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[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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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[capitalism Is] That Commercial

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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[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.

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The Whole Modern World Has Divided Itself Into Conservatives And Progressives. The Business Of Progressives Is To Go On Making Mistakes. The Business Of Conservatives Is To Prevent Mistakes From Being Corrected.

If I Think The Universe Is Triangular, And You Think It Is Square, There Cannot Be Room For Two Universes. We May Argue Politely, We May Argue Humanely, We May Argue With Great Mutual Benefit: But, Obviously, We Must Argue.

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.

Where Does A Wise Man Hide A Leaf? In The Forest. But What Does He Do If There Is No Forest? He Grows A Forest To Hide It In.

Where Does A Wise Man Kick A Pebble? On The Beach. Where Does A Wise Man Hide A Leaf? In The Forest.

I Had Always Felt Life First As A Story: And If There Is A Story There Is A Story-teller

Why Do All The Clerks And Navvies In The Railway Trains Look So Sad And Tired, So Very Sad And Tired? I Will Tell You. It Is Because They Know That The Train Is Going Right. It Is Because They Know That Whatever Place They Have Taken A Ticket For That Place They Will Reach. It Is Because After They Have Passed Sloane Square They Know That The Next Station Must Be Victoria, And Nothing But Victoria. Oh, Their Wild Rapture! Oh, Their Eyes Like Stars And Their Souls Again In Eden, If The Next Station Were Unaccountably Baker Street!

Every Time A Man Knocks On A Brothel Door, He Is Really Knocking For God

The Original Quality In Any Man Of Imagination Is Imagery.

One Pleasure Attached To Growing Older Is That Many Things Seem To Be Growing Younger; Growing Fresher And More Lively Than We Once Supposed Them To Be.

Large Organization Is Loose Organization. Nay, It Would Be Almost As True To Say That Organization Is Always Disorganization.

I Defy Anybody To Say What Are The Rights Of A Citizen, If They Do Not Include The Control Of His Own Diet In Relation To His Own Health.

It Has Always Been One Of My Unclerical Sermons To Myself, That That Remark Which Peter Made On Seeing The Vision Of A Single Hour, Ought To Be Made By Us All, In Contemplating Every Panoramic Change In The Long Vision We Call Life... "it Is Good For Us To Be Here - It Is Good For Us To Be Here", Repeating Itself Eternally.

The Woman Does Not Work Because The Man Tells Her To Work And She Obeys. On The Contrary, The Woman Works Because She Has Told The Man To Work And He Hasn’t Obeyed.

We Can Be Almost Certain Of Being Wrong About The Future, If We Are Wrong About The Past.

People Seem To Fight About Things Very Unsuitable For Fighting. They Make A Frightful Noise In Support Of Very Quiet Things. They Knock Each Other About In The Name Of Very Fragile Things.

Art Is Limitation; The Essence Of Every Picture Is The Frame. If You Draw A Giraffe, You Must Draw Him With A Long Neck. If In Your Bold Creative Way You Hold Yourself Free To Draw A Giraffe With A Short Neck, You Will Really Find That You Are Not Free To Draw A Giraffe.

One Of The Deepest And Strangest Of All Human Moods Is The Mood Which Will Suddenly Strike Us Perhaps In A Garden At Night, Or Deep In Sloping Meadows, The Feeling That Every Flower And Leaf Has Just Uttered Something Stupendously Direct And Important, And That We Have By A Prodigy Of Imbecility Not Heard Or Understood It. There Is A Certain Poetic Value, And That A Genuine One, In This Sense Of Having Missed The Full Meaning Of Things. There Is Beauty, Not Only In Wisdom, But In This Dazed And Dramatic Ignorance.

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

And All Over The World, The Old Literature, The Popular Literature, Is The Same. It Consists Of Very Dignified Sorrow And Very Undignified Fun. Its Sad Tales Are Of Broken Hearts; Its Happy Tales Are Of Broken Heads.

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.

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.

It Is Absurd For The Evolutionist To Complain That It Is Unthinkable For An Admittedly Unthinkable God To Make Everything Out Of Nothing And Then Pretend That It Is More Thinkable That Nothing Should Turn Itself Into Everything.

