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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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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I Suppose Every One

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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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.

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

What Life And Death May Be To A Turkey Is Not My Business; But The Soul Of Scrooge And The Body Of Cratchit Are My Business.

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.

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

Sometimes He Even Embarrassed The Company By Phrases Suggesting That There Was Some Difference Between A Liberal And A Conservative.

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.

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 That Arrogant Oligarchy Who Merely Happen To Be Walking Around.

There Is No Bigot Like The Atheist.

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.

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

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

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

Listening And Hearing

We Are All Ordinary People. And It's The Extraordinary People Who Know It.

All But The Hard Hearted Man Must Be Torn With Pity For This Pathetic Dilemma Of The Rich Man, Who Has To Keep The Poor Man Just Stout Enough To Do The Work And Just Thin Enough To Have To Do It.

The Cross Cannot Be Defeated For It Is Defeat.

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

At Least Five Times, With The Arian And The Albigensian, With The Humanist Skeptic, After Voltaire And After Darwin, The Christian Faith Has To All Appearance, Gone To The Dogs? But, In Each Of These Five Cases, It Was The Dog That Died.

It Isn't That They Can't See The Solution. It Is That They Can't See The Problem.

There Are Two Ways Of Getting Home; And One Of Them Is To Stay There.

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.

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

The Chief Object Of Education Is Not To Learn Things But To Unlearn Things.

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

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

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.

There Are No Words To Express The Abyss Between Isolation And Having One Ally. It May Be Conceded To The Mathematician That Four Is Twice Two. But Two Is Not Twice One; Two Is Two Thousand Times One.

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.

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

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

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

Representatives

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.

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

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

The State Did Not Own Men So Entirely, Even When It Could Send Them To The Stake, As It Sometimes Does Now Where It Can Send Them To The Elementary School.

If The World Grows To Worldly, It Can Be Rebuked By The Church; But If The Church Grows To Worldly, It Cannot Be Adequately Rebuked For Worldlyness By The World.

When "everyone Knows" That Something Is So, It Is Always More Interesting And Often Illuminating To Assumeexactly The Opposite, And To See Where That Leads.

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 Whole Truth Is Generally The Ally Of Virtue; A Half-truth Is Always The Ally Of Some Vice.

There Are Some Desires That Are Not Desirable.

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

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

The Old Assumption Of The Approximate Impossibility Of War Really Rested On A Similar Assumption About The Impossibility Of Evil-and Especially Of Evil In High Places.

Savages And Modern Artists Are Alike Strangely Driven To Create Something Uglier Than Themselves. But The Artists Find It Harder.

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

The Home Is Not The One Tame Place In The World Of Adventure. It Is The One Wild Place In The World Of Rules And Set Tasks.

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

Angels Can Fly Because They Take Themselves Lightly.

Half A Truth Is Better Than No Politics.

The Man Who Lives In A Small Community Lives In A Much Larger World. He Knows Much More Of The Fierce Variety And Uncompromising Divergences Of Men…in A Large Community, We Can Choose Our Companions. In A Small Community, Our Companions Are Chosen For Us. Thus In All Extensive And Highly Civilized Society Groups Come Into Existence Founded Upon Sympathy, And Shut Out The Real World More Sharply Than The Gates Of A Monastery. There Is Nothing Really Narrow About The Clan; The Thing Which Is Really Narrow Is The Clique.

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 Power Which Makes A Man Able To Entertain A Good Impulse Is The Same As That Which Enables Him To Make A Good Gun; It Is Imagination.

Men Do Not Differ Much About What Things They Will Call Evils; They Differ Enormously About What Evils They Will Call Excusable.

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

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

The Modern World Is Full Of The Old Christian Virtues Gone Mad. The Virtues Have Gone Mad Because They Have Been Isolated From Each Other And Are Wandering Alone. Thus Some Scientists Care For Truth; And Their Truth Is Pitiless. Thus Some Humanitarians Only Care For Pity; And Their Pity (i Am Sorry To Say) Is Often Untruthful.

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

Tolerance Is A Virtue Of People Who Don't Believe In Anything Anymore.

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

A Tragedy Means Always A Mans Struggle With That Which Is Stronger Than Man.

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

...but Out Of The Desert, From The Dry Places And The Dreadful Suns, Come The Cruel Children Of The Lonely God; The Real Unitarians Who With Scimitar In Hand Have Laid Waste The World. For It Is Not Well For God To Be Alone.

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.

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

The Doctrine Of Human Equality Reposes On This: That There Is No Man Really Clever Who Has Not Found That He Is Stupid.

And It Did For One Wild Moment Cross My Mind That, Perhaps, Those Might Not Be The Very Best Judges Of The Relation Of Religion To Happiness Who, By Their Own Account, Had Neither One Nor The Other.

