Background Image

...

Ideas Are Dangerous, But The Man To Whom They Are Least Dangerous Is The Man Of Ideas. He Is Acquainted With Ideas, And Moves Among Them Like A Lion-tamer. Ideas Are Dangerous, But The Man To Whom They Are Most Dangerous Is The Man Of No Ideas. The Man Of No Ideas Will Find The First Idea Fly To His Head Like Wine To The Head Of A Teetotaller.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Ideas Are Dangerous, But

Gilbert K. Chesterton

...

Ideas Are Dangerous, But The Man To Whom They Are Least Dangerous Is The Man Of Ideas. He Is Acquainted With Ideas, And Moves Among Them Like A Lion-tamer. Ideas Are Dangerous, But The Man To Whom They Are Most Dangerous Is The Man Of No Ideas. The Man Of No Ideas Will Find The First Idea Fly To His Head Like Wine To The Head Of A Teetotaller.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Gilbert K. Chesterton

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.

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.

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

Reason Is Itself A Matter Of Faith. It Is An Act Of Faith To Assert That Our Thoughts Have Any Relation To Reality At All.

When You Break The Big Laws, You Do Not Get Liberty; You Do Not Even Get Anarchy. You Get The Small Laws.

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

The Traveler Sees What He Sees, The Tourist Sees What He Has Come To See.

Poetry Is Sane Because It Floats Easily In An Infinite Sea; Reason Seeks To Cross The Infinite Sea And So Make It Finite. The Result Is Mental Exhaustion. To Accept Everything Is An Exercise, To Understand Everything A Strain.

Take Not Thy Thunder From Us, But Take Away Our Pride.

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

There Is No Great Harm In The Theorist Who Makes Up A New Theory To Fit A New Event. But The Theorist Who Starts With A False Theory And Then Sees Everything As Making It Come True Is The Most Dangerous Enemy Of Human Reason.

We Are Justified In Enforcing Good Morals, For They Belong To All Mankind; But We Are Not Justified In Enforcing Good Manners, For Good Manners Always Mean Our Own Manners.

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.

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

White... Is Not A Mere Absence Of Colour; It Is A Shining And Affirmative Thing, As Fierce As Red, As Definite As Black... God Paints In Many Colours; But He Never Paints So Gorgeously, I Had Almost Said So Gaudily, As When He Paints In White.

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.

Adventure Is The Champagne Of Life.

Inspirational Life

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.

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 Poetry Of Art Is In Beholding The Single Tower; The Poetry Of Nature In Seeing The Single Tree; The Poetry Of Love In Following The Single Woman; The Poetry Of Religion In Worshipping The Single Star.

A Man Making The Confession Of Any Creed Worth Ten Minutes' Intelligent Talk, Is Always A Man Who Gains Something And Gives Up Something. So Long As He Does Both He Can Create: For He Is Making An Outline And A Shape.

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

Science Boasts Of The Distance Of Its Stars; Of The Terrific Remoteness Of The Things Of Which It Has To Speak. But Poetry And Religion Always Insist Upon The Proximity, The Almost Menacing Closeness Of The Things With Which They Are Concerned. Always The Kingdom Of Heaven Is "at Hand."

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

Though The Academic Authorities Are Actually Proud Of Conducting Everything By Means Of Examinations, They Seldom Indulge In What Religious People Used To Descibe As Self-examination. The Consequence Is That The Modern State Has Educated Its Citizens In A Series Of Ephemeral Fads.

The Long Words Are Not The Hard Words, It Is The Short Words That Are Hard. There Is Much More Metaphysical Subtlety In The Word "damn" Than In The Word "degeneration."

A Modern Vegetarian Is Also A Teetotaler, Yet There Is No Obvious Connection Between Consuming Vegetables And Not Consuming Fermented Vegetables. A Drunkard, When Lifted Laboriously Out Of The Gutter, Might Well Be Heard Huskily To Plead That He Had Fallen There Through Excessive Devotion To A Vegetable Diet.

We Are Passing Into A Social Phase In Which Unless A Heroic Effort Is Made For Human Dignity And Freedom, Gold Will Be The Sole Method Of Government And Therefore The Sole Standard Of Manners.

