Background Image

...

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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

My Attitude Toward Progress

Gilbert K. Chesterton

...

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.

Views: 8

Topic

More From Gilbert K. Chesterton

The Great Majority Of People Will Go On Observing Forms That Cannot Be Explained; They Will Keep Christmas Day With Christmas Gifts And Christmas Benedictions; They Will Continue To Do It; And Some Day Suddenly Wake Up And Discover Why.

The New Community Which The Capitalists Are Now Constructing Will Be A Very Complete And Absolute Community; And One Which Will Tolerate Nothing Really Independent Of Itself.

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

The Ignorant Pronounce It Frood To Cavil Or Applaud The Well-informed Pronounce It Froyd But I Pronounce It Fraud.

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.

There Are Two Kinds Of Paradoxes. They Are Not So Much The Good And The Bad, Nor Even The True And The False. Rather They Are The Fruitful And The Barren; The Paradoxes Which Produce Life And The Paradoxes That Merely Announce Death. Nearly All Modern Paradoxes Merely Announce Death.

To Hurry Through One's Leisure Is The Most Unbusiness-like Of Actions.

I Came To The Conclusion That The Optimist Thought Everything Good Except The Pessimist, And That The Pessimist Thought Everything Bad, Except Himself.

It Is Not Bigotry To Be Certain We Are Right; But It Is Bigotry To Be Unable To Imagine How We Might Possibly Have Gone Wrong.

The Simple Sense Of Wonder At The Shapes Of Things, And At Their Exuberant Independence Of Our Intellectual Standards And Our Trivial Definitions, Is The Basis Of Spirituality.

At Any Innocent Tea-table We May Easily Hear A Man Say, "life Is Not Worth Living." We Regard It As We Regard The Statement That It Is A Fine Day; Nobody Thinks That It Can Possibly Have Any Serious Effect On The Man Or On The World. And Yet If That Utterance Were Really Believed, The World Would Stand On Its Head.

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 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 Pray Where In Earth Or Heaven Are There Prudent Marriages-might As Well Talk About Prudent Suicides.

Where Does A Wise Man Hide A Leaf? In The Forest. But What Does He Do If There Is No Forest? He Grows A Forest To Hide It In.

A Nation Is Not Going Mad When It Does Extravagant Things, So Long As It Does Them In An Extravagant Spirit. But Whenever We See Things Done Wildly, But Taken Tamely, Then The State Is Growing Insane.

Human Anger Is A Higher Thing Than What Is Called Divine Discontent. For You Must Be Angry With Something; But You Can Be Discontented With Everything.

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

Every High Civilization Decays By Forgetting Obvious Things.

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

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.

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.

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

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

All My Authority In Heaven And On Earth Has Been Given To Me.

Dear Sir: Regarding Your Article 'what's Wrong With The World?' I Am. Yours Truly.

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

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.

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

Bigotry Is An Incapacity To Conceive Seriously The Alternative To A Proposition.

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

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.

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.

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

Christmas Is Built Upon A Beautiful And Intentional Paradox; That The Birth Of The Homeless Should Be Celebrated In Every Home.

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.

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.

These Are The Things Which Might Conceivably And Truly Make Men Forgive Their Enemies. We Can Only Turn Hate To Love By Understanding What Are The Things That Men Have Loved; Nor Is It Necessary To Ask Men To Hate Their Loves In Order To Love One Another. Just As Two Grocers Are Most Likely To Be Reconciled When They Remember For A Moment That They Are Two Fathers, So Two Nationals Are Most Likely To Be Reconciled When They Remember (if Only For A Moment) That They Are Two Patriots.

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.

You've Got That Eternal Idiotic Idea That If Anarchy Came It Would Come From The Poor. Why Should It? The Poor Have Been Rebels, But They Have Never Been Anarchists; They Have More Interest Than Any One Else In There Being Some Decent Government. The Poor Man Really Has A Stake In The Country. The Rich Man Hasn't; He Can Go Away To New Guinea In A Yacht. The Poor Have Sometimes Been Objected To Being Governed Badly; The Rich Have Always Objected To Being Governed At All. Aristocrats Were Always Anarchists, As You Can See From The Barons' Wars.

