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Children Are Simply Human Beings Who Are Allowed To Do What Everyone Else Really Desires To Do, As For Instance, To Fly Kites, Or When Seriously Wronged To Emit Prolonged Screams For Several Minutes.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Children Are Simply Human

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Children Are Simply Human Beings Who Are Allowed To Do What Everyone Else Really Desires To Do, As For Instance, To Fly Kites, Or When Seriously Wronged To Emit Prolonged Screams For Several Minutes.

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

Is Ditchwater Dull? Naturalists With Microscopes Have Told Me That It Teems With Quiet Fun.

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

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.

Man Is An Exception, Whatever Else He Is. If He Is Not The Image Of God, Then He Is A Disease Of The Dust. If It Is Not True That A Divine Being Fell, Then We Can Only Say That One Of The Animals Went Entirely Off Its Head.

The Man Who Says, 'my Country Right Or Wrong' Is Like The Man Who Says, 'my Mother Drunk Or Sober'

A Man Looking At A Hippopotamus May Sometimes Be Tempted To Regard A Hippopotamus As An Enormous Mistake; But He Is Also Bound To Confess That A Fortunate Inferiority Prevents Him Personally From Making Such Mistakes.

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

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

When Men Have Come To The Edge Of A Precipice, It Is The Lover Of Life Who Has The Spirit To Leap Backwards, And Only The Pessimist Who Continues To Believe In Progress.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Man's Minor Actions And Arrangements Ought To Be Free, Flexible, Creative; The Things That Should Be Unchangeable Are His Principles, His Ideals. But With Us The Reverse Is True; Our Views Change Constantly; But Our Lunch Does Not Change. Now, I Should Like Men To Have Strong And Rooted Conceptions, But As For Their Lunch, Let Them Have It Sometimes In The Garden, Sometimes In Bed, Sometimes On The Roof, Sometimes In The Top Of A Tree. Let Them Argue From The Same First Principles, But Let Them Do It In A Bed, Or A Boat, Or A Balloon.

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

As For The General View That The Church Was Discredited By The War—they Might As Well Say That The Ark Was Discredited By The Flood. When The World Goes Wrong, It Proves Rather That The Church Is Right. The Church Is Justified, Not Because Her Children Do Not Sin, But Because They Do.

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

Tolerance Is The Virtue Of Those Who Don't Believe Anything.

The Thing That Cannot Be Defined Is The First Thing; The Primary Fact.

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.

I Am Concerned With A Certain Way Of Looking At Life, Which Was Created In Me By The Fairy Tales, But Has Since Been Meekly Ratified By The Mere Facts.

Criticism Is Only Words About Words, And Of What Use Are Words About Such Words As These?

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

A Modern Vegetarian Is Also A Teetotaler, Yet There Is No Obvious Connection Between Consuming Vegetables And Not Consuming Fermented Vegetables. A Drunkard, When Lifted Laboriously Out Of The Gutter, Might Well Be Heard Huskily To Plead That He Had Fallen There Through Excessive Devotion To A Vegetable Diet.

Experience Which Was Once Claimed By The Aged Is Now Claimed Exclusively By The Young.

Every Heresy Has Been An Effort To Narrow The Church.

Honour Is A Luxury For Aristocrats, But It Is A Necessity For Hall-porters.

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

We Do Not Need To Get Good Laws To Restrain Bad People. We Need To Get Good People To Restrain Us From Bad Laws.

Chastity Does Not Mean Abstention From Sexual Wrong; It Means Something Flaming, Like Joan Of Arc.

There's A Lot Of Difference Between Listening And Hearing.

Listening And Hearing

I Think The Oddest Thing About The Advanced People Is That, While They Are Always Talking About Things As Problems, They Have Hardly Any Notion Of What A Real Problem Is.

I Wish We Could Sometimes Love The Characters In Real Life As We Love The Characters In Romances. There Are A Great Many Human Souls Whom We Should Accept More Kindly, And Even Appreciate More Clearly, If We Simply Thought Of Them As People In A Story.

It Is Not Funny That Anything Else Should Fall Down; Only That A Man Should Fall Down... Why Do We Laugh? Because It Is A Grave Religious Matter: It Is The Fall Of Man. Only Man Can Be Absurd: For Only Man Can Be Dignified.

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.

Evil Always Wins Through The Strength Of Its Splendid Dupes; And There Has In All Ages Been A Disastrous Alliance Between Abnormal Innocence And Abnormal Sin.

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

Nine Times Out Of Ten It Is The Coarse Word That Condemns An Evil, And The Refined Word That Excuses It.