An Artist Will Betray Himself By Some Sort Of Sincerity.

Every Man Who Will Not Have Softening Of The Heart Must At Last Have Softening Of The Brain

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

Silence Is The Unbearable Repartee.

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.

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

Happiness Is A Mystery, Like Religion, And Should Never Be Rationalised.

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.

The Truth Is, Of Course, That The Curtness Of The Ten Commandments Is An Evidence, Not Of The Gloom And Narrowness Of A Religion, But, On The Contrary, Of Its Liberality And Humanity. It Is Shorter To State The Things Forbidden Than The Things Permitted; Precisely Because Most Things Are Permitted, And Only A Few Things Are Forbidden.

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

We Should Thank God For Beer And Burgundy By Not Drinking Too Much Of Them.

Over-civilization And Barbarism Are Within An Inch Of Each Other. And A Mark Of Both Is The Power Of Medicine-men.

The Act Of Defending Any Of The Cardinal Virtues Has Today All The Exhilaration Of A Vice.

Before The Gods That Made The Gods Had Seen Their Sunrise Pass, The White Horse Of The White Horse Vale Was Cut Out Of The Grass.

...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.

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

It Has Been Left To The Last Christians, Or Rather To The First Christians Fully Committed To Blaspheming And Denying Christianity, To Invent A New Kind Of Worship Of Sex, Which Is Not Even A Worship Of Life. It Has Been Left To The Very Latest Modernists To Proclaim An Erotic Religion Which At Once Exalts Lust And Forbids Fertility . . . The New Priests Abolish The Fatherhood And Keep The Feast - To Themselves.

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.

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

No Man Knows He Is Young While He Is Young.

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.

The Sort Of Man Who Admires Italian Art While Despising Italian Religion Is A Tourist And A Cad.

It's The First Effect Of Not Believing In God That You Lose Your Common Sense.

The Things We See Every Day Are The Things We Never See At All.

There Is Only One Thing That Stands In Our Midst, Attenuated And Threatened, But Enthroned In Some Power Like A Ghost Of The Middle Ages: The Trade Unions.

The 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.

He Who Has No Sympathy With Myths Has No Sympathy With Men.

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

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

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.

Fairy Tales Are More Than True.

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 Bible Tells Us To Love Our Neighbors, And Also To Love Our Enemies; Probably Because They Are Generally The Same People.

It Is Impossible Without Humility To Enjoy Anything - Even Pride.

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

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.

Lord! What A Strange World In Which A Man Cannot Remain Unique Even By Taking The Trouble To Go Mad!

There Is Nothing The Matter With Americans Except Their Ideals. The Real American Is All Right; It Is The Ideal American Who Is All Wrong.

Without Authority There Is No Liberty. Freedom Is Doomed To Destruction At Every Turn, Unless There Is A Recognized Right To Freedom. And If There Are Rights, There Is An Authority To Which We Appeal For Them.

There Is A Law Written In The Darkest Of The Books Of Life, And It Is This: If You Look At A Thing Nine Hundred And Ninety-nine Times, You Are Perfectly Safe; If You Look At It The Thousandth Time, You Are In Frightful Danger Of Seeing It For The First Time.

Students Of Popular Science... Are Always Insisting That Christianity And Buddhism Are Very Much Alike, Especially Buddhism. This Is Generally Believed, And I Believed It Myself Until I Read A Book Giving The Reasons For It.

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

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

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

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

Tradition Does Not Mean A Dead Town; It Does Not Mean That The Living Are Dead But That The Dead Are Alive. It Means That It Still Matters What Penn Did Two Hundred Years Ago Or What Franklin Did A Hundred Years Ago; I Never Could Feel In New York That It Mattered What Anybody Did An Hour Ago.

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

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.

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

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

The Determining Bulk Of Scotch People Had Heard Of Golf Ever Since They Had Heard Of God And Often Considered The Two As Of Equal Importance.

Life Exists For The Love Of Music Or Beautiful Things.

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

The Universe Is The Most Extraordinary Masterpiece Ever Constructed By Nobody.

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

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

Men Reform A Thing By Removing The Reality From It, And Then Do Not Know What To Do With The Unreality That Is Left.

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.