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

There Is No Obligation On Us To Be Richer, Or Busier, Or More Efficient, Or More Productive, Or More Progressive, Or Any Way Worldlier Or Wealthier, If It Does Not Make Us Happier.

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

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

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.

It Is The Decisive People Who Have Become Civilised; It Is The Indecisive, Otherwise Called The Higher Sceptics, Or The Idealistic Doubters, Who Have Remained Barbarians.

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

The Wine They Drink In Paradise They Make In Haute Lorraine.

Humility Is The Mother Of Giants.

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

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.

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.

God Is Like The Sun; You Cannot Look At It, But Without It You Cannot Look At Anything Else.

Faith Is Always At A Disadvantage; It Is A Perpetually Defeated Thing Which Survives All Conquerors.

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

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

It Is The Beginning Of All True Criticism Of Our Time To Realize That It Has Really Nothing To Say, At The Very Moment When It Has Invented So Tremendous A Trumpet For Saying It.

As Long As The Vision Of Heaven Is Always Changing, The Vision Of Earth Will Be Exactly The Same. No Ideal Will Remain Long Enough To Be Realized, Or Even Partly Realized. The Modern Young Man Will Never Change His Environment; For He Will Always Change His Mind.

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.

Wait And See Whether The Religion Of The Servile State Is Not In Every Case What I Say: The Encouragement Of Small Virtues Supporting Capitalism, The Discouragement Of The Huge Virtues That Defy It.

It Is Assumed That The Skeptic Has No Bias; Whereas He Has A Very Obvious Bias In Favour Of Skepticism.

No Man Must Be Superior To The Things That Are Common To Men.... Not Only Are We All In The Same Boat, But We Are All Seasick.

In Dealing With The Arrogant Asserter Of Doubt, It Is Not The Right Method To Tell Him To Stop Doubting. It Is Rather The Right Method To Tell Him To Go On Doubting, To Doubt A Little More, To Doubt Every Day Newer And Wilder Things In The Universe, Until At Last, By Some Strange Enlightenment, He May Begin To Doubt Himself.

It Is Still Bad Taste To Be An Avowed Atheist. But Now It Is Equally Bad Taste To Be An Avowed Christian.

Folk-lore Means That The Soul Is Sane, But That The Universe Is Wild And Full Of Marvels. Realism Means That The World Is Dull And Full Of Routine, But That The Soul Is Sick And Screaming. The Problem Of The Fairy Tale Is: What Will A Healthy Man Do With A Fantastic World? The Problems Of The Modern Novel Is: What Will A Madman Do With A Dull World? In The Fairy Tales The Cosmos Goes Mad; But The Hero Does Not Go Mad. In The Modern Novels The Hero Is Mad Before The Book Begins, And Suffers From The Harsh Steadiness And Cruel Sanity Of The Cosmos.

The Full Value Of This Life Can Only Be Got By Fighting; The Violent Take It By Storm. And If We Have Accepted Everything We Have Missed Something - War. This Life Of Ours Is A Very Enjoyable Fight, But A Very Miserable Truce.

True Contentment Is A Thing As Active As Agriculture. It Is The Power Of Getting Out Of Any Situation All That There Is In It. It Is Arduous And It Is Rare.

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

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

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.

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

To Be Born Into This Earth Is To Be Born Into Uncongenial Surroundings, Hence To Be Born Into A Romance.

Misers Get Up Early In The Morning; And Burglars, I Am Informed, Get Up The Night Before.

The Present Condition Of Fame Is Merely Fashion.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

It May Be A Mere Patriotic Bias, Though I Do Not Think So, But It Seems To Me That The English Aristocracy Is Not Only The Type, But Is The Crown And Flower Of All Actual Aristocracies; It Has All The Oligarchical Virtues As Well As All The Defects. It Is Casual, It Is Kind, It Is Courageous In Obvious Matters; But It Has One Great Merit That Overlaps Even These. The Great And Very Obvious Merit Of The English Aristocracy Is That Nobody Could Possibly Take It Seriously.

For The Only Courage Worth Calling Courage Must Necessarily Mean That The Soul Passes A Breaking Point And Does Not Break.

In The End It Will Not Matter To Us Whether We Wrote Well Or Ill; Whether We Fought With Flails Or Reeds. It Will Matter To Us Greatly On What Side We Fought.

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.

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

The Beautification Of The World Is Not A Work Of Nature, But A Work Of Art, Then It Involves An Artist.

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

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

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

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.

Love Is Not Blind; That Is The Last Thing That It Is. Love Is Bound; And The More It Is Bound The Less It Is Blind.

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.

