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It Is The Mark Of Our Whole Modern History That The Masses Are Kept Quiet With A Fight. They Are Kept Quiet By The Fight Because It Is A Sham-fight; Thus Most Of Us Know By This Time That The Party System Has Been Popular Only In The Sense That A Football Match Is Popular.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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It Is The Mark

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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It Is The Mark Of Our Whole Modern History That The Masses Are Kept Quiet With A Fight. They Are Kept Quiet By The Fight Because It Is A Sham-fight; Thus Most Of Us Know By This Time That The Party System Has Been Popular Only In The Sense That A Football Match Is Popular.

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

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

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

The More We Are Proud That The Bethlehem Story Is Plain Enough To Be Understood By The Shepherds, And Almost By The Sheep, The More Do We Let Ourselves Go, In Dark And Gorgeous Imaginative Frescoes Or Pageants About The Mystery And Majesty Of The Three Magian Kings.

I Have Little Doubt That When St. George Had Killed The Dragon He Was Heartily Afraid Of The Princess.

A Man Was Meant To Be Doubtful About Himself, But Undoubting About The Truth; This Has Been Reversed. Nowadays The Part Of A Man That A Man Does Assert Is Exactly The Part He Ought Not To Assert - Himself. The Part He Doubts Is Exactly The Part He Ought Not To Doubt - The Divine Reason.

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.

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.

They Say Travel Broadens The Mind, But You Must Have The Mind.

'my Country, Right Or Wrong' Is A Thing No Patriot Would Ever Think Of Saying Except In A Desperate Case. It Is Like Saying 'my Mother, Drunk Or Sober.'

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

A Detective Story Generally Describes Six Living Men Discussing How It Is That A Man Is Dead. A Modern Philosophic Story Generally Describes Six Dead Men Discussing How Any Man Can Possibly Be Alive.

The Old Restriction Meant That Only The Orthodox Were Allowed To Discuss Religion. Modern Liberty Means That Nobody Is Allowed To Discuss It. Good Taste, The Last And Vilest Of Human Superstitions, Has Succeeded In Silencing Us Where All The Rest Have Failed.

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.

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

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

Our Society Is So Abnormal That The Normal Man Never Dreams Of Having The Normal Occupation Of Looking After His Own Property. When He Chooses A Trade, He Chooses One Of The Ten Thousand Trades That Involve Looking After Other People's Property.

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

We Do Not Admire, We Hardly Excuse, The Fanatic Who Wrecks This World For Love Of The Other. But What Are We To Say Of The Fanatic Who Wrecks This World Out Of Hatred Of The Other? He Sacrifices The Very Existence Of Humanity To The Non-existence Of God. He Offers His Victims Not To The Altar, But Merely To Assert The Idleness Of The Altar And The Emptiness Of The Throne. He Is Ready To Ruin Even That Primary Ethic By Which All Things Live, For His Strange And Eternal Vengeance Upon Some One Who Never Lived At All.

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

Moral Issues Are Always Terribly Complex For Someone Without Principles.

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

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 Frame Of Mind; Praise Should Be The Permanent Pulsation Of The Soul.

Science Is The Study Of The Admitted Laws Of Existence, Which Cannot Prove A Universal Negative About Whether Those Laws Could Ever Be Suspended By Something Admittedly Above Them. It Is As If We Were To Say That A Lawyer Was So Deeply Learned In The American Constitution That He Knew There Could Never Be A Revolution In America.

The Classes That Wash Most Are Those That Work Least.

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

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

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.

But There Is Good News Yet To Hear And Fine Things To Be Seen Before We Go To Paradise By Way Of Kensal Green.

Paradox - Truth Standing On Her Head To Get Attention.

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

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

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.

The Real Argument Against Aristocracy Is That It Always Means The Rule Of The Ignorant. For The Most Dangerous Of All Forms Of Ignorance Is Ignorance Of Work.

And Noah He Often Said To His Wife When He Sat Down To Dine, "i Don't Care Where The Water Goes If It Doesn't Get Into The Wine."

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

Pleasure Seeking

If Man Is Not The Image Of God, Then He Is A Disease Of The Dust.

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.

I Believe In Preaching To The Converted; For I Have Generally Found That The Converted Do Not Understand Their Own Religion.

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

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

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.

[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.

