Its Trial.

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.

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.

America Is The Only Country Ever Founded On A Creed.

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.

In Dealing With The Arrogant Asserter Of Doubt, It Is Not The Right Method To Tell Him To Stop Doubting. It Is Rather The Right Method To Tell Him To Go On Doubting, To Doubt A Little More, To Doubt Every Day Newer And Wilder Things In The Universe, Until At Last, By Some Strange Enlightenment, He May Begin To Doubt Himself.

We Should Always Endeavor To Wonder At The Permanent Thing, Not At The Mere Exception. We Should Be Startled By The Sun, And Not By The Eclipse. We Should Wonder Less At The Earthquake, And Wonder More At The Earth.

We Are Learning To Do A Great Many Clever Things. The Next Great Task Will Be To Learn Not To Do Them.

We Lose Our Bearings Entirely By Speaking Of The 'lower Classes' When We Mean Humanity Minus Ourselves.

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

If The Apple Hit Newton’s Nose, Newton’s Nose Hit The Apple.

Buddhism Is Not A Creed, It Is A Doubt.

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

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.

Man Is More Himself, Man Is More Manlike, When Joy Is The Fundamental Thing In Him, And Grief The Superficial. Melancholy Should Be An Innocent Interlude, A Tender And Fugitive State Of Mind; Praise Should Be The Permanent Pulsation Of The Soul. Pessimism Is At Best An Emotional Half-holiday; Joy Is The Uproarious Labor By Which All Things Live? Christianity Satisfies Suddenly And Perfectly Man's Ancestral Instinct For Being The Right Way Up; Satisfies It Supremely In This, That By Its Creed Joy Becomes Something Gigantic, And Sadness Something Special And Small.

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.

Puritanism Was An Honourable Mood; It Was A Noble Fad. In Other Words, It Was A Highly Creditable Mistake.

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

With Any Recovery From Morbidity There Must Go A Certain Healthy Humiliation.

Savages And Modern Artists Are Alike Strangely Driven To Create Something Uglier Than Themselves. But The Artists Find It Harder.

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.

God Is Not A Symbol Of Goodness; Goodness Is A Symbol Of God

Powerful Men Who Have Powerful Passions Use Much Of Their Strength In Forging Chains For Themselves.

It Is One Thing To Describe An Interview With A Gorgon Or A Griffin, A Creature Who Does Not Exist. It Is Another Thing To Discover That The Rhinoceros Does Exist And Then Take Pleasure In The Fact That He Looks As If He Didn't.

Trending Author

Whitney Houston

Lurlene McDaniel

Category