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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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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In The End It

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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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.

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Virtue Is Not The Absence Of Vices Or The Avoidance Of Moral Dangers; Virtue Is A Vivid And Separate Thing, Like Pain Or A Particular Smell.

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.

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 Most Important Fact About The Subject Of Education Is That There Is No Such Thing. Education Is Not A Subject And It Does Not Deal In Subjects. It Is Instead The Transfer Of A Way Of Life.

And My Haunting Instinct That Somehow Good Was Not Merely A Tool To Be Used, But A Relic To Be Guarded, Like The Goods From Crusoe's Ship--even That Had Been The Wild Whisper Of Something Originally Wise, For, According To Christianity, We Were Indeed The Survivors Of A Wreck, The Crew Of A Golden Ship That Had Gone Down Before The Beginning Of The World.

The Evolutionists Seem To Know Everything About The Missing Link Except The Fact That It Is Missing.

The Philosophy Of This World May Be Founded On Facts, But Its Business Is Run On Spiritual Impressions And Atmospheres.

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

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

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 Men Of The East May Spell The Stars, And Times And Triumphs Mark, But The Men Signed Of The Cross Of Christ Go Gaily In The Dark.

Madness Does Not Come By Breaking Out, But By Giving In; By Settling Down In Some Dirty, Little, Self-repeating Circle Of Ideas; By Being Tamed.

A Thing May Be Too Sad To Be Believed Or Too Wicked To Be Believed Or Too Good To Be Believed; But It Cannot Be Too Absurd To Be Believed In This Planet Of Frogs And Elephants, Of Crocodiles And Cuttle-fish.

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

The Person Who Is Really In Revolt Is The Optimist, Who Generally Lives And Dies In A Desperate And Suicidal Effort To Persuade Other People How Good They Are.

'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.

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

Architecture Approaches Nearer Than Any Other Art To Being Irrevocable Because It Is So Difficult To Get Rid Of.

An Inconvenience Is An Adventure Wrongly Considered.

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.

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

Vigorous Organisms Talk Not About Their Processes, But About Their Aims.

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

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.

Humility Is The Mother Of Giants.

Democracy Means Government By The Uneducated, While Aristocracy Means Government By The Badly Educated.

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

No Sceptical Philosopher Can Ask Any Questions That May Not Equally Be Asked By A Tired Child On A Hot Afternoon.

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

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

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

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.

Your Next-door Neighbor Is Not A Man; He Is An Environment. He Is The Barking Of A Dog; He Is The Noise Of A Piano; He Is A Dispute About A Party Wall; He Is Drains That Are Worse Than Yours, Or Roses That Are Better Than Yours.

But The Truth Is That It Is Only By Believing In God That We Can Ever Criticise The Government. Once Abolish The God, And The Government Becomes The God.

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.

To Complain That I Could Only Be Married Once Was Like Complaining That I Had Only Been Born Once.

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

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.

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

You Can Never Have A Revolution In Order To Establish A Democracy. You Must Have A Democracy In Order To Have A Revolution.

Democracies Have

Dipsomaniac And The Abstainer Are Not Only Both Mistaken, But They Both Make The Same Mistake. They Both Regard Wine As A Drug And Not As A Drink.

Every Heresy Has Been An Effort To Narrow The Church.

Nothing Can Ever Overcome That One Enormous Sex (female) Superiority That Even The Male Child Is Born Closer To His Mother Than To His Father.

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

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 . . .

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

Art Is Limitation; The Essence Of Every Picture Is The Frame. If You Draw A Giraffe, You Must Draw Him With A Long Neck. If In Your Bold Creative Way You Hold Yourself Free To Draw A Giraffe With A Short Neck, You Will Really Find That You Are Not Free To Draw A Giraffe.

I Am A Bad Reporter Because Everything Seems To Me Worth Reporting; And A Bad Reviewer Because Every Sentence In Every Book Suggests A Separate Essay.

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

In Truth, There Are Only Two Kinds Of People; Those Who Accept Dogma And Know It, And Those Who Accept Dogma And Don't Know It.

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

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

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.

Tolerance Is The Virtue Of People Who Do Not Believe In Anything.

[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.

A Dead Thing Goes With The Stream, But Only A Living Thing Can Go Against It.

One Of The Chief Uses Of Religion Is That It Makes Us Remember Our Coming From Darkness, The Simple Fact That We Are Created.

