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For The Mass Of Men The Idea Of Artistic Creation Can Only Be Expressed By An Idea Unpopular In Present Discussions - The Idea Of Property... Property Is Merely The Art Of The Democracy... One Would Think, To Hear People Talk, That The Rothschilds And The Rockefellers Were On The Side Of Property. But Obviously They Are The Enemies Of Property; Because They Are Enemies Of Their Own Limitations.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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For The Mass Of

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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For The Mass Of Men The Idea Of Artistic Creation Can Only Be Expressed By An Idea Unpopular In Present Discussions - The Idea Of Property... Property Is Merely The Art Of The Democracy... One Would Think, To Hear People Talk, That The Rothschilds And The Rockefellers Were On The Side Of Property. But Obviously They Are The Enemies Of Property; Because They Are Enemies Of Their Own Limitations.

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More From Gilbert K. Chesterton

The Whole Pleasure Of Marriage Is That It Is A Perpetual Crisis.

The Philosophy Of This World May Be Founded On Facts, But Its Business Is Run On Spiritual Impressions And Atmospheres.

Human Anger Is A Higher Thing Than What Is Called Divine Discontent. For You Must Be Angry With Something; But You Can Be Discontented With Everything.

Such Professions As The Soldier And The Lawyer ... Give Ample Opportunity For Crimes But Not Much For Mere Illusions. ... If You Have Lost A Battle You Cannot Believe You Have Won It; If Your Client Is Hanged You Cannot Pretend That You Have Gotten Him Off.

Now, Among The Heresies That Are Spoken In This Matter Is The Habit Of Calling A Grey Day A "colourless" Day. Grey Is A Colour, And Can Be A Very Powerful And Pleasing Colour.... A Grey Clouded Sky Is Indeed A Canopy Between Us And The Sun; So Is A Green Tree, If It Comes To That. But The Grey Umbrellas Differ As Much As The Green In Their Style And Shape, In Their Tint And Tilt. One Day May Be Grey Like Steel, And Another Grey Like Dove’s Plumage. One May Seem Grey Like The Deathly Frost, And Another Grey Like The Smoke Of Substantial Kitchens.

And My Haunting Instinct That Somehow Good Was Not Merely A Tool To Be Used, But A Relic To Be Guarded, Like The Goods From Crusoe's Ship--even That Had Been The Wild Whisper Of Something Originally Wise, For, According To Christianity, We Were Indeed The Survivors Of A Wreck, The Crew Of A Golden Ship That Had Gone Down Before The Beginning Of The World.

Sir Hiram Maxim Is A Genuine And Typical Example Of The Man Of Science, Romantic, Excitable, Full Of Real But Somewhat Obvious Poetry, A Little Hazy In Logic And Philosophy, But Full Of Hearty Enthusiasm And An Honorable Simplicity. He Is, As He Expresses It, "an Old And Trained Engineer," And Is Like All Of The Old And Trained Engineers I Have Happened To Come Across, A Man Who Indemnifies Himself For The Superhuman Or Inhuman Concentration Required For Physical Science By A Vague And Dangerous Romanticism About Everything Else.

Cleanliness Is Not Next To Godliness Nowadays, For Cleanliness Is Made An Essential And Godliness Is Regarded As An Offence.

For The Mass Of Men The Idea Of Artistic Creation Can Only Be Expressed By An Idea Unpopular In Present Discussions - The Idea Of Property... Property Is Merely The Art Of The Democracy... One Would Think, To Hear People Talk, That The Rothschilds And The Rockefellers Were On The Side Of Property. But Obviously They Are The Enemies Of Property; Because They Are Enemies Of Their Own Limitations.

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

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

Somehow One Can Never Manage To Be An Atheist.

The Timidity Of The Child Or The Savage Is Entirely Reasonable; They Are Alarmed At This World, Because This World Is A Very Alarming Place. They Dislike Being Alone Because It Is Verily And Indeed An Awful Idea To Be Alone. Barbarians Fear The Unknown For The Same Reason That Agnostics Worship It - Because It Is A Fact.

