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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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The Idea Of Private

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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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.

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

Every One On The Earth Should Believe That He Has Something To Give To The World Which Cannot Otherwise Be Given.

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.

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

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

When Learned Men Begin To Use Their Reason, Then I Generally Discover That They Haven't Got Any.

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

Very Few Reputations Are Gained By Unsullied Virtue.

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.

Evil Always Wins Through The Strength Of Its Splendid Dupes; And There Has In All Ages Been A Disastrous Alliance Between Abnormal Innocence And Abnormal Sin.

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

Then I Only Wondered Who Put The Toys In The Stocking; Now I Wonder Who Put The Stocking By The Bed, And The Bed In The Room, And The Room In The House, And The House On The Planet, And The Great Planet In The Void.

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

By Experts In Poverty I Do Not Mean Sociologists, But Poor Men.

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

Acceptance Is The Truest Kinship With Humanity.

The Moderns Do Not Realize Modernity.

Religious Liberty Might Be Supposed To Mean That Everybody Is Free To Discuss Religion. In Practice It Means That Hardly Anybody Is Allowed To Mention It.

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

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.

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.

We Talk Of Wild Animals But Man Is The Only Wild Animal. It Is Man That Has Broken Out. All Other Animals Are Tame Animals; Following The Rugged Respectability Of The Tribe Or Type.

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

Women Prefer To Talk In Twos, While Men Prefer To Talk In Threes.

All Architecture Is Great Architecture After Sunset.

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.

Faith Means Believing The Unbelievable.

The Best Kind Of Giving Is Thanksgiving.

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

He Can Only Get Away From Death By Continually Stepping Within An Inch Of It.

Silence Is The Unbearable Repartee.

Poets Do Not Go Mad, But Chess Players Do.

The Coming Peril Is The Intellectual, Educational, Psychological And Artistic Overproduction, Which, Equally With Economic Overproduction, Threatens The Well-being Of Contemporary Civilisation. People Are Inundated, Blinded, Deafened, And Mentally Paralysed By A Flood Of Vulgar And Tasteless Externals, Leaving Them No Time For Leisure, Thought, Or Creation From Within Themselves.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Modern Nature-worship Is All Upside Down. Trees And Fields Ought To Be The Ordinary Things; Terraces And Temples Ought To Be Extraordinary. I Am On The Side Of The Man Who Lives In The Country And Wants To Go To London.

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

O God Of Earth And Altar, Bow Down And Hear Our Cry, Our Earthly Rulers Falter, Our People Drift And Die; The Walls Of Gold Entomb Us, The Swords Of Scorn Divide, Take Not Thy Thunder From Us, But Take Away Our Pride.

But Pure Wit Is Akin To Puritanism; To The Perfect And Painful Consciousness Of The Final Fact In The Universe. Very Briefly, The Man Who Sees The Consistency In Things Is A Wit - And A Calvinist. The Man Who Sees The Inconsistency In Things Is A Humorist - And A Catholic.

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

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

The Old Assumption Of The Approximate Impossibility Of War Really Rested On A Similar Assumption About The Impossibility Of Evil-and Especially Of Evil In High Places.

There Is No Such Thing On Earth As An Uninteresting Subject; The Only Thing That Can Exist Is An Uninterested Person. Nothing Is More Keenly Required Than A Defence Of Bores. When Byron Divided Humanity Into The Bores And Bored, He Omitted To Notice That The Higher Qualities Exist Entirely In The Bores, The Lower Qualities In The Bored, Among Whom He Counted Himself. The Bore, By His Starry Enthusiasm, His Solemn Happiness, May, In Some Sense, Have Proved Himself Poetical. The Bored Has Certainly Proved Himself Prosaic.

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

The Secularists Have Not Wrecked Divine Things; But The Secularists Have Wrecked Secular Things, If That Is Any Comfort To Them. The Titans Did Not Scale Heaven; But They Laid Waste The World.

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

Inspirational Life

Before The Roman Came To Rye Or Out To Severn Strode, / The Rolling English Drunkard Made The Rolling English Road.

A Good Man's Work Is Effected By Doing What He Does, A Woman's By Being What She Is.

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.

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.

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

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

The Fatal Metaphor Of Progress, Which Means Leaving Things Behind Us, Has Utterly Obscured The Real Idea Of Growth, Which Means Leaving Things Inside Us.

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

A Change Of Opinions Is Almost Unknown In An Elderly Military Man.

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.

Everyone Seems To Assume That The Unscrupulous Parts Of Journalism Will Be The Frivolous Or Jocular Parts. This Is Against All Ethical Experience. Jokes Are Generally Honest. Complete Solemnity Is Almost Always Dishonest. The Writer Of The Snippet Merely Refers To A Frivolous And Fugitive Fact In A Frivolous And Fugitive Way. The Writer Of The Leading Article Has To Write About A Fact He Has Known For 20 Minutes As Though He Has Studied It For 20 Years.

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.

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

There Are Two Ways Of Dealing With Nonsense In This World. One Way Is To Put Nonsense In The Right Place; As When People Put Nonsense Into Nursery Rhymes. The Other Is To Put Nonsense In The Wrong Place; As When They Put It Into Educational Addresses, Psychological Criticisms, And Complaints Against Nursery Rhymes Or Other Normal Amusements Of Mankind.

The Christian Is Quite Free To Believe That There Is A Considerable Amount Of Settled Order And Inevitable Development In The Universe. But The Materialist Is Not Allowed To Admit Into His Spotless Machine The Slightest Speck Of Spiritualism Or Miracle.

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.

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.

