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I Like The Americans For A Great Many Reasons. I Like Them Because Even The Modern Thing Called Industrialism Has Not Entirely Destroyed In Them The Very Ancient Thing Called Democracy. I Like Them Because They Have A Respect For Work Which Really Curbs The Human Tendency To Snobbishness.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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I Like The Americans

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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I Like The Americans For A Great Many Reasons. I Like Them Because Even The Modern Thing Called Industrialism Has Not Entirely Destroyed In Them The Very Ancient Thing Called Democracy. I Like Them Because They Have A Respect For Work Which Really Curbs The Human Tendency To Snobbishness.

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

Liberty Is The Very Last Idea That Seems To Occur To Anybody, In Considering Any Political Or Social Proposal. It Is Only Necessary For Anybody For Any Reason To Allege Any Evidence Of Any Evil In Any Human Practice, For People Instantly To Suggest That The Practice Should Be Suppressed By The Police.

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

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

The First Two Facts Which A Healthy Boy Or Girl Feels About Sex Are These: First That It Is Beautiful And Then That It Is Dangerous.

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.

The Mass Is Not Only About God Becoming Man, It Is About Man Becoming More Himself.

A Man Does Not Know What He Is Saying Until He Knows What He Is Not Saying.

No Animal Ever Invented Anything As Bad As Drunkenness - Or So Good As Drink.

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

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.

Modern Masters Of Science Are Much Impressed With The Need Of Beginning All Inquiry With A Fact. The Ancient Masters Of Religion Were Quite Equally Impressed With That Necessity. They Began With The Fact Of Sin-a Fact As Practical As Potatoes. Whether Or Not Man Could Be Washed In Miraculous Waters, There Was No Doubt At Any Rate That He Wanted Washing.

People Decided That It Was Impossible To Achieve Any Of The Good Of Socialism, But They Comforted Themselves By Achieving All The Bad.

Modern Intelligence Won't Accept Anything On Authority. But It Will Accept Anything Without Authority.

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.

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

There Are Some Desires That Are Not Desirable.

The Idea Of Private Property Universal But Private, The Idea Of Families Free But Still Families, Of Domesticity Democratic But Still Domestic, Of One Man One House - This Remains The Real Vision And Magnet Of Mankind. The World May Accept Something More Official And General, Less Human And Intimate. But The World Will Be Like A Broken-hearted Woman Who Makes A Humdrum Marriage Because She May Not Make A Happy One; Socialism May Be The World's Deliverance, But It Is Not The World's Desire.

When A Woman Puts Up Her Fists To A Man She Is Putting Herself In The Only Posture In Which He Is Not Afraid Of Her.

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

O God Of Earth And Altar, Bow Down And Hear Our Cry, Our Earthly Rulers Falter, Our People Drift And Die; The Walls Of Gold Entomb Us, The Swords Of Scorn Divide, Take Not Thy Thunder From Us, But Take Away Our Pride.

Any One Of The Strange Laws We Suffer Is A Compromise Between A Fad And A Vested Interest.

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

Hope Means Expectancy When Things Are Otherwise Hopeless.

The Perplexity Of Life Arises From There Being Too Many Interesting Things In It For Us To Be Interested Properly In Any Of Them.

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

When People Impute Special Vices To The Christian Church, They Seem Entirely To Forget That The World (which Is The Only Other Thing There Is) Has These Vices Much More. The Church Has Been Cruel; But The World Has Been Much More Cruel. The Church Has Plotted; But The World Has Plotted Much More. The Church Has Been Superstitious; But It Has Never Been So Superstitious As The World Is When Left To Itself.

An Adventure Is Only An Inconvenience Rightly Considered. An Inconvenience Is Only An Adventure Wrongly Considered.

The Best Way That A Man Could Test His Readiness To Encounter The Common Variety Of Mankind Would Be To Climb Down A Chimney Into Any House At Random, And Get On As Well As Possible With The People Inside. And That Is Essentially What Each One Of Us Did On The Day That He Was Born.

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.

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.

Not Only Does "orthodox" No Longer Mean Being Right, It Practically Means Being Wrong.