Instead Of Looking At Books And Pictures About The New Testament I Looked At The New Testament. There I Found An Account, Not In The Least Of A Person With His Hair Parted In The Middle Or His Hands Clasped In Appeal, But Of An Extraordinary Being With Lips Of Thunder And Acts Of Lurid Decision, Flinging Down Tables, Casting Out Devils, Passing With The Wild Secrecy Of The Wind From Mountain Isolation To A Sort Of Dreadful Demagogy; A Being Who Often Acted Like An Angry God — And Always Like A God.

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.

I Would Give A Woman Not More Rights, But More Privileges. Instead Of Sending Her To Seek Such Freedom As Notoriously Prevails In Banks And Factories, I Would Design Specially A House In Which She Can Be Free.

When Giving Treats To Friends Or Children, Give Them What They Like, Emphatically Not What Is Good For Them.

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.

Art, Like Morality, Consists In Drawing The Line Somewhere.

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

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.

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.

Democracy Is Like Blowing Your Nose. You May Not Do It Well, But It's Something You Ought To Do Yourself.

There Is A Road From The Eye To The Heart That Does Not Go Through The Intellect.

The Men Of The Clique Live Together Because They Have The Same Kind Of Soul, And Their Narrowness Is A Narrowness Of Spiritual Coherence And Contentment, Like That Which Exists In Hell . . .

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.

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.

One Can No More Have A Private Religion Than One Can Have A Private Sun Or A Private Moon.

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

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 Only Object Of Liberty Is Life.

If Christianity Should Happen To Be True - That Is To Say, If Its God Is The Real God Of The Universe - Then Defending It May Mean Talking About Anything And Everything.

She Had Never Really Listened To Anyone In Her Life; Which, Some Said, Was Why She Had Survived.

It Isn't That They Can't See The Solution. It's That They Can't See The Problem. They Can't See The Problem If They Are Looking In The Wrong Place. They Can't See The Problem If They Have Blinders On - For 'none Are So Blind As Those That Will Not See'.

Americans Are A Very Backward People, With All The Real Virtues Of A Backward People; The Patriarchal Simplicity And Human Dignity Of A Democracy, And A Respect For Labor Uncorrupted By Cynicism.

A Third-class Carriage Is A Community, While A First-class Carriage Is A Place Of Wild Hermits.

The New Community Which The Capitalists Are Now Constructing Will Be A Very Complete And Absolute Community; And One Which Will Tolerate Nothing Really Independent Of Itself.

If Men Will Not Be Governed By The Ten Commandments, They Shall Be Governed By The Ten Thousand Commandments

The Supreme Adventure Is Being Born. There We Do Walk Suddenly Into A Splendid And Startling Trap... When We Step Into The Family, By The Act Of Being Born, We Do Step Into A World Which Is Incalculable, Into A World Which Has Its Own Strange Laws, Into A World Which Could Do Without Us, Into A World We Have Not Made. In Other Words, When We Step Into The Family We Step Into A Fairy-tale.

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.

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

Marriage Is An Adventure, Like Going To War.

The Life Of A Thinking Man Will Probably Be Divided Into Two Parts -- The First In Which He Desires To Exterminate Modern Thinkers, And The Second In Which He Desires To Watch Them Exterminating Each Other. ... Suppose, For Instance, There Is An Old Story And A New Skeptic Who Is Skeptical Of The Story. We Have Only To Wait A Little While For A Yet Newer Skeptic Who Is Skeptical Of The Skeptic. He Will Probably Find The Old Notion Actually A Help In His New Notion. This Process Is An Abstract Truth Applying To Anything, Apart From Agreement Or Disagreement.

Hope Means Expectancy When Things Are Otherwise Hopeless.

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

The Triangle Of Truisms, Of Father, Mother And Child, Cannot Be Destroyed; It Can Only Destroy Those Civilizations Which Disregard It.

And Pray Where In Earth Or Heaven Are There Prudent Marriages-might As Well Talk About Prudent Suicides.

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

Because A Girl Should Have Long Hair, She Should Have Clean Hair; Because She Should Have Clean Hair, She Should Not Have An Unclean Home; Because She Should Not Have An Unclean Home, She Should Have A Free And Leisured Mother; Because She Should Have A Free Mother, She Should Not Have An Usurious Landlord; Because There Should Not Be A Usurious Landlord, There Should Be A Redistribution Of Property; Because There Should Be A Redistribution Of Property, There Shall Be A Revolution.

Facts By Themselves Can Often Feed The Flame Of Madness, Because Sanity Is A Spirit.

It Is Better To Speak Wisdom Foolishly Like The Saints Than To Speak Folly Wisely Like The Deans.

There Is A Road From The Eye To The Heart That Does Not Go Through The Intellect. Men Do Not Quarrel About The Meaning Of Sunsets; They Never Dispute That The Hawthorn Says The Best And Wittiest Thing About The Spring.

