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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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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It Has Been Left

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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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.

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

The Human Race Is Always Trying This Dodge Of Making Everything Entirely Easy; But The Difficulty Which It Shifts Off One Thing It Shifts To Another.

It Is Because Artists Do Not Practise, Patrons Do Not Patronize, Crowds Do Not Assemble To Reverently Worship The Great Work Of Doing Nothing, That The World Has Lost Its Philosophy And Even Failed To Invent A New Religion.

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.

I've Been To Every Park In Every City And Not Seen A Statue To A Committee.

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

To Love Means Loving The Unlovable. To Forgive Means Pardoning The Unpardonable. Faith Means Believing The Unbelievable. Hope Means Hoping When Everything Seems Hopeless.

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.

Oh, Most Unhappy Man,' He Cried, 'try To Be Happy! You Have Red Hair Like Your Sister.' My Red Hair, Like Red Flames, Shall Burn Up The World,' Said Gregory.

Government Has Become Ungovernable; That Is, It Cannot Leave Off Governing. Law Has Become Lawless; That Is, It Cannot See Where Laws Should Stop. The Chief Feature Of Our Time Is The Meekness Of The Mob And The Madness Of The Government.

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

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

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.

Atheism Is Too Theological.

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

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

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.

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

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

The English Are No Nearer Than They Were A Hundred Years Ago To Knowing What Jefferson Really Meant When He Said That God Had Created All Men Equal.

But They None Of Them Create The Psychological Conditions In Which I First Saw, Or Desired To See, The Flower.

There Is At The Back Of Every Artist’s Mind Something Like A Pattern And A Type Of Architecture. The Original Quality In Any Man Of Imagination Is Imagery. It Is A Thing Like The Landscape Of His Dreams; The Sort Of World He Would Like To Make Or In Which He Would Like To Wander, The Strange Flora And Fauna, His Own Secret Planet, The Sort Of Thing He Likes To Think About. This General Atmosphere, And Pattern Or A Structure Of Growth, Governs All His Creations, However Varied.

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.

There Are No Wise Few. Every Aristocracy That Has Ever Existed Has Behaved, In All Essential Points, Exactly Like A Small Mob.

All Men Matter. You Matter. I Matter. It's The Hardest Thing In Theology To Believe.

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.

He May Be Mad, But There's Method In His Madness. There Nearly Always Is Method In Madness. It's What Drives Men Mad, Being Methodical.

Nine Times Out Of Ten It Is The Coarse Word That Condemns An Evil, And The Refined Word That Excuses It.

For The Mass Of Men The Idea Of Artistic Creation Can Only Be Expressed By An Idea Unpopular In Present Discussions - The Idea Of Property... Property Is Merely The Art Of The Democracy... One Would Think, To Hear People Talk, That The Rothschilds And The Rockefellers Were On The Side Of Property. But Obviously They Are The Enemies Of Property; Because They Are Enemies Of Their Own Limitations.

Thanks Are The Highest Form Of Thought.

All Good Writers Express The State Of Their Souls, Even (as Occurs In Some Cases Of Very Good Writers) If It Is A State Of Damnation.

...it Is Not Necessary To The Child To Awaken To The Sense Of The Strange And Humorous By Giving A Man A Luminous Nose...to The Child It Is Sufficiently Strange And Humorous To Have A Nose At All.

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

He Wondered Why The Pelican Was The Symbol Of Charity, Except It Was That It Wanted A Good Deal Of Charity To Admire A Pelican.

Only Poor Men Get Hanged.

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.

Just At Present You Only See The Tree By The Light Of The Lamp. I Wonder When You Would Ever See The Lamp By The Light Of The Tree.

The World Will Very Soon Be Divided, Unless I Am Mistaken, Into Those Who Still Go On Explaining Our Success, And Those Somewhat More Intelligent Who Are Trying To Explain Our Failure.

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.

They Have Invented A Phrase, A Phrase That Is A Black And White Contradiction In Two Words - 'free-love' - As If A Lover Ever Had Been, Or Ever Could Be, Free.

Black And White

We Must Be Clear About What We Want To Paint. This Adds A Further Principle To Our Previous List Of Principles. We Have Said We Must Be Fond Of This World, Even In Order To Change It.

In The Glad Old Days, Before The Rise Of Modern Morbidities...it Used To Be Thought A Disadvantage To Be Misunderstood.