Poets Do Not Go Mad, But Chess Players Do.

The True Object Of Human Life Is Play.

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.

The Decay Of Society Is Praised By Artists As The Decay Of A Corpse Is Praised By Worms.

The Danger Of Loss Of Faith In God Is Not That One Will Believe In Nothing, But Rather That One Will Believe In Anything.

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.

No Man Should Leave In The Universe Anything Of Which He Is Afraid.

The Obvious Effect Of Frivolous Divorce Will Be Frivolous Marriage. If People Can Be Separated For No Reason They Will Feel It All The Easier To Be United For No Reason.

There Are Many Definite Methods, Honest And Dishonest, Which Make People Rich; The Only Instinct I Know Of Which Does It Is That Instinct Which Theological Christianity Crudely Describes As The Sin Of Avarice.

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.

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.

Modern Man Is Educated To Understand Foreign Languages And Misunderstand Foreigners.

Instead Of The Machine Being A Giant To Which The Man Is The Pygmy, We Must At Last Reverse The Proportions Until Man Is A Giant To Whom The Machine Is The Toy.

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.

Gluttony Is A Great Fault; But We Do Not Necessarily Dislike A Glutton. We Only Dislike The Glutton When He Becomes A Gourmet-that Is, We Only Dislike Him When He Not Only Wants The Best For Himself, But Knows What Is Best For Other People.

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

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 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.

The Man Who Lives In A Small Community Lives In A Much Larger World... The Reason Is Obvious. In A Large Community We Can Choose Our Companions. In A Small Community Our Companions Are Chosen For Us.

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.

The Christian Is Quite Free To Believe That There Is A Considerable Amount Of Settled Order And Inevitable Development In The Universe. But The Materialist Is Not Allowed To Admit Into His Spotless Machine The Slightest Speck Of Spiritualism Or Miracle.

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.

Eugenics Asserts That All Men Must Be So Stupid That They Cannot Manage Their Own Affairs; And Also So Clever That They Can Manage Each Other's.

The Real Trouble With This World Of Ours Is Not That It Is An Unreasonable World, Nor Even That It Is A Reasonable One. The Commonest Kind Of Trouble Is That It Is Nearly Reasonable, But Not Quite. ... It Looks Just A Little More Mathematical And Regular Than It Is; Its Exactitude Is Obvious, But Its Inexactitude Is Hidden; Its Wilderness Lies In Wait.

The Simplification Of Anything Is Always Sensational.

Leisure Is Being Allowed To Do Nothing.

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

The Academic Mind Reflects Infinity, And Is Full Of Light By The Simple Process Of Being Shallow And Standing Still.

The Real Great Man Is The Man Who Makes Every Man Feel Great.

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

When Fishes Flew And Forests Walked And Figs Grew Upon Thorn, Some Moment When The Moon Was Blood Then Surely I Was Born. With Monstrous Head And Sickening Cry And Ears Like Errant Wings, The Devil's Walking Parody On All Four-footed Things.

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

The Secularists Have Not Wrecked Divine Things; But The Secularists Have Wrecked Secular Things, If That Is Any Comfort To Them. The Titans Did Not Scale Heaven; But They Laid Waste The World.

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.

Surely We Cannot Take An Open Question Like The Supernatural And Shut It With A Bang, Turning The Key Of The Madhouse On All The Mystics Of History. You Cannot Take The Region Of The Unknown And Calmly Say That, Though You Know Nothing About It, You Know All The Gates Are Locked. We Do Not Know Enough About The Unknown To Know That It Is Unknowable.

Everyone Seems To Assume That The Unscrupulous Parts Of Journalism Will Be The Frivolous Or Jocular Parts. This Is Against All Ethical Experience. Jokes Are Generally Honest. Complete Solemnity Is Almost Always Dishonest. The Writer Of The Snippet Merely Refers To A Frivolous And Fugitive Fact In A Frivolous And Fugitive Way. The Writer Of The Leading Article Has To Write About A Fact He Has Known For 20 Minutes As Though He Has Studied It For 20 Years.

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.

Mankind Is Not A Tribe Of Animals To Which We Owe Compassion. Mankind Is A Club To Which We Owe Our Subscription.