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

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

The Disadvantage Of Men Not Knowing The Past Is That They Do Not Know The Present. History Is A Hill Or High Point Of Vantage, From Which Alone Men See The Town In Which They Live Or The Age In Which They Are Living.

Buddhism Is Not A Creed, It Is A Doubt.

To Downgrade The Human Mind Is Bad Theology.

The Objection To Fairy Stories Is That They Tell Children There Are Dragons. But Children Have Always Known There Are Dragons. Fairy Stories Tell Children That Dragons Can Be Killed.

For The Only Courage Worth Calling Courage Must Necessarily Mean That The Soul Passes A Breaking Point And Does Not Break.

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.

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

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

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.

The More We Are Certain What Good Is, The More We Shall See Good In Everything.

No Man Who Worships Education Has Got The Best Out Of Education... Without A Gentle Contempt For Education No Man's Education Is Complete.

A Great Curse Has Fallen Upon Modern Life With The Discovery Of The Vastness Of The Word Education.

The Hands That Had Made The Sun And Stars Were Too Small To Reach The Huge Heads Of The Cattle. Upon This Paradox, We Might Almost Say Upon This Jest, All The Literature Of Our Faith Is Founded.

Whatever Else We May Say Of Our Own Age, For Good Or Evil, Nobody Is Likely To Call It An Age Of Reason.

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

I Agree With The Realistic Irishman Who Said He Preferred To Prophesy After The Event.

The Doctrine Of Human Equality Reposes On This: That There Is No Man Really Clever Who Has Not Found That He Is Stupid.

There Is A Certain Poetic Value, And That A Genuine One, In This Sense Of Having Missed The Full Meaning Of Things. There Is Beauty, Not Only In Wisdom, But In This Dazed And Dramatic Ignorance.

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

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.

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.

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

Political Speeches

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

The Honest Poor Can Sometimes Forget Poverty. The Honest Rich Can Never Forget It.

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.

Being A Success At Work Is Not Worth It If It Means Being A Failure At Home.

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.

The Truth Is That It Is Our Attitude Towards Children That Is Right, And Our Attitude Towards Grown-up People That Is Wrong. Our Attitude Towards Our Equals In Age Consists In A Servile Solemnity, Overlying A Considerable Degree Of Indifference Or Disdain. Our Attitude Towards Children Consists In A Condescending Indulgence, Overlying An Unfathomable Respect.

Surprise Is The Secret Of Joy.

The Golden Age Only Comes To Men When They Have Forgotten Gold.

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 Materialist Theory Of History, That All Politics And Ethics Are The Expression Of Economics, Is A Very Simple Fallacy Indeed. It Consists Simply Of Confusing The Necessary Conditions Of Life With The Normal Preoccupations Of Life, That Are Quite A Different Thing.

A Naked Moon Stood In A Naked Sky.

I Owe My Success To Having Listened Respectfully To The Very Best Advice, And Then Going Away And Doing The Exact Opposite.

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

The Theory Of Free Speech, That Truth Is So Much Larger And Stranger And More Many-sided Than We Know Of, That It Is Very Much Better At All Costs To Hear Everyone's Account Of It, Is A Theory Which Has Been Justified On The Whole By Experiment, But Which Remains A Very Daring And Even A Very Surprising Theory. It Is Really One Of The Great Discoveries Of The Modern Time.

The Vulgar Man Is Always The Most Distinguished, For The Very Desire To Be Distinguished Is Vulgar.

Women Are The Only Realists; Their Whole Object In Life Is To Pit Their Realism Against The Extravagant, Excessive, And Occasionally Drunken Idealism Of Men.

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.

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

Aristocracy Is An Atmosphere; It Is Sometimes A Healthy Atmosphere; But It Is Very Hard To Say When It Becomes An Unhealthy Atmosphere. You Can Prove That A Man Is Not The Son Of A King, Or That He Is Not The Delegate Of A Definite Number Of People. But You Cannot Prove That A Man Is Not A Gentleman.

Only Friendliness Produces Friendship. And We Must Look Far Deeper Into The Soul Of Man For The Thing That Produces Friendliness.