You Can Only Find Truth With Logic If You Have Already Found Truth Without It.

A Good Civilisation Spreads Over Us Freely Like A Tree, Varying And Yielding Because It Is Alive. A Bad Civilisation Stands Up And Sticks Out Above Us Like An Umbrella-artificial, Mathematical In Shape; Not Merely Universal, But Uniform.

The Free Man Owns Himself. He Can Damage Himself With Either Eating Or Drinking; He Can Ruin Himself With Gambling. If He Does He Is Certainly A Damn Fool, And He Might Possibly Be A Damned Soul; But If He May Not, He Is Not A Free Man Any More Than A Dog.

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.

Democracy Means Government By The Uneducated, While Aristocracy Means Government By The Badly Educated.

If We Are Bound To Improve, We Need Not Trouble To Improve. The Pure Doctrine Of Progress Is The Best Of All Reasons For Not Being A Progressive.

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

I Was Planning To Go Into Architecture. But When I Arrived, Architecture Was Filled Up. Acting Was Right Next To It, So I Signed Up For Acting Instead.

There Are Two Kinds Of People In The World, The Conscious Dogmatists And The Unconscious Dogmatists. I Have Always Found Myself That The Unconscious Dogmatists Were By Far The Most Dogmatic.

A Strange Fanaticism Fills Our Time: The Fanatical Hatred Of Morality, Especially Of Christian Morality.

Silence Is The Unbearable Repartee.

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.

Reason Is Itself A Matter Of Faith. It Is An Act Of Faith To Assert That Our Thoughts Have Any Relation To Reality At All.

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

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.

No One Can Understand Paris And Its History Who Does Not Understand That Its Fierceness Is The Balance And Justification Of Its Frivolity. It Is Called A City Of Pleasure; But It May Also Very Specially Be Called A City Of Pain. The Crown Of Roses Is Also A Crown Of Thorns. Its People Are Too Prone To Hurt Others, But Quite Ready Also To Hurt Themselves. They Are Martyrs For Religion, They Are Martyrs For Irreligion; They Are Even Martyrs For Immorality.

There Are No Rules Of Architecture For A Castle In The Clouds.

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.

Hope Means Expectancy When Things Are Otherwise Hopeless.

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

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.

The Last Few Decades Have Been Marked By A Special Cultivation Of The Romance Of The Future. We Seem To Have Made Up Our Minds To Misunderstand What Has Happened; And We Turn, With A Sort Of Relief, To Stating What Will Happen-which Is Apparently Much Easier...the Modern Mind Is Forced Towards The Future By A Certain Sense Of Fatigue, Not Unmixed With Terror, With Which It Regards The Past.

Real Development Is Not Leaving Things Behind, As On A Road, But Drawing Life From Them, As From A Root.

Being 'contented' Ought To Mean In English, As It Does In French, Being Pleased. Being Content With An Attic Ought Not To Mean Being Unable To Move From It And Resigned To Living In It; It Ought To Mean Appreciating All There Is In Such A Position.

An Imbecile Habit Has Arisen In Modern Controversy Of Saying That Such And Such A Creed Can Be Held In One Age But Cannot Be Held In Another. Some Dogma, We Are Told, Was Credible In The Twelfth Century, But Is Not Credible In The Twentieth. You Might As Well Say That A Certain Philosophy Can Be Believed On Mondays, But Cannot Be Believed On Tuesdays. You Might As Well Say Of A View Of The Cosmos That It Was Suitable To Half-past Three, But Not Suitable To Half-past Four. What A Man Can Believe Depends Upon His Philosophy, Not Upon The Clock Or The Century.

The Word 'heresy' Not Only Means No Longer Being Wrong; It Practically Means Being Clear-headed And Courageous. The Word 'orthodoxy' Not Only No Longer Means Being Right; It Practically Means Being Wrong

Dogma Is Actually The Only Thing That Cannot Be Separated From Education. It Is Education. A Teacher Who Is Not Dogmatic Is Simply A Teacher Who Is Not Teaching. There Are No Uneducated People; Only Most People Are Educated Wrong. The True Task Of Culture Today Is Not A Task Of Expansion, But Of Selection-and-rejection. The Educationist Must Find A Creed And Teach It.

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

The People Has No Definite Disbelief In The Temples Of Theology. The People Has A Very Fiery And Practical Disbelief In The Temples Of Physical Science.