The Trouble With Always Trying To Preserve The Health Of The Body Is That It Is So Difficult To Do Without Destroying The Health Of The Mind.

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

All Government Is An Ugly Necessity.

To Mix Science Up With Philosophy Is Only To Produce A Philosophy That Has Lost All Its Ideal Value And A Science That Has Lost All Its Practical Value. It Is For My Private Physician To Tell Me Whether This Or That Food Will Kill Me. It Is For My Private Philosopher To Tell Me Whether I Ought To Be Killed.

You Never Know The Best About Men Until You Know The Worst About Them.

Many Clever Men Like You Have Trusted To Civilization. Many Clever Babylonians, Many Clever Egyptians, Many Clever Men At The End Of Rome. Can You Tell Me, In A World That Is Flagrant With The Failures Of Civilisation, What There Is Particularly Immortal About Yours?

Progress Should Mean That We Are Always Changing The World To Fit The Vision, Instead We Are Always Changing The Vision.

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.

They Say Travel Broadens The Mind, But You Must Have The Mind.

A Citizen Can Hardly Distinguish Between A Tax And A Fine, Except That The Fine Is Generally Much Lighter.

Happy Is He Who Still Loves Something He Loved In The Nursery: He Has Not Been Broken In Two By Time; He Is Not Two Men, But One, And He Has Saved Not Only His Soul But His Life.

For When We Cease To Worship God, We Do Not Worship Nothing, We Worship Anything.

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

A Fairly Clear Line Separated Advertisement From Art. ... The First Effect Of The Triumph Of The Capitalist (if We Allow Him To Triumph) Will Be That That Line Of Demarcation Will Entirely Disappear. There Will Be No Art That Might Not Just As Well Be Advertisement.

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.

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

The Criminal Is The Creative Artist; The Detective Only The Critic.

I Am Not Fighting A Hopeless Fight. People Who Have Fought In Real Fights Don't, As A Rule.

Then I Only Wondered Who Put The Toys In The Stocking; Now I Wonder Who Put The Stocking By The Bed, And The Bed In The Room, And The Room In The House, And The House On The Planet, And The Great Planet In The Void.

It Is Quite Easy To See Why A Legend Is Treated, And Ought To Be Treated, More Respectfully Than A Book Of History. The Legend Is Generally Made By The Majority Of People In The Village, Who Are Sane. The Book Is Generally Written By The One Man In The Village Who Is Mad.

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.

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

If You'd Take Your Head Home And Boil It For A Turnip It Might Be Useful. I Can't Say. But It Might.

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.

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

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

The Church Is A House With A Hundred Gates: And No Two Men Enter At Exactly The Same Angle

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

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

At Any Innocent Tea-table We May Easily Hear A Man Say, "life Is Not Worth Living." We Regard It As We Regard The Statement That It Is A Fine Day; Nobody Thinks That It Can Possibly Have Any Serious Effect On The Man Or On The World. And Yet If That Utterance Were Really Believed, The World Would Stand On Its Head.

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.

Feminists Are Those Who Cannot Stand Female Characteristics.

Characteristics

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.

Reason Is Always A Kind Of Brute Force; Those Who Appeal To The Head Rather Than The Heart, However Pallid And Polite, Are Necessarily Men Of Violence. We Speak Of 'touching' A Man's Heart, But We Can Do Nothing To His Head But Hit It.

The Believers In Miracles Accept Them (rightly Or Wrongly) Because They Have Evidence For Them. The Disbelievers In Miracles Deny Them (rightly Or Wrongly) Because They Have A Doctrine Against Them.

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

There Is No Way In Which A Man Can Earn A Star Or Deserve A Sunset.

I Said To Him, "shall I Tell You Where The Men Are Who Believe Most In Themselves? For I Can Tell You. I Know Of Men Who Believe In Themselves More Colossally Than Napoleon Or Caesar. I Know Where Flames The Fixed Star Of Certainty And Success. I Can Guide You To The Thrones Of The Super-men. The Men Who Really Believe In Themselves Are All In Lunatic Asylums.

