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Now, Among The Heresies That Are Spoken In This Matter Is The Habit Of Calling A Grey Day A "colourless" Day. Grey Is A Colour, And Can Be A Very Powerful And Pleasing Colour.... A Grey Clouded Sky Is Indeed A Canopy Between Us And The Sun; So Is A Green Tree, If It Comes To That. But The Grey Umbrellas Differ As Much As The Green In Their Style And Shape, In Their Tint And Tilt. One Day May Be Grey Like Steel, And Another Grey Like Dove’s Plumage. One May Seem Grey Like The Deathly Frost, And Another Grey Like The Smoke Of Substantial Kitchens.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Now, Among The Heresies

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Now, Among The Heresies That Are Spoken In This Matter Is The Habit Of Calling A Grey Day A "colourless" Day. Grey Is A Colour, And Can Be A Very Powerful And Pleasing Colour.... A Grey Clouded Sky Is Indeed A Canopy Between Us And The Sun; So Is A Green Tree, If It Comes To That. But The Grey Umbrellas Differ As Much As The Green In Their Style And Shape, In Their Tint And Tilt. One Day May Be Grey Like Steel, And Another Grey Like Dove’s Plumage. One May Seem Grey Like The Deathly Frost, And Another Grey Like The Smoke Of Substantial Kitchens.

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It [feminism] Is Mixed Up With A Muddled Idea That Women Are Free When They Serve Their Employers But Slaves When They Help Their Husbands.

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

Art Consists Of Limitation. The Most Beautiful Part Of Every Picture Is The Frame.

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

Islam Was Something Like A Christian Heresy. The Early Heresies Had Been Full Of Mad Reversals And Evasions Of The Incarnation, Rescuing Their Jesus From The Reality Of His Body Even At The Expense Of The Sincerity Of His Soul.

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

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.

Gratitude Produced The Most Purely Joyful Moments That Have Been Known To Man.

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.

A Feminist Is Someone Who Loathes Being A Woman And Who Dislikes The Chief Feminine Characteristics.

But Whenever One Meets Modern Thinkers (as One Often Does) Progressing Toward A Madhouse, One Always Finds, On Inquiry, That They Have Just Had A Splendid Escape From Another Madhouse. Thus, Hundreds Of People Become Socialists, Not Because They Have Tried Socialism And Found It Nice, But Because They Have Tried Individualism And Found It Particularly Nasty.

Education Is Implication. It Is Not The Things You Say Which Children Respect; When You Say Things, They Very Commonly Laugh And Do The Opposite. It Is The Things You Assume Which Really Sink Into Them. It Is The Things You Forget Even To Teach That They Learn.

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

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.

Experience Which Was Once Claimed By The Aged Is Now Claimed Exclusively By The Young.

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.

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

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.

But A Somewhat More Liberal And Sympathetic Examination Of Mankind Will Convince Us That The Cross Is Even Older Than The Gibbet, That Voluntary Suffering Was Before And Independent Of Compulsory; And In Short That In Most Important Matters A Man Has Always Been Free To Ruin Himself If He Chose.

It Is Much Easier To Write A Good Times Leading Article Than A Good Joke In Punch.

Journalism Is Popular, But It Is Popular Mainly As Fiction. Life Is One World, And Life Seen In The Newspapers Is Another.

Here Ends Another Day, During Which I Have Had Eyes, Ears, Hands And The Great World Around Me. Tomorrow Begins Another Day. Why Am I Allowed Two?

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

La Mejor Prueba De La Cultura Y La Liberalidad De Un Hombre Es Su Actitud Ante Las Cosas Que Nunca Sucedieron.

Shouldn't Atheist Have An Equal Obligation To Explain Pleasure In A World Of Randomness. Where Does Pleasure Come From?

It Is Human To Err; And The Only Final And Deadly Error, Among All Our Errors, Is Denying That We Have Ever Erred.

There Should Be A Burnished Tablet Let Into The Ground On The Spot Where Some Courageous Man First Ate Stilton Cheese, And Survived.

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

There Is No Logical Connection Between Flying And Laying Eggs.

Nothing Is So Remote From Us As The Thing Which Is Not Old Enough To Be History And Not New Enough To Be News.

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

To Downgrade The Human Mind Is Bad Theology.

Right Is Right Even If Nobody Does It. Wrong Is Wrong Even If Everybody Is Wrong About It.

Aesthetes Never Do Anything But What They Are Told.

A Puritan Is A Person Who Pours Righteous Indignation Into The Wrong Things.

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.

