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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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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For Tommy, On That

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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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.

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For Children Are Innocent And Love Justice, While Most Of Us Are Wicked And Naturally Prefer Mercy.

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

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

Internationalism

Somehow One Must Love The World Without Being Worldly.

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

What We Suffer From Today Is Humility In The Wrong Place...the Old Humility Was A Spur That Prevented A Man From Stopping; Not A Nail In His Boot That Prevented Him From Going On. For The Old Humility Made A Man Doubtful About His Efforts, Which Made Him Work Harder. But The New Humility Makes A Man Doubtful About His Aims, Which Will Make Him Stop Working Altogether.

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

I Suppose Every One Must Have Reflected How Primeval And How Poetical Are The Things That One Carries In One's Pocket; The Pocket-knife, For Instance, The Type Of All Human Tools, The Infant Of The Sword. Once I Planned To Write A Book Of Poems Entirely About Things In My Pockets. But I Found It Would Be Too Long; And The Age Of The Great Epics Is Past.

I Did Try To Found A Little Heresy Of My Own; And When I Had Put The Last Touches To It, I Discovered That It Was Orthodoxy.

There'd Be A Lot Less Scandal If People Didn't Idealize Sin And Pose As Sinners.

America Has A Genius For The Encouragement Of Fame.

To Downgrade The Human Mind Is Bad Theology.

When Men Choose Not To Believe In God, They Do Not Thereafter Believe In Nothing, They Then Become Capable Of Believing In Anything.

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.

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.

A Modern Man May Disapprove Of Some Of His Sweeping Reforms, And Approve Others; But Finds It Difficult Not To Admire Even Where He Does Not Approve.

One Of The Great Disadvantages Of Hurry Is That It Takes Such A Long Time.

Tolerance Is The Virtue Of People Who Do Not Believe In Anything.

I Am Not Absentminded. It Is The Presence Of Mind That Makes Me Unaware Of Everything Else.

Presence Of Mind

Without Education We Are In A Horrible And Deadly Danger Of Taking Educated People Seriously.

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

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

Nothing Is So Remote From Us As The Thing Which Is Not Old Enough To Be History And Not New Enough To Be News.

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.

He Has Come To The Most Dreadful Conclusion A Literary Man Can Come To, The Conclusion That The Ordinary View Is The Right One. It Is Only The Last And Wildest Kind Of Courage That Can Stand On A Tower Before Ten Thousand People And Tell Them That Twice Two Is Four.

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.

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.

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

The First Fact About The Celebration Of A Birthday Is That It Is A Way Of Affirming Defiantly, And Even Flamboyantly, That It Is A Good Thing To Be Alive.

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.

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.

Democracy Is Reproached With Saying That The Majority Is Always Right. But Progress Says That The Minority Is Always Right.

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

It Is Shorter To State The Things Forbidden Than The Things Permitted; Precisely Because Most Things Are Permitted And Only A Few Things Forbidden.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Odd, Isn't It, That A Thief And A Vagabond Should Repent, When So Many Who Are Rich And Secure Remain Hard And Frivolous, And Without Fruit For God Or Man?

Altruists, With Thin, Weak Voices, Denounce Christ As An Egoist. Egoists (with Even Thinner And Weaker Voices) Denounce Him As An Altruist.

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

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

Truths Turn Into Dogmas The Instant That They Are Disputed. Thus Every Man Who Utters A Doubt Defines A Religion.

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

And When It Rains On Your Parade, Look Up Rather Than Down. Without The Rain, There Would Be No Rainbow.

It Is As Healthy To Enjoy Sentiment As To Enjoy Jam.

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.

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

The Aesthete Aims At Harmony Rather Than Beauty. If His Hair Does Not Match The Mauve Sunset Against Which He Is Standing, He Hurriedly Dyes His Hair Another Shade Of Mauve. If His Wife Does Not Go With The Wall-paper, He Gets A Divorce.

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.

To Be Wrong, And To Be Carefully Wrong, That Is The Definition Of Decadence.

The Simplification Of Anything Is Always Sensational.

Be Careful How You Suggest Things To Me. For There Is In Me A Madness Which Goes Beyond Martyrdom, The Madness Of An Utterly Idle Man.

I Am Going To Hold A Pistol To The Head Of The Modern Man. But I Shall Not Use It To Kill Him–only To Bring Him To Life.

America Is The Only Country Ever Founded On A Creed.

