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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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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I Like The Cyclostyle

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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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.

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The Only Defensible War Is A War Of Defense.

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

There Is No Logical Connection Between Flying And Laying Eggs.

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

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

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 Can't Have The Family Farm Without The Family.

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

There Must Be Some Good In The Life Of Battle, For So Many Good Men Have Enjoyed Being Soldiers.

When The Chord Of Monotony Is Stretched To Its Tightest, It Breaks With The Sound Of A Song.

The Aim Of Good Prose Words Is To Mean What They Say. The Aim Of Good Poetical Words Is To Mean What They Do Not Say.

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

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

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

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.

We Should Always Endeavor To Wonder At The Permanent Thing, Not At The Mere Exception. We Should Be Startled By The Sun, And Not By The Eclipse. We Should Wonder Less At The Earthquake, And Wonder More At The Earth.

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.

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

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

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

The Essence Of All Pantheism, Evolutionism, And Modern Cosmic Religion Is Really This Proposition: That Nature Is Our Mother. Unfortunately, If You Regard Nature As A Mother, You Discover She Is A Step-mother.

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.

Thieves Respect Property. They Merely Wish The Property To Become Their Property That They May More Perfectly Respect It.

Fallacies Do Not Cease To Be Fallacies Because They Become Fashions.

The Sentimentalist, Roughly Speaking, Is The Man Who Wants To Eat His Cake And Have It. He Has No Sense Of Honor About Ideas; He Will Not See That One Must Pay For An Idea As Well As For Anything Else. He Will Have Them All At Once In One Wild Intellectual Harem, No Matter How Much They Quarrel And Contradict Each Other.

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

The Lunatic Is The Man Who Lives In A Small World But Thinks It Is A Large One; He Is The Man Who Lives In A Tenth Of The Truth, And Thinks It Is The Whole. The Madman Cannot Conceive Any Cosmos Outside A Certain Tale Or Conspiracy Or Vision.

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

The Poets Have Been Mysteriously Silent On The Subject Of Cheese.

As An Explanation Of The World Materialism Has A Sort Of Insane Simplicity. It Has The Quality Of A Madman's Arguments; We Have At Once The Sense Of It Covering Everything And The Sense Of It Leaving Everything Out.

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

Destiny Is But A Phrase Of The Weak Human Heart - The Dark Apology For Every Error. The Strong And Virtuous Admit No Destiny. On Earth Conscience Guides; In Heaven God Watches. And Destiny Is But The Phantom We Invoke To Silence The One And Dethrone The Other.

The Only People Who Seem To Have Nothing To Do With The Education Of The Children Are The Parents.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Paradox - Truth Standing On Her Head To Get Attention.

A Nation That Has Nothing But Its Amusements Will Not Be Amused For Long.

The Unconscious Democracy Of America Is A Very Fine Thing. It Is A True And Deep And Instinctive Assumption Of The Equality Of Citizens, Which Even Voting And Elections Have Not Destroyed.

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

It Is One Thing To Describe An Interview With A Gorgon Or A Griffin, A Creature Who Does Not Exist. It Is Another Thing To Discover That The Rhinoceros Does Exist And Then Take Pleasure In The Fact That He Looks As If He Didn't.

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

Children Are Grateful When Santa Claus Puts In Their Stockings Gifts Of Toys Or Sweets. Could I Not Be Grateful To Santa Claus When He Put In My Stockings The Gift Of Two Miraculous Legs? We Thank People For Birthday Presents Of Cigars And Slippers. Can I Thank No One For The Birthday Present Of Birth?

The Men Who Really Believe In Themselves Are All In Lunatic Asylums.

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

When We Look Upon Lives So Human And Yet So Small, We Feel As If We Ourselves Were Enlarged To An Embarrassing Bigness Of Stature. We Feel The Same Kind Of Obligation To These Creatures That A Deity Might Feel If He Had Created Something That He Could Not Understand.

The Point Is Not That This World Is Too Sad To Love Or Too Glad Not To Love; The Point Is That When You Do Love A Thing, Its Gladness Is A Reason For Loving It, And Its Sadness A Reason For Loving It More.

