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And Though St. John Saw Many Strange Monsters In His Vision, He Saw No Creature So Wild As One Of His Own Commentators.
-Gilbert K. Chesterton
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And Though St. John

Gilbert K. Chesterton
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And Though St. John Saw Many Strange Monsters In His Vision, He Saw No Creature So Wild As One Of His Own Commentators.

Understanding the Quote: "and though st. john saw many strange monsters in his vision, he..."

This quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton reflects deeply on the theme of vision. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Vision, Monsters, Saws, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Gilbert K. Chesterton interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Gilbert K. Chesterton

Gilbert K. Chesterton is celebrated for insightful thoughts on vision and monsters. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Vision
Monsters
Saws
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Were Patrick Henry To Return To Earth And Look Around On The Vast Economic Order Of The Day, He Might Revise His Observation And Merely Say ‘give Me Death’-the Alternative Being Manifestly Impossible Under Modern Conditions.
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A Fairly Clear Line Separated Advertisement From Art. ... The First Effect Of The Triumph Of The Capitalist (if We Allow Him To Triumph) Will Be That That Line Of Demarcation Will Entirely Disappear. There Will Be No Art That Might Not Just As Well Be Advertisement.
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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.
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No Man Should Leave In The Universe Anything Of Which He Is Afraid.
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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.
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In Matters Of Truth The Fact That You Don't Want To Publish Something Is, Nine Times Out Of Ten, A Proof That You Ought To Publish It.
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Modern Toleration Is Really A Tyranny. It Is A Tyranny Because It Is A Silence.
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The Whole Secret Of Mysticism Is This: That Man Can Understand Everything By The Help Of Something He Cannot Understand.
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Man Seems To Be Capable Of Great Virtues But Not Of Small Virtues; Capable Of Defying His Torturer But Not Of Keeping His Temper.
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Romance Is The Combination Of Something That Is Strange With Something That Is Secure.
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[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."
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Correctitude Implies Nowadays A Formal Or Fastidious Use Of Words; And What Is Wanted Is Not So Much The Correct As The Living Use Of Words. It Is The Memory Of The Meaning Of A Word Which Is The Life Of The Word.
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There Are No Boring Subjects, Only Disinterested Minds.
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All The Exaggerations Are Right, If They Exaggerate The Right Thing.
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Do Not Look At The Faces In The Illustrated Papers. Look At The Faces In The Street.
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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.
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The Philosophy Of This World May Be Founded On Facts, But Its Business Is Run On Spiritual Impressions And Atmospheres.
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Circumstances Break Men's Bones; It Has Never Been Shown That They Break Men's Optimism.
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People Who Make History Know Nothing About History. You Can See That In The Sort Of History They Make.
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What Is The Good Of Telling A Community That It Has Every Liberty Except The Liberty To Make Laws? The Liberty To Make Laws Is What Constitutes A Free People.
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Nobody Notices Postmen, Yet They Have Passions Like Other Men.
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Among The Rich You Will Never Find A Really Generous Man Even By Accident. They May Give Their Money Away, But They Will Never Give Themselves Away; They Are Egotistic, Secretive, Dry As Old Bones. To Be Smart Enough To Get All That Money You Must Be Dull Enough To Want It.
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Real Development Is Not Leaving Things Behind, As On A Road, But Drawing Life From Them, As From A Root.
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The True Savage Is A Slave, And Is Always Talking About What He Must Do; The True Civilised Man Is A Free Man, And Is Always Talking About What He May Do.
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We Make Our Friends; We Make Our Enemies; But God Makes Our Next Door Neighbour.
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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.
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He Wondered Why The Pelican Was The Symbol Of Charity, Except It Was That It Wanted A Good Deal Of Charity To Admire A Pelican.
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All Architecture Is Great Architecture After Sunset.
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. . . For Friendship Implies Individuality; Whereas Comradeship Really Implies The Temporary Subordination, If Not The Temporary Swamping Of Individuality. Friends Are The Better For Being Two; But Comrades Are The Better For Being Two Million.