The Vault Above Us Is Not Deaf Because The Universe Is An Idiot; The Silence Is Not The Heartless Silence Of An Endless And Aimless World. Rather The Silence Around Us Is A Small And Pitiful Stillness Like The Prompt Stillness Of A Sick Room. We Are Perhaps Permitted Tragedy As A Sort Of Merciful Comedy, Because The Frantic Energy Of Divine Things Would Knock Us Down Like A Drunken Farce. We Can Take Our Own Tears More Lightly Than We Could Take The Tremendous Levities Of The Angels. So We Sit Perhaps In A Starry Chamber Of Silence While The Laughter Of The Heavens Is Too Loud For Us To Hear.

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.

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

For Fear Of The Newspapers Politicians Are Dull, And At Last They Are Too Dull Even For The Newspapers.

The Museum Is Not Meant Either For The Wanderer To See By Accident Or For The Pilgrim To See With Awe. It Is Meant For The Mere Slave Of A Routine Of Self- Education To Stuff Himself With Every Sort Of Incongruous Intellectual Food In One Indigestible Meal.

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

Romance Is The Deepest Thing In Life. It Is Deeper Than Reality.

We Call A Man A Bigot Or A Slave Of Dogma Because He Is A Thinker Who Has Thought Thoroughly And To A Definite End.

Against A Dark Sky, All Flowers Look Like Fireworks.

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.

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.

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

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

Every One On This Earth Should Believe, Amid Whatever Madness Or Moral Failure, That His Life And Temperament Have Some Object On The Earth. Every One On The Earth Should Believe That He Has Something To Give To The World Which Cannot Otherwise Be Given.

The Pure Modernist Is Merely A Snob; He Cannot Bear To Be A Month Behind The Fashion.

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

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

Childlike Faith

For Religion All Men Are Equal, As All Pennies Are Equal, Because The Only Value Of Any Of Them Is That They Bear The Image Of The King.

I Do Not Believe That Any Human Being Is Fundamentally Happier For Being Finally Lost In A Crowd, Even If It Is Called A Crowd Of Comrades.

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

[paradox Is] Truth Standing On Its Head To Gain Attention.

If I Can Put One Touch Of Rosy Sunset Into The Life Of Any Man Or Woman, I Shall Feel That I Have Worked With God.

I Need Not Pause To Explain That Crime Is Not A Disease. It Is Criminology That Is A Disease.

Some Of The Most Frantic Lies On The Face Of Life Are Told With Modesty And Restraint; For The Simple Reason That Only Modesty And Restraint Will Save Them.

It Was The Mystical Dogma Of Bentham And Adam Smith And The Rest, That Some Of The Worst Of Human Passions Would Turn Out To Be All For The Best. It Was The Mysterious Doctrine That Selfishness Would Do The Work Of Unselfishness.

For Good Or Evil, A Line Has Been Passed In Our Political History; And Something That We Have Known All Our Lives Is Dead. I Will Take Only One Example Of It: Our Politicians Can No Longer Be Caricatured.

An Almost Unnatural Vigilance Is Really Required Of The Citizen Because Of The Horrible Rapidity With Which Human Institutions Grow Old.

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

Variability Is One Of The Virtues Of A Woman. It Avoids The Crude Requirement Of Polygamy. So Long As You Have One Good Wife You Are Sure To Have A Spiritual Harem".

Progress Is The Mother Of Problems.

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.

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

There Is Only One Thing That Stands In Our Midst, Attenuated And Threatened, But Enthroned In Some Power Like A Ghost Of The Middle Ages: The Trade Unions.

Political Economy Means That Everybody Except Politicians Must Be Economical.

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

Every Work Of Art Has One Indispensable Mark ... The Center Of It Is Simple, However Much The Fulfillment May Be Complicated.

Like Every Book I Never Wrote, It Is By Far The Best Book I Have Ever Written.

Nothing Can Ever Overcome That One Enormous Sex (female) Superiority That Even The Male Child Is Born Closer To His Mother Than To His Father.

What Is Called Matriarchy Is Simply Moral Anarchy, In Which The Mother Alone Remains Fixed Because All The Fathers Are Fugitive And Irresponsible.

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

They Hate Kings, They Hate Priests, They Hate Soldiers, They Hate Sailors. They Distrust Men Of Science, They Denounce The Middle Classes, They Despair Of Working Men, But They Adore Humanity. Only They Always Speak Of Humanity As If It Were A Curious Foreign Nation. They Are Dividing Themselves More And More From Men To Exalt The Strange Race Of Mankind. They Are Ceasing To Be Human In The Effort To Be Humane.