Comforts That Were Rare Among Our Forefathers Are Now Multiplied In Factories And Handed Out Wholesale; And Indeed, Nobody Nowadays, So Long As He Is Content To Go Without Air, Space, Quiet, Decency And Good Manners, Need Be Without Anything Whatever That He Wants; Or At Least A Reasonably Cheap Imitation Of It.

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

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

Leisure Is Being Allowed To Do Nothing.

The Miser Is The Man Who Starves Himself And Everybody Else, In Order To Worship Wealth In Its Dead Form, As Distinct From Its Living Form.

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.

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!

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 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.

Angels Can Fly Because They Take Themselves Lightly.

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

Somehow One Can Never Manage To Be An Atheist.

The Object Of Opening The Mind, As Of Opening The Mouth, Is To Shut It Again On Something Solid.

It Is Not Merely True That A Creed Unites Men. Nay, A Difference Of Creed Unites Men - So Long As It Is A Clear Difference. A Boundary Unites. Many A Magnanimous Moslem And Chivalrous Crusader Must Have Been Nearer To Each Other, Because They Were Both Dogmatists, Than Any Two Agnostics. "i Say God Is One," And "i Say God Is One But Also Three," That Is The Beginning Of A Good Quarrelsome, Manly Friendship.

I Left The Fairy Tales Lying On The Floor Of The Nursery, And I Have Not Found Any Books So Sensible Since.

Courage Is Almost A Contradiction In Terms. It Means A Strong Desire To Live Taking The Form Of Readiness To Die.

The Person Who Is Really In Revolt Is The Optimist, Who Generally Lives And Dies In A Desperate And Suicidal Effort To Persuade Other People How Good They Are.

Blessed Is He That Expecteth Nothing, For He Shall Be Gloriously Surprised.

Literature And Fiction Are Two Entirely Different Things. Literature Is A Luxury; Fiction Is A Necessity.

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.

Aristocracy: Government By The Badly Educated.

All Good Writers Express The State Of Their Souls, Even (as Occurs In Some Cases Of Very Good Writers) If It Is A State Of Damnation.

A Man Will Not Roll In The Snow For A Stream Of Tendency By Which All Things Fulfill The Law Of Their Being. He Will Not Go Without Food In The Name Of Something, Not Ourselves, That Makes For Righteousness. He Will Do Things Like This, Or Pretty Nearly Like This, Under Quite A Different Impulse. He Will Do These Things When He Is In Love.

The Perils, Rewards, Punishments, And Fulfillments Of An Adventure Must Be Real, Or The Adventure Is Only A Shifting And Heartless Nightmare. If I Bet I Must Be Made To Pay, Or There Is No Poetry In Betting. If I Challenge I Must Be Made To Fight, Or There Is No Poetry In Challenging. If I Vow To Be Faithful I Must Be Cursed When I Am Unfaithful, Or There Is No Fun Vowing.

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.

He Can Only Get Away From Death By Continually Stepping Within An Inch Of It.

The Man Who Kills A Man Kills A Man. The Man Who Kills Himself Kills All Men. As Far As He Is Concerned, He Wipes Out The World.

It Seems To Me,' Said The Other, 'that You Are Simply Seeking A Pretext To Insult The Marquis.' By George!' Said Syme Facing Round And Looking At Him, 'what A Clever Chap You Are!

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

Journalism Largely Consists Of Saying 'lord Jones Is Dead' To People Who Never Knew That Lord Jones Was Alive.

There Is Nothing So Weak, For Working Purposes, As This Enormous Importance Attached To Immediate Victory. There Is Nothing That Fails Like Success.

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

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

There Are No New Lies, No New Heresies. Man Is Simply Not That Creative.

I Would Rather A Boy Learnt In The Roughest School The Courage To Hit A Politician, Or Gained In The Hardest School The Learning To Refute Him - Rather Than That He Should Gain In The Most Enlightened School The Cunning To Copy Him.

Romance Is The Combination Of Something That Is Strange With Something That Is Secure.

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

There Are Some Desires That Are Not Desirable.

Nobody Understands The Nature Of The Church, Or The Ringing Note Of The Creed Descending From Antiquity, Who Does Not Realize That The Whole World Once Very Nearly Died Of Broadmindedness And The Brotherhood Of All Religions.