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

Among The Rich You Will Never Find A Really Generous Man Even By Accident. They May Give Their Money Away, But They Will Never Give Themselves Away; They Are Egotistic, Secretive, Dry As Old Bones. To Be Smart Enough To Get All That Money You Must Be Dull Enough To Want It.

Plato Was Only A Bernard Shaw Who Unfortunately Made His Jokes In Greek.

When A Man Ceases To Believe In God, He Does Not Believe In Nothing. He Believes In Everything.

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?

[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 Poets Have Been Mysteriously Silent On The Subject Of Cheese.

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.

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.

To Say That A Man Is An Idealist Is Merely To Say That He Is A Man.

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

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

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

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

...there Is In Life An Element Of Elfin Coincidence Which People Reckoning On The Prosaic May Perpetually Miss. As It Has Been Well Expressed In The Paradox Of Poe, Wisdom Should Reason On The Unforeseen.

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.

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

A Building Is Akin To Dogma; It Is Insolent, Like Dogma. Whether Or No It Is Permanent, It Claims Permanence, Like A Dogma. People Ask Why We Have No Typical Architecture Of The Modern World, Like Impressionism In Painting. Surely It Is Obviously Because We Have Not Enough Dogmas; We Cannot Bear To See Anything In The Sky That Is Solid And Enduring, Anything In The Sky That Does Not Change Like The Clouds Of The Sky.

The Only People Who Seem To Have Nothing To Do With The Education Of The Children Are The Parents.

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

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.

Now There Is Any Amount Of This Nonsense Cropping Up Among American Cranks. Anybody May Propose To Establish Coercive Eugenics; Or Enforce Psychoanalysis That Is, Enforce Confession Without Absolution.

Is Ditchwater Dull? Naturalists With Microscopes Have Told Me That It Teems With Quiet Fun.

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.

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

I Believe In Getting Into Hot Water; It Keeps You Clean.

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

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

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

Artistic Temperament Is The Disease That Afflicts Amateurs.

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

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

Progress Of Society

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

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.

For When We Cease To Worship God, We Do Not Worship Nothing, We Worship Anything.

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

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

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

I Suppose Every One Must Have Reflected How Primeval And How Poetical Are The Things That One Carries In One's Pocket; The Pocket-knife, For Instance, The Type Of All Human Tools, The Infant Of The Sword. Once I Planned To Write A Book Of Poems Entirely About Things In My Pockets. But I Found It Would Be Too Long; And The Age Of The Great Epics Is Past.

Every Great Literature Has Always Been Allegorical - Allegorical Of Some View Of The Whole Universe. The 'iliad' Is Only Great Because All Life Is A Battle, The 'odyssey' Because All Life Is A Journey, The Book Of Job Because All Life Is A Riddle.

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

But There Is In Everything A Reasonable Division Of Labour. I Have Written The Book, And Nothing On Earth Would Induce Me To Read It.

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.

A Sober Man May Become A Drunkard Through Being A Coward. A Brave Man May Become A Coward Through Being A Drunkard.

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

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

In A World Where Everything Is Ridiculous, Nothing Can Be Ridiculed. You Cannot Unmask A Mask.

If You Spell A Word Wrong You Have Some Temptation To Think It Wrong.

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

A Fairly Clear Line Separated Advertisement From Art. ... The First Effect Of The Triumph Of The Capitalist (if We Allow Him To Triumph) Will Be That That Line Of Demarcation Will Entirely Disappear. There Will Be No Art That Might Not Just As Well Be Advertisement.

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.

Fallacies Do Not Cease To Be Fallacies Because They Become Fashions.

A Crown Of Roses Is Also A Crown Of Thorns.

All True Friendliness Begins With Fire And Food And Drink And The Recognition Of Rain Or Frost.

Spring Never Is Spring Unless It Comes Too Soon.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Only Men To Whom The Family Is Sacred Will Ever Have A Standard Or A Status By Which To Criticize The State. They Alone Can Appeal To Something More Holy Than The Gods Of The City.

People Accuse Journalism Of Being Too Personal; But To Me It Has Always Seemed Far Too Impersonal. It Is Charged With Tearing Away The Veils From Private Life; But It Seems To Me To Be Always Dropping Diaphanous But Blinding Veils Between Men And Men. The Yellow Press Is Abused For Exposing Facts Which Are Private; I Wish The Yellow Press Did Anything So Valuable. It Is Exactly The Decisive Individual Touches That It Never Gives; And A Proof Of This Is That After One Has Met A Man A Million Times In The Newspapers It Is Always A Complete Shock And Reversal To Meet Him In Real Life.