There Is More To Life Than Increasing Its Speed. Gandhi Gave My Life To Become The Person I Am Right Now. Was It Worth It? Richard Bach Life Exists For The Love Of Music Or Beautiful Things.

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.

It Is The Chief Value Of Legend To Mix Up The Centuries While Preserving The Sentiment.

To Be Simple Is The Best Thing In The World; To Be Modest Is The Next Best Thing. I Am Not Sure About Being Quiet.

Education Is Implication. It Is Not The Things You Say Which Children Respect; When You Say Things, They Very Commonly Laugh And Do The Opposite. It Is The Things You Assume Which Really Sink Into Them. It Is The Things You Forget Even To Teach That They Learn.

These Are The Things Which Might Conceivably And Truly Make Men Forgive Their Enemies. We Can Only Turn Hate To Love By Understanding What Are The Things That Men Have Loved; Nor Is It Necessary To Ask Men To Hate Their Loves In Order To Love One Another. Just As Two Grocers Are Most Likely To Be Reconciled When They Remember For A Moment That They Are Two Fathers, So Two Nationals Are Most Likely To Be Reconciled When They Remember (if Only For A Moment) That They Are Two Patriots.

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.

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 Truth Is That There Are No Things For Which Men Will Make Such Herculean Efforts As The Things Of Which They Know They Are Unworthy.

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.

It Is Much Easier To Write A Good Times Leading Article Than A Good Joke In Punch.

There Are A Great Many Good People, And A Great Many Sane People Here This Afternoon. Unfortunately, By A Kind Of Coincidence, All The Good People Are Mad, And All The Sane People Are Wicked.

The Poet Only Asks To Get His Head Into The Heavens. It Is The Logician Who Seeks To Get The Heavens Into His Head. And It Is His Head That Splits.

How Quickly Revolutions Grow Old; And, Worse Still, Respectable.

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.

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.

The Humorous Look Of Children Is Perhaps The Most Endearing Of All The Bonds That Hold The Cosmos Together. Their Top-heavy Dignity Is More Touching Than Any Humility; Their Solemnity Gives Us More Hope For All Things Than A Thousand Carnivals Of Optimism; Their Large And Lustrous Eyes Seem To Hold All The Stars In Their Astonishment; Their Fascinating Absence Of Nose Seems To Give To Us The Most Perfect Hint Of The Humour That Awaits Us In The Kingdom Of Heaven.

The Modern World Is A Crowd Of Very Rapid Racing Cars All Brought To A Standstill And Stuck In A Block Of Traffic.

The Whole Truth Is Generally The Ally Of Virtue; A Half-truth Is Always The Ally Of Some Vice.

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

Now There Is Any Amount Of This Nonsense Cropping Up Among American Cranks. Anybody May Propose To Establish Coercive Eugenics; Or Enforce Psychoanalysis That Is, Enforce Confession Without Absolution.

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.

Cruelty Is, Perhaps, The Worst Kid Of Sin. Intellectual Cruelty Is Certainly The Worst Kind Of Cruelty.

There Are Two Ways Of Dealing With Nonsense In This World. One Way Is To Put Nonsense In The Right Place; As When People Put Nonsense Into Nursery Rhymes. The Other Is To Put Nonsense In The Wrong Place; As When They Put It Into Educational Addresses, Psychological Criticisms, And Complaints Against Nursery Rhymes Or Other Normal Amusements Of Mankind.

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 Still Think Sincere Pessimism The Unpardonable Sin.

The Old Restriction Meant That Only The Orthodox Were Allowed To Discuss Religion. Modern Liberty Means That Nobody Is Allowed To Discuss It. Good Taste, The Last And Vilest Of Human Superstitions, Has Succeeded In Silencing Us Where All The Rest Have Failed.

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

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.

A New Philosophy Generally Means In Practice The Praise Of Some Old Vice.

