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The Cause Which Is Blocking All Progress Today Is The Subtle Scepticism Which Whispers In A Million Ears That Things Are Not Good Enough To Be Worth Improving. If The World Is Good We Are Revolutionaries, If The World Is Evil We Must Be Conservatives. These Essays, Futile As They Are Considered As Serious Literature, Are Yet Ethically Sincere, Since They Seek To Remind Men That Things Must Be Loved First And Improved Afterwards.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The Cause Which Is

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The Cause Which Is Blocking All Progress Today Is The Subtle Scepticism Which Whispers In A Million Ears That Things Are Not Good Enough To Be Worth Improving. If The World Is Good We Are Revolutionaries, If The World Is Evil We Must Be Conservatives. These Essays, Futile As They Are Considered As Serious Literature, Are Yet Ethically Sincere, Since They Seek To Remind Men That Things Must Be Loved First And Improved Afterwards.

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Progress Is Providence Without God. That Is, It Is A Theory That Everything Has Always Perpetually Gone Right By Accident. It Is A Sort Of Atheistic Optimism, Based On An Everlasting Coincidence Far More Miraculous Than A Miracle.

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.

The Disadvantage Of Men Not Knowing The Past Is That They Do Not Know The Present.

The Great Intellectual Tradition That Comes Down To Us From The Past Was Never Interrupted Or Lost Through Such Trifles As The Sack Of Rome, The Triumph Of Attila, Or All The Barbarian Invasions Of The Dark Ages. It Was Lost After The Introduction Of Printing, The Discovery Of America, The Founding Of The Royal Society, And All The Enlightenment Of The Renaissance And The Modern World. It Was There, If Anywhere, That There Was Lost Or Impatiently Snapped The Long Thin Delicate Thread That Had Descended From Distant Antiquity; The Thread Of That Unusual Human Hobby: The Habit Of Thinking.

You Can't Have The Family Farm Without The Family.

When It Wishes Anything Done Which Is Really Serious, It Collects Twelve Of The Ordinary Men Standing Round. The Same Thing Was Done, If I Remember Right, By The Founder Of Christianity.

Never Invoke The Gods Unless You Really Want Them To Appear. It Annoys Them Very Much.

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

With Every Step Of Our Lives We Enter Into The Middle Of Some Story Which We Are Certain To Misunderstand.

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

Every Work Of Art Has One Indispensable Mark ... The Center Of It Is Simple, However Much The Fulfillment May Be Complicated.

I Wish We Could Sometimes Love The Characters In Real Life As We Love The Characters In Romances. There Are A Great Many Human Souls Whom We Should Accept More Kindly, And Even Appreciate More Clearly, If We Simply Thought Of Them As People In A Story.

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.

The Mind Moves By Instincts, Associations And Premonitions And Not By Fixed Dates Or Completed Processes. Action And Reaction Will Occur Simultaneously: Or The Cause Actually Be Found After The Effect. Errors Will Be Resisted Before They Have Been Properly Promulgated: Notions Will Be First Defined Long After They Are Dead.

Christianity, Whatever Else It Is, Is An Explosion. Unless It Is Sensational There Is Simply No Sense In It. Unless The Gospel Sounds Like A Gun Going Off It Has Not Been Uttered At All.

Who Would Condescend To Strike Down The Mere Things That He Does Not Fear? Who Would Debase Himself To Be Merely Brave, Like Any Common Prizefighter? Who Would Stoop To Be Fearless--like A Tree? Fight The Thing That You Fear. You Remember The Old Tale Of The English Clergyman Who Gave The Last Rites To The Brigand Of Sicily, And How On His Death-bed The Great Robber Said, 'i Can Give You No Money, But I Can Give You Advice For A Lifetime: Your Thumb On The Blade, And Strike Upwards.' So I Say To You, Strike Upwards, If You Strike At The Stars.

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.

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

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.

The Only Way To Be Sure Of Catching A Train Is To Miss The One Before It.

People Generally Quarrel Because They Cannot Argue.

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

Coincidence Is A Spiritual Pun.

Dogma Is Actually The Only Thing That Cannot Be Separated From Education. It Is Education. A Teacher Who Is Not Dogmatic Is Simply A Teacher Who Is Not Teaching. There Are No Uneducated People; Only Most People Are Educated Wrong. The True Task Of Culture Today Is Not A Task Of Expansion, But Of Selection-and-rejection. The Educationist Must Find A Creed And Teach It.

