Background Image

...

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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Would Give A

Gilbert K. Chesterton

...

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.

Views: 5

Topic

More From Gilbert K. Chesterton

Humour Is Meant, In A Literal Sense, To Make Game Of Man; That Is, To Dethrone Him From His Official Dignity And Hunt Him Like Game.

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

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

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

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.

Somehow One Can Never Manage To Be An Atheist.

Self-denial Is The Test And Definition Of Self-government.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

My Attitude Toward Progress Has Passed From Antagonism To Boredom. I Have Long Ceased To Argue With People Who Prefer Thursday To Wednesday Because It Is Thursday.

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.

Angels Can Fly Because They Take Themselves Lightly. Never Forget That The Devil Fell By Force Of Gravity. He Who Has The Faith Has The Fun.

The One Created Thing Which We Cannot Look At Is The One Thing In The Light Of Which We Look At Everything.

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

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.

Most Americans Are Born Drunk, And Really Require A Little Wine Or Beer To Sober Them.

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

When You With Velvets Mantled O'er, Defy December's Tempests Frore, Oh! Spare One Garment From Your Store, To Clothe The Poor At Christmas.

It Is Much Easier To Write A Good Times Leading Article Than A Good Joke In Punch.

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

Journalism Only Tells Us What Men Are Doing; It Is Fiction That Tells Us What They Are Thinking, And Still More What They Are Feeling. If A New Scientific Theory Finds The Soul Of A Man In His Dreams, At Least It Ought Not To Leave Out His Day-dreams. And All Fiction Is Only A Diary Of Day-dreams Instead Of Days. And This Profound Preoccupation Of Men's Minds With Certain Things Always Eventually Has An Effect Even On The External Expression Of The Age.

The Whole Object Of Travel Is Not To Set Foot On Foreign Land; It Is At Last To Set Foot On One's Own Country As A Foreign Land.

Some Men Never Feel Small, But These Are The Few Men Who Are.

A New Philosophy Generally Means In Practice The Praise Of Some Old Vice.

I Was Planning To Go Into Architecture. But When I Arrived, Architecture Was Filled Up. Acting Was Right Next To It, So I Signed Up For Acting Instead.

A Great Man Knows He Is Not God, And The Greater He Is The Better He Knows It.

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

Only Man Can Be Absurd: For Only Man Can Be Dignified.

History Is Not A Toboggan Slide, But A Road To Be Reconsidered And Even Retraced

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

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

If The Devil Tells You Something Is Too Fearful To Look At, Look At It. If He Says Something Is Too Terrible To Hear, Hear It. If You Think Some Truth Unbearable, Bear It.

Poets Do Not Go Mad, But Chess Players Do.

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 . . .

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

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

London Is A Riddle. Paris Is An Explanation.

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

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

We Make Our Friends; We Make Our Enemies; But God Makes Our Next Door Neighbour.

People Talk Of The Pathos And Failure Of Plain Women; But It Is A More Terrible Thing That A Beautiful Woman May Succeed In Everything But Womanhood.

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

There Is The Great Lesson Of 'beauty And The Beast,' That A Thing Must Be Loved Before It Is Lovable.

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

Soldiers Have Many Faults, But They Have One Redeeming Merit; They Are Never Worshippers Of Force. Soldiers More Than Any Other Men Are Taught Severely And Systematically That Might Is Not Right. The Fact Is Obvious. The Might Is In The Hundred Men Who Obey. The Right (or What Is Held To Be Right) Is In The One Man Who Commands Them.

Humility Is The Luxurious Art Of Reducing Ourselves To A Point, Not To A Small Thing Or A Large One, But To A Thing With No Size At All, So That To It All The Cosmic Things Are What They Really Are - Of Immeasurable Stature.

Evil Always Wins Through The Strength Of Its Splendid Dupes; And There Has In All Ages Been A Disastrous Alliance Between Abnormal Innocence And Abnormal Sin.

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.

The Artistic Temperament Is A Disease That Affects Amateurs. Artists Of A Large And Wholesome Vitality Get Rid Of Their Art Easily, As They Breathe Easily Or Perspire Easily. But In Artists Of Less Force, The Thing Becomes A Pressure, And Produces A Definite Pain, Which Is Called The Artistic Temperament.