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

Man Is Always Something Worse Or Something Better Than An Animal; And A Mere Argument From Animal Perfection Never Touches Him At All. Thus, In Sex No Animal Is Either Chivalrous Or Obscene. And Thus No Animal Invented Anything So Bad As Drunkeness - Or So Good As Drink.

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

I Despise Birth-control First Because It Is ... An Entirely Meaningless Word; And Is Used So As To Curry Favour Even With Those Who Would First Recoil From Its Real Meaning. The Proceeding These Quack Doctors Recommend Does Not Control Any Birth.

Silence Is The Unbearable Repartee.

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.

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

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

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.

The Poet Only Asks To Get His Head Into The Heavens. It Is The Logician Who Seeks To Get The Heavens Into His Head. And It Is His Head That Splits.

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

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

There Are Many Definite Methods, Honest And Dishonest, Which Make People Rich; The Only Instinct I Know Of Which Does It Is That Instinct Which Theological Christianity Crudely Describes As The Sin Of Avarice.

Any Man Who Preaches Real Love Is Bound To Beget Hate. It Is As True Of Democratic Fraternity As A Divine Love; Sham Love Ends In Compromise And Common Philosophy; But Real Love Has Always Ended In Bloodshed.

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 Have All Forgotten What We Really Are. All That We Call Common Sense And Rationality And Practicality And Positivism Only Means That For Certain Dead Levels Of Our Life We Forget That We Have Forgotten. All That We Call Spirit And Art And Ecstasy Only Means That For One Awful Instant We Remember That We Forget.

As Long As The Vision Of Heaven Is Always Changing, The Vision Of Earth Will Be Exactly The Same. No Ideal Will Remain Long Enough To Be Realized, Or Even Partly Realized. The Modern Young Man Will Never Change His Environment; For He Will Always Change His Mind.

The Only Object Of Liberty Is Life.

The Ordinary Scientific Man Is Strictly A Sentimentalist. He Is A Sentimentalist In This Essential Sense, That He Is Soaked And Swept Away By Mere Associations.

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

Busy Editors Cannot Be Expected To Put On Their Posters, "mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," Or "mr. Jones, Of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They Cannot Announce The Happiness Of Mankind At All. They Cannot Describe All The Forks That Are Not Stolen, Or All The Marriages That Are Not Judiciously Dissolved. Hence The Complex Picture They Give Of Life Is Of Necessity Fallacious; They Can Only Represent What Is Unusual.

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

The Reformer Is Always Right About What's Wrong. However, He's Often Wrong About What Is Right.

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 . . .

Poets Do Not Go Mad; But Chess-players Do. Mathematicians Go Mad, And Cashiers; But Creative Artists Very Seldom. I Am Not, As Will Be Seen, In Any Sense Attacking Logic: I Only Say That This Danger Does Lie In Logic, Not In Imagination.

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.

The Difficulty Of Explaining ‘why I Am A Catholic’ Is That There Are Ten Thousand Reasons All Amounting To One Reason: That Catholicism Is True.

And It Did For One Wild Moment Cross My Mind That, Perhaps, Those Might Not Be The Very Best Judges Of The Relation Of Religion To Happiness Who, By Their Own Account, Had Neither One Nor The Other.

The Beautification Of The World Is Not A Work Of Nature, But A Work Of Art, Then It Involves An Artist.

It Is The Chief Value Of Legend To Mix Up The Centuries While Preserving The Sentiment.

Why Are We Not Grateful To God For Filling Our Stockings With Legs?

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

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

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.

No Man Knows He Is Young While He Is Young.

The Full Potentialities Of Human Fury Cannot Be Reached Until A Friend Of Both Parties Tactfully Intervenes.

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

Inspirational Life

Nine Out Of Ten Of What We Call New Ideas Are Simply Old Mistakes.

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

Coincidences Are Spiritual Puns.

The Point Is Not That This World Is Too Sad To Love Or Too Glad Not To Love; The Point Is That When You Do Love A Thing, Its Gladness Is A Reason For Loving It, And Its Sadness A Reason For Loving It More.

Individually, Men May Present A More Or Less Rational Appearance, Eating, Sleeping, And Scheming. But Humanity A A Whole Is Changeful, Mystical, Fickle, Delightful. Men Are Men, But Man Is A Woman.