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My Brother, Cecil Edward Chesterton, Was Born When I Was About Five Years Old; And, After A Brief Pause, Began To Argue. He Continued To Argue To The End. I Am Glad To Think That Through All Those Years We Never Stopped Arguing; And We Never Once Quarreled. Perhaps The Principal Objection To A Quarrel Is That It Interrupts An Argument.
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I Do Not Know Much About Mohammed Or Mohammedanism. I Do Not Take The Koran To Bed With Me Every Night. But, If I Did On Some One Particular Night, There Is One Sense At Least In Which I Know What I Should Not Find There. I Apprehend That I Should Not Find The Work Abounding In Strong Encouragements To The Worship Of Idols; That The Praises Of Polytheism Would Not Be Loudly Sung; That The Character Of Mohammed Would Not Be Subjected To Anything Resembling Hatred And Derision; And That The Great Modern Doctrine Of The Unimportance Of Religion Would Not Be Needlessly Emphasised.
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The Old Religionist Cried Out For His God. The New Religionist Cries Out For Some God To Be His.
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If The Common Man In The Past Had A Grave Respect For Property, It May Conceivably Have Been Because He Sometimes Had Some Of His Own.
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Lord! What A Strange World In Which A Man Cannot Remain Unique Even By Taking The Trouble To Go Mad!
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Men
Mad
Teach To The Young, Men's Enduring Truths, And Let The Learned Amuse Themselves With Their Passing Errors.
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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.
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Luxury
Honor
Halls
Every Act Of Will Is An Act Of Self-limitation. To Desire Action Is To Desire Limitation. In That Sense, Every Act Is An Act Of Self-sacrifice. When You Choose Anything, You Reject Everything Else.
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Self
Desire
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All We Know Of The Missing Link Is That He Is Missing - And He Won't Be Missed Either.
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Knows
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.
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New Year
Eye
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Children
Growing Up
Of Being Strong And Brave. The Strong Can Not Be Brave. Only The Weak Can Be Brave; And Yet Again, In Practice, Only Those Who Can Be Brave Can Be Trusted, In Time Of Doubt, To Be Strong.
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Strong
Practice
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Children
Real
A Beetle May Or May Not Be Inferior To A Man - The Matter Awaits Demonstration; But If He Were Inferior By Ten Thousand Fathoms, The Fact Remains That There Is Probably A Beetle View Of Things Of Which A Man Is Entirely Ignorant. If He Wishes To Conceive That Point Of View, He Will Scarcely Reach It By Persistently Revelling In The Fact That He Is Not A Beetle.
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Men
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Literature
Earnest Freethinkers Need Not Worry Themselves So Much About The Persecutions Of The Past. Before The Liberal Idea Is Dead Or Triumphant We Shall See Wars And Persecutions The Like Of Which The World Has Never Seen.
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A Man Making The Confession Of Any Creed Worth Ten Minutes' Intelligent Talk, Is Always A Man Who Gains Something And Gives Up Something. So Long As He Does Both He Can Create: For He Is Making An Outline And A Shape.
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And Noah He Often Said To His Wife When He Sat Down To Dine, "i Don't Care Where The Water Goes If It Doesn't Get Into The Wine."
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It Is Largely Because The Free-thinkers, As A School, Have Hardly Made Up Their Minds Whether They Want To Be More Optimist Or More Pessimist Than Christianity That Their Small But Sincere Movement Has Failed.
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Movement
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Beautiful
Home
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Voice
Special
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Children
Fear
Ideas
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.
Men
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Pity
We Talk Of Wild Animals But Man Is The Only Wild Animal. It Is Man That Has Broken Out. All Other Animals Are Tame Animals; Following The Rugged Respectability Of The Tribe Or Type.
Animal
Men
Broken
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Adventure
Encounters
Flags
A Man Cannot Deserve Adventures; He Cannot Earn Dragons And Hippogriffs.
Adventure
Men
Dragons
Thieves Respect Property. They Merely Wish The Property To Become Their Property That They May More Perfectly Respect It.
Funny
Respect
Humor
Self-denial Is The Test And Definition Of Self-government.