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

Man Must Have Just Enough Faith In Himself To Have Adventures, And Just Enough Doubt Of Himself To Enjoy Them.

When We Really Worship Anything, We Love Not Only Its Clearness But Its Obscurity. We Exult In Its Very Invisibility.

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.

In All Legends Men Have Thought Of Women As Sublime Separately But Horrible In A Herd.

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

War Is Not The Best Way Of Settling Differences; It Is The Only Way Of Preventing Their Being Settled For You.

They Have Invented A Phrase, A Phrase That Is A Black And White Contradiction In Two Words - 'free-love' - As If A Lover Ever Had Been, Or Ever Could Be, Free.

Black And White

People Wonder Why The Novel Is The Most Popular Form Of Literature; People Wonder Why It Is Read More Than Books Of Science Or Books Of Metaphysics. The Reason Is Very Simple; It Is Merely That The Novel Is More True Than They Are.

The Professional Soldier Gains More And More Power As The General Courage Of A Community Declines.

And We Were Angry And Poor And Happy, And Proud Of Seeing Our Names In Print.

I Came To The Conclusion That The Optimist Thought Everything Good Except The Pessimist, And That The Pessimist Thought Everything Bad, Except Himself.

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

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

A Man Cannot Have The Energy To Produce Good Art Without Having The Energy To Wish To Pass Beyond It.

When People Begin To Ignore Human Dignity, It Will Not Be Long Before They Begin To Ignore Human Rights.

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.

Women Prefer To Talk In Twos, While Men Prefer To Talk In Threes.

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.

Fairy Tales Do Not Tell Children The Dragons Exist. Children Already Know That Dragons Exist. Fairy Tales Tell Children The Dragons Can Be Killed.

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.

I Regard Golf As An Expensive Way Of Playing Marbles.

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.

It Is Very Good For A Man To Talk About What He Does Not Understand; As Long As He Understands That He Does Not Understand It.

The Simple Sense Of Wonder At The Shapes Of Things, And At Their Exuberant Independence Of Our Intellectual Standards And Our Trivial Definitions, Is The Basis Of Spirituality.

The Difficulty Of Explaining ‘why I Am A Catholic’ Is That There Are Ten Thousand Reasons All Amounting To One Reason: That Catholicism Is True.

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

Once Remove The Old Arena Of Theological Quarrels, And You Will Throw Open The Whole World To The Most Horrible, The Most Hopeless, The Most Endless, The Most Truly Interminable Quarrels; The Untheological Quarrels.

Christian Science … Is The Direct Denial Both Of Science And Of Christianity, For Science Rests Wholly On The Recognition Of Truth And Christianity On The Recognition Of Pain.

There Cannot Be A Nation Of Millionaires, And There Never Has Been A Nation Of Utopian Comrades; But There Have Been Any Number Of Nations Of Tolerably Contented Peasants.

But We Are The People Of England; And We Have Not Spoken Yet. Smile At Us, Pay Us, Pass Us. But Do Not Quite Forget.

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

Gratitude Is Happiness Doubled By Wonder.

All Literary Style, Especially National Style, Is Made Up Of Such Coincidences, Which Are A Spiritual Sort Of Puns. That Is Why Style Is Untranslatable.

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.

He Must Not Merely Cling To Life, For Then He Will Be A Coward, And Will Not Escape. He Must Not Merely Wait For Death, For Then He Will Be A Suicide, And Will Not Escape. He Must Seek His Life In A Spirit Of Furious Indifference To It.

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.

The Old Idea That The Joke Was Not Good Enough For The Company Has Been Superseded By The New Aristocratic Idea That The Company Was Not Worthy Of The Joke. They Have Introduced An Almost Insane Individualism Into That One Form Of Intercourse Which Is Specially And Uproariously Communal. They Have Made Even Levities Into Secrets. They Have Made Laughter Lonelier Than Tears.

Humility Is The Mother Of Giants.