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

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

It's Not The World That's Got So Much Worse But The News Coverage That's Got So Much Better.

The Problem Of Disbelieving In God Is Not That A Man Ends Up Believing Nothing. Alas, It Is Much Worse. He Ends Up Believing Anything.

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

The Sincere Love Of Books Has Nothing To Do With Cleverness Or Stupidity Any More Than Any Other Sincere Love. It Is A Quality Of Character, A Freshness, A Power Of Pleasure, A Power Of Faith. A Silly Person May Delight In Reading Masterpieces Just As A Silly Person May Delight In Picking Flowers. A Fool May Be In Love With A Poet As He May Be In Love With A Woman.

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

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

The Sceptics, Like Bees, Give Their One Sting And Die.

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.

There Nearly Always Is A Method In Madness.

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.

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.

The Only Thing That Has Kept The Race Of Men From The Mad Extremes Of The Convent And The Pirate-galley, The Night-club And The Lethal Chamber, Has Been Mysticism - The Belief That Logic Is Misleading, And That Things Are Not What They Seem.

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

The Poetry Of Art Is In Beholding The Single Tower; The Poetry Of Nature In Seeing The Single Tree; The Poetry Of Love In Following The Single Woman; The Poetry Of Religion In Worshipping The Single Star.

It Is Often A Mistake To Combine Two Pleasures, Because Pleasures, Like Pains, Can Act As Counter-irri-tants To Each Other.

There Is One Thing Which Gives Radiance To Everything. It Is The Idea Of Something Around The Corner.

There Should Be A Burnished Tablet Let Into The Ground On The Spot Where Some Courageous Man First Ate Stilton Cheese, And Survived.

The Long Words Are Not The Hard Words, It Is The Short Words That Are Hard. There Is Much More Metaphysical Subtlety In The Word "damn" Than In The Word "degeneration."

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

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

For Tommy, On That Hot And Empty Afternoon, Was In A State Of Mind In Which Grown-up People Go Away And Write Books About Their Whole World, And Stories About What It Is Like To Be Married, And Plays About The Important Problems Of Modern Times. Tommy, Being Only Ten Years Old, Was Not Able To Do Harm On This Large And Handsome Scale.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Would Never Commit The Positively Anti-social Action Of Robbing A Bank, Or Worse Still, Working In One.

We Are Like The Penny, Because We Have The Image Of The King Stamped On Us, The Divine King.

All The Exaggerations Are Right, If They Exaggerate The Right Thing.

Men May Keep A Sort Of Level Of Good, But No Man Has Ever Been Able To Keep On One Level Of Evil.

There Are No Words To Express The Abyss Between Isolation And Having One Ally.

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

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.

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.

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

A Change Of Opinions Is Almost Unknown In An Elderly Military Man.

Our Civilization Has Decided That Determining The Guilt Or Innocence Of Men Is A Thing Too Important To Be Trusted To Trained Men. When It Wants A Library Catalogued, Or The Solar System Discovered, Or Any Trifle Of That Kind, It Uses Up Its Specialists. But 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.

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.

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.

I Should Say That Psycho-analysis Was Confession Without Absolution.

Very Few Reputations Are Gained By Unsullied Virtue.

If A Man Says That He Is Jesus Christ, It Is No Answer To Tell Him That The World Denies His Divinity; For The World Denied Christ's.

Our Society Is So Abnormal That The Normal Man Never Dreams Of Having The Normal Occupation Of Looking After His Own Property. When He Chooses A Trade, He Chooses One Of The Ten Thousand Trades That Involve Looking After Other People's Property.

On The Third Day The Friends Of Christ Coming At Daybreak To The Place Found The Grave Empty And The Stone Rolled Away. In Varying Ways They Realized The New Wonder; But Even They Hardly Realized That The World Had Died In The Night. What They Were Looking At Was The First Day Of A New Creation, With A New Heaven And A New Earth; And In A Semblance Of The Gardener God Walked Again In The Garden, In The Cool Not Of The Evening But Of The Dawn.

If We Want To Give Poor People Soap We Must Set Out Deliberately To Give Them Luxuries. If We Will Not Make Them Rich Enough To Be Clean, Then Empathically We Must Do What We Did With The Saints. We Must Reverence Them For Being Dirty.

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.

It Is Hard To Make Government Representative When It Is Also Remote.

Representatives

Laughter Has Something In It Common With The Ancient Words Of Faith And Inspiration; It Unfreezes Pride And Unwinds Secrecy; It Makes People Forget Themselves In The Presence Of Something Greater Than Themselves.