The Best Kind Of Giving Is Thanksgiving.

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.

Love Means To Love That Which Is Unlovable; Or It Is No Virtue At All.

The Martyr Endured Tortures To Affirm His Belief In Truth But He Never Asserted His Disbelief In Torture.

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

Any One Thinking Of The Holy Child As Born In December Would Mean By It Exactly What We Mean By It; That Christ Is Not Merely A Summer Sun Of The Prosperous But A Winter Fire For The Unfortunate.

All Real Democracy Is An Attempt Like That Of A Jolly Hostess To Bring The Shy People Out.

There Is Less Difference Than Many Suppose Between The Ideal Socialist System, In Which The Big Businesses Are Run By The State, And The Present Capitalist System, In Which The State Is Run By The Big Businesses.

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.

Silver Is Sometimes More Valuable Than Gold, That Is, In Large Quantities.

Honour Is A Luxury For Aristocrats, But It Is A Necessity For Hall-porters.

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.

Fable Is More Historical Than Fact, Because Fact Tells Us About One Man And Fable Tells Us About A Million Men.

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

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

Buddhism Is Not A Creed, It Is A Doubt.

It Is Not Funny That Anything Else Should Fall Down; Only That A Man Should Fall Down... Why Do We Laugh? Because It Is A Grave Religious Matter: It Is The Fall Of Man. Only Man Can Be Absurd: For Only Man Can Be Dignified.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

One Must Somehow Find A Way Of Loving The World Without Trusting It; Somehow One Must Love The World Without Being Worldly.

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

Paradox - Truth Standing On Her Head To Get Attention.

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

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

The Whole Modern World Has Divided Itself Into Conservatives And Progressives. The Business Of Progressives Is To Go On Making Mistakes. The Business Of Conservatives Is To Prevent Mistakes From Being Corrected.

Theology Is Only Thought Applied To Religion.

To Be Simple Is The Best Thing In The World.

As For The General View That The Church Was Discredited By The War—they Might As Well Say That The Ark Was Discredited By The Flood. When The World Goes Wrong, It Proves Rather That The Church Is Right. The Church Is Justified, Not Because Her Children Do Not Sin, But Because They Do.

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

Every True Artist Feels That He Is Touching Transcendental Truths; That His Images Are Shadows Of Things Seen Through The Veil.

Around Every Corner Is Another Gift Waiting To Surprise Us, And It Will Surprise Us If We Can Achieve Control Over Our Natural Tendencies To Make Comparisons [to Things That Are Better Rather Than Things That Are Worse], To Take Things For Granted [rather Than Imagining How Much Worse Things Would Be If They Weren't There And So Feeling Grateful], And To Feel Entitled!

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.

Always Be Comic In A Tragedy. What The Deuce Else Can You Do?

It Is Easy To Be Heavy: Hard To Be Light.

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.

The Materialist Theory Of History, That All Politics And Ethics Are The Expression Of Economics, Is A Very Simple Fallacy Indeed. It Consists Simply Of Confusing The Necessary Conditions Of Life With The Normal Preoccupations Of Life, That Are Quite A Different Thing.

Education Is Implication. It Is Not The Things You Say Which Children Respect; When You Say Things, They Very Commonly Laugh And Do The Opposite. It Is The Things You Assume Which Really Sink Into Them. It Is The Things You Forget Even To Teach That They Learn.

There Is No Logical Connection Between Flying And Laying Eggs.

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

Literature Is A Luxury; Fiction Is A Necessity.

Physical Science Is Like Simple Addition: It Is Either Infallible Or It Is False.

Physical Science

Art Is Born When The Temporary Touches The Eternal.

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

Every High Civilization Decays By Forgetting Obvious Things.

There Are No Words To Express The Abyss Between Isolation And Having One Ally.

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

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.

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

What People Call Impartiality May Simply Mean Indifference, And What People Call Partiality May Simply Mean Mental Activity.

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.