All Democrats Object To Men Being Disqualified By The Accident Of Birth; Tradition Objects To Their Being Disqualified By The Accident Of Death.

Comradeship Is Obvious And Universal And Open; But It Is Only One Kind Of Affection; It Has Characteristics That Would Destroy Any Other Kind. Anyone Who Has Known True Comradeship In A Club Or In A Regiment, Knows That It Is Impersonal.

Once I Planned To Write A Book Of Poems Entirely About The Things In My Pocket. But I Found It Would Be Too Long; And The Age Of The Great Epics Is Past.

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.

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 Average Businessman Began To Be Agnostic, Not So Much Because He Did Not Know Where He Was, As Because He Wanted To Forget. Many Of The Rich Took To Scepticism Exactly As The Poor Took To Drink; Because It Was A Way Out.

When It Comes To Life The Critical Thing Is Whether You Take Things For Granted Or Take Them With Gratitude.

Man Is Not Merely An Evolution But Rather A Revolution.

The Simplification Of Anything Is Always Sensational.

When A Politician Is In Opposition He Is An Expert On The Means To Some End; And When He Is In Office He Is An Expert On The Obstacles To It.

The Decay Of Society Is Praised By Artists As The Decay Of A Corpse Is Praised By Worms.

[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.

...but Out Of The Desert, From The Dry Places And The Dreadful Suns, Come The Cruel Children Of The Lonely God; The Real Unitarians Who With Scimitar In Hand Have Laid Waste The World. For It Is Not Well For God To Be Alone.

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

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 Human Race, To Which So Many Of My Readers Belong, Has Been Playing At Children's Games From The Beginning, And Will Probably Do It Till The End, Which Is A Nuisance For The Few People Who Grow Up.

The Family Is The Test Of Freedom; Because The Family Is The Only Thing That The Free Man Makes For Himself And By Himself.

Education Is The Period During Which You Are Being Instructed By Somebody You Do Not Know, About Something You Do Not Want To Know.

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

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

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."

I Would Maintain That Thanks Are The Highest Form Of Thought; And That Gratitude Is Happiness Doubled By Wonder.

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

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.

None Of The Modern Machines, None Of The Modern Paraphernalia. . . Have Any Power Except Over The People Who Choose To Use Them.

Real Development Is Not Leaving Things Behind, As On A Road, But Drawing Life From Them, As From A Root.

I Left The Fairy Tales Lying On The Floor Of The Nursery, And I Have Not Found Any Books So Sensible Since.

The Man Who Lives In A Small Community Lives In A Much Larger World... The Reason Is Obvious. In A Large Community We Can Choose Our Companions. In A Small Community Our Companions Are Chosen For Us.

There Again," Said Syme Irritably, "what Is There Poetical About Being In Revolt? You Might As Well Say That It Is Poetical To Be Sea-sick. Being Sick Is A Revolt. Both Being Sick And Being Rebellious May Be The Wholesome Thing On Certain Desperate Occasions; But I'm Hanged If I Can See Why They Are Poetical...it Is Things Going Right," He Cried, "that Is Poetical! Our Digestions, For Instance, Going Sacredly And Silently Right, That Is The Foundation Of All Poetry...the Most Poetical Thing In The World Is Not Being Sick.

Materialists And Madmen Never Have Doubts.

Monotony Has Nothing To Do With A Place; Monotony, Either In Its Sensation Or Its Infliction, Is Simply The Quality Of A Person. There Are No Dreary Sights; There Are Only Dreary Sight Seers.

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

He Said He Didn't Very Well Understand How George Was Going To Sleep Any More Than He Did Now, Seeing That There Were Only Twenty-four Hours In Each Day.

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.

Man Knows That There Are In The Soul Tints More Bewildering, More Numberless, And More Nameless That The Colors Of An Autumn Forest....yet He Seriously Believes That These Things Can Every One Of Them , In All Their Tones And Semi-tones, In All Their Blends And Unions, Be Accurately Represented By An Arbitrary System Of Grunts And Squeals. He Believes That An Ordinary Civilized Stockbroker Can Really Produce Out Of His Own Inside Noises Which Denote All The Mysteries Of Memory And All The Agonies Of Desire.