The Great Intellectual Tradition That Comes Down To Us From The Past Was Never Interrupted Or Lost Through Such Trifles As The Sack Of Rome, The Triumph Of Attila, Or All The Barbarian Invasions Of The Dark Ages. It Was Lost After The Introduction Of Printing, The Discovery Of America, The Founding Of The Royal Society, And All The Enlightenment Of The Renaissance And The Modern World. It Was There, If Anywhere, That There Was Lost Or Impatiently Snapped The Long Thin Delicate Thread That Had Descended From Distant Antiquity; The Thread Of That Unusual Human Hobby: The Habit Of Thinking.

There Is Nothing Harder To Learn Than Painting And Nothing Which Most People Take Less Trouble About Learning. An Art School Is A Place Where About Three People Work With Feverish Energy And Everybody Else Idles To A Degree That I Should Have Conceived Unattainable By Human Nature.

You've Got That Eternal Idiotic Idea That If Anarchy Came It Would Come From The Poor. Why Should It? The Poor Have Been Rebels, But They Have Never Been Anarchists; They Have More Interest Than Any One Else In There Being Some Decent Government. The Poor Man Really Has A Stake In The Country. The Rich Man Hasn't; He Can Go Away To New Guinea In A Yacht. The Poor Have Sometimes Been Objected To Being Governed Badly; The Rich Have Always Objected To Being Governed At All. Aristocrats Were Always Anarchists, As You Can See From The Barons' Wars.

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

If You Convey To A Woman That Something Ought To Be Done, There Is Always A Dreadful Danger That She Will Suddenly Do It.

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.

My Attitude Toward Progress Has Passed From Antagonism To Boredom. I Have Long Ceased To Argue With People Who Prefer Thursday To Wednesday Because It Is Thursday.

Though The Academic Authorities Are Actually Proud Of Conducting Everything By Means Of Examinations, They Seldom Indulge In What Religious People Used To Descibe As Self-examination. The Consequence Is That The Modern State Has Educated Its Citizens In A Series Of Ephemeral Fads.

The Best Kind Of Giving Is Thanksgiving.

It Is A Strange Thing That Many Truly Spiritual Men, Such As General Gordon, Have Actually Spent Some Hours In Speculating Upon The Precise Location Of The Garden Of Eden. Most Probably We Are In Eden Still. It Is Only Our Eyes That Have Changed.

Price Is A Crazy And Incalculable Thing, While Value Is An Intrinsic And Indestructible Thing.

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

Internationalism

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.

Nothing Is Certain By Uncertainty.

A Stiff Apology Is A Second Insult... The Injured Party Does Not Want To Be Compensated Because He Has Been Wronged; He Wants To Be Healed Because He Has Been Hurt.

Paradox - Truth Standing On Her Head To Get Attention.

It Is Always The Secure Who Are Humble.

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

It Is Very Foolish Of A Man To Be Frightened Of A Skeleton, For Nature Has Put An Insurmountable Obstacle Against Running Away From It.

And They That Rule In England, In Stately Conclaves Met, Alas, Alas For England They Have No Graves As Yet.

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?

Sticking To One Woman Is A Small Price To Pay For So Much As Having Seen One Woman.

I Would Maintain That Thanks Are The Highest Form Of Thought; And That Gratitude Is Happiness Doubled By Wonder.

What We Call Emancipation Is Always And Of Necessity Simply The Free Choice Of The Soul Between One Set Of Limitations And Another.

St Thomas (aqinas) Loved Books And Lived On Books... When Asked For What He Thanked God Most, He Answered Simply, ‘i Have Understood Every Page I Ever Read’.

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.

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

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

Christianity Got Over The Difficulty Of Combining Furious Opposites, By Keeping Them Both, And Keeping Them Both Furious.

There Is The Great Lesson Of 'beauty And The Beast,' That A Thing Must Be Loved Before It Is Lovable.

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.

A Great Classic Means A Man Whom One Can Praise Without Having Read.

If There Is One Thing Worse Than The Modern Weakening Of Major Morals, It Is The Modern Strengthening Of Minor Morals.

Before The Gods That Made The Gods Had Seen Their Sunrise Pass, The White Horse Of The White Horse Vale Was Cut Out Of The Grass.

The Whole Order Of Things Is As Outrageous As Any Miracle Which Could Presume To Violate It.