The Center Of Every Man's Existence Is A Dream. Death, Disease, Insanity, Are Merely Material Accidents, Like A Toothache Or A Twisted Ankle. That These Brutal Forces Always Besiege And Often Capture The Citadel Does Not Prove That They Are The Citadel.

What Life And Death May Be To A Turkey Is Not My Business; But The Soul Of Scrooge And The Body Of Cratchit Are My Business.

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

Whatever The Word "great" Means, Dickens Was What It Means.

If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Badly. (on Not Perfectionism To Put Things Off) .

The Classes That Wash Most Are Those That Work Least.

Art Is Born When The Temporary Touches The Eternal.

I Had Always Felt Life First As A Story: And If There Is A Story There Is A Story-teller

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 Sceptic Ultimately Undermines Democracy (1) Because He Can See No Significance In Death And Such Things Of A Literal Equality; (2) Because He Introduces Different First Principles, Making Debate Impossible: And Debate Is The Life Of Democracy; (3) Because The Fading Of The Images Of Sacred Persons Leaves A Man Too Prone To Be A Respecter Of Earthly Persons; (4) Because There Will Be More, Not Less, Respect For Human Rights If They Can Be Treated As Divine Rights.

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

That Young Man With The Long, Auburn Hair And The Impudent Face - That Young Man Was Not Really A Poet; But Surely He Was A Poem.

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.

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

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

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.

The Truth Is That There Are No Things For Which Men Will Make Such Herculean Efforts As The Things Of Which They Know They Are Unworthy.

Forms Of Expression Always Appear Turgid To Those Who Do Not Share The Emotions They Represent.

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

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."

If You'd Take Your Head Home And Boil It For A Turnip It Might Be Useful. I Can't Say. But It Might.

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

Most Modern Freedom Is At Root Fear. It Is Not So Much That We Are Too Bold To Endure Rules; It Is Rather That We Are Too Timid To Endure Responsibilities.

Men Can Construct A Science With Very Few Instruments, Or With Very Plain Instruments; But No One On Earth Could Construct A Science With Unreliable Instruments. A Man Might Work Out The Whole Of Mathematics With A Handful Of Pebbles, But Not With A Handful Of Clay Which Was Always Falling Apart Into New Fragments, And Falling Together Into New Combinations. A Man Might Measure Heaven And Earth With A Reed, But Not With A Growing Reed.

The Past Is Not What It Was.

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

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

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.

[fairy Tales] Make Rivers Run With Wine Only To Make Us Remember, For One Wild Moment, That They Run With Water.

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

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.

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.

A Naked Moon Stood In A Naked Sky.

America Is The Only Nation In The World That Is Founded On Creed. That Creed Is Set Forth With Dogmatic And Even Theological Lucidity In The Declaration Of Independence; Perhaps The Only Piece Of Practical Politics That Is Also Theoretical Politics And Also Great Literature.

One Of The Great Disadvantages Of Hurry Is That It Takes Such A Long Time.

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.

As For The General View That The Church Was Discredited By The War—they Might As Well Say That The Ark Was Discredited By The Flood. When The World Goes Wrong, It Proves Rather That The Church Is Right. The Church Is Justified, Not Because Her Children Do Not Sin, But Because They Do.

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

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.

I Do Not Feel Any Contempt For An Atheist, Who Is Often A Man Limited And Constrained By His Own Logic To A Very Sad Simplification.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Men Spoke Much In My Boyhood About Restricted Or Ruined Men Of Genius: And It Was Common To Say That Many A Man Was A Great Might-have-been. To Me It's A More Solid And Startling Fact That Any Man In The Street Is A Great Might-not-have-been.

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

Christian Inspirational

Hope Means Expectancy When Things Are Otherwise Hopeless.

Being 'contented' Ought To Mean In English, As It Does In French, Being Pleased. Being Content With An Attic Ought Not To Mean Being Unable To Move From It And Resigned To Living In It; It Ought To Mean Appreciating All There Is In Such A Position.

Truth Must Necessarily Be Stranger Than Fiction, For Fiction Is The Creation Of The Human Mind And Therefore Congenial To It.

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

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

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

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

The Golden Age Only Comes To Men When They Have Forgotten Gold.

The Free Man Owns Himself. He Can Damage Himself With Either Eating Or Drinking; He Can Ruin Himself With Gambling. If He Does He Is Certainly A Damn Fool, And He Might Possibly Be A Damned Soul; But If He May Not, He Is Not A Free Man Any More Than A Dog.

All Conservatism Is Based Upon The Idea That If You Leave Things Alone You Leave Them As They Are. But You Do Not. If You Leave A Thing Alone You Leave It To A Torrent Of Change.

He Is Only A Very Shallow Critic Who Cannot See An Eternal Rebel In The Heart Of The Conservative.