Thrift Is The Really Romantic Thing; Economy Is More Romantic Than Extravagance... Thrift Is Poetic Because It Is Creative; Waste Is Unpoetic Because It Is Waste... If A Man Could Undertake To Make Use Of All The Things In His Dustbin, He Would Be A Broader Genius Than Shakespeare.

Plato Was Right, But Not Quite Right.

All Government Is An Ugly Necessity.

The Past Is Not What It Was.

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

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

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.

Nobody Notices Postmen, Yet They Have Passions Like Other Men.

Jokes Are Generally Honest. Complete Solemnity Is Always Dishonest.

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

I Say That A Man Must Be Certain Of His Morality For The Simple Reason That He Has To Suffer For It.

[fairy Tales] Make Rivers Run With Wine Only To Make Us Remember, For One Wild Moment, That They Run With Water.

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

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.

The More Truly We Can See Life As A Fairytale, The More Clearly The Tale Resolves Itself Into War With The Dragon Who Is Wasting Fairyland.

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

It Is Not Bigotry To Be Certain We Are Right; But It Is Bigotry To Be Unable To Imagine How We Might Possibly Have Gone Wrong.

The Grinding Power Of The Plain Words Of The Gospel Story Is Like The Power Of Mill-stones, And Those Who Can Read Them Simply Enough Will Feel As If Rocks Had Been Rolled Upon Them.

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

I Am A Journalist And Have No Earthly Motives Except Curiosity And Personal Vanity.

What Are We Going To Do?" Asked The Professor. "at This Moment," Said Syme, With A Scientific Detachment, "i Think We Are Going To Smash Into A Lamppost.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Boyhood Is A Most Complex And Incomprehensible Thing. Even When One Has Been Through It, One Does Not Understand What It Was. A Man Can Never Quite Understand A Boy, Even When He Has Been The Boy.

The World Will Very Soon Be Divided, Unless I Am Mistaken, Into Those Who Still Go On Explaining Our Success, And Those Somewhat More Intelligent Who Are Trying To Explain Our Failure.

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

The Thing I Hate About An Argument Is That It Always Interrupts A Discussion.

Mr. Mccabe Thinks That I Am Not Serious But Only Funny, Because Mr. Mccabe Thinks That Funny Is The Opposite Of Serious. Funny Is The Opposite Of Not Funny And Nothing Else.

There Are Two Kinds Of Peacemakers In The Modern World; And They Are Both, Though In Various Ways, A Nuisance. The First Peacemaker Is The Man Who Goes About Saying That He Agrees With Everybody. He Confuses Everybody. The Second Peacemaker Is The Man Who Goes About Saying That Everybody Agrees With Him. He Enrages Everybody. Between The Two Of Them They Produce A Hundred Times More Disputes And Distractions Than We Poor Pugnacious People Would Ever Have Thought Of In Our Lives.

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.

Your Offer," He Said, "is Far Too Idiotic To Be Declined.

No Man Can Break Any Of The Ten Commandments. He Can Only Break Himself Against Them.

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.

This Is The Age In Which Thin And Theoretic Minorities Can Cover And Conquer Unconscious And Untheoretic Majorities.

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.

Thinking Means Connecting Things, And Stops If They Cannot Be Connected.

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.

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."

What Is The Good Of Words If They Aren't Important Enough To Quarrel Over? Why Do We Choose One Word More Than Another If There Isn't Any Difference Between Them? If You Called A Woman A Chimpanzee Instead Of An Angel, Wouldn't There Be A Quarrel About A Word? If You're Not Going To Argue About Words, What Are You Going To Argue About? Are You Going To Convey Your Meaning To Me By Moving Your Ears? The Church And The Heresies Always Used To Fight About Words, Because They Are The Only Thing Worth Fighting About.

Do Not Look At The Faces In The Illustrated Papers. Look At The Faces In The Street.

Christmas Is Built Upon A Beautiful And Intentional Paradox; That The Birth Of The Homeless Should Be Celebrated In Every Home.

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

Representatives

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

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.

Paradox - Truth Standing On Her Head To Get Attention.

The Classes That Wash Most Are Those That Work Least.

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

To Desire Money Is Much Nobler Than To Desire Success. Desiring Money May Mean Desiring To Return To Your Country, Or Marry The Woman You Love, Or Ransom Your Father From Brigands. But Desiring Success Must Mean That You Take An Abstract Pleasure In The Unbrotherly Act Of Distancing And Disgracing Other Men.

That Young Man With The Long, Auburn Hair And The Impudent Face - That Young Man Was Not Really A Poet; But Surely He Was A Poem.