If A Man Would Make His World Large, He Must Be Always Making Himself Small.

I Like The Cyclostyle Ink; It Is So Inky. I Do Not Think There Is Anyone Who Takes Quite Such A Fierce Pleasure In Things Being Themselves As I Do. The Startling Wetness Of Water Excites And Intoxicates Me: The Fieriness Of Fire, The Steeliness Of Steel, The Unutterable Muddiness Of Mud. It Is Just The Same With People.... When We Call A Man "manly" Or A Woman "womanly" We Touch The Deepest Philosophy.

Why Are We Not Grateful To God For Filling Our Stockings With Legs?

The Main Point Of Christianity Was This: That Nature Is Not Our Mother: Nature Is Our Sister.

Acceptance Is The Truest Kinship With Humanity.

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

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

But Since He Stood For England And Knew What England Means, Unless You Give Him Bacon You Must Not Give Him Beans.

I Regard Golf As An Expensive Way Of Playing Marbles.

The Most Extraordinary Thing In The World Is An Ordinary Man And An Ordinary Woman And Their Ordinary Children.

It Was The People Who Did Not Care Who Filled The World With Fire And Oppression. It Was The Hands Of The Indifferent That Lit The Faggots; It Was The Hands Of The Indifferent That Turned The Rack.

History Is Not A Toboggan Slide, But A Road To Be Reconsidered And Even Retraced

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

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

For My Part, I Should Be Inclined To Suggest That The Chief Object Of Education Should Be To Restore Simplicity. If You Like To Put It So, The Chief Object Of Education Is Not To Learn Things; Nay, The Chief Object Of Education Is To Unlearn Things.

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

Unless A Man Starts Afresh About Things, He Will Certainly Do Nothing Effective. Unless A Man Starts On The Strange Assumption That He Has Never Existed Before, It Is Quite Certain That He Will Never Exist Afterwards.

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

Literature Is A Luxury; Fiction Is A Necessity.

Christendom Has Had A Series Of Revolutions And In Each One Of Them Christianity Has Died. Christianity Has Died Many Times And Risen Again; For It Had A God Who Knew The Way Out Of The Grave.

There Is Not Really Any Courage At All In Attacking Hoary Or Antiquated Things, Any More Than In Offering To Fight One's Grandmother. The Really Courageous Man Is He Who Defies Tyrannies Young As The Morning And Superstitions Fresh As The First Flowers. The Only True Free-thinker Is He Whose Intellect Is As Much Free From The Future As From The Past.

You Cannot Love A Thing Without Wanting To Fight For It.

A Nation Is Not Going Mad When It Does Extravagant Things, So Long As It Does Them In An Extravagant Spirit. But Whenever We See Things Done Wildly, But Taken Tamely, Then The State Is Growing Insane.

America Is The Only Country Ever Founded On A Creed.

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

A Catholic Is A Person Who Has Plucked Up Courage To Face The Incredible And Inconceivable Idea That Something Else May Be Wiser Than He Is.

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

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.

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.

The Catholic Church Is Like A Thick Steak, A Glass Of Red Wine, And A Good Cigar.

Pessimism Is Not In Being Tired Of Evil But In Being Tired Of Good. Despair Does Not Lie In Being Weary Of Suffering, But In Being Weary Of Joy. It Is When For Some Reason Or Other Good Things In A Society No Longer Work That The Society Begins To Decline; When Its Food Does Not Feed, When Its Cures Do Not Cure, When Its Blessings Refuse To Bless.

The True Object Of Human Life Is Play.

There Is No Better Test Of A Man's Ultimate Chivalry And Integrity Than How He Behaves When He Is Wrong... A Stiff Apology Is A Second Insult.

Life Is Not An Illogicality; Yet It Is A Trap For Logicians. It Looks Just A Little More Mathematical And Regular Than It Is; Its Exactitude Is Obvious, But Its Inexactitude Is Hidden; Its Wildness Lies In Wait.

When Men Cease To Believe In God, They Will Believe In Anything

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

Every Man Is Important If He Loses His Life;and Every Man Is Funny If He Loses His Hat And Has To Run After It.

Leisure Is Being Allowed To Do Nothing.

Life Is Indeed Terribly Complicated—to A Man Who Has Lost His Principles.

A Man Who Says That No Patriot Should Attack The Boer War Until It Is Over Is Not Worth Answering Intelligently; He Is Saying That No Good Son Should Warn His Mother Off A Cliff Until She Has Fallen Over It.

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

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