How Can It Be A Large Career To Tell Other People's Children About The Rule Of Three, And A Small Career To Tell One's Own Children About The Universe? How Can It Be Broad To Be The Same Thing To Everyone, And Narrow To Be Everything To Someone? No; A Woman's Function Is Laborious, But Because It Is Gigantic, Not Because It Is Minute. I Will Pity Mrs. Jones For The Hugeness Of Her Task; I Will Never Pity Her For Its Smallness.

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

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.

Against A Dark Sky, All Flowers Look Like Fireworks.

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

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

You Could Compile The Worst Book In The World Entirely Out Of Selected Passages From The Best Writers In The World.

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.

If I Had Only One Sermon To Preach It Would Be A Sermon Against Pride.

Well, If I Am Not Drunk, I Am Mad," Replied Syme With Perfect Calm; "but I Trust I Can Behave Like A Gentleman In Either Condition.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

I Am At One With My Duality.

The Man Who Throws A Bomb Is An Artist, Because He Prefers A Great Moment To Everything.

The Modern World Is A Crowd Of Very Rapid Racing Cars All Brought To A Standstill And Stuck In A Block Of Traffic.

When We Reverence Anything In The Mature, It Is Their Virtues Or Their Wisdom, And This Is An Easy Matter. But We Reverence The Faults And Follies Of Children. We Should Probably Come Considerably Nearer To The True Conception Of Things If We Treated All Grown-up Persons, Of All Titles And Types, With Precisely That Dark Affection And Dazed Respect With Which We Treat The Infantile Limitations.

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

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

God Is Not A Symbol Of Goodness; Goodness Is A Symbol Of God

The Present Condition Of Fame Is Merely Fashion.

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.

There Is More Simplicity In The Man Who Eats Caviar On Impulse Than In The Man Who Eats Grape-nuts On Principle.

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

The True Object Of Human Life Is Play.

Thinking In Isolation And With Pride Ends In Being An Idiot.

Acceptance Is The Truest Kinship With Humanity.

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.

Correctitude Implies Nowadays A Formal Or Fastidious Use Of Words; And What Is Wanted Is Not So Much The Correct As The Living Use Of Words. It Is The Memory Of The Meaning Of A Word Which Is The Life Of The Word.

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

The Most Unfathomable Schools And Sages Have Never Attained To The Gravity Which Dwells In The Eyes Of A Baby Of Three Months Old. It Is The Gravity Of Astonishment At The Universe, And Astonishment At The Universe Is Not Mysticism, But A Transcendent Common-sense. The Fascination Of Children Lies In This: That With Each Of Them All Things Are Remade, And The Universe Is Put Again Upon Its Trial.

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

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.

An Enormous Amount Of Modern Ingenuity Is Expended On Finding Defences For The Indefensible Conduct Of The Powerful. As I Have Said Above, These Defences Generally Exhibit Themselves Most Emphatically In The Form Of Appeals To Physical Science. And Of All The Forms In Which Science, Or Pseudo-science, Has Come To The Rescue Of The Rich And Stupid, There Is None So Singular As The Singular Invention Of The Theory Of Races.

Progress Is The Mother Of All Problems.

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

Most Modern Freedom Is At Root Fear. It Is Not So Much That We Are Too Bold To Endure Rules; It Is Rather That We Are Too Timid To Endure Responsibilities.

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

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.

A Man Cannot Be Wise Enough To Be A Great Artist Without Being Wise Enough To Wish To Be A Philosopher.

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

A Man Looking At A Hippopotamus May Sometimes Be Tempted To Regard A Hippopotamus As An Enormous Mistake; But He Is Also Bound To Confess That A Fortunate Inferiority Prevents Him Personally From Making Such Mistakes.

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.

There Is Only One Reason An Intelligent Person Doesn't Believe In Miracles. He Or She Believes In Materialism.

Every Remedy Is A Desperate Remedy. Every Cure Is A Miraculous Cure. Curing A Madman Is Not Arguing With A Philosopher; It Is Casting Out A Devil.

There Is No Bigot Like The Atheist.

Modern Nature-worship Is All Upside Down. Trees And Fields Ought To Be The Ordinary Things; Terraces And Temples Ought To Be Extraordinary. I Am On The Side Of The Man Who Lives In The Country And Wants To Go To London.