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

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.

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

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

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

Powerful Men Who Have Powerful Passions Use Much Of Their Strength In Forging Chains For Themselves.

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.

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.

All Government Is An Ugly Necessity.

Men May Keep A Sort Of Level Of Good, But No Man Has Ever Been Able To Keep On One Level Of Evil.

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.

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

America Has A New Delicacy, A Coarse, Rank Refinement.

At The Bottom Of All The Tributes Paid To Democracy Is The Little Man, Walking Into The Little Booth, With A Little Pencil, Making A Little Cross On A Little Bit Of Paper. . . .

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

My Brain And This World Don't Fit Each Other; And There's An End Of It.

When People Talk As If The Crusades Were Nothing More Than An Aggressive Raid Against Islam, They Seem To Forget In The Strangest Way That Islam Itself Was Only An Aggressive Raid Against The Old And Ordered Civilization In These Parts. I Do Not Say It In Mere Hostility To The Religion Of Mahomet; I Am Fully Conscious Of Many Values And Virtues In It; But Certainly It Was Islam That Was The Invasion And Christendom That Was The Thing Invaded.

...but This Is The Real Objection To That Torrent Of Modern Talk About Treating Crime As Disease, About Making Prison Merely A Hygienic Environment Like A Hospital, Of Healing Sin By Slow Scientific Methods. The Fallacy Of The Whole Thing Is That Evil Is A Matter Of Active Choice Whereas Disease Is Not.

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.

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.

The Atheist Is Not Interested In Anything Except Attacks On Atheism.

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

Even A Bad Shot Is Dignified When He Accepts A Duel.

I Like The Americans For A Great Many Reasons. I Like Them Because Even The Modern Thing Called Industrialism Has Not Entirely Destroyed In Them The Very Ancient Thing Called Democracy. I Like Them Because They Have A Respect For Work Which Really Curbs The Human Tendency To Snobbishness.

It Is Very Good For A Man To Talk About What He Does Not Understand; As Long As He Understands That He Does Not Understand It.

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

There Are No Boring Subjects, Only Disinterested Minds.

We Need To Be Reminded More Than We Need To Be Instructed

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

I Doubt If Anyone Of Any Tenderness Or Imagination Can See The Hand Of A Child And Not Be A Little Frightened Of It. It Is Awful To Think Of The Essential Human Energy Moving So Tiny A Thing; It Is Like Imagining That Human Nature Could Live In The Wing Of A Butterfly Or The Leaf Of A Tree. When We Look Upon Lives So Human And Yet So Small... We Feel The Same Kind Of Obligation To These Creatures That A Deity Might Feel...

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

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

Science Boasts Of The Distance Of Its Stars; Of The Terrific Remoteness Of The Things Of Which It Has To Speak. But Poetry And Religion Always Insist Upon The Proximity, The Almost Menacing Closeness Of The Things With Which They Are Concerned. Always The Kingdom Of Heaven Is "at Hand."

When Giving Treats To Friends Or Children, Give Them What They Like, Emphatically Not What Is Good For Them.

The Word 'good' Has Many Meanings. For Example, If A Man Were To Shoot His Grandmother At A Range Of Five Hundred Yards, I Should Call Him A Good Shot, But Not Necessarily A Good Man.

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.

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

When 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.

The Devil's Walking Parody; On All Four-footed Things.

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

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

There Nearly Always Is A Method In Madness.

Men Rush Toward Complexity; But Yearn For Simplicity.

Stick To The Man Who Looks Out Of The Window And Tries To Understand The World. Keep Clear Of The Man Who Looks In At The Window And Tries To Understand You.

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

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

There Is, Therefore, About All Complete Conviction A Kind Of Huge Helplessness.

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

The Byzantines Hammered Away At Their Hard And Orthodox Symbols, Because They Could Not Be In A Mood To Believe That Men Could Take A Hint. The Moderns Drag Out Into Lengths And Reels Of Extravagance Their New Orthodoxy Of Being Unorthodox, Because They Also Cannot Give A Hint -- Or Take A Hint. Yet All Perfect And Well-poised Art Is Really A Hint.