Men In England Are Ruled, At This Minute By The Clock, By Brutes Who Refuse Them Bread, By Liars Who Refuse Them News, And By Fools Who Cannot Govern, And Therefore Wish To Enslave.

The Modern World Has Far Too Little Understanding Of The Art Of Keeping Young. Its Notion Of Progress Has Been To Pile One Thing On Top Of Another, Without Caring If Each Thing Was Crushed In Turn. People Forgot That The Human Soul Can Enjoy A Thing Most When There Is Time To Think About It And Be Thankful For It. And By Crowding Things Together They Lost The Sense Of Surprise; And Surprise Is The Secret Of Joy.

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.

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

Literary Men Are Being Employed To Praise A Big Business Man Personally, As Men Used To Praise A King. They Not Only Find Political Reasons For The Commercial Schemes That They Have Done For Some Time Past They Also Find Moral Defences For The Commercial Schemers... I Do Resent The Whole Age Of Patronage Being Revived Under Such Absurd Patrons; And All Poets Becoming Court Poets, Under Kings That Have Taken No Oath.

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

The Thing That Cannot Be Defined Is The First Thing; The Primary Fact.

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.

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

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

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.

The Whole Curse Of The Last Century Has Been What Is Called The Swing Of The Pendulum; That Is, The Idea That Man Must Go Alternately From One Extreme To The Other. It Is A Shameful And Even Shocking Fancy; It Is The Denial Of The Whole Dignity Of The Mankind. When Man Is Alive He Stands Still. It Is Only When He Is Dead That He Swings.

Plato Was Right, But Not Quite Right.

The Cosmos Is About The Smallest Hole That A Man Can Hide His Head In.

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

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.

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

Blessed Is He That Expecteth Nothing, For He Shall Be Gloriously Surprised.

The Primary Paradox Of Christianity Is That The Ordinary Condition Of Man Is Not His Sane Or Sensible Condition; That The Normal Itself Is An Abnormality.

If I Did Not Believe In God, I Should Still Want My Doctor, My Lawyer And My Banker To Do So.

People Wonder Why The Novel Is The Most Popular Form Of Literature; People Wonder Why It Is Read More Than Books Of Science Or Books Of Metaphysics. The Reason Is Very Simple; It Is Merely That The Novel Is More True Than They Are.

The Criminal Is The Creative Artist; The Detective Only The Critic.

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.

And Though St. John Saw Many Strange Monsters In His Vision, He Saw No Creature So Wild As One Of His Own Commentators.

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.

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

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

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

Truth Can Understand Error, But Error Cannot Understand Truth.

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

You Cannot Love A Thing Without Wanting To Fight For It.

London Is A Riddle. Paris Is An Explanation.

Science Only Means Knowledge; And For [greek] Ancients It Did Only Mean Knowledge. Thus The Favorite Science Of The Greeks Was Astronomy, Because It Was As Abstract As Algebra. ... We May Say That The Great Greek Ideal Was To Have No Use For Useful Things. The Slave Was He Who Learned Useful Things; The Freeman Was He Who Learned Useless Things. This Still Remains The Ideal Of Many Noble Men Of Science, In The Sense They Do Desire Truth As The Great Greeks Desired It; And Their Attitude Is An External Protest Against Vulgarity Of Utilitarianism.

In Truth The Church Is Too Unique To Prove Herself Unique. For Most Popular And Easy Proof Is By Parallel; And Here There Is No Parallel.

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.

Life Exists For The Love Of Music Or Beautiful Things.

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

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

The Comedy Of Man Survives The Tragedy Of Man.

The Theory Of Free Speech, That Truth Is So Much Larger And Stranger And More Many-sided Than We Know Of, That It Is Very Much Better At All Costs To Hear Everyone's Account Of It, Is A Theory Which Has Been Justified On The Whole By Experiment, But Which Remains A Very Daring And Even A Very Surprising Theory. It Is Really One Of The Great Discoveries Of The Modern Time.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

If There Is One Fact We Really Can Prove, From The History That We Really Do Know, It Is That Despotism Can Be A Development, Often A Late Development And Very Often Indeed The End Of Societies That Have Been Highly Democratic. A Despotism May Almost Be Defined As A Tired Democracy. As Fatigue Falls On A Community, The Citizens Are Less Inclined For That Eternal Vigilance Which Has Truly Been Called The Price Of Liberty; And They Prefer To Arm Only One Single Sentinel To Watch The City While They Sleep.