But I Was Frightfully Fond Of The Universe And Wanted To Address It By A Diminutive. I Often Did So; And It Never Seemed To Mind.

Not Only Is Suicide A Sin, It Is The Sin. It Is The Ultimate And Absolute Evil, The Refusal To Take An Interest In Existence; The Refusal To Take The Oath Of Loyalty To Life. The Man Who Kills A Man, Kills A Man. The Man Who Kills Himself, Kills All Men. As Far As He Is Concerned He Wipes Out The World.

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

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

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.

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

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

According To Most Philosophers, God In Making The World Enslaved It. According To Christianity, In Making It, He Set It Free. God Had Written, Not So Much A Poem, But Rather A Play; A Play He Had Planned As Perfect, But Which Had Necessarily Been Left To Human Actors And Stage-managers, Who Had Since Made A Great Mess Of It.

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

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

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

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

A Crown Of Roses Is Also A Crown Of Thorns.

Big Business And State Socialism Are Very Much Alike, Especially Big Business.

Marriage Is An Adventure, Like Going To War.

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

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.

It Is A Strange Thing That Many Truly Spiritual Men, Such As General Gordon, Have Actually Spent Some Hours In Speculating Upon The Precise Location Of The Garden Of Eden. Most Probably We Are In Eden Still. It Is Only Our Eyes That Have Changed.

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

Paradox - Truth Standing On Her Head To Get Attention.

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

Saint George He Was For England, And Before He Killed The Dragon He Drank A Pint Of English Ale Out Of An English Flagon.

There Is One Thing Which Gives Radiance To Everything. It Is The Idea Of Something Around The Corner.

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.

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

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

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.

The Historic Glory Of America Lies In The Fact That It Is The One Nation That Was Founded Like A Church. That Is, It Was Founded On A Faith That Was Not Merely Summed Up After It Had Exited, But Was Defined Before It Existed.

Thoughts On The Merits Of Work The Worst Of Work Nowadays Is What Happens To People When They Cease To Work.

...but Nature Does Not Say That Cats Are More Valuable Than Mice; Nature Makes No Remark On The Subject. She Does Not Even Say That The Cat Is Enviable Or The Mouse Pitiable. We Think The Cat Superior Because We Have (or Most Of Us Have) A Particular Philosophy To The Effect That Life Is Better Than Death. But If The Mouse Were A German Pessimist Mouse, He Might Not Think That The Cat Had Beaten Him At All. He Might Think He Had Beaten The Cat By Getting To The Grave First.

Nothing Taken For Granted; Everything Received With Gratitude; Everything Passed On With Grace.

Every Politician Is Emphatically A Promising Politician.

If You Know What A Man's Doing, Get In Front Of Him; But If You Want To Guess What He's Doing Keep Behind Him.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

America Has A Genius For The Encouragement Of Fame.

The True Object Of Human Life Is Play.

The Poor Have Sometimes Objected To Being Governed Badly; The Rich Have Always Objected To Being Governed At All.

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.

Classic Literature Is Still Something That Hangs In The Air Like A Song.

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.

I Have No Right To Think For Myself. I Have No Right To Think At All.

If You Argue With A Madman, It Is Extremely Probable That You Will Get The Worst Of It; For In Many Ways His Mind Moves All The Quicker For Not Being Delayed By The Things That Go With Good Judgment.

Christian Inspirational

All Architecture Is Great Architecture After Sunset.

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

I Always Like A Dog So Long As He Isn't Spelled Backward.

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

The Great Saint May Be Said To Mix All His Thoughts With Thanks. All Goods Look Better When They Look Like Gifts.

Men Rush Toward Complexity; But Yearn For Simplicity.

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

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

The Only Object Of Liberty Is Life.

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.

There Is Only One Thing That It Requires Real Courage To Say, And That Is A Truism.

At The Bottom Of All The Tributes Paid To Democracy Is The Little Man, Walking Into The Little Booth, With A Little Pencil, Making A Little Cross On A Little Bit Of Paper. . . .

Think Of All Those Ages Through Which Men Have Had The Courage To Die, And Then Remember That We Have Actually Fallen To Talking About Having The Courage To Live.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

People Seem To Fight About Things Very Unsuitable For Fighting. They Make A Frightful Noise In Support Of Very Quiet Things. They Knock Each Other About In The Name Of Very Fragile Things.