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

Modern Toleration Is Really A Tyranny. It Is A Tyranny Because It Is A Silence.

Boys Like Romantic Tales; But Babies Like Realistic Tales-because They Find Them Romantic.

Artistic Temperament Is The Disease That Afflicts Amateurs.

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.

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.

Women Have A Thirst For Order And Beauty As For Something Physical; There Is A Strange Female Power Of Hating Ugliness And Waste As Good Men Can Only Hate Sin And Bad Men Virtue.

Silence Is The Unbearable Repartee.

There Is No Bigot Like The Atheist.

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.

Business, Especially Big Business, Is Now Organized Like An Army. It Is, As Some Would Say, A Sort Of Mild Militarism Without Bloodshed; As I Say, A Militarism Without The Military Virtues.

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.

I Will Go Forth As A Real Outlaw," He Said, "and As Men Do Robbery On The Highway I Will Do Right On The Highway; And It Will Be Counted A Wilder Crime.

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

The Modern Materialists Are Not Permitted To Doubt; They Are Forbidden To Believe.

Every One On The Earth Should Believe That He Has Something To Give To The World Which Cannot Otherwise Be Given.

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

To Complain That I Could Only Be Married Once Was Like Complaining That I Had Only Been Born Once.

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

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.

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

America Is The Only Nation In The World That Is Founded On Creed. That Creed Is Set Forth With Dogmatic And Even Theological Lucidity In The Declaration Of Independence; Perhaps The Only Piece Of Practical Politics That Is Also Theoretical Politics And Also Great Literature.

Morality Did Not Begin By One Man Saying To Another, "i Will Not Hit You If You Do Not Hit Me"; There Is No Trace Of Such A Transaction. There Is A Trace Of Both Men Having Said, "we Must Not Hit Each Other In The Holy Place.

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.

People Have Fallen Into A Foolish Habit Of Speaking Of Orthodoxy As Something Heavy, Humdrum, And Safe. There Never Was Anything So Perilous Or So Exciting As Orthodoxy. It Was Sanity: And To Be Sane Is More Dramatic Than To Be Mad.

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.

Even A Bad Shot Is Dignified When He Accepts A Duel.

For Scotland Has A Double Dose Of The Poison Called Heredity; The Sense Of Blood In The Aristocrat, The Sense Of Doom In The Calvinist.

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.

It Is Ludicrous To Suppose That The More Sceptical We Are The More We See Good In Everything. It Is Clear That The More We Are Certain What Good Is, The More We Shall See Good In Everything.

Do Not Enjoy Yourself. Enjoy Dances And Theaters And Joy-rides And Champagne And Oysters; Enjoy Jazz And Cocktails And Night-clubs If You Can Enjoy Nothing Better; Enjoy Bigamy And Burglary And Any Crime In The Calendar, In Preference To The Other Alternative; But Never Learn To Enjoy Yourself.

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

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

Do Not Free A Camel Of The Burden Of His Hump; You May Be Freeing Him From Being A Camel.

Inspirational Life

Journalism Is Popular, But It Is Popular Mainly As Fiction. Life Is One World, And Life Seen In The Newspapers Is Another.

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.

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

The Byzantines Hammered Away At Their Hard And Orthodox Symbols, Because They Could Not Be In A Mood To Believe That Men Could Take A Hint. The Moderns Drag Out Into Lengths And Reels Of Extravagance Their New Orthodoxy Of Being Unorthodox, Because They Also Cannot Give A Hint -- Or Take A Hint. Yet All Perfect And Well-poised Art Is Really A Hint.

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

He Wondered Why The Pelican Was The Symbol Of Charity, Except It Was That It Wanted A Good Deal Of Charity To Admire A Pelican.

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."

You Say Grace Before Meals. All Right. But I Say Grace Before The Concert And The Opera, And Grace Before The Play And Pantomime, And Grace Before I Open A Book, And Grace Before Sketching, Painting, Swimming, Fencing, Boxing, Walking, Playing, Dancing And Grace Before I Dip The Pen In The Ink.

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

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

Agnostic Is The Greek Word, For The Latin Word, For Ignorant

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

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

Thanks Are The Highest Form Of Thought.

Ritual Will Always Mean Throwing Away Something: Destroying Our Corn Or Wine Upon The Altar Of Our Gods.

I Still Think Sincere Pessimism The Unpardonable Sin.

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