You Have Not Wasted Your Time; You Have Helped To Save The World. We Are Not Buffoons, But Very Desperate Men At War With A Vast Conspiracy.

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 Modern Man May Disapprove Of Some Of His Sweeping Reforms, And Approve Others; But Finds It Difficult Not To Admire Even Where He Does Not Approve.

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

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.

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.

Exactly What The Fairy Tale Does Is This: It Accustoms Him For A Series Of Clear Pictures To The Idea That These Limitless Terrors Had A Limit, That These Shapeless Enemies Have Enemies In The Knights Of God, That There Is Something In The Universe More Mystical Than Darkness, And Stronger Than Strong Fear.

Christian Science … Is The Direct Denial Both Of Science And Of Christianity, For Science Rests Wholly On The Recognition Of Truth And Christianity On The Recognition Of Pain.

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

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.

The Historic Glory Of America Lies In The Fact That It Is The One Nation That Was Founded Like A Church. That Is, It Was Founded On A Faith That Was Not Merely Summed Up After It Had Exited, But Was Defined Before It Existed.

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

Some Men Never Feel Small, But These Are The Few Men Who Are.

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

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

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.

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

All But The Hard Hearted Man Must Be Torn With Pity For This Pathetic Dilemma Of The Rich Man, Who Has To Keep The Poor Man Just Stout Enough To Do The Work And Just Thin Enough To Have To Do It.

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.

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

Is There Anyone... Who Will Maintain That The Party System Could Have Been Created By People Particularly Fond Of Truth?

Could Have Been

To Do Mohammed Justice, His Main Attack Was Against The Idolatries Of Asia. Only He Thought, Just As The Arians Did And Just As The Unitarians Do, That He Could Attack Them Better With A Greater Approximation To Plain Theism. What Distinguishes His Heresy From Anything Like An Arian Or Albigensian Heresy Is That, As It Sprang Up On The Borders Of Christendom, It Could Spread Outwards To A Barbaric World.

If We Could Destroy Custom At A Blow And See The Stars As A Child Sees Them, We Should Need No Other Apocalypse.

When "everyone Knows" That Something Is So, It Is Always More Interesting And Often Illuminating To Assumeexactly The Opposite, And To See Where That Leads.

He Has Come To The Most Dreadful Conclusion A Literary Man Can Come To, The Conclusion That The Ordinary View Is The Right One. It Is Only The Last And Wildest Kind Of Courage That Can Stand On A Tower Before Ten Thousand People And Tell Them That Twice Two Is Four.

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.

The State Did Not Own Men So Entirely, Even When It Could Send Them To The Stake, As It Sometimes Does Now Where It Can Send Them To The Elementary School.

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

It Is The Test Of A Good Religion Whether You Can Joke About It.

Childlike Faith

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.

What Is Education? Properly Speaking, There Is No Such Thing As Education. Education Is Simply The Soul Of A Society As It Passes From One Generation To Another. Whatever The Soul Is Like, It Will Have To Be Passed On Somehow, Consciously Or Unconsciously, And That Transition May Be Called Education. ... What We Need Is To Have A Culture Before We Hand It Down. In Other Words, It Is A Truth, However Sad And Strange, That We Cannot Give What We Have Not Got, And Cannot Teach To Other People What We Do Not Know Ourselves.

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

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

Passion Makes Every Detail Important.

Progress Is The Mother Of All Problems.

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

Unfortunately, 19th-century Scientists Were Just As Ready To Jump To The Conclusion That Any Guess About Nature Was An Obvious Fact, As Were 17th-century Sectarians To Jump To The Conclusion That Any Guess About Scripture Was The Obvious Explanation . . . . And This Clumsy Collision Of Two Very Impatient Forms Of Ignorance Was Known As The Quarrel Of Science And Religion.

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

Music With Dinner Is An Insult Both To The Cook And The Violinist.

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.

Democracy Is Like Blowing Your Nose. You May Not Do It Well, But It's Something You Ought To Do Yourself.

The Cause Which Is Blocking All Progress Today Is The Subtle Scepticism Which Whispers In A Million Ears That Things Are Not Good Enough To Be Worth Improving. If The World Is Good We Are Revolutionaries, If The World Is Evil We Must Be Conservatives. These Essays, Futile As They Are Considered As Serious Literature, Are Yet Ethically Sincere, Since They Seek To Remind Men That Things Must Be Loved First And Improved Afterwards.