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

It Is The Simple Truth That Man Does Differ From The Brutes In Kind And Not In Degree; And The Proof Of It Is Here; That It Sounds Like A Truism To Say That The Most Primitive Man Drew A Picture Of A Monkey And That It Sounds Like A Joke To Say That The Most Intelligent Monkey Drew A Picture Of A Man. Something Of Division And Disproportion Has Appeared; And It Is Unique. Art Is The Signature Of Man.

Truth Can Understand Error, But Error Cannot Understand Truth.

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

[there Is] One Distinctly Human Thing - The Story. There Can Be As Good Science About A Turnip As About A Man. ... [or Philosophy, Or Theology] ...there Can Be, Without Any Question At All, As Good Higher Mathematics About A Turnip As About A Man. But I Do Not Think, Though I Speak In A Manner Somewhat Tentative, That There Could Be As Good A Novel Written About A Turnip As A Man.

Bigotry Is An Incapacity To Conceive Seriously The Alternative To A Proposition.

The Most Incredible Thing About Miracles Is That They Happen.

The Artistic Temperament Is A Disease That Afflicts Amateurs. It Is A Disease Which Arises From Men No Having Sufficient Power Of Expression To Utter And Get Rid Of The Element Of Art In Their Being.

The Great Misfortune Of The Modern English Is Not At All That They Are More Boastful Than Other People (they Are Not); It Is That They Are Boastful About Those Particular Things Which Nobody Can Boast Of Without Losing Them.

Now It Has Appeared To Me Unfair That Humanity Should Be Engaged Perpetually In Calling All Those Things Bad Which Have Been Good Enough To Make Other Things Better, In Everlastingly Kicking Down The Ladder By Which It Has Climbed. It Has Appeared To Me That Progress Should Be Something Else Besides A Continual Parricide; Therefore I Have Investigated The Dust-heaps Of Humanity, And Found A Treasure In All Of Them. I Have Found That Humanity Is Not Incidentally Engaged, But Eternally And Systematically Engaged, In Throwing Gold Into The Gutter And Diamonds Into The Sea.

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

I Don't Need A Church To Tell Me I'm Wrong Where I Already Know I'm Wrong; I Need A Church To Tell Me I'm Wrong Where I Think I'm Right

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

Literature Is A Luxury; Fiction Is A Necessity.

What Was Wonderful About Childhood Is That Anything In It Was A Wonder. It Was Not Merely A World Full Of Miracles; It Was A Miraculous World.

Blasphemy Is An Artistic Effect, Because Blasphemy Depends Upon A Philosophical Conviction. Blasphemy Depends Upon Belief And Is Fading With It. If Any One Doubts This, Let Him Sit Down Seriously And Try To Think Blasphemous Thoughts About Thor.

One Can Hardly Think Too Little Of One's Self. One Can Hardly Think Too Much Of One's Soul.

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

My Life Is Passed In Making Bad Jokes And Seeing Them Turn Into True Prophecies.

A Building Is Akin To Dogma; It Is Insolent, Like Dogma. Whether Or No It Is Permanent, It Claims Permanence, Like A Dogma. People Ask Why We Have No Typical Architecture Of The Modern World, Like Impressionism In Painting. Surely It Is Obviously Because We Have Not Enough Dogmas; We Cannot Bear To See Anything In The Sky That Is Solid And Enduring, Anything In The Sky That Does Not Change Like The Clouds Of The Sky.

There Are Two Kinds Of Paradoxes. They Are Not So Much The Good And The Bad, Nor Even The True And The False. Rather They Are The Fruitful And The Barren; The Paradoxes Which Produce Life And The Paradoxes That Merely Announce Death. Nearly All Modern Paradoxes Merely Announce Death.

"are You A Devil?" "i Am A Man," Answered Father Brown Gravely; "and Therefore Have All Devils In My Heart."

What Affects Men Sharply About A Foreign Nation Is Not So Much Finding Or Not Finding Familiar Things; It Is Rather Not Finding Them In The Familiar Place.

While Once It Was The Rank And File That Cheered With All The Partisan Passions At Their Heights, Today It Is The Party Leaders Who Are Cheering Themselves; And All By Themselves. The Mob That Is Their Audience Is In One Vast Universal Trance, Thinking About Something Else.