Self
Government
Culture
What The World Wants, What The World Is Waiting For, Is Not Modern Poetry Or Classical Poetry Or Neo-classical Poetry - But Good Poetry. And The Dreadful Disreputable Doubt, Which Stirs In My Own Skeptical Mind, Is Doubt About Whether It Would Really Matter Much What Style A Poet Chose To Write In, In Any Period, As Long As He Wrote Good Poetry.
Writing
Long
Waiting
Sticking To One Woman Is A Small Price To Pay For So Much As Having Seen One Woman.
Pay
One Woman
To Mix Science Up With Philosophy Is Only To Produce A Philosophy That Has Lost All Its Ideal Value And A Science That Has Lost All Its Practical Value. It Is For My Private Physician To Tell Me Whether This Or That Food Will Kill Me. It Is For My Private Philosopher To Tell Me Whether I Ought To Be Killed.
Death
Philosophy
Science
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.
Children
Dark
Matter
There Are No Wise Few. Every Aristocracy That Has Ever Existed Has Behaved, In All Essential Points, Exactly Like A Small Mob.
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Essentials
Aristocracy
Civilization Has Run On Ahead Of The Soul Of Man, And Is Producing Faster Than He Can Think And Give Thanks.
Running
Men
Thinking
White... Is Not A Mere Absence Of Colour; It Is A Shining And Affirmative Thing, As Fierce As Red, As Definite As Black... God Paints In Many Colours; But He Never Paints So Gorgeously, I Had Almost Said So Gaudily, As When He Paints In White.
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Color White
Shining
A Good Novel Tells Us The Truth About Its Hero; But A Bad Novel Tells Us The Truth About Its Author.
Book
Reading
Hero
The Wine They Drink In Paradise They Make In Haute Lorraine.
Wine
Paradise
Drink
The Thing That Cannot Be Defined Is The First Thing; The Primary Fact.
Science
Technology
Firsts
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.
Christian
Grief
Holiday
And I Will Add This Point Of Merely Personal Experience Of Humanity: When Men Have A Real Explanation They Explain It, Eagerly And Copiously And In Common Speech, As Huxley Freely Gave It When He Thought He Had It. When They Have No Explanation To Offer, They Give Short Dignified Replies, Disdainful Of The Ignorance Of The Multitude.
Real
Ignorance
Men
To Complain That I Could Only Be Married Once Was Like Complaining That I Had Only Been Born Once.
Complaining
Married
Born
Youth Is Always Too Serious, And Just Now It Is Too Serious About Frivolity.
Serious
Youth
Frivolity
It Is Better To Speak Wisdom Foolishly Like The Saints Than To Speak Folly Wisely Like The Deans.
Education
Saint
Speak
With Every Step Of Our Lives We Enter Into The Middle Of Some Story Which We Are Certain To Misunderstand.
Stories
Steps
Middle
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.
Pride
Men
Political
We Need To Be Reminded More Than We Need To Be Instructed
Needs
Romance Is The Deepest Thing In Life. It Is Deeper Than Reality.
Reality
Things In Life
Romance
The Pure Modernist Is Merely A Snob; He Cannot Bear To Be A Month Behind The Fashion.
Fashion
Months
Bears
Truths Turn Into Dogmas The Minute They Are Disputed.
Truth
Lying
Dogma
I Have No Right To Think For Myself. I Have No Right To Think At All.
Thinking
The Object Of Opening The Mind, As Of Opening The Mouth, Is To Shut It Again On Something Solid.
Mind
Literature
Mouths
A Great Man Knows He Is Not God, And The Greater He Is The Better He Knows It.
Men
Great Men
Knows
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
Blessed Is He That Expecteth Nothing, For He Shall Be Gloriously Surprised.
Blessed
Expectations
In The Fairy Tale, An Incomprehensible Happiness Rests Upon An Incomprehensible Condition. A Box Is Opened And All Evils Fly Out. A Word Is Forgotten And Cities Perish. A Lamp Is Lit And Love Flies Away. An Apple Is Eaten And The Hope Of God Is Gone.
Apples
Cities
Evil
The Most Poetical Thing In The World Is Not Being Sick.
Sick
World
Being Sick
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?