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

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

Men Rush Towards Complexity, But They Yearn Towards Simplicity. They Try To Be Kings; But They Dream Of Being Shepherds.

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

It Is The Simple Truth That Man Does Differ From The Brutes In Kind And Not In Degree; And The Proof Of It Is Here; That It Sounds Like A Truism To Say That The Most Primitive Man Drew A Picture Of A Monkey And That It Sounds Like A Joke To Say That The Most Intelligent Monkey Drew A Picture Of A Man. Something Of Division And Disproportion Has Appeared; And It Is Unique. Art Is The Signature Of Man.

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.

All Slang Is Metaphor, And All Metaphor Is Poetry.

It Is The First Law Of Practical Courage. To Be In The Weakest Camp Is To Be In The Strongest School.

Buddhism Is Not A Creed, It Is A Doubt.

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

It's Not The World That's Got So Much Worse But The News Coverage That's Got So Much Better.

When Men Choose Not To Believe In God, They Do Not Thereafter Believe In Nothing, They Then Become Capable Of Believing In Anything.

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

If I Think The Universe Is Triangular, And You Think It Is Square, There Cannot Be Room For Two Universes. We May Argue Politely, We May Argue Humanely, We May Argue With Great Mutual Benefit: But, Obviously, We Must Argue.

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

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

Agnostic Is The Greek Word, For The Latin Word, For Ignorant

The Most Incredible Thing About Miracles Is That They Happen.

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

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

If An Editor Can Only Make People Angry Enough, They Will Write Half His Newspaper For Him For Nothing.

It Is Absurd For The Evolutionist To Complain That It Is Unthinkable For An Admittedly Unthinkable God To Make Everything Out Of Nothing And Then Pretend That It Is More Thinkable That Nothing Should Turn Itself Into Everything.

Tradition Is Only Democracy Extended Through Time; It May Be Defined As An Extension Of The Franchise. Tradition Means Giving Votes To The Most Obscure Of All Classes, Our Ancestors. It Is The Democracy Of The Dead. Tradition Refuses To Submit To The Small And Arrogant Oligarchy Of Those Who Are Merely Walking About. All Democrats Object To Men Being Disqualified By Accident Of Birth; Tradition Objects To Their Being Disqualified By Accident Of Death. Democracy Tells Us Not To Neglect A Good Man's Opinion, Even If He Is Our Father.

The Modern City Is Ugly Not Because It Is A City But Because It Is Not Enough Of A City, Because It Is A Jungle, Because It Is Confused And Anarchic, And Surging With Selfish And Materialistic Energies.

And All Over The World, The Old Literature, The Popular Literature, Is The Same. It Consists Of Very Dignified Sorrow And Very Undignified Fun. Its Sad Tales Are Of Broken Hearts; Its Happy Tales Are Of Broken Heads.

A Man Must Be Orthodox Upon Most Things, Or He Will Never Even Have Time To Preach His Own Heresy.

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

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

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

Customs Are Generally Unselfish. Habits Are Nearly Always Selfish.

In The Struggle For Existence, It Is Only On Those Who Hang On For Ten Minutes After All Is Hopeless, That Hope Begins To Dawn.

Fairy Tales Are More Than True.

Your Offer," He Said, "is Far Too Idiotic To Be Declined.

Psychoanalysis Is A Science Conducted By Lunatics For Lunatics. They Are Generally Concerned With Proving That People Are Irresponsible; And They Certainly Succeed In Proving That Some People Are

Properly Speaking, Of Course, There Is No Such Thing As A Return To Nature, Because There Is No Such Thing As A Departure From It. The Phrase Reminds One Of The Slightly Intoxicated Gentleman Who Gets Up In His Own Dining Room And Declares Firmly That He Must Be Getting Home.

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

Artistic Temperament Is The Disease That Afflicts Amateurs.

The Big Corporation Is Not In The Least Remarkable For Efficiency; It Is Only Too Big To Be Blamed For Its Inefficiency.

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.

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

If You Do Not Understand A Man You Cannot Crush Him. And If You Do Understand Him, Very Probably You Will Not.

A Good Novel Tells Us The Truth About Its Hero; But A Bad Novel Tells Us The Truth About Its Author.