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

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

I Should Favour Anything That Would Increase The Present Enormous Authority Of Women And Their Creative Action In Their Own Homes. The Average Woman...is A Despot; The Average Man Is A Serf.

Properly Speaking, Of Course, There Is No Such Thing As A Return To Nature, Because There Is No Such Thing As A Departure From It. The Phrase Reminds One Of The Slightly Intoxicated Gentleman Who Gets Up In His Own Dining Room And Declares Firmly That He Must Be Getting Home.

Catholicism Is Not Ritualism; It May In The Future Be Fighting Some Sort Of Superstitious And Idolatrous Exaggeration Of Ritual. Catholicism Is Not Asceticism; It Has Again And Again In The Past Repressed Fanatical And Cruel Exaggerations Of Asceticism. Catholicism Is Not Mere Mysticism; It Is Even Now Defending Human Reason Against The Mere Mysticism Of The Pragmatists.

Let Your Religion Be Less Of A Theory And More Of A Love Affair.

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

If You Happen To Read Fairy Tales, You Will Observe That One Idea Runs From One End Of Them To The Other--the Idea That Peace And Happiness Can Only Exist On Some Condition. This Idea, Which Is The Core Of Ethics, Is The Core Of The Nursery-tales.

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.

Only Men To Whom The Family Is Sacred Will Ever Have A Standard Or A Status By Which To Criticize The State. They Alone Can Appeal To Something More Holy Than The Gods Of The City.

It Might Reasonably Be Maintained That The True Object Of All Human Life Is Play. Earth Is A Task Garden; Heaven Is A Playground. To Be At Last In Such Secure Innocence That One Can Juggle With The Universe And The Stars, To Be So Good That One Can Treat Everything As A Joke - That May Be, Perhaps, The Real End And Final Holiday Of Human Souls.

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.

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.

Puritanism Was An Honourable Mood; It Was A Noble Fad. In Other Words, It Was A Highly Creditable Mistake.

A Good Novel Tells Us The Truth About Its Hero; But A Bad Novel Tells Us The Truth About Its Author.

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

[a Pacifist Is] The Last And Least Excusable On The List Of The Enemies Of Society.

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

Poets Do Not Go Mad, But Chess Players Do.

Ivory May Not Be So White As Snow, But The Whole Arctic Continent Does Not Make Ivory Black.

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

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

Contemporary Society Has Become Dry, Not For Lack Of Wonders But For Lack Of Wonder.

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

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.

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.

The Voice Of The Special Rebels And Prophets, Recommending Discontent, Should, As I Have Said, Sound Now And Then Suddenly, Like A Trumpet. But The Voices Of The Saints And Sages, Recommending Contentment, Should Sound Unceasingly, Like The Sea.

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.

The Madman Is The Man Who Has Lost Everything Except His Reason.

Lost Everything

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

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

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

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

Science Must Not Impose Any Philosophy, Any More Than The Telephone Must Tell Us What To Say.

A Man Must Be Prepared Not Only To Be A Martyr, But To Be A Fool. It Is Absurd To Say That A Man Is Ready To Toil And Die For His Convictions If He Is Not Even Ready To Wear A Wreathe Around His Head For Them.

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

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.

Modern Man Is Staggering And Losing His Balance Because He Is Being Pelted With Little Pieces Of Alleged Fact Which Are Native To The Newspapers; And, If They Turn Out Not To Be Facts, That Is Still More Native To Newspapers.

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

A Feminist Is Someone Who Loathes Being A Woman And Who Dislikes The Chief Feminine Characteristics.

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

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

The Worst Moment For An Atheist Is When He Feels A Profound Sense Of Gratitude And Has No One To Thank.

Against A Dark Sky All Flowers Look Like Fireworks. There Is Something Strange About Them, At Once Vivid And Secret, Like Flowers Traced In Fire In The Phantasmal Garden Of A Witch.

I Am Myself So Exceedingly Nordic, As Far As Physical Constitution Is Concerned, That I Can Enjoy Almost Any Weather Except What Is Called Glorious Weather. At The End Of A Few Days, I Am Left Wondering How The Men Of The Mediterranean Ever Managed To Do Almost All The Most Active And Astonishing Things That Have Been Done.