Poets Do Not Go Mad; But Chess-players Do. Mathematicians Go Mad, And Cashiers; But Creative Artists Very Seldom. I Am Not, As Will Be Seen, In Any Sense Attacking Logic: I Only Say That This Danger Does Lie In Logic, Not In Imagination.

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.

You'll Never Find The Solution If You Don't See The Problem.

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

The Object Of A New Year Is Not That We Should Have A New Year, But Rather That We Should Have A New Soul.

Who Would Condescend To Strike Down The Mere Things That He Does Not Fear? Who Would Debase Himself To Be Merely Brave, Like Any Common Prizefighter? Who Would Stoop To Be Fearless--like A Tree? Fight The Thing That You Fear. You Remember The Old Tale Of The English Clergyman Who Gave The Last Rites To The Brigand Of Sicily, And How On His Death-bed The Great Robber Said, 'i Can Give You No Money, But I Can Give You Advice For A Lifetime: Your Thumb On The Blade, And Strike Upwards.' So I Say To You, Strike Upwards, If You Strike At The Stars.

Tolerance Is A Virtue Of People Who Don't Believe In Anything Anymore.

A Faith Is That Which Is Able To Survive A Mood.

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

The Truth Is, Of Course, That The Curtness Of The Ten Commandments Is An Evidence, Not Of The Gloom And Narrowness Of A Religion, But, On The Contrary, Of Its Liberality And Humanity. It Is Shorter To State The Things Forbidden Than The Things Permitted; Precisely Because Most Things Are Permitted, And Only A Few Things Are Forbidden.

Modern Science Is Necessarily A Double-edged Tool, A Tool That Cuts Both Ways. ... There Is No Doubt That A Zeppelin Is A Wonderful Thing; But That Did Not Prevent It From Becoming A Horrible Thing.

It Is Easy To Be Heavy: Hard To Be Light.

It Is Quite An Old-fashioned Fallacy To Suppose That Our Objection To Scepticism Is That It Removes The Discipline From Life. Our Objection To Scepticism Is That It Removes The Motive Power. Materialism Is Not A Thing Which Destroys Mere Restraint. Materialism Itself Is The Great Restraint.

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

The Comedy Of Man Survives The Tragedy Of Man.

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

We Talk Of Wild Animals, But The Wildest Animal Is Man.

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.

Idolatry Is Committed, Not Merely By Setting Up False Gods, But Also By Setting Up False Devils; By Making Men Afraid Of War Or Alcohol, Or Economic Law, When They Should Be Afraid Of Spiritual Corruption And Cowardice.

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

We Ought To Be Interested In That Darkest And Most Real Part Of A Man In Which Dwell Not The Vices That He Does Not Display, But The Virtues That He Cannot.

At The Back Of Our Brains Is A Blaze Of Astonishment At Our Own Existence. The Object Of The Artistic And Spiritual Life Is To Dig For This Sunrise Of Wonder.

A Man Must Be Orthodox Upon Most Things, Or He Will Never Even Have Time To Preach His Own Heresy.

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

Every Remedy Is A Desperate Remedy. Every Cure Is A Miraculous Cure. Curing A Madman Is Not Arguing With A Philosopher; It Is Casting Out A Devil.

The More I Considered Christianity, The More I Found That While It Had Established A Rule And Order, The Chief Aim Of That Order Was To Give Room For Good Things To Run Wild.

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.

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.

Science Is The Study Of The Admitted Laws Of Existence, Which Cannot Prove A Universal Negative About Whether Those Laws Could Ever Be Suspended By Something Admittedly Above Them. It Is As If We Were To Say That A Lawyer Was So Deeply Learned In The American Constitution That He Knew There Could Never Be A Revolution In America.

I Tell You Naught For Your Comfort, Yea, Naught For Your Desire, Save That The Sky Grows Darker Yet And The Sea Rises Higher.

Hope Means Hoping When Things Are Hopeless, Or It Is No Virtue At All... As Long As Matters Are Really Hopeful, Hope Is Mere Flattery Or Platitude; It Is Only When Everything Is Hopeless That Hope Begins To Be A Strength.

Facts As Facts Do Not Always Create A Spirit Of Reality, Because Reality Is A Spirit.