We Are To Regard Existence As A Raid Or Great Adventure; It Is To Be Judged, Therefore, Not By What Calamities It Encounters, But By What Flag It Follows And What High Town It Assaults. The Most Dangerous Thing In The World Is To Be Alive; One Is Always In Danger Of One's Life. But Anyone Who Shrinks From That Is A Traitor To The Great Scheme And Experiment Of Being.

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.

I Do Not Know Much About Mohammed Or Mohammedanism. I Do Not Take The Koran To Bed With Me Every Night. But, If I Did On Some One Particular Night, There Is One Sense At Least In Which I Know What I Should Not Find There. I Apprehend That I Should Not Find The Work Abounding In Strong Encouragements To The Worship Of Idols; That The Praises Of Polytheism Would Not Be Loudly Sung; That The Character Of Mohammed Would Not Be Subjected To Anything Resembling Hatred And Derision; And That The Great Modern Doctrine Of The Unimportance Of Religion Would Not Be Needlessly Emphasised.

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.

[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.

If, Therefore, Nonsense Is Really To Be The Literature Of The Future, It Must Have Its Own Version Of The Cosmos To Offer; The World Must Not Only Be Tragic, Romantic, And Religious, It Must Be Nonsensical Also.

The Most Dangerous Criminal Now Is The Entirely Lawless Modern Philosopher. Compared To Him, Burglars And Bigamists Are Essentially Moral Men.

The Average Man Votes Below Himself; He Votes With Half A Mind Or A Hundredth Part Of One. A Man Ought To Vote With The Whole Of Himself, As He Worships Or Gets Married. A Man Ought To Vote With His Head And Heart, His Soul And Stomach, His Eye For Faces And His Ear For Music; Also (when Sufficiently Provoked) With His Hands And Feet. If He Has Ever Seen A Fine Sunset, The Crimson Color Of It Should Creep Into His Vote. The Question Is Not So Much Whether Only A Minority Of The Electorate Votes. The Point Is That Only A Minority Of The Voter Votes.

All Things Are From God; And Above All, Reason And Imagination And The Great Gifts Of The Mind. They Are Good In Themselves; And We Must Not Altogether Forget Their Origin Even In Their Perversion.

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.

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

Progress Is The Mother Of Problems.

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.

There Is No Such Thing On Earth As An Uninteresting Subject; The Only Thing That Can Exist Is An Uninterested Person. Nothing Is More Keenly Required Than A Defence Of Bores. When Byron Divided Humanity Into The Bores And Bored, He Omitted To Notice That The Higher Qualities Exist Entirely In The Bores, The Lower Qualities In The Bored, Among Whom He Counted Himself. The Bore, By His Starry Enthusiasm, His Solemn Happiness, May, In Some Sense, Have Proved Himself Poetical. The Bored Has Certainly Proved Himself Prosaic.

Even In An Empire Of Atheists The Dead Man Is Always Sacred.

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

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

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

The Christian Pities Men Because They Are Dying, And The Buddhist Pities Them Because They Are Living. The Christian Is Sorry For What Damages The Life Of A Man; But The Buddhist Is Sorry For Him Because He Is Alive.

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

Hell Is God's Great Compliment To The Reality Of Human Freedom And The Dignity Of Human Choice.

The Most Valuable Book We Can Read, About Countries We Have Visited, Is That Which Recalls To Us Something That We Did Notice, But Did Not Notice That We Noticed.

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.

I Owe My Success To Having Listened Respectfully To The Very Best Advice, And Then Going Away And Doing The Exact Opposite.

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

One May Understand The Cosmos, But Never The Ego; The Self Is More Distant Than Any Star.

Stated Baldly, Charity Certainly Means One Of Two Things–pardoning Unpardonable Acts, Or Loving Unlovable People.

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

There Is Only One Thing Certain And That Is That Nothing Is Certain

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."

I Agree With The Realistic Irishman Who Said He Preferred To Prophesy After The Event.

The Most Poetical Thing In The World Is Not Being Sick.

There Are No Wise Few; For In All Men Rages The Folly Of The Fall. Take Your Strongest, Happiest, Handsomest, Best Born, Best Bred, Best Instructed Men On Earth And Give Them Special Power For Half An Hour And Because They Are Men They Will Begin To [perform] Badly.

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

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

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

Plato Was Right, But Not Quite Right.

In The Main, And From The Beginning Of Time, Mysticism Has Kept Men Sane. The Thing That Has Driven Them Mad Was Logic.

We Lose Our Bearings Entirely By Speaking Of The 'lower Classes' When We Mean Humanity Minus Ourselves.

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

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George Santayana

Edward Everett Hale

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