Men
Fruit
Thieves
The Real Trouble With This World Of Ours Is Not That It Is An Unreasonable World, Nor Even That It Is A Reasonable One. The Commonest Kind Of Trouble Is That It Is Nearly Reasonable, But Not Quite. ... It Looks Just A Little More Mathematical And Regular Than It Is; Its Exactitude Is Obvious, But Its Inexactitude Is Hidden; Its Wilderness Lies In Wait.
Real
Lying
Waiting
A Man Does Not Know What He Is Saying Until He Knows What He Is Not Saying.
Knowledge
Men
Doe
A Citizen Can Hardly Distinguish Between A Tax And A Fine, Except That The Fine Is Generally Much Lighter.
Citizens
Economic
Fine
There Again," Said Syme Irritably, "what Is There Poetical About Being In Revolt? You Might As Well Say That It Is Poetical To Be Sea-sick. Being Sick Is A Revolt. Both Being Sick And Being Rebellious May Be The Wholesome Thing On Certain Desperate Occasions; But I'm Hanged If I Can See Why They Are Poetical...it Is Things Going Right," He Cried, "that Is Poetical! Our Digestions, For Instance, Going Sacredly And Silently Right, That Is The Foundation Of All Poetry...the Most Poetical Thing In The World Is Not Being Sick.
Sea
Sick
Foundation
If, Therefore, Nonsense Is Really To Be The Literature Of The Future, It Must Have Its Own Version Of The Cosmos To Offer; The World Must Not Only Be Tragic, Romantic, And Religious, It Must Be Nonsensical Also.
Religious
Cosmos
Literature
It Might Reasonably Be Maintained That The True Object Of All Human Life Is Play. Earth Is A Task Garden; Heaven Is A Playground. To Be At Last In Such Secure Innocence That One Can Juggle With The Universe And The Stars, To Be So Good That One Can Treat Everything As A Joke - That May Be, Perhaps, The Real End And Final Holiday Of Human Souls.
Faith
Stars
Real
To Do Mohammed Justice, His Main Attack Was Against The Idolatries Of Asia. Only He Thought, Just As The Arians Did And Just As The Unitarians Do, That He Could Attack Them Better With A Greater Approximation To Plain Theism. What Distinguishes His Heresy From Anything Like An Arian Or Albigensian Heresy Is That, As It Sprang Up On The Borders Of Christendom, It Could Spread Outwards To A Barbaric World.
Justice
Islam
Borders
There Are Two Kinds Of Charlatan: The Man Who Is Called A Charlatan, And The Man Who Really Is One. The First Is The Quack Who Cures You; The Second Is The Highly Qualified Person Who Doesn't.
Men
Two
Firsts
Surprise Is The Secret Of Joy.
Joy
Secret
Surprise
The One Stream Of Poetry Which Is Continually Flowing Is Slang.
Slang
Streams
One Can Hardly Think Too Little Of One's Self. One Can Hardly Think Too Much Of One's Soul.
Thinking
Self
Soul
In The Main, And From The Beginning Of Time, Mysticism Has Kept Men Sane. The Thing That Has Driven Them Mad Was Logic.
Men
Mad
Logic
All Men Thirst To Confess Their Crimes More Than Tired Beasts Thirst For Water; But They Naturally Object To Confessing Them While Other People, Who Have Also Committed The Same Crimes, Sit By And Laugh At Them.
Tired
Men
Water
A Good Joke Is The Closest Thing We Have To Divine Revelation.
Divine Revelation
Revelations
Theologian
Man Is Not Merely An Evolution But Rather A Revolution.
Faith
Inspiration
Men
Christianity Has Not Been Tried And Found Wanting; It Has Been Found Difficult And Not Tried.
Christian
Wisdom
Religious
Gluttony Is A Great Fault; But We Do Not Necessarily Dislike A Glutton. We Only Dislike The Glutton When He Becomes A Gourmet-that Is, We Only Dislike Him When He Not Only Wants The Best For Himself, But Knows What Is Best For Other People.
Food
People
Want
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.
Doubt
Enlightenment
Arrogant
Joy, Which Was The Small Publicity Of The Pagan, Is The Gigantic Secret Of The Christian.