A Naked Moon Stood In A Naked Sky.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

If A Thing Is Worth Doing, It Is Worth Doing Badly.

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

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

By Experts In Poverty I Do Not Mean Sociologists, But Poor Men.

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

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

How You Think When You Lose Determines How Long It Will Be Until You Win.

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.

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.

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.

My Brain And This World Don't Fit Each Other; And There's An End Of It.

But Pure Wit Is Akin To Puritanism; To The Perfect And Painful Consciousness Of The Final Fact In The Universe. Very Briefly, The Man Who Sees The Consistency In Things Is A Wit - And A Calvinist. The Man Who Sees The Inconsistency In Things Is A Humorist - And A Catholic.

Every Heresy Has Been An Effort To Narrow The Church.

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.

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

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

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

A Child's Instinct Is Almost Perfect In The Matter Of Fighting. The Child's Hero Is Always The Man Or Boy Who Defends Himself Suddenly And Splendidly Against Aggression.

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

Ten Thousand Women Marched Through The Streets Shouting, 'we Will Not Be Dictated To,' And Went Off And Became Stenographers.

Family Is The Theatre Of The Spiritual Drama, The Place Where Things Happen, Especially The Things That Matter.

No Man Knows He Is Young While He Is Young.

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

[marxism Will] In A Generation Or So [go] Into The Limbo Of Most Heresies, But Meanwhile It Will Have Poisoned The Russian Revolution.

I Believe Your Own Accent Is Inimitable, Though I Shall Practice It In My Bath.

All Men Thirst To Confess Their Crimes More Than Tired Beasts Thirst For Water; But They Naturally Object To Confessing Them While Other People, Who Have Also Committed The Same Crimes, Sit By And Laugh At Them.

It Is True That I Am Of An Older Fashion; Much That I Love Has Been Destroyed Or Sent Into Exile.

The Riddles Of God Are More Satisfying Than The Solutions Of Man.

The Center Of Every Man's Existence Is A Dream.

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.

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.

Education Is Simply The Soul Of A Society As It Passes From One Generation To Another.

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

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.

A Man Was Meant To Be Doubtful About Himself, But Undoubting About The Truth; This Has Been Reversed. Nowadays The Part Of A Man That A Man Does Assert Is Exactly The Part He Ought Not To Assert - Himself. The Part He Doubts Is Exactly The Part He Ought Not To Doubt - The Divine Reason.

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

There Are Many Books Which We Think We Have Read When We Have Not. There Are, At Least, Many That We Think We Remember When We Do Not. An Original Picture Was, Perhaps, Imprinted Upon The Brain, But It Has Changed With Our Own Changing Minds. We Only Remember Our Remembrance.

Of All Modern Notions, The Worst Is This: That Domesticity Is Dull. Inside The Home, They Say, Is Dead Decorum And Routine; Outside Is Adventure And Variety. But The Truth Is That The Home Is The Only Place Of Liberty, The Only Spot On Earth Where A Man Can Alter Arrangements Suddenly, Make An Experiment Or Indulge In A Whim. The Home Is Not The One Tame Place In A World Of Adventure; It Is The One Wild Place In A World Of Rules And Set Tasks.

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.

Fairy Tales Do Not Give The Child His First Idea Of Bogey. What Fairy Tales Give The Child Is His First Clear Idea Of The Possible Defeat Of Bogey. The Baby Has Known The Dragon Intimately Ever Since He Had An Imagination. What The Fairy Tale Provides For Him Is A St. George To Kill The Dragon.

(tradition) Is The Democracy Of The Dead.

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

'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.'

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

I Would Not Say That Old Men Grow Wise, For Men Never Grow Wise; And Many Old Men Retain A Very Attractive Childishness And Cheerful Innocence. Elderly People Are Often Much More Romantic Than Younger People, And Sometimes Even More Adventurous, Having Begun To Realize How Many Things They Do Not Know.

It Is Well Sometimes To Half Understand A Poem In The Same Manner That We Half Understand The World.