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

Bowing Down In Blind Credulity, As Is My Custom, Before Mere Authority And The Tradition Of The Elders, Superstitiously Swallowing A Story I Could Not Test At The Time By Experiment Or Private Judgment, I Am Firmly Of The Opinion That I Was Born On The 29th Of May, 1874, On Campden Hill, Kensington; And Baptised According To The Formularies Of The Church Of England In The Little Church Of St. George Opposite The Large Waterworks Tower That Dominated That Ridge.

My Brother, Cecil Edward Chesterton, Was Born When I Was About Five Years Old; And, After A Brief Pause, Began To Argue. He Continued To Argue To The End. I Am Glad To Think That Through All Those Years We Never Stopped Arguing; And We Never Once Quarreled. Perhaps The Principal Objection To A Quarrel Is That It Interrupts An Argument.

The Best Kind Of Giving Is Thanksgiving.

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

Every Politician Is Emphatically A Promising Politician.

For They (capitalists) Hold As Their Chief Heresy, In A Coarser Form, The Fundamental Falsehood That Things Are Not Made To Be Used But Made To Be Sold. All The Collapse Of Their Commercial System In Their Own Time Has Been Due To That Fallacy Of Forcing Things On A Market Where There Was No Market; Of Continually Increasing The Power Of Supply Without Increasing The Power Of Demand; Of Briefly, Of Always Considering The Man Who Sells The Potato And Never Considering The Man Who Eats It.

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.

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.

The Man Of The True Religious Tradition Understands Two Things: Liberty And Obedience. The First Means Knowing What You Really Want. The Second Means Knowing What You Really Trust.

Tradition Is Only Democracy Extended Through Time; It May Be Defined As An Extension Of The Franchise. Tradition Means Giving Votes To The Most Obscure Of All Classes, Our Ancestors. It Is The Democracy Of The Dead. Tradition Refuses To Submit To The Small And Arrogant Oligarchy Of Those Who Are Merely Walking About. All Democrats Object To Men Being Disqualified By Accident Of Birth; Tradition Objects To Their Being Disqualified By Accident Of Death. Democracy Tells Us Not To Neglect A Good Man's Opinion, Even If He Is Our Father.

Hope Is The Power Of Being Cheerful In Circumstances Which We Know To Be Desperate.

No Man Can Be Merry Unless He Is Serious.

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.

Very Few People In The World Would Care To Listen To The Real Defense Of Their Own Characters. The Real Defense, The Defense Which Belongs To The Day Of Judgment, Would Make Such Damaging Admissions, Would Clear Away So Many Artificial Virtues, Would Tell Such Tragedies Of Weakness And Failure, That A Man Would Sooner Be Misunderstood And Censured By The World Than Exposed To That Awful And Merciless Eulogy.

Gratitude Produced The Most Purely Joyful Moments That Have Been Known To Man.

We Talk Of Wild Animals But Man Is The Only Wild Animal. It Is Man That Has Broken Out. All Other Animals Are Tame Animals; Following The Rugged Respectability Of The Tribe Or Type.

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

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?

Whether A Man Chooses To Tell The Truth In Long Sentences Or Short Jokes Is A Problem Analogous To Whether He Chooses To Tell The Truth In French Or In German.

All The Controversialists Who Have Become Conscious Of The Real Issue Are Already Saying Of Our Ideal Exactly What Used To Be Said Of The Socialists' Ideal. They Are Saying That Private Property Is Too Ideal Not To Be Impossible. They Are Saying That Private Enterprise Is Too Good To Be True. They Are Saying That The Idea Of Ordinary Men Owning Ordinary Possessions Is Against The Laws Of Political Economy And Requires An Alteration In Human Nature.

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.

Marriage Halves Our Griefs, Doubles Our Joys, And Quadruples Our Expenses

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

Leaving The Complications Of The Human Breakfast-table Out Of Account, In An Elemental Sense, The Egg Only Exists To Produce The Chicken. But The Chicken Does Not Exist Only In Order To Produce Another Egg. He May Also Exist To Amuse Himself, To Praise God, And Even To Suggest Ideas To A French Dramatist. Being A Conscious Life, He Is, Or May Be, Valuable In Himself.