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

Man Must Have Just Enough Faith In Himself To Have Adventures, And Just Enough Doubt Of Himself To Enjoy Them.

Passion Makes Every Detail Important.

The World Will Never Starve For Want Of Wonders; But Only For Want Of Wonder.

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

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

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

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

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

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 Man Who Lives In A Small Community Lives In A Much Larger World. He Knows Much More Of The Fierce Variety And Uncompromising Divergences Of Men…in A Large Community, We Can Choose Our Companions. In A Small Community, Our Companions Are Chosen For Us. Thus In All Extensive And Highly Civilized Society Groups Come Into Existence Founded Upon Sympathy, And Shut Out The Real World More Sharply Than The Gates Of A Monastery. There Is Nothing Really Narrow About The Clan; The Thing Which Is Really Narrow Is The Clique.

Against A Dark Sky All Flowers Look Like Fireworks. There Is Something Strange About Them, At Once Vivid And Secret, Like Flowers Traced In Fire In The Phantasmal Garden Of A Witch.

If You Happen To Read Fairy Tales, You Will Observe That One Idea Runs From One End Of Them To The Other--the Idea That Peace And Happiness Can Only Exist On Some Condition. This Idea, Which Is The Core Of Ethics, Is The Core Of The Nursery-tales.

Do Not Look At The Faces In The Illustrated Papers. Look At The Faces In The Street.

The Timidity Of The Child Or The Savage Is Entirely Reasonable; They Are Alarmed At This World, Because This World Is A Very Alarming Place. They Dislike Being Alone Because It Is Verily And Indeed An Awful Idea To Be Alone. Barbarians Fear The Unknown For The Same Reason That Agnostics Worship It - Because It Is A Fact.

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.

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'.

This Is The Perpetual And Pitiful Tragedy Of The Practical Man In Practical Affairs. He Always Begins With A Flourish Of Contempt For What He Calls Theorizing And What People Who Can Do It Call Thinking. He Will Not Wait For Logic-that Is, In The Most Exact Sense, He Will Not Listen To Reason. It Will Therefore Appear To Him An Idle And Ineffectual Proceeding To Say That There Is A Reason For His Present Failure. Nevertheless, It May Be Well To Say It, And To Try And Make It Clear Even To Him.

Making The Landlord And The Tenant The Same Person Has Certain Advantages, As That The Tenant Pays No Rent, While The Landlord Does A Little Work.

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

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

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.

When You Have Really Exhausted An Experience You Always Reverence And Love It.

Whether A Man Chooses To Tell The Truth In Long Sentences Or Short Jokes Is A Problem Analogous To Whether He Chooses To Tell The Truth In French Or In German.

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

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

The Repetition In Nature May Not Be A Mere Recurrence; It May Be A Theatrical Encore.

In Real Life The People Who Are Most Bigoted Are The People Who Have No Convictions At All.

A Tragedy Means Always A Mans Struggle With That Which Is Stronger Than Man.

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

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

When Fishes Flew And Forests Walked And Figs Grew Upon Thorn, Some Moment When The Moon Was Blood Then Surely I Was Born. With Monstrous Head And Sickening Cry And Ears Like Errant Wings, The Devil's Walking Parody On All Four-footed Things.

I Do Not Believe That Any Human Being Is Fundamentally Happier For Being Finally Lost In A Crowd, Even If It Is Called A Crowd Of Comrades.

The True Object Of All Human Life Is Play. Earth Is A Task Garden; Heaven Is A Playground.

Inspirational Life

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.

People Have Fallen Into A Foolish Habit Of Speaking Of Orthodoxy As Something Heavy, Humdrum, And Safe. There Never Was Anything So Perilous Or So Exciting As Orthodoxy. It Was Sanity: And To Be Sane Is More Dramatic Than To Be Mad.

Like Every Book I Never Wrote, It Is By Far The Best Book I Have Ever Written.

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

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

Price Is A Crazy And Incalculable Thing, While Value Is An Intrinsic And Indestructible Thing.

It Is Well Sometimes To Half Understand A Poem In The Same Manner That We Half Understand The World.

Trending Author

Walter Annenberg

Jonny Greenwood

Chelsea Clinton

Category