As Regards Moral Courage, Then, It Is Not So Much That The Public Schools Support It Feebly, As That They Suppress It Firmly.

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

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

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

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

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

Shall I Tell You The Secret Of The Whole World? It Is That We Have Only Known The Back Of The World. We See Everything From Behind, And It Looks Brutal. That Is Not A Tree, But The Back Of A Tree. That Is Not A Cloud, But The Back Of A Cloud. Cannot You See That Everything Is Stooping And Hiding A Face? If We Could Only Get Round In Front--

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.

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

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

Poets Do Not Go Mad, But Chess Players Do.

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.

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

There Is No Such Thing On Earth As An Uninteresting Subject; The Only Thing That Can Exist Is An Uninterested Person.

Artistic Temperament

There Are Two Kinds Of Peacemakers In The Modern World; And They Are Both, Though In Various Ways, A Nuisance. The First Peacemaker Is The Man Who Goes About Saying That He Agrees With Everybody. He Confuses Everybody. The Second Peacemaker Is The Man Who Goes About Saying That Everybody Agrees With Him. He Enrages Everybody. Between The Two Of Them They Produce A Hundred Times More Disputes And Distractions Than We Poor Pugnacious People Would Ever Have Thought Of In Our Lives.

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

Internationalism

The Moderns Do Not Realize Modernity.

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

Free Verse Is Like Free Love; It Is A Contradiction In Terms.

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

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

The Real Trouble With This World Of Ours Is Not That It Is An Unreasonable World, Nor Even That It Is A Reasonable One. The Commonest Kind Of Trouble Is That It Is Nearly Reasonable, But Not Quite. ... It Looks Just A Little More Mathematical And Regular Than It Is; Its Exactitude Is Obvious, But Its Inexactitude Is Hidden; Its Wilderness Lies In Wait.

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

Comradeship Is Quite A Different Thing From Friendship. . .

Different Things

Every High Civilization Decays By Forgetting Obvious Things.

How Much Larger Your Life Would Be If You Were Smaller In It.

Christian Inspirational

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

There Are An Infinity Of Angles At Which One Falls, Only One At Which One Stands.

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.

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.

What Are We Going To Do?" Asked The Professor. "at This Moment," Said Syme, With A Scientific Detachment, "i Think We Are Going To Smash Into A Lamppost.

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

Modern Intelligence Won't Accept Anything On Authority. But It Will Accept Anything Without Authority.

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.

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.

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

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

To Be Simple Is The Best Thing In The World; To Be Modest Is The Next Best Thing. I Am Not Sure About Being Quiet.

Circumstances Break Men's Bones; It Has Never Been Shown That They Break Men's Optimism.

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

The Real Pleasure-seeking Is The Combination Of Luxury And Austerity In Such A Way That The Luxury Can Really Be Felt.

Pleasure Seeking

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

Business, Especially Big Business, Is Now Organized Like An Army. It Is, As Some Would Say, A Sort Of Mild Militarism Without Bloodshed; As I Say, A Militarism Without The Military Virtues.

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

Nothing Is Poetical If Plain Daylight Is Not Poetical; And No Monster Should Amaze Us If The Normal Man Does Not Amaze.

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.

Playing As Children Means Playing Is The Most Serious Thing In The World.

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.

Children Feel The Whiteness Of The Lily With A Graphic And Passionate Clearness Which We Cannot Give Them At All. The Only Thing We Can Give Them Is Information-the Information That If You Break The Lily In Two It Won't Grow Again.

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

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

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.

I Like The Cyclostyle Ink; It Is So Inky. I Do Not Think There Is Anyone Who Takes Quite Such A Fierce Pleasure In Things Being Themselves As I Do. The Startling Wetness Of Water Excites And Intoxicates Me: The Fieriness Of Fire, The Steeliness Of Steel, The Unutterable Muddiness Of Mud. It Is Just The Same With People.... When We Call A Man "manly" Or A Woman "womanly" We Touch The Deepest Philosophy.

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

[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.

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.

What We Suffer From Today Is Humility In The Wrong Place...the Old Humility Was A Spur That Prevented A Man From Stopping; Not A Nail In His Boot That Prevented Him From Going On. For The Old Humility Made A Man Doubtful About His Efforts, Which Made Him Work Harder. But The New Humility Makes A Man Doubtful About His Aims, Which Will Make Him Stop Working Altogether.

The Trouble With Always Trying To Preserve The Health Of The Body Is That It Is So Difficult To Do Without Destroying The Health Of The Mind.