The Old Religionist Cried Out For His God. The New Religionist Cries Out For Some God To Be His.

To Do Mohammed Justice, His Main Attack Was Against The Idolatries Of Asia. Only He Thought, Just As The Arians Did And Just As The Unitarians Do, That He Could Attack Them Better With A Greater Approximation To Plain Theism. What Distinguishes His Heresy From Anything Like An Arian Or Albigensian Heresy Is That, As It Sprang Up On The Borders Of Christendom, It Could Spread Outwards To A Barbaric World.

When Learned Men Begin To Use Their Reason, Then I Generally Discover That They Haven't Got Any.

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.

If A Rhinoceros Were To Enter This Restaurant Now, There Is No Denying He Would Have Great Power Here. But I Should Be The First To Rise And Assure Him That He Had No Authority Whatever.

The Cause Which Is Blocking All Progress Today Is The Subtle Scepticism Which Whispers In A Million Ears That Things Are Not Good Enough To Be Worth Improving. If The World Is Good We Are Revolutionaries, If The World Is Evil We Must Be Conservatives. These Essays, Futile As They Are Considered As Serious Literature, Are Yet Ethically Sincere, Since They Seek To Remind Men That Things Must Be Loved First And Improved Afterwards.

For Us Who Live In Cities Nature Is Not Natural. Nature Is Supernatural. Just As Monks Watched And Strove To Get A Glimpse Of Heaven, So We Watch And Strive To Get A Glimpse Of Earth. It Is As If Men Had Cake And Wine Every Day But Were Sometimes Allowed Common Bread.

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.

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

Islam Was Something Like A Christian Heresy. The Early Heresies Had Been Full Of Mad Reversals And Evasions Of The Incarnation, Rescuing Their Jesus From The Reality Of His Body Even At The Expense Of The Sincerity Of His Soul.

Why Be Something To Everybody When You Can Be Everything To Somebody?

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.

When A Man Ceases To Believe In God, He Does Not Believe In Nothing. He Believes In Everything.

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

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

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 Whole Curse Of The Last Century Has Been What Is Called The Swing Of The Pendulum; That Is, The Idea That Man Must Go Alternately From One Extreme To The Other. It Is A Shameful And Even Shocking Fancy; It Is The Denial Of The Whole Dignity Of The Mankind. When Man Is Alive He Stands Still. It Is Only When He Is Dead That He Swings.

If A Man Only Likes Victory He Must Always Come Late For The Battle.

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.

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.

The Reason That Angels Fly Is That They Take Themselves So Lightly.

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.

A Man Running After A Hat Is Not Half So Ridiculous As A Man Running After A Woman.

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

Oscar Wilde Said That Sunsets Were Not Valued Because We Could Not Pay For Sunsets. But Oscar Wilde Was Wrong; We Can Pay For Sunsets. We Can Pay For Them By Not Being Oscar Wilde.

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.

Gratitude Is Happiness Doubled By Wonder.

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

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

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

When A Person Has Found Something Which He Prefers To Life Itself, He For The First Time Has Begun To Live.

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.

A Woman Uses Her Intelligence To Find Reasons To Support Her Intuition.

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

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.

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

Of Being Strong And Brave. The Strong Can Not Be Brave. Only The Weak Can Be Brave; And Yet Again, In Practice, Only Those Who Can Be Brave Can Be Trusted, In Time Of Doubt, To Be Strong.

London Is A Riddle. Paris Is An Explanation.

Truth, Of Course, Must Of Necessity Be Stranger Than Fiction, For We Have Made Fiction To Suit Ourselves.

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

Christianity Satisfies Suddenly And Perfectly Man's Ancestral Instinct For Being The Right Way Up; Satisfies It Supremely In This, That By Its Creed Joy Becomes Something Gigantic, And Sadness Something Special And Small.

The 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.

There Are No Wise Few. Every Aristocracy That Has Ever Existed Has Behaved, In All Essential Points, Exactly Like A Small Mob.

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