The Fatal Metaphor Of Progress, Which Means Leaving Things Behind Us, Has Utterly Obscured The Real Idea Of Growth, Which Means Leaving Things Inside Us.

A Man Who Says That No Patriot Should Attack The Boer War Until It Is Over Is Not Worth Answering Intelligently; He Is Saying That No Good Son Should Warn His Mother Off A Cliff Until She Has Fallen Over It.

Do Not, I Beseech You Be Troubled By The Increase Of Forces Already In Dissolution. You Have Mistake The Hour Of The Night: It Is Already Morning.

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.

It Is Unpardonable Conceit Not To Laugh At Your Own Jokes. Joking Is Undignified; That Is Why It Is So Good For One's Soul. Do Not Fancy You Can Be A Detached Wit And Avoid Being A Buffoon; You Cannot. If You Are The Court Jester You Must Be The Court Fool.

But Since He Stood For England And Knew What England Means, Unless You Give Him Bacon You Must Not Give Him Beans.

What The World Wants, What The World Is Waiting For, Is Not Modern Poetry Or Classical Poetry Or Neo-classical Poetry - But Good Poetry. And The Dreadful Disreputable Doubt, Which Stirs In My Own Skeptical Mind, Is Doubt About Whether It Would Really Matter Much What Style A Poet Chose To Write In, In Any Period, As Long As He Wrote Good Poetry.

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

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

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

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

I've Searched All The Parks In All The Cities - And Found No Statues Of Committees.

It Is A Good Sign In A Nation When Things Are Done Badly. It Shows That All The People Are Doing Them. And It Is Bad Sign In A Nation When Such Things Are Done Very Well, For It Shows That Only A Few Experts And Eccentrics Are Doing Them, And That The Nation Is Merely Looking On.

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

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 Most Incredible Thing About Miracles Is That They Happen.

War Is Not The Best Way Of Settling Differences; It Is The Only Way Of Preventing Their Being Settled For You.

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

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.

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

Do Not Enjoy Yourself. Enjoy Dances And Theaters And Joy-rides And Champagne And Oysters; Enjoy Jazz And Cocktails And Night-clubs If You Can Enjoy Nothing Better; Enjoy Bigamy And Burglary And Any Crime In The Calendar, In Preference To The Other Alternative; But Never Learn To Enjoy Yourself.

No Man Who Worships Education Has Got The Best Out Of Education... Without A Gentle Contempt For Education No Man's Education Is Complete.

A Naked Moon Stood In A Naked Sky.

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

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

One Can Sometimes Do Good By Being The Right Person In The Wrong Place.

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

It Is Always The Secure Who Are Humble.

I Am Going To Hold A Pistol To The Head Of The Modern Man. But I Shall Not Use It To Kill Him–only To Bring Him To Life.

It Is Generally The Man Who Is Not Ready To Argue, Who Is Ready To Sneer.

...it's Natural To Believe In The Supernatural. It Never Feels Natural To Accept Only Natural Things.

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.

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.

The Only Thing That Has Kept The Race Of Men From The Mad Extremes Of The Convent And The Pirate-galley, The Night-club And The Lethal Chamber, Has Been Mysticism - The Belief That Logic Is Misleading, And That Things Are Not What They Seem.

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

Lying In Bed Would Be An Altogether Perfect And Supreme Experience If Only One Had A Colored Pencil Long Enough To Draw On The Ceiling.

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

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

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.

Coincidence Is A Spiritual Pun.

He Can Only Get Away From Death By Continually Stepping Within An Inch Of It.

It Is Terrible To Contemplate How Few Politicians Are Hanged.

Most Americans Are Born Drunk, And Really Require A Little Wine Or Beer To Sober Them. They Have A Sort Of Permanent Intoxication From Within, A Sort Of Invisible Champagne. Americans Do Not Need To Drink To Inspire Them To Do Anything, Though They Do Sometimes, I Think, Need A Little For The Deeper And More Delicate Purpose Of Teaching Them How To Do Nothing.

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

When Men Cease To Believe In God, They Will Believe In Anything

You Can Free Things From Alien Or Accidental Laws, But Not From The Laws Of Their Own Nature. You May, If You Like, Free A Tiger From His Bars; But Do Not Free Him From His Stripes.