Christian
Joy
Secret
A Mystic Is A Man Who Separates Heaven And Earth Even If He Enjoys Them Both.
Men
Heaven
Earth
Americans Have A Taste For…rocking-chairs. A Flippant Critic Might Suggest That They Select Rocking-chairs So That, Even When They Are Sitting Down, They Need Not Be Sitting Still. Something Of This Restlessness In The Race May Really Be Involved In The Matter; But I Think The Deeper Significance Of The Rocking-chair May Still Be Found In The Deeper Symbolism Of The Rocking-horse. I Think There Is Behind All This Fresh And Facile Use Of Wood A Certain Spirit That Is Childish In The Good Sense Of The Word; Something That Is Innocent, And Easily Pleased.
Horse
Thinking
Race
Silence Is The Unbearable Repartee.
Silence
Unbearable
Silence Is
Altruists, With Thin, Weak Voices, Denounce Christ As An Egoist. Egoists (with Even Thinner And Weaker Voices) Denounce Him As An Altruist.
Voice
Christ
Weak
I Never Could See Anything Wrong In Sensationalism; And I Am Sure Our Society Is Suffering More From Secrecy Than From Flamboyant Revelations.
Suffering
Our Society
Culture
Most Americans ... Have A Sort Of Permanent Intoxication From Within, A Sort Of Invisible Champagne.
Invisible
Champagne
Intoxication
I Owe My Success To Having Listened Respectfully To The Very Best Advice, And Then Going Away And Doing The Exact Opposite.
Inspirational
Motivational
Success
The Object Of A New Year Is Not That We Should Have A New Year, But Rather That We Should Have A New Soul.
Inspiring
New Year
Inspiration
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.
Men
Tea
Finals
When Belief In God Becomes Difficult, The Tendency Is To Turn Away From Him; But In Heaven's Name To What?
Names
Heaven
Belief
Playing As Children Means Playing Is The Most Serious Thing In The World.
Baby
Children
Mean
Adventure Is The Champagne Of Life, But I Prefer My Champagne And My Adventures Dry.
Adventure
Dry
Champagne
With All That We Hear Of American Hustle And Hurry, It Is Rather Strange That Americans Seem To Like To Linger On Longer Words.
Hustle
Culture
Strange
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.
Book
Ninety Nine
Law
You Can't Have The Family Farm Without The Family.
Economic
Family Farms
Farms
Free Verse'? You May As Well Call Sleeping In A Ditch 'free Architecture'.
Sleep
May
Architecture
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
Thinking
Church
Needs
Being A Success At Work Is Not Worth It If It Means Being A Failure At Home.
Home
Mean
Not Worth It
There Is No Such Thing As Success....that A Thing Is Successful Merely Means That It Is; A Millionaire Is Successful In Being A Millionaire And A Donkey In Being A Donkey.
Mean
Successful
Wealth
There Should Be A Burnished Tablet Let Into The Ground On The Spot Where Some Courageous Man First Ate Stilton Cheese, And Survived.
Courage
Men
Tablets
The Real Pleasure-seeking Is The Combination Of Luxury And Austerity In Such A Way That The Luxury Can Really Be Felt.
Happiness
Real
Pleasure Seeking
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.
Children
Philosophy
Passing On
Only Men To Whom The Family Is Sacred Will Ever Have A Standard Or A Status By Which To Criticize The State. They Alone Can Appeal To Something More Holy Than The Gods Of The City.
Family
Men
Cities
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.
Father
Mean
Men
And It Did For One Wild Moment Cross My Mind That, Perhaps, Those Might Not Be The Very Best Judges Of The Relation Of Religion To Happiness Who, By Their Own Account, Had Neither One Nor The Other.
Judging
Mind
Might
All Slang Is Metaphor, And All Metaphor Is Poetry.
Literature
Metaphor
Slang
I May Not Practice What I Preach But God Forbid I Should Preach What I Practice
Practice
Religion
May
And Though St. John Saw Many Strange Monsters In His Vision, He Saw No Creature So Wild As One Of His Own Commentators.
Vision
Monsters
Saws
How You Think When You Lose Determines How Long It Will Be Until You Win.
Encouragement
Clever
Failure
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