Unfortunately, 19th-century Scientists Were Just As Ready To Jump To The Conclusion That Any Guess About Nature Was An Obvious Fact, As Were 17th-century Sectarians To Jump To The Conclusion That Any Guess About Scripture Was The Obvious Explanation . . . . And This Clumsy Collision Of Two Very Impatient Forms Of Ignorance Was Known As The Quarrel Of Science And Religion.

There Are Many Ways To Fall Down, But There's Only One Way To Stand Up Straight.

It Was Not The House That Grew Dull, But I That Grew Dull In It. My Wife Was Better Than All Women, And Yet I Could Not Feel It.

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

All Architecture Is Great Architecture After Sunset.

Coincidences Are Spiritual Puns.

Gratitude, Being Nearly The Greatest Of Human Duties, Is Also Nearly The Most Difficult.

Angels Can Fly Because They Take Themselves Lightly.

Youth Is The Period In Which A Man Can Be Hopeless. The End Of Every Episode Is The End Of The World. But The Power Of Hoping Through Everything, The Knowledge That The Soul Survives Its Adventures, That Great Inspiration Comes To The Middle-aged.

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.

Boys Like Romantic [fairy] Tales; But Babies Like Realistic Tales - Because They Find Them Romantic...this Proves That Even Nursery Tales Only Echo An Almost Prenatal Leap Of Interest And Amazement. These Tales Say That Apples Were Golden Only To Refresh The Forgotten Moment When We Found That They Were Green. They Make Rivers Run With Wine Only To Make Us Remember, For One Wild Moment, That They Run With Water.

Mr. Blatchford Says That There Was Not A Fall But A Gradual Rise. But The Very Word "rise" Implies That You Know Toward What You Are Rising. Unless There Is A Standard You Cannot Tell Whether You Are Rising Or Falling. But The Main Point Is That The Fall Like Every Other Large Path Of Christianity Is Embodied In The Common Language Talked On The Top Of An Omnibus. Anybody Might Say, "very Few Men Are Really Manly." Nobody Would Say, "very Few Whales Are Really Whaley."

The Real Pleasure-seeking Is The Combination Of Luxury And Austerity In Such A Way That The Luxury Can Really Be Felt.

Pleasure Seeking

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

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

This Is The Perpetual And Pitiful Tragedy Of The Practical Man In Practical Affairs. He Always Begins With A Flourish Of Contempt For What He Calls Theorizing And What People Who Can Do It Call Thinking. He Will Not Wait For Logic-that Is, In The Most Exact Sense, He Will Not Listen To Reason. It Will Therefore Appear To Him An Idle And Ineffectual Proceeding To Say That There Is A Reason For His Present Failure. Nevertheless, It May Be Well To Say It, And To Try And Make It Clear Even To Him.

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.

Nine Out Of Ten Of What We Call New Ideas Are Simply Old Mistakes.

The Way To Love Anything Is To Realize That It May Be Lost.

The Only Defensible War Is A War Of Defense.

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

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

No Man Knows He Is Young While He Is Young.

But I Was Frightfully Fond Of The Universe And Wanted To Address It By A Diminutive. I Often Did So; And It Never Seemed To Mind.

I Doubt If Anyone Of Any Tenderness Or Imagination Can See The Hand Of A Child And Not Be A Little Frightened Of It. It Is Awful To Think Of The Essential Human Energy Moving So Tiny A Thing; It Is Like Imagining That Human Nature Could Live In The Wing Of A Butterfly Or The Leaf Of A Tree. When We Look Upon Lives So Human And Yet So Small... We Feel The Same Kind Of Obligation To These Creatures That A Deity Might Feel...

The Repetition In Nature May Not Be A Mere Recurrence; It May Be A Theatrical Encore.

Music With Dinner Is An Insult Both To The Cook And The Violinist.

Christianity Met The Mythological Search For Romance By Being A Story And The Philosophical Search For Truth By Being A True Story.

[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.