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

Thrift Is Poetic Because It Is Creative; Waste Is Unpoetic Because It Is Waste.

We Are All In The Same Boat, In A Stormy Sea, And We Owe Each Other A Terrible Loyalty.

Why Do All The Clerks And Navvies In The Railway Trains Look So Sad And Tired, So Very Sad And Tired? I Will Tell You. It Is Because They Know That The Train Is Going Right. It Is Because They Know That Whatever Place They Have Taken A Ticket For That Place They Will Reach. It Is Because After They Have Passed Sloane Square They Know That The Next Station Must Be Victoria, And Nothing But Victoria. Oh, Their Wild Rapture! Oh, Their Eyes Like Stars And Their Souls Again In Eden, If The Next Station Were Unaccountably Baker Street!

[no Society Can Survive The Socialist] Fallacy That There Is An Absolutely Unlimited Number Of Inspired Officials And An Absolutely Unlimited Amount Of Money To Pay Them.

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

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

There Nearly Always Is A Method In Madness.

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.

I Would Never Commit The Positively Anti-social Action Of Robbing A Bank, Or Worse Still, Working In One.

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.

Obviously If Any Actions, Even A Lunatic's, Can Be Causeless, Determinism Is Done For. If The Chain Of Causation Can Be Broken For A Madman, It Can Be Broken For A Man.

The Honest Poor Can Sometimes Forget Poverty. The Honest Rich Can Never Forget It.

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

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

Feminists Are Those Who Cannot Stand Female Characteristics.

Characteristics

One Sees Great Things From The Valley; Only Small Things From The Peak.

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

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

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.

Even The Moon Is Only Poetical Because There Is A Man In The Moon.

Man In The Moon

...the Primary Paradox That Man Is Superior To All The Things Around Him And Yet Is At Their Mercy.

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

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.

It Is Customary To Complain Of The Bustle And Strenuousness Of Our Epoch. But In Truth The Chief Mark Of Our Epoch Is A Profound Laziness And Fatigue; And The Fact Is That The Real Laziness Is The Cause Of The Apparent Bustle.

How Much Happier You Would Be, How Much More Of You There Would Be, If The Hammer Of A Higher God Could Smash Your Small Cosmos.

The Vault Above Us Is Not Deaf Because The Universe Is An Idiot; The Silence Is Not The Heartless Silence Of An Endless And Aimless World. Rather The Silence Around Us Is A Small And Pitiful Stillness Like The Prompt Stillness Of A Sick Room. We Are Perhaps Permitted Tragedy As A Sort Of Merciful Comedy, Because The Frantic Energy Of Divine Things Would Knock Us Down Like A Drunken Farce. We Can Take Our Own Tears More Lightly Than We Could Take The Tremendous Levities Of The Angels. So We Sit Perhaps In A Starry Chamber Of Silence While The Laughter Of The Heavens Is Too Loud For Us To Hear.

The One Perfectly Divine Thing, The One Glimpse Of God's Paradise Given On Earth, Is To Fight A Losing Battle - And Not Lose It.

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.

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.

It Is The Root Of All Religion That A Man Knows That He Is Nothing In Order To Thank God That He Is Something.

Man Is Not Merely An Evolution But Rather A Revolution.

[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.

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.

Music With Dinner Is An Insult Both To The Cook And The Violinist.

If Seeds In The Black Earth Can Turn Into Such Beautiful Roses, What Might Not The Heart Of Man Become In Its Long Journey Toward The Stars?

Moral Issues Are Always Terribly Complex For Someone Without Principles.

Gratitude Is Happiness Doubled By Wonder.

We Have Had No Good Comic Operas Of Late, Because The Real World Has Been More Comic Than Any Possible Opera.

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

For Good Or Evil, A Line Has Been Passed In Our Political History; And Something That We Have Known All Our Lives Is Dead. I Will Take Only One Example Of It: Our Politicians Can No Longer Be Caricatured.

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

A Catholic Is A Person Who Has Plucked Up Courage To Face The Incredible And Inconceivable Idea That Something Else May Be Wiser Than He Is.

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

Trending Author

Millard Fillmore

James McGreevey

Category