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

Atheism Is Indeed The Most Daring Of All Dogmas . . . For It Is The Assertion Of A Universal Negative.

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

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

Literature Is A Luxury; Fiction Is A Necessity.

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

Very Few Reputations Are Gained By Unsullied Virtue.

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

It Was Not The House That Grew Dull, But I That Grew Dull In It. My Wife Was Better Than All Women, And Yet I Could Not Feel It.

Progress Is A Comparative Of Which We Have Not Settled The Superlative.

Progress Of Society

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

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

Adventure Is The Champagne Of Life, But I Prefer My Champagne And My Adventures Dry.

Idolatry Is Committed, Not Merely By Setting Up False Gods, But Also By Setting Up False Devils; By Making Men Afraid Of War Or Alcohol, Or Economic Law, When They Should Be Afraid Of Spiritual Corruption And Cowardice.

When You Have Really Exhausted An Experience You Always Reverence And Love It. The Two Things That Nearly All Of Us Have Thoroughly And Really Been Through Are Childhood And Youth. And Though We Would Not Have Them Back Again On Any Account, We Feel That They Are Both Beautiful, Because We Have Drunk Them Dry.

Every Sane Man Recognises That Unlimited Liberty Is Anarchy, Or Rather Is Nonentity. The Civic Idea Of Liberty Is To Give The Citizen A Province Of Liberty; A Limitation Within Which A Citizen Is A King.

Indeed The Book Of Job Avowedly Only Answers Mystery With Mystery. Job Is Comforted With Riddles; But He Is Comforted. Herein Is Indeed A Type, In The Sense Of A Prophecy, Of Things Speaking With Authority. For When He Who Doubts Can Only Say, ‘i Do Not Understand,’ It Is True That He Who Knows Can Only Reply Or Repeat ‘you Do Not Understand.’ And Under That Rebuke There Is Always A Sudden Hope In The Heart; And The Sense Of Something That Would Be Worth Understanding.

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

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.

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.

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

Somehow One Can Never Manage To Be An Atheist.

There Is No Bigot Like The Atheist.

All Good Men Are International. Nearly All Bad Men Are Cosmopolitan. If We Are To Be International We Must Be National.

Internationalism

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.

Science In The Modern World Has Many Uses; Its Chief Use, However, Is To Provide Long Words To Cover The Errors Of The Rich.

The Classes That Wash Most Are Those That Work Least.

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.

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.

There Are No New Lies, No New Heresies. Man Is Simply Not That Creative.

Our Digestions, Going Sacredly And Silently Right, That Is The Foundation Of All Poetry.

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

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

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

Most Americans ... Have A Sort Of Permanent Intoxication From Within, A Sort Of Invisible Champagne.

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.

Progress Is The Mother Of Problems.

The Humorous Look Of Children Is Perhaps The Most Endearing Of All The Bonds That Hold The Cosmos Together. Their Top-heavy Dignity Is More Touching Than Any Humility; Their Solemnity Gives Us More Hope For All Things Than A Thousand Carnivals Of Optimism; Their Large And Lustrous Eyes Seem To Hold All The Stars In Their Astonishment; Their Fascinating Absence Of Nose Seems To Give To Us The Most Perfect Hint Of The Humour That Awaits Us In The Kingdom Of Heaven.

A Man Can Never Quite Understand A Boy, Even When He Has Been A Boy.

To Downgrade The Human Mind Is Bad Theology.

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

All Slang Is Metaphor, And All Metaphor Is Poetry.

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.

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

The Cross Cannot Be Defeated For It Is Defeat.

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

I Would Rather A Boy Learnt In The Roughest School The Courage To Hit A Politician, Or Gained In The Hardest School The Learning To Refute Him - Rather Than That He Should Gain In The Most Enlightened School The Cunning To Copy Him.

There Is No Logical Connection Between Flying And Laying Eggs.

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

There Is Something To Be Said For Every Error; But, Whatever May Be Said For It, The Most Important Thing To Be Said About It Is That It Is Erroneous.

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.

From The Standpoint Of Any Sane Person, The Present Problem Of Capitalist Concentration Is Not Only A Question Of Law, But Of Criminal Law, Not To Mention Criminal Lunacy.

I Represent The Jolly Mass Of Mankind. I Am The Happy And Reckless Christian.

Hope Means Hoping When Everything Seems Hopeless.