Those Thinkers Who Cannot Believe In Any Gods Often Assert That The Love Of Humanity Would Be In Itself Sufficient For Them; And So, Perhaps, It Would, If They Had It.

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.

Never Invoke The Gods Unless You Really Want Them To Appear. It Annoys Them Very Much.

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.

I Have Known Many Happy Marriages, But Never A Compatible One. The Whole Aim Of Marriage Is To Fight Through And Survive The Instant When Incompatibility Becomes Unquestionable. For A Man And A Woman, As Such, Are Incompatible.

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.

The Central Idea Of Poetry Is The Idea Of Guessing Right, Like A Child.

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

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.

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.

Men In England Are Ruled, At This Minute By The Clock, By Brutes Who Refuse Them Bread, By Liars Who Refuse Them News, And By Fools Who Cannot Govern, And Therefore Wish To Enslave.

How Much Larger Your Life Would Be If You Were Smaller In It.

Christian Inspirational

He Said He Didn't Very Well Understand How George Was Going To Sleep Any More Than He Did Now, Seeing That There Were Only Twenty-four Hours In Each Day.

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.

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.

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.

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

There Are No New Ideas About Female Education.

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

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

If A Man Does Not Talk To Himself, It Is Because He Is Not Worth Talking To.

Idolatry Is When You Worship What You Should Use, And Use What You Should Worship.

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

We All Live In The Past, Because There Is Nothing Else To Live In. To Live In The Present Is Like Proposing To Sit On A Pin. It Is Too Minute, It Is Too Slight A Support, It Is Too Uncomfortable A Posture, And It Is Of Necessity Followed Immediately By Totally Different Experiences, Analogous To Those Of Jumping Up With A Yell.

Different Experiences

We Fear Men So Much, Because We Fear God So Little. One Fear Cures Another. When Man's Terror Scares You, Turn Your Thoughts To The Wrath Of God.

All True Friendliness Begins With Fire And Food And Drink And The Recognition Of Rain Or Frost.

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

We Cannot Fling Ourselves Into The Blank Future; We Can Only Call Up Images From The Past. This Being So, The Important Principle Follows, That How Many Images We Have Largely Depends On How Much Past We Have.

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

You Don't Want To Be So Open Minded That Your Brains Fall Out!

Christianity, Whatever Else It Is, Is An Explosion. Unless It Is Sensational There Is Simply No Sense In It. Unless The Gospel Sounds Like A Gun Going Off It Has Not Been Uttered At All.

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

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.

There Is A Great Deal Of Difference Between An Eager Man Who Wants To Read A Book And The Tired Man Who Wants A Book To Read.

People Accuse Journalism Of Being Too Personal; But To Me It Has Always Seemed Far Too Impersonal. It Is Charged With Tearing Away The Veils From Private Life; But It Seems To Me To Be Always Dropping Diaphanous But Blinding Veils Between Men And Men. The Yellow Press Is Abused For Exposing Facts Which Are Private; I Wish The Yellow Press Did Anything So Valuable. It Is Exactly The Decisive Individual Touches That It Never Gives; And A Proof Of This Is That After One Has Met A Man A Million Times In The Newspapers It Is Always A Complete Shock And Reversal To Meet Him In Real Life.

The Cosmos Is About The Smallest Hole That A Man Can Hide His Head In.

According To Most Philosophers, God In Making The World Enslaved It. According To Christianity, In Making It, He Set It Free. God Had Written, Not So Much A Poem, But Rather A Play; A Play He Had Planned As Perfect, But Which Had Necessarily Been Left To Human Actors And Stage-managers, Who Had Since Made A Great Mess Of It.

You!" He Cried. "you Never Hated Because You Never Lived. I Know What You Are All Of You, From First To Last--you Are The People In Power! You Are The Police--the Great, Fat Smiling Men In Blue And Buttons! You Are The Law, And You Have Never Been Broken. But Is There A Free Soul Alive That Does Not Long To Break You, Only Because You Have Never Been Broken?

The Reformer Is Always Right About What's Wrong. However, He's Often Wrong About What Is Right.