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

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

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

Progress Of Society

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.

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 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.

Civilisation Is Not To Be Judged By The Rapidity Of Communication, But By The Value Of What Is Communicated.

Any One Thinking Of The Holy Child As Born In December Would Mean By It Exactly What We Mean By It; That Christ Is Not Merely A Summer Sun Of The Prosperous But A Winter Fire For The Unfortunate.

It Has Been Left To The Last Christians, Or Rather To The First Christians Fully Committed To Blaspheming And Denying Christianity, To Invent A New Kind Of Worship Of Sex, Which Is Not Even A Worship Of Life. It Has Been Left To The Very Latest Modernists To Proclaim An Erotic Religion Which At Once Exalts Lust And Forbids Fertility . . . The New Priests Abolish The Fatherhood And Keep The Feast - To Themselves.

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

The Atheist Is Not Interested In Anything Except Attacks On Atheism.

We're All In The Same Boat, And We're All Seasick.

Folk-lore Means That The Soul Is Sane, But That The Universe Is Wild And Full Of Marvels. Realism Means That The World Is Dull And Full Of Routine, But That The Soul Is Sick And Screaming. The Problem Of The Fairy Tale Is: What Will A Healthy Man Do With A Fantastic World? The Problems Of The Modern Novel Is: What Will A Madman Do With A Dull World? In The Fairy Tales The Cosmos Goes Mad; But The Hero Does Not Go Mad. In The Modern Novels The Hero Is Mad Before The Book Begins, And Suffers From The Harsh Steadiness And Cruel Sanity Of The Cosmos.

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.

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

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

The One Perfectly Divine Thing, The One Glimpse Of God's Paradise Given On Earth, Is To Fight A Losing Battle - And Not Lose It.

If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Badly. (on Not Perfectionism To Put Things Off) .

When People Talk As If The Crusades Were Nothing More Than An Aggressive Raid Against Islam, They Seem To Forget In The Strangest Way That Islam Itself Was Only An Aggressive Raid Against The Old And Ordered Civilization In These Parts. I Do Not Say It In Mere Hostility To The Religion Of Mahomet; I Am Fully Conscious Of Many Values And Virtues In It; But Certainly It Was Islam That Was The Invasion And Christendom That Was The Thing Invaded.

Those Who Leave The Tradition Of Truth Do Not Escape Into Something Which We Call Freedom. They Only Escape Into Something Else, Which We Call Fashion.

There Are Those Who Hate Christianity And Call Their Hatred An All-embracing Love For All Religions.

If There Is A God

Christian Inspirational

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

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.

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.

He Is A [sane] Man Who Can Have Tragedy In His Heart And Comedy In His Head.

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

Each Generation Is Converted By The Saint Who Contradicts It Most.

Virtue Is Not The Absence Of Vices Or The Avoidance Of Moral Dangers; Virtue Is A Vivid And Separate Thing, Like Pain Or A Particular Smell.

Lord! What A Strange World In Which A Man Cannot Remain Unique Even By Taking The Trouble To Go Mad!

There Have Been Household Gods And Household Saints And Household Fairies. I Am Not Sure That There Have Yet Been Any Factory Gods Or Factory Saints Or Factory Fairies. I May Be Wrong, As I Am No Commericial Expert, But I Have Not Heard Of Them As Yet.

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

Most Americans Are Born Drunk, And Really Require A Little Wine Or Beer To Sober Them.

I May Not Practice What I Preach But God Forbid I Should Preach What I Practice

"the Universe Repeats Itself, With The Possible Exception Of History." Of All Earthly Studies History Is The Only One That Does Not Repeat Itself. ... Astronomy Repeats Itself; Botany Repeats Itself; Trigonometry Repeats Itself; Mechanics Repeats Itself; Compound Long Division Repeats Itself. Every Sum If Worked Out In The Same Way At Any Time Will Bring Out The Same Answer. ... A Great Many Moderns Say That History Is A Science; If So It Occupies A Solitary And Splendid Elevation Among The Sciences; It Is The Only Science The Conclusions Of Which Are Always Wrong.

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.

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