I Believe Your Own Accent Is Inimitable, Though I Shall Practice It In My Bath.

When Once You Have Got Hold Of A Vulgar Joke, You May Be Certain That You Have Got Hold Of A Subtle And Spiritual Idea.

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.

The Center Of Every Man's Existence Is A Dream.

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

I Am Concerned With A Certain Way Of Looking At Life, Which Was Created In Me By The Fairy Tales, But Has Since Been Meekly Ratified By The Mere Facts.

Atheism Is Too Theological.

The Party System Was Founded On One National Notion Of Fair Play. It Was The Notion That Folly And Futility Should Be Fairly Divided Between Both Sides.

The More Truly We Can See Life As A Fairytale, The More Clearly The Tale Resolves Itself Into War With The Dragon Who Is Wasting Fairyland.

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

I Have Known Many Happy Marriages, But Never A Compatible One. The Whole Aim Of Marriage Is To Fight Through And Survive The Instant When Incompatibility Becomes Unquestionable. For A Man And A Woman, As Such, Are Incompatible.

There Are Two Kinds Of Charlatan: The Man Who Is Called A Charlatan, And The Man Who Really Is One. The First Is The Quack Who Cures You; The Second Is The Highly Qualified Person Who Doesn't.

An Imbecile Habit Has Arisen In Modern Controversy Of Saying That Such And Such A Creed Can Be Held In One Age But Cannot Be Held In Another. Some Dogma, We Are Told, Was Credible In The Twelfth Century, But Is Not Credible In The Twentieth. You Might As Well Say That A Certain Philosophy Can Be Believed On Mondays, But Cannot Be Believed On Tuesdays. You Might As Well Say Of A View Of The Cosmos That It Was Suitable To Half-past Three, But Not Suitable To Half-past Four. What A Man Can Believe Depends Upon His Philosophy, Not Upon The Clock Or The Century.

Poets Do Not Go Mad, But Chess Players Do.

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

Religious Unity Can Look Like A Carnival And Religious Liberty Can Look Like A Funeral.

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.

Gratitude, Being Nearly The Greatest Of Human Duties, Is Also Nearly The Most Difficult.

How You Think When You Lose Determines How Long It Will Be Until You Win.

On The Third Day The Friends Of Christ Coming At Daybreak To The Place Found The Grave Empty And The Stone Rolled Away. In Varying Ways They Realized The New Wonder; But Even They Hardly Realized That The World Had Died In The Night. What They Were Looking At Was The First Day Of A New Creation, With A New Heaven And A New Earth; And In A Semblance Of The Gardener God Walked Again In The Garden, In The Cool Not Of The Evening But Of The Dawn.

The Aim Of Good Prose Words Is To Mean What They Say. The Aim Of Good Poetical Words Is To Mean What They Do Not Say.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Man In The Moon

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

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

That All War Is Physically Frightful Is Obvious; But If That Were A Moral Verdict, There Would Be No Difference Between A Torturer And A Surgeon. There Are Certain Intellectuals Who Are Too Bright To Be Content With Merely Praising Peace But Who Are Infuriated By Anybody Praising War. If No War Is Possible, All Criminality Has Its Chance

The Wise Old Fairy Tales Never Were So Silly As To Say That The Prince And The Princess Lived Peacefully Ever Afterwards. The Fairy Tales Said That The Prince And Princess Lived Happily Ever Afterwards; And So They Did. They Lived Happily, Although It Is Very Likely That From Time To Time They Threw The Furniture At Each Other.

The Telescope Makes The World Smaller; It Is Only The Microscope That Makes It Larger.

Science Must Not Impose Any Philosophy, Any More Than The Telephone Must Tell Us What To Say.

The First Two Facts Which A Healthy Boy Or Girl Feels About Sex Are These: First That It Is Beautiful And Then That It Is Dangerous.

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.

This Is, First And Last, The Real Value Of Christmas; In So Far As The Mythology Remains At All It Is A Kind Of Happy Mythology. Personally, Of Course, I Believe In Santa Claus; But It Is The Season Of Forgiveness, And I Will Forgive Others For Not Doing So.

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

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.