As To The Doubt Of The Soul I Discover It To Be False: A Mood Not A Conclusion. My Conclusion Is The Faith. Corporate, Organized, A Personality, Teaching. A Thing, Not A Theory. It.

'my Country, Right Or Wrong' Is A Thing No Patriot Would Ever Think Of Saying Except In A Desperate Case. It Is Like Saying 'my Mother, Drunk Or Sober.'

Leisure Is Being Allowed To Do Nothing.

Atheism Is Indeed The Most Daring Of All Dogmas . . . For It Is The Assertion Of A Universal Negative.

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.

The Mind That Finds Its Way To Wild Places Is The Poet's; But The Mind That Never Finds Its Way Back Is The Lunatic's.

A Small Artist Is Content With Art; A Great Artist Is Content With Nothing Except Everything.

Men Always Talk About The Most Important Things To Perfect Strangers.

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.

Brave Men Are All Vertebrates; They Have Their Softness On The Surface And Their Toughness In The Middle.

The Darwinian Movement Has Made No Difference To Mankind, Except That, Instead Of Talking Unphilosophically About Philosophy, They Now Talk Unscientifically About Science.

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

We Do Not Admire, We Hardly Excuse, The Fanatic Who Wrecks This World For Love Of The Other. But What Are We To Say Of The Fanatic Who Wrecks This World Out Of Hatred Of The Other? He Sacrifices The Very Existence Of Humanity To The Non-existence Of God. He Offers His Victims Not To The Altar, But Merely To Assert The Idleness Of The Altar And The Emptiness Of The Throne. He Is Ready To Ruin Even That Primary Ethic By Which All Things Live, For His Strange And Eternal Vengeance Upon Some One Who Never Lived At All.

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

Architecture Is The Alphabet Of Giants; It Is The Largest Set Of Symbols Ever Made To Meet The Eyes Of Men. A Tower Stands Up Like A Sort Of Simplified Stature, Of Much More Than Heroic Size.

We Do Not Want Joy And Anger To Neutralize Each Other And Produce A Surly Contentment; We Want A Fiercer Delight And A Fiercer Discontent. We Have To Feel The Universe At Once As An Ogre's Castle, To Be Stormed, And Yet As Our Own Cottage, To Which We Can Return To At Evening.

There Is Always In The Healthy Mind An Obscure Prompting That Religion Teaches Us Rather To Dig Than To Climb; That If We Could Once Understand The Common Clay Of Earth We Should Understand Everything. Similarly, We Have The Sentiment That If We Could Destroy Custom At A Blow And See The Stars As A Child Sees Them, We Should Need No Other Apocalypse. This Is The Great Truth Which Has Always Lain At The Back Of Baby-worship, And Which Will Support It To The End.

The English Are No Nearer Than They Were A Hundred Years Ago To Knowing What Jefferson Really Meant When He Said That God Had Created All Men Equal.

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

It's Not That We Don't Have Enough Scoundrels To Curse; It's That We Don't Have Enough Good Men To Curse Them.

Faith Means Believing The Unbelievable.

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.

All Architecture Is Great Architecture After Sunset; Perhaps Architecture Is Really A Nocturnal Art, Like The Art Of Fireworks.

The Past Is Democratic, Because It Is A People. The Future Is Despotic, Because It Is A Caprice. Every Man Is Alone In His Prediction, Just As Each Man Is Alone In A Dream.

Very Few Reputations Are Gained By Unsullied Virtue.

The Word 'good' Has Many Meanings. For Example, If A Man Were To Shoot His Grandmother At A Range Of Five Hundred Yards, I Should Call Him A Good Shot, But Not Necessarily A Good Man.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I've Been To Every Park In Every City And Not Seen A Statue To A Committee.

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.

The Wisest Thing In The World Is To Cry Out Before You Are Hurt. It Is No Good To Cry Out After You Are Hurt; Especially After You Are Mortally Hurt. People Talk About The Impatience Of The Populace; But Sound Historians Know That Most Tyrannies Have Been Possible Because Men Moved Too Late. It Is Often Essential To Resist A Tyranny Before It Exists.