There Is No Such Thing As Success....that A Thing Is Successful Merely Means That It Is; A Millionaire Is Successful In Being A Millionaire And A Donkey In Being A Donkey.

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

All Architecture Is Great Architecture After Sunset.

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

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

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.

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

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

It Is Not Merely True That A Creed Unites Men. Nay, A Difference Of Creed Unites Men - So Long As It Is A Clear Difference. A Boundary Unites. Many A Magnanimous Moslem And Chivalrous Crusader Must Have Been Nearer To Each Other, Because They Were Both Dogmatists, Than Any Two Agnostics. "i Say God Is One," And "i Say God Is One But Also Three," That Is The Beginning Of A Good Quarrelsome, Manly Friendship.

Marriage Is An Adventure, Like Going To War.

The Man Who Lives In Contact With What He Believes To Be A Living Church Is A Man Always Expecting To Meet Plato And Shakespeare Tomorrow At Breakfast. He Is Always Expecting To See Some Truth That He Has Never Seen Before.

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.

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

In Every Serious Doctrine Of The Destiny Of Men, There Is Some Trace Of The Doctrine Of The Equality Of Men. But The Capitalist Really Depends On Some Religion Of Inequality. The Capitalist Must Somehow Distinguish Himself From Human Kind; He Must Be Obviously Above It Or He Would Be Obviously Below It.

Passion Makes Every Detail Important.

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

In Matters Of Truth The Fact That You Don't Want To Publish Something Is, Nine Times Out Of Ten, A Proof That You Ought To Publish It.

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

A Cosmic Philosophy Is Not Constructed To Fit A Man; A Cosmic Philosophy Is Constructed To Fit A Cosmos. A Man Can No More Possess A Private Religion Than He Can Possess A Private Sun And Moon.

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 Real Trouble With This World Of Ours Is Not That It Is An Unreasonable One. The Trouble Is That It Is Nearly Reasonable, But Not Quite.

You Can Only Find Truth With Logic If You Have Already Found Truth Without It.

We Can Be Almost Certain Of Being Wrong About The Future, If We Are Wrong About The Past.

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

Modern Masters Of Science Are Much Impressed With The Need Of Beginning All Inquiry With A Fact. The Ancient Masters Of Religion Were Quite Equally Impressed With That Necessity. They Began With The Fact Of Sin-a Fact As Practical As Potatoes. Whether Or Not Man Could Be Washed In Miraculous Waters, There Was No Doubt At Any Rate That He Wanted Washing.

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.

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

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.

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

I Tell You Naught For Your Comfort, Yea, Naught For Your Desire, Save That The Sky Grows Darker Yet And The Sea Rises Higher.

We Are Like The Penny, Because We Have The Image Of The King Stamped On Us, The Divine King.

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

There Are Some Desires That Are Not Desirable.

The Word Good Has Many Meanings.

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

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.

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

Modern Broad-mindedness Benefits The Rich; And Benefits Nobody Else.

[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.

The Diseased Pride [of Artistic Individualists] Was Not Even Conscious Of A Public Interest, And Would Have Found All Political Terms Utterly Tasteless And Insignificant. It Was No Longer A Question Of One Man One Vote, But Of One Man One Universe.

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

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.

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

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

What Is The Good Of Telling A Community That It Has Every Liberty Except The Liberty To Make Laws? The Liberty To Make Laws Is What Constitutes A Free People.

Once Remove The Old Arena Of Theological Quarrels, And You Will Throw Open The Whole World To The Most Horrible, The Most Hopeless, The Most Endless, The Most Truly Interminable Quarrels; The Untheological Quarrels.

Men Feel That Cruelty To The Poor Is A Kind Of Cruelty To Animals. They Never Feel That It Is An Injustice To Equals; Nay It Is Treachery To Comrades.

The Mind That Finds Its Way To Wild Places Is The Poet's; But The Mind That Never Finds Its Way Back Is The Lunatic's.

Doing Nothing Is Sometimes One Of The Highest Of The Duties Of Man.

The Materialist Is Sure That History Has Been Simply And Solely A Chain Of Causation, Just As The [lunatic] Is Quite Sure That He Is Simply And Solely A Chicken. Materialists And Madmen Never Have Doubts.

I Still Believe In Liberalism Today As Much As I Ever Did, But, Oh, There Was A Happy Time When I Believed In Liberals.

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.

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