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.

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

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

The 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.

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

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

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

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

The Idea Of Private Property Universal But Private, The Idea Of Families Free But Still Families, Of Domesticity Democratic But Still Domestic, Of One Man One House - This Remains The Real Vision And Magnet Of Mankind. The World May Accept Something More Official And General, Less Human And Intimate. But The World Will Be Like A Broken-hearted Woman Who Makes A Humdrum Marriage Because She May Not Make A Happy One; Socialism May Be The World's Deliverance, But It Is Not The World's Desire.

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

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.

It Is The Decisive People Who Have Become Civilised; It Is The Indecisive, Otherwise Called The Higher Sceptics, Or The Idealistic Doubters, Who Have Remained Barbarians.

Marriage Is An Adventure, Like Going To War.

One Elephant Having A Trunk Was Odd; But All Elephants Having Trunks Looked Like A Plot.

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

[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.

There Is Not Really Any Courage At All In Attacking Hoary Or Antiquated Things, Any More Than In Offering To Fight One's Grandmother. The Really Courageous Man Is He Who Defies Tyrannies Young As The Morning And Superstitions Fresh As The First Flowers. The Only True Free-thinker Is He Whose Intellect Is As Much Free From The Future As From The Past.

Tradition Does Not Mean A Dead Town; It Does Not Mean That The Living Are Dead But That The Dead Are Alive. It Means That It Still Matters What Penn Did Two Hundred Years Ago Or What Franklin Did A Hundred Years Ago; I Never Could Feel In New York That It Mattered What Anybody Did An Hour Ago.

The Sane Man Knows That He Has A Touch Of The Beast, A Touch Of The Devil, A Touch Of The Saint, A Touch Of The Citizen. Nay, The Really Sane Man Knows That He Has A Touch Of The Madman.

There Is No Great Harm In The Theorist Who Makes Up A New Theory To Fit A New Event. But The Theorist Who Starts With A False Theory And Then Sees Everything As Making It Come True Is The Most Dangerous Enemy Of Human Reason.

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

St Thomas (aqinas) Loved Books And Lived On Books... When Asked For What He Thanked God Most, He Answered Simply, ‘i Have Understood Every Page I Ever Read’.

If A Man Would Make His World Large, He Must Be Always Making Himself Small.

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

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.

Earnest Freethinkers Need Not Worry Themselves So Much About The Persecutions Of The Past. Before The Liberal Idea Is Dead Or Triumphant We Shall See Wars And Persecutions The Like Of Which The World Has Never Seen.

A Man Must Be Prepared Not Only To Be A Martyr, But To Be A Fool. It Is Absurd To Say That A Man Is Ready To Toil And Die For His Convictions If He Is Not Even Ready To Wear A Wreathe Around His Head For Them.

One Pleasure Attached To Growing Older Is That Many Things Seem To Be Growing Younger; Growing Fresher And More Lively Than We Once Supposed Them To Be.

Feminists Are Those Who Cannot Stand Female Characteristics.

Characteristics

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.

To Mix Science Up With Philosophy Is Only To Produce A Philosophy That Has Lost All Its Ideal Value And A Science That Has Lost All Its Practical Value. It Is For My Private Physician To Tell Me Whether This Or That Food Will Kill Me. It Is For My Private Philosopher To Tell Me Whether I Ought To Be Killed.

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.

The Prophet And The Quack Are Alike Admired For A Generation, And Admired For The Wrong Reasons.

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

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

Were Meant To Be

There Are No Wise Few; For In All Men Rages The Folly Of The Fall. Take Your Strongest, Happiest, Handsomest, Best Born, Best Bred, Best Instructed Men On Earth And Give Them Special Power For Half An Hour And Because They Are Men They Will Begin To [perform] Badly.

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

Life Is Not An Illogicality; Yet It Is A Trap For Logicians. It Looks Just A Little More Mathematical And Regular Than It Is; Its Exactitude Is Obvious, But Its Inexactitude Is Hidden; Its Wildness Lies In Wait.