...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.

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."

It Is Cold Anarchy To Say That All Men Are To Meddle In All Men'smarriages. It Is Cold Anarchy To Say That Any Doctor May Seize Andsegregate Anyone He Likes. But It Is Not Anarchy To Say That A Fewgreat Hygienists Might Enclose Or Limit The Life Of All Citizens,as Nurses Do With A Family Of Children. It Is Not Anarchy, It Istyranny; But Tyranny Is A Workable Thing.

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

With All That We Hear Of American Hustle And Hurry, It Is Rather Strange That Americans Seem To Like To Linger On Longer Words.

If There Were No God, There Would Be No Atheists.

Christian Inspirational

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

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

'as You Have Made Your Bed, So You Must Lie On It'; Which Again Is Simply A Lie. If I Have Made My Bed Uncomfortable, Please God I Will Make It Again.

He Walked By Instinct Along One White Road, On Which Early Birds Hopped And Sang, And Found Himself Outside A Fenced Garden. There He Saw The Sister Of Gregory, The Girl With The Gold-red Hair, Cutting Lilac Before Breakfast, With The Great Unconscious Gravity Of A Girl.

We All Feel The Riddle Of The Earth Without Anyone To Point It Out. The Mystery Of Life Is The Plainest Part Of It. The Clouds And Curtains Of Darkness, The Confounding Vapors, These Are The Daily Weather Of This World.

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

The Oligarchic Character Of The Modern English Commonwealth Does Not Rest, Like Many Oligarchies, On The Cruelty Of The Rich To The Poor. It Does Not Even Rest On The Kindness Of The Rich To The Poor. It Rests On The Perennial And Unfailing Kindness Of The Poor To The Rich.

The Whole Secret Of Mysticism Is This: That Man Can Understand Everything By The Help Of Something He Cannot Understand.

A Businessman Is The Only Man Who Is Forever Apologizing For His Occupation.

A Thing Constructed Can Only Be Loved After It Is Constructed; But A Thing Created Is Loved Before It Exists.

Creative Thought

So Far As A Man May Be Proud Of A Religion Rooted In Humility, I Am Very Proud Of My Religion; I Am Especially Proud Of Those Parts Of It That Are Most Commonly Called Superstition. I Am Proud Of Being Fettered By Antiquated Dogmas And Enslaved By Dead Creeds (as My Journalistic Friends Repeat With So Much Pertinacity), For I Know Very Well That It Is The Heretical Creeds That Are Dead, And That It Is Only The Reasonable Dogma That Lives Long Enough To Be Called Antiquated.

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.

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

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

The Last Few Decades Have Been Marked By A Special Cultivation Of The Romance Of The Future. We Seem To Have Made Up Our Minds To Misunderstand What Has Happened; And We Turn, With A Sort Of Relief, To Stating What Will Happen-which Is Apparently Much Easier...the Modern Mind Is Forced Towards The Future By A Certain Sense Of Fatigue, Not Unmixed With Terror, With Which It Regards The Past.

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

There Is A Case For Telling The Truth; There Is A Case For Avoiding The Scandal; But There Is No Possible Defense For The Man Who Tells The Scandal, But Does Not Tell The Truth

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

One Pleasure Attached To Growing Older Is That Many Things Seem To Be Growing Younger; Growing Fresher And More Lively Than We Once Supposed Them To Be.

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

The Only Way To Be Sure Of Catching A Train Is To Miss The One Before It.

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

We Call A Man A Bigot Or A Slave Of Dogma Because He Is A Thinker Who Has Thought Thoroughly And To A Definite End.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Strangest Whim Has Seized Me ... After All I Think I Will Not Hang Myself Today.

Catholic Doctrine And Discipline May Be Walls; But They Are The Walls Of A Playground.

A Man Cannot Deserve Adventures; He Cannot Earn Dragons And Hippogriffs.

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.

[capitalism Is] That Commercial System In Which Supply Immediately Answers To Demand, And In Which Everybody Seems To Be Thoroughly Dissatisfied And Unable To Get Anything He Wants.

Trending Author

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Herman Melville

Category