Marriage Is A Sort Of Poetical See-saw.

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.

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.

Civilization Has Run On Ahead Of The Soul Of Man, And Is Producing Faster Than He Can Think And Give Thanks.

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

The Rolling Stone Rolls Echoing From Rock To Rock; But The Rolling Stone Is Dead. The Moss Is Silent Because The Moss Is Alive.

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

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

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.

I Entertain A Private Suspicion That Physical Sports Were Much More Really Effective And Beneficent When They Were Not Taken Quite So Seriously. One Of The First Essentials Of Sport Being Healthy Is That It Should Be Delightful; It Is Rapidly Becoming A False Religion With Austerities And Prostrations.

And It Is Always The Humble Man Who Talks Too Much; The Proud Man Watches Himself Too Closely.

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.

Silence Is The Unbearable Repartee.

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

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

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

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

Free Verse'? You May As Well Call Sleeping In A Ditch 'free Architecture'.

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

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

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

In The Modern Conflict Between The Smile And The Laugh, I Am All In Favor Of Laughing. The Recent Stage Of Culture And Criticism Might Very Well Be Summed Up As The Men Who Smile Criticizing The Men Who Laugh.

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

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.

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

I Never Could See Anything Wrong In Sensationalism; And I Am Sure Our Society Is Suffering More From Secrecy Than From Flamboyant Revelations.

The Average Businessman Began To Be Agnostic, Not So Much Because He Did Not Know Where He Was, As Because He Wanted To Forget. Many Of The Rich Took To Scepticism Exactly As The Poor Took To Drink; Because It Was A Way Out.

A Man Is Angry At A Libel Because It Is False, But At A Satire Because It Is True.

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

What Is Education? Properly Speaking, There Is No Such Thing As Education. Education Is Simply The Soul Of A Society As It Passes From One Generation To Another. Whatever The Soul Is Like, It Will Have To Be Passed On Somehow, Consciously Or Unconsciously, And That Transition May Be Called Education. ... What We Need Is To Have A Culture Before We Hand It Down. In Other Words, It Is A Truth, However Sad And Strange, That We Cannot Give What We Have Not Got, And Cannot Teach To Other People What We Do Not Know Ourselves.

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

There Are No Boring Subjects, Only Disinterested Minds.

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.

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

When We Were Children We Were Grateful To Those Who Filled Our Stockings At Christmas Time. Why Are We Not Grateful To God For Filling Our Stockings With Legs?

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

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

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.

It Never Occurred To Him To Be Spiritually Won Over To The Enemy. Many Moderns, Inured To A Weak Worship Of Intellect And Force, Might Have Wavered In Their Allegiance Under This Oppression Of A Great Personality. . . . But This Was A Kind Of Modern Meanness To Which Syme Could Not Sink Even In His Extreme Morbidity. Like Any Man, He Was Coward Enough To Fear Great Force; But He Was Not Coward Enough To Admire It.

Materialists And Madmen Never Have Doubts.

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

[consider] A Fence Or Gate Erected Across A Road] The More Modern Type Of Reformer Goes Gaily Up To It And Says, "i Don't See The Use Of This; Let Us Clear It Away." To Which The More Intelligent Type Of Reformer Will Do Well To Answer: "if You Don't See The Use Of It, I Certainly Won't Let You Clear It Away. Go Away And Think. Then, When You Can Come Back And Tell Me That You Do See The Use Of It, I May Allow You To Destroy It."

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.

Man Is More Himself, Man Is More Manlike, When Joy Is The Fundamental Thing In Him, And Grief The Superficial. Melancholy Should Be An Innocent Interlude, A Tender And Fugitive State Of Mind; Praise Should Be The Permanent Pulsation Of The Soul. Pessimism Is At Best An Emotional Half-holiday; Joy Is The Uproarious Labor By Which All Things Live? Christianity Satisfies Suddenly And Perfectly Man's Ancestral Instinct For Being The Right Way Up; Satisfies It Supremely In This, That By Its Creed Joy Becomes Something Gigantic, And Sadness Something Special And Small.

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.

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