It Is Generally The Man Who Is Not Ready To Argue, Who Is Ready To Sneer.

You May Think A Crime Horrible Because You Could Never Commit It. I Think It Is Horrible Because I Could Commit It.

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

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

Men Reform A Thing By Removing The Reality From It, And Then Do Not Know What To Do With The Unreality That Is Left.

Every One Of The Great Revolutionists, From Isaiah To Shelley, Have Been Optimists. They Have Been Indignant, Not About The Badness Of Existence, But About The Slowness Of Men In Realizing Its Goodness.

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

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

People Who Make History Know Nothing About History. You Can See That In The Sort Of History They Make.

Free Verse Is Like Free Love; It Is A Contradiction In Terms.

The Modern World Has Far Too Little Understanding Of The Art Of Keeping Young. Its Notion Of Progress Has Been To Pile One Thing On Top Of Another, Without Caring If Each Thing Was Crushed In Turn. People Forgot That The Human Soul Can Enjoy A Thing Most When There Is Time To Think About It And Be Thankful For It. And By Crowding Things Together They Lost The Sense Of Surprise; And Surprise Is The Secret Of Joy.

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

Earth Will Grow Worse Till Men Redeem It, And Wars More Evil, Ere All Wars Cease.

Against A Dark Sky, All Flowers Look Like Fireworks.

Though I Believe In Liberalism, I Find It Difficult To Believe In Liberals.

Coincidence Is A Spiritual Pun.

It Is Customary To Complain Of The Bustle And Strenuousness Of Our Epoch. But In Truth The Chief Mark Of Our Epoch Is A Profound Laziness And Fatigue; And The Fact Is That The Real Laziness Is The Cause Of The Apparent Bustle.

All My Authority In Heaven And On Earth Has Been Given To Me.

The Human Race, To Which So Many Of My Readers Belong, Has Been Playing At Children's Games From The Beginning, And Will Probably Do It Till The End, Which Is A Nuisance For The Few People Who Grow Up.

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

Unless A Man Becomes The Enemy Of An Evil, He Will Not Even Become Its Slave But Rather Its Champion.

Marriage Is A Duel To The Death Which No Man Of Honour Should Decline.

The Test Of Happiness Is Gratitude.

There Is No Logical Connection Between Flying And Laying Eggs.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Obviously If Any Actions, Even A Lunatic's, Can Be Causeless, Determinism Is Done For. If The Chain Of Causation Can Be Broken For A Madman, It Can Be Broken For A Man.

Drink Because You Are Happy, But Never Because You Are Miserable.

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.

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."

Impartiality Is A Pompous Name For Indifference, Which Is An Elegant Name For Ignorance.

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.

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."

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.

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.

Here Ends Another Day, During Which I Have Had Eyes, Ears, Hands And The Great World Around Me. Tomorrow Begins Another Day. Why Am I Allowed Two?

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

We Are Always Giving Foreign Names To Very Native Things. If There Is A Thing That Reeks Of The Glorious Tradition Of The Old English Tavern, It Is Toasted Cheese. But For Some Wild Reason We Call It Welsh Rarebit. I Believe That What We Call Irish Stew Might More Properly Be Called English Stew, And That It Is Not Particularly Familiar In Ireland.

Children Feel The Whiteness Of The Lily With A Graphic And Passionate Clearness Which We Cannot Give Them At All. The Only Thing We Can Give Them Is Information-the Information That If You Break The Lily In Two It Won't Grow Again.

I Am More Than A Devil; I Am A Man. I Can Do The One Thing Which Satan Himself Cannot Do— I Can Die.

The Aim Of Life Is Appreciation; There Is No Sense In Not Appreciating Things; And There Is No Sense In Having More Of Them If You Have Less Appreciation Of Them.

Feminists Are Those Who Cannot Stand Female Characteristics.

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