Either Criticism Is No Good At All (a Very Defensible Position) Or Else Criticism Means Saying About An Author The Very Things That Would Have Made Him Jump Out Of His Boots.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Comforts That Were Rare Among Our Forefathers Are Now Multiplied In Factories And Handed Out Wholesale; And Indeed, Nobody Nowadays, So Long As He Is Content To Go Without Air, Space, Quiet, Decency And Good Manners, Need Be Without Anything Whatever That He Wants; Or At Least A Reasonably Cheap Imitation Of It.

Thinking Means Connecting Things, And Stops If They Cannot Be Connected.

The Disadvantage Of Men Not Knowing The Past Is That They Do Not Know The Present. History Is A Hill Or High Point Of Vantage, From Which Alone Men See The Town In Which They Live Or The Age In Which They Are Living.

The Problem Of Disbelieving In God Is Not That A Man Ends Up Believing Nothing. Alas, It Is Much Worse. He Ends Up Believing Anything.

Facts As Facts Do Not Always Create A Spirit Of Reality, Because Reality Is A Spirit.

Evil Comes At Leisure Like The Disease. Good Comes In A Hurry Like The Doctor.

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

The Reason That Angels Fly Is That They Take Themselves So Lightly.

We Are To Regard Existence As A Raid Or Great Adventure; It Is To Be Judged, Therefore, Not By What Calamities It Encounters, But By What Flag It Follows And What High Town It Assaults. The Most Dangerous Thing In The World Is To Be Alive; One Is Always In Danger Of One's Life. But Anyone Who Shrinks From That Is A Traitor To The Great Scheme And Experiment Of Being.

Too Much Capitalism Does Not Mean Too Many Capitalists, But Too Few Capitalists.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Each Generation Is Converted By The Saint Who Contradicts It Most.

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.

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

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

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.

I Still Think Sincere Pessimism The Unpardonable Sin.

To Have A Right To Do A Thing Is Not At All The Same As To Be Right In Doing It.

In The Modern Conflict Between The Smile And The Laugh, I Am All In Favor Of Laughing. The Recent Stage Of Culture And Criticism Might Very Well Be Summed Up As The Men Who Smile Criticizing The Men Who Laugh.

Large Organization Is Loose Organization. Nay, It Would Be Almost As True To Say That Organization Is Always Disorganization.

She Had Never Really Listened To Anyone In Her Life; Which, Some Said, Was Why She Had Survived.

Thanks Are The Highest Form Of Thought.

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

People Talk Of The Pathos And Failure Of Plain Women; But It Is A More Terrible Thing That A Beautiful Woman May Succeed In Everything But Womanhood.

Some Of The Most Frantic Lies On The Face Of Life Are Told With Modesty And Restraint; For The Simple Reason That Only Modesty And Restraint Will Save Them.

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

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

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

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.

Daybreak Is A Never-ending Glory; Getting Out Of Bed Is A Never Ending Nuisance.

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

An Artist Will Betray Himself By Some Sort Of Sincerity.

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

I Do Not Know Much About Mohammed Or Mohammedanism. I Do Not Take The Koran To Bed With Me Every Night. But, If I Did On Some One Particular Night, There Is One Sense At Least In Which I Know What I Should Not Find There. I Apprehend That I Should Not Find The Work Abounding In Strong Encouragements To The Worship Of Idols; That The Praises Of Polytheism Would Not Be Loudly Sung; That The Character Of Mohammed Would Not Be Subjected To Anything Resembling Hatred And Derision; And That The Great Modern Doctrine Of The Unimportance Of Religion Would Not Be Needlessly Emphasised.

Christianity Got Over The Difficulty Of Combining Furious Opposites, By Keeping Them Both, And Keeping Them Both Furious.

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

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

The Catholic Church Is Like A Thick Steak, A Glass Of Red Wine, And A Good Cigar.

The Whole Pleasure Of Marriage Is That It Is A Perpetual Crisis.

That Is The One Eternal Education: To Be Sure Enough That Something Is True That You Dare To Tell It To A Child.

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

All Science, Even The Divine Science, Is A Sublime Detective Story. Only It Is Not Set To Detect Why A Man Is Dead; But The Darker Secret Of Why He Is Alive.

Coincidence Is A Spiritual Pun.

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

The Woman Does Not Work Because The Man Tells Her To Work And She Obeys. On The Contrary, The Woman Works Because She Has Told The Man To Work And He Hasn’t Obeyed.

Original Sin Is The Only Doctrine That's Been Empirically Validated By 2,000 Years Of Human History.