...but Nature Does Not Say That Cats Are More Valuable Than Mice; Nature Makes No Remark On The Subject. She Does Not Even Say That The Cat Is Enviable Or The Mouse Pitiable. We Think The Cat Superior Because We Have (or Most Of Us Have) A Particular Philosophy To The Effect That Life Is Better Than Death. But If The Mouse Were A German Pessimist Mouse, He Might Not Think That The Cat Had Beaten Him At All. He Might Think He Had Beaten The Cat By Getting To The Grave First.

The Hands That Had Made The Sun And Stars Were Too Small To Reach The Huge Heads Of The Cattle. Upon This Paradox, We Might Almost Say Upon This Jest, All The Literature Of Our Faith Is Founded.

It Is Assumed That The Skeptic Has No Bias; Whereas He Has A Very Obvious Bias In Favour Of Skepticism.

People In High Life Are Hardened To The Wants And Distresses Of Mankind As Surgeons Are To Their Bodily Pains.

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

When A Woman Puts Up Her Fists To A Man She Is Putting Herself In The Only Posture In Which He Is Not Afraid Of Her.

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.

Christendom Has Had A Series Of Revolutions And In Each One Of Them Christianity Has Died. Christianity Has Died Many Times And Risen Again; For It Had A God Who Knew The Way Out Of The Grave.

They Hate Kings, They Hate Priests, They Hate Soldiers, They Hate Sailors. They Distrust Men Of Science, They Denounce The Middle Classes, They Despair Of Working Men, But They Adore Humanity. Only They Always Speak Of Humanity As If It Were A Curious Foreign Nation. They Are Dividing Themselves More And More From Men To Exalt The Strange Race Of Mankind. They Are Ceasing To Be Human In The Effort To Be Humane.

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?

Moderate Strength Is Shown In Violence, Supreme Strength Is Shown In Levity.

Half A Truth Is Better Than No Politics.

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.

The Whole Modern World Has Divided Itself Into Conservatives And Progressives. The Business Of Progressives Is To Go On Making Mistakes. The Business Of Conservatives Is To Prevent Mistakes From Being Corrected.

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

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

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

I Am At One With My Duality.

The Truth Is That It Is Our Attitude Towards Children That Is Right, And Our Attitude Towards Grown-up People That Is Wrong.

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

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

Drink Because You Are Happy, But Never Because You Are Miserable. Never Drink When You Are Wretched Without It, Or You Will Be Like The Grey-faced Gin-drinker In The Slum; But Drink When You Would Be Happy Without It, And You Will Be Like The Laughing Peasant Of Italy. Never Drink Because You Need It, For This Is Rational Drinking, And The Way To Death And Hell. But Drink Because You Do Not Need It, For This Is Irrational Drinking, And The Ancient Health Of The World.

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.

There Is One Thing Which Gives Radiance To Everything. It Is The Idea Of Something Around The Corner.

The Past Is Not What It Was.

We All Have A Little Weakness, Which Is Very Natural But Rather Misleading, For Supposing That This Epoch Must Be The End Of The World Because It Will Be The End Of Us. How Future Generations Will Get On Without Us Is Indeed, When We Come To Think Of It, Quite A Puzzle. But I Suppose They Will Get On Somehow, And May Possibly Venture To Revise Our Judgments As We Have Revised Earlier Judgments.

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

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

A Radical Generally Meant A Man Who Thought He Could Somehow Pull Up The Root Without Affecting The Flower. A Conservative Generally Meant A Man Who Wanted To Conserve Everything Except His Own Reason For Conserving Anything.

It May Not Be Automatic Necessity That Makes All Daisies Alike; It May Be That God Makes Every Daisy Separately, But Has Never Gotten Tired Of Making Them

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

A Good Moslem King Was One Who Was Strict In Religion, Valiant In Battle, Just In Giving Judgment Among His People, But Not One Who Had The Slightest Objection In International Matters To Removing His Neighbour's Landmark.

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

Every Man Is Important If He Loses His Life;and Every Man Is Funny If He Loses His Hat And Has To Run After It.

There Are No Rules Of Architecture For A Castle In The Clouds.

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

Laughter Has Something In It Common With The Ancient Words Of Faith And Inspiration; It Unfreezes Pride And Unwinds Secrecy; It Makes People Forget Themselves In The Presence Of Something Greater Than Themselves.

When A Person Has Found Something Which He Prefers To Life Itself, He For The First Time Has Begun To Live.

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.

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