Unbelievable Things

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.

Happiness Is Not Only A Hope, But Also In Some Strange Manner A Memory ... We Are All Kings In Exile.

I Think The Oddest Thing About The Advanced People Is That, While They Are Always Talking About Things As Problems, They Have Hardly Any Notion Of What A Real Problem Is.

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

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.

English Experience Indicates That When The Two Great Political Parties Agree About Something It Is Generally Wrong.

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

When Men Have Come To The Edge Of A Precipice, It Is The Lover Of Life Who Has The Spirit To Leap Backwards, And Only The Pessimist Who Continues To Believe In Progress.

For Tommy, On That Hot And Empty Afternoon, Was In A State Of Mind In Which Grown-up People Go Away And Write Books About Their Whole World, And Stories About What It Is Like To Be Married, And Plays About The Important Problems Of Modern Times. Tommy, Being Only Ten Years Old, Was Not Able To Do Harm On This Large And Handsome Scale.

I Will Not Call It My Philosophy; For I Did Not Make It. God And Humanity Made It; And It Made Me.

You May Think A Crime Horrible Because You Could Never Commit It. I Think It Is Horrible Because I Could Commit It.

...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.

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

The Good Bishop Of Assisi Expressed A Sort Of Horror At The Hard Life Which The Little Brothers Lived At The Portiuncula, Without Comforts, Without Possessions, Eating Anything They Could Get And Sleeping Anyhow On The Ground. St. Francis Answered Him With That Curious And Almost Stunning Shrewdness Which The Unworldly Can Sometimes Wield Like A Club Of Stone. He Said, 'if We Had Any Possessions, We Should Need Weapons And Laws To Defend Them.

It Is Often A Mistake To Combine Two Pleasures, Because Pleasures, Like Pains, Can Act As Counter-irri-tants To Each Other.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The One Stream Of Poetry Which Is Continually Flowing Is Slang.

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

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

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

The Purpose Of Compulsory Education Is To Deprive The Common People Of Their Commonsense.

Only Friendliness Produces Friendship. And We Must Look Far Deeper Into The Soul Of Man For The Thing That Produces Friendliness.

There Is Nothing Harder To Learn Than Painting And Nothing Which Most People Take Less Trouble About Learning.

In A World Flagrant With The Failures Of Civilization, What Is There Particularly Immortal About Our Own?

If The Barricades Went Up In Our Streets And The Poor Became Masters, I Think The Priests Would Escape, I Fear The Gentlemen Would; But I Believe The Gutters Would Simply Be Running With The Blood Of Philanthropists.

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

The Sincere Love Of Books Has Nothing To Do With Cleverness Or Stupidity Any More Than Any Other Sincere Love. It Is A Quality Of Character, A Freshness, A Power Of Pleasure, A Power Of Faith. A Silly Person May Delight In Reading Masterpieces Just As A Silly Person May Delight In Picking Flowers. A Fool May Be In Love With A Poet As He May Be In Love With A Woman.

Those Thinkers Who Cannot Believe In Any Gods Often Assert That The Love Of Humanity Would Be In Itself Sufficient For Them; And So, Perhaps, It Would, If They Had It.

[buddhism And Christianity] Are In One Sense Parallel And Equal; As A Mound And A Hollow, As A Valley And A Hill. There Is A Sense In Which That Sublime Despair Is The Only Alternative To That Divine Audacity. It Is Even True That The Truly Spiritual And Intellectual Man Sees It As Sort Of Dilemma; A Very Hard And Terrible Choice. There Is Little Else On Earth That Can Compare With These For Completeness. And He Who Does Not Climb The Mountain Of Christ Does Indeed Fall Into The Abyss Of Buddha.

It Is Really Not So Repulsive To See The Poor Asking For Money As To See The Rich Asking For More Money. And Advertisement Is The Rich Asking For More Money.

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

Just The Other Day In The Underground I Enjoyed The Pleasure Of Offering My Seat To Three Ladies.

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

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.

A Stiff Apology Is A Second Insult... The Injured Party Does Not Want To Be Compensated Because He Has Been Wronged; He Wants To Be Healed Because He Has Been Hurt.

Odd, Isn't It, That A Thief And A Vagabond Should Repent, When So Many Who Are Rich And Secure Remain Hard And Frivolous, And Without Fruit For God Or Man?

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