Every True Artist Does Feel, Consciously Or Unconsciously, That He Is Touching Transcendental Truths; That His Images Are Shadows Of Things Seen Through The Veil. In Other Words, The Natural Mystic Does Know That There Is Something There, Something Behind The Clouds Or Within The Trees; But He Believes That The Pursuit Of Beauty Is The Way To Find It; That Imagination Is A Sort Of Incantation That Can Call It Up.

I Need Not Pause To Explain That Crime Is Not A Disease. It Is Criminology That Is A Disease.

It Is One Thing To Describe An Interview With A Gorgon Or A Griffin, A Creature Who Does Not Exist. It Is Another Thing To Discover That The Rhinoceros Does Exist And Then Take Pleasure In The Fact That He Looks As If He Didn't.

I Am Myself So Exceedingly Nordic, As Far As Physical Constitution Is Concerned, That I Can Enjoy Almost Any Weather Except What Is Called Glorious Weather. At The End Of A Few Days, I Am Left Wondering How The Men Of The Mediterranean Ever Managed To Do Almost All The Most Active And Astonishing Things That Have Been Done.

There Nearly Always Is A Method In Madness.

A Strange Fanaticism Fills Our Time: The Fanatical Hatred Of Morality, Especially Of Christian Morality.

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

There Is No Such Thing As Education. The Thing Is Merely A Loose Phrase For The Passing On To Others Of Whatever Truth Or Virtue We Happen To Have Ourselves. It Is Typical Of Our Time That The More Doubtful We Are About The Value Of Philosophy, The More Certain We Are About The Value Of Education. That Is To Say, The More Doubtful We Are About Whether We Have Any Truth, The More Certain We Are (apparently) That We Can Teach It To Our Children.

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

The Function Of The Imagination Is Not To Make Strange Things Settled, So Much As To Make Settled Things Strange.

What Is The Good Of Words If They Aren't Important Enough To Quarrel Over? Why Do We Choose One Word More Than Another If There Isn't Any Difference Between Them? If You Called A Woman A Chimpanzee Instead Of An Angel, Wouldn't There Be A Quarrel About A Word? If You're Not Going To Argue About Words, What Are You Going To Argue About? Are You Going To Convey Your Meaning To Me By Moving Your Ears? The Church And The Heresies Always Used To Fight About Words, Because They Are The Only Thing Worth Fighting About.

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

If The Common Man In The Past Had A Grave Respect For Property, It May Conceivably Have Been Because He Sometimes Had Some Of His Own.

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.

A Great Man Is Not A Man So Strong That He Feels Less Than Other Men; He Is A Man So Strong That He Feels More.

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

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

The Triangle Of Truisms, Of Father, Mother And Child, Cannot Be Destroyed; It Can Only Destroy Those Civilizations Which Disregard It.

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

The Madman Is The Man Who Has Lost Everything Except His Reason.

Lost Everything

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

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.

No Man Can Break Any Of The Ten Commandments. He Can Only Break Himself Against Them.

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.

Sticking To One Woman Is A Small Price To Pay For So Much As Having Seen One Woman.

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

There Are A Good Many Fools Who Call Me A Friend, And Also A Good Many Friends Who Call Me A Fool.

Funny Friendship

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

When We Look Upon Lives So Human And Yet So Small, We Feel As If We Ourselves Were Enlarged To An Embarrassing Bigness Of Stature. We Feel The Same Kind Of Obligation To These Creatures That A Deity Might Feel If He Had Created Something That He Could Not Understand.

We Lose Our Bearings Entirely By Speaking Of The 'lower Classes' When We Mean Humanity Minus Ourselves.

A Man Was Meant To Be Doubtful About Himself, But Undoubting About The Truth; This Has Been Exactly Reversed.

Were Meant To Be

Not Only Does "orthodox" No Longer Mean Being Right, It Practically Means Being Wrong.

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.

The Declaration Of Independence Dogmatically Bases All Rights On The Fact That God Created All Men Equal; And It Is Right; For If They Were Not Created Equal, They Were Certainly Evolved Unequal. There Is No Basis For Democracy Except In A Dogma About The Divine Origin Of Man.

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.

In The Fairy Tale, An Incomprehensible Happiness Rests Upon An Incomprehensible Condition. A Box Is Opened And All Evils Fly Out. A Word Is Forgotten And Cities Perish. A Lamp Is Lit And Love Flies Away. An Apple Is Eaten And The Hope Of God Is Gone.

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

Poets Do Not Go Mad, But Chess Players Do.

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.

Civilization Has Run On Ahead Of The Soul Of Man, And Is Producing Faster Than He Can Think And Give Thanks.

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

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.

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!

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

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

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.

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.

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

Man In The Moon

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