But Those Dealing In The Actual Manufacture Of Mind Are Dealing In A Very Explosive Material. The Material Is Not Merely The Clay Of Which Man Is Master, But The Truths Or Semblances Of Truth Which Have A Certain Mastery Over Man. The Material Is Explosive Because It Must Be Taken Seriously. The Men Writing Books Really Are Throwing Bombs.

A Great Classic Means A Man Whom One Can Praise Without Having Read.

Once Abolish The God, And The Government Becomes The God.

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

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.

The Word Good Has Many Meanings.

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

There Are No New Ideas About Female Education.

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

Do Not Free A Camel Of The Burden Of His Hump; You May Be Freeing Him From Being A Camel.

Inspirational Life

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Christian Inspirational

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

There Is No Better Test Of A Man's Ultimate Chivalry And Integrity Than How He Behaves When He Is Wrong... A Stiff Apology Is A Second Insult.

Hope Means Hoping When Things Are Hopeless, Or It Is No Virtue At All... As Long As Matters Are Really Hopeful, Hope Is Mere Flattery Or Platitude; It Is Only When Everything Is Hopeless That Hope Begins To Be A Strength.

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.

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.

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

For They (capitalists) Hold As Their Chief Heresy, In A Coarser Form, The Fundamental Falsehood That Things Are Not Made To Be Used But Made To Be Sold. All The Collapse Of Their Commercial System In Their Own Time Has Been Due To That Fallacy Of Forcing Things On A Market Where There Was No Market; Of Continually Increasing The Power Of Supply Without Increasing The Power Of Demand; Of Briefly, Of Always Considering The Man Who Sells The Potato And Never Considering The Man Who Eats It.

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.

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.

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

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.

Man Is At His Tallest When He Bows.

The Museum Is Not Meant Either For The Wanderer To See By Accident Or For The Pilgrim To See With Awe. It Is Meant For The Mere Slave Of A Routine Of Self- Education To Stuff Himself With Every Sort Of Incongruous Intellectual Food In One Indigestible Meal.

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

America Is The Only Country Ever Founded On A Creed.

It Is A Quaint Comment On The Notion That The English Are Practical And The French Merely Visionary, That We Were Rebels In Arts While They Were Rebels In Arms.

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

The Modern World Is Not Evil; In Some Ways The Modern World Is Far Too Good. It Is Full Of Wild And Wasted Virtues. When A Religious Scheme Is Shattered (as Christianity Was Shattered At The Reformation), It Is Not Merely The Vices That Are Let Loose. The Vices Are, Indeed, Let Loose, And They Wander And Do Damage. But The Virtues Are Let Loose Also; And The Virtues Wander More Wildly, And The Virtues Do More Terrible Damage. The Modern World Is Full Of The Old Christian Virtues Gone Mad. The Virtues Have Gone Mad Because They Have Been Isolated From Each Other And Are Wandering Alone.

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.

In Anything That Does Cover The Whole Of Your Life - In Your Philosophy And Your Religion - You Must Have Mirth. If You Do Not Have Mirth You Will Certainly Have Madness.

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

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

It Has Been Often Said, Very Truly, That Religion Is The Thing That Makes The Ordinary Man Feel Extraordinary; It Is An Equally Important Truth That Religion Is The Thing That Makes The Extraordinary Man Feel Ordinary.

In Catholicism, The Pint, The Pipe And The Cross Can All Fit Together.

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

Life Is Serious All The Time, But Living Cannot Be. You May Have All The Solemnity You Wish In Your Neckties, But In Anything Important (such As Sex, Death, And Religion), You Must Have Mirth Or You Will Have Madness.

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

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

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

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

Drink Because You Are Happy, But Never Because You Are Miserable.

I Regard Golf As An Expensive Way Of Playing Marbles.

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.

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

The Main Point Of Christianity Was This: That Nature Is Not Our Mother: Nature Is Our Sister.

Every Heresy Has Been An Effort To Narrow The Church.

If A Man Called Christmas Day A Mere Hypocritical Excuse For Drunkenness And Gluttony, That Would Be False, But It Would Have A Fact Hidden In It Somewhere. But When Bernard Shaw Says The Christmas Day Is Only A Conspiracy Kept Up By Poulterers And Wine Merchants From Strictly Business Motives, Then He Says Something Which Is Not So Much False As Startling And Arrestingly Foolish. He Might As Well Say That The Two Sexes Were Invented By Jewellers Who Wanted To Sell Wedding Rings.

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

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William J. H. Boetcker

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