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

I Am Not Fighting A Hopeless Fight. People Who Have Fought In Real Fights Don't, As A Rule.

Humility Is The Mother Of Giants.

Though The Academic Authorities Are Actually Proud Of Conducting Everything By Means Of Examinations, They Seldom Indulge In What Religious People Used To Descibe As Self-examination. The Consequence Is That The Modern State Has Educated Its Citizens In A Series Of Ephemeral Fads.

London Is A Riddle. Paris Is An Explanation.

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

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.

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

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

Nothing Is Certain By Uncertainty.

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

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.

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.

A Catholic Is A Person Who Has Plucked Up Courage To Face The Incredible And Inconceivable Idea That Something Else May Be Wiser Than He Is.

Leaving The Complications Of The Human Breakfast-table Out Of Account, In An Elemental Sense, The Egg Only Exists To Produce The Chicken. But The Chicken Does Not Exist Only In Order To Produce Another Egg. He May Also Exist To Amuse Himself, To Praise God, And Even To Suggest Ideas To A French Dramatist. Being A Conscious Life, He Is, Or May Be, Valuable In Himself.

I Believe What Really Happens In History Is This: The Old Man Is Always Wrong; And The Young People Are Always Wrong About What Is Wrong With Him. The Practical Form It Takes Is This: That, While The Old Man May Stand By Some Stupid Custom, The Young Man Always Attacks It With Some Theory That Turns Out To Be Equally Stupid.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Surely We Cannot Take An Open Question Like The Supernatural And Shut It With A Bang, Turning The Key Of The Madhouse On All The Mystics Of History. You Cannot Take The Region Of The Unknown And Calmly Say That, Though You Know Nothing About It, You Know All The Gates Are Locked. We Do Not Know Enough About The Unknown To Know That It Is Unknowable.

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

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

Internationalism

Variability Is One Of The Virtues Of A Woman. It Avoids The Crude Requirement Of Polygamy. So Long As You Have One Good Wife You Are Sure To Have A Spiritual Harem".

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

The Word Good Has Many Meanings.

I Regard Golf As An Expensive Way Of Playing Marbles.

We Are Always Giving Foreign Names To Very Native Things. If There Is A Thing That Reeks Of The Glorious Tradition Of The Old English Tavern, It Is Toasted Cheese. But For Some Wild Reason We Call It Welsh Rarebit. I Believe That What We Call Irish Stew Might More Properly Be Called English Stew, And That It Is Not Particularly Familiar In Ireland.

The Man Who Throws A Bomb Is An Artist, Because He Prefers A Great Moment To Everything.

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

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

Humility Is The Luxurious Art Of Reducing Ourselves To A Point, Not To A Small Thing Or A Large One, But To A Thing With No Size At All, So That To It All The Cosmic Things Are What They Really Are - Of Immeasurable Stature.

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...

Mysticism Keeps Mankind Sane. As Long As You Have Mystery You Have Health; When You Destroy Mystery You Create Morbidity.

To Be Born Into This Earth Is To Be Born Into Uncongenial Surroundings, Hence To Be Born Into A Romance.

The Pure Modernist Is Merely A Snob; He Cannot Bear To Be A Month Behind The Fashion.

When People Begin To Ignore Human Dignity, It Will Not Be Long Before They Begin To Ignore Human Rights.

For Fear Of The Newspapers Politicians Are Dull, And At Last They Are Too Dull Even For The Newspapers.

Boys Like Romantic [fairy] Tales; But Babies Like Realistic Tales - Because They Find Them Romantic...this Proves That Even Nursery Tales Only Echo An Almost Prenatal Leap Of Interest And Amazement. These Tales Say That Apples Were Golden Only To Refresh The Forgotten Moment When We Found That They Were Green. They Make Rivers Run With Wine Only To Make Us Remember, For One Wild Moment, That They Run With Water.

A Great Curse Has Fallen Upon Modern Life With The Discovery Of The Vastness Of The Word Education.

Where Does A Wise Man Kick A Pebble? On The Beach. Where Does A Wise Man Hide A Leaf? In The Forest.

Happiness Is Not Only A Hope, But Also In Some Strange Manner A Memory ... We Are All Kings In Exile.

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

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.

There Is But An Inch Of Difference Between A Cushioned Chamber And A Padded Cell.

Altruists, With Thin, Weak Voices, Denounce Christ As An Egoist. Egoists (with Even Thinner And Weaker Voices) Denounce Him As An Altruist.

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.

One Of The Deepest And Strangest Of All Human Moods Is The Mood Which Will Suddenly Strike Us Perhaps In A Garden At Night, Or Deep In Sloping Meadows, The Feeling That Every Flower And Leaf Has Just Uttered Something Stupendously Direct And Important, And That We Have By A Prodigy Of Imbecility Not Heard Or Understood It. There Is A Certain Poetic Value, And That A Genuine One, In This Sense Of Having Missed The Full Meaning Of Things. There Is Beauty, Not Only In Wisdom, But In This Dazed And Dramatic Ignorance.

Great Truths Can Only Be Forgotten And Can Never Be Falsified.

There Is Nothing So Weak, For Working Purposes, As This Enormous Importance Attached To Immediate Victory. There Is Nothing That Fails Like Success.

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.

The Only Object Of Liberty Is Life.

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.

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

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

The Home Is Not The One Tame Place In The World Of Adventure. It Is The One Wild Place In The World Of Rules And Set Tasks.

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

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

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

Obviously If Any Actions, Even A Lunatic's, Can Be Causeless, Determinism Is Done For. If The Chain Of Causation Can Be Broken For A Madman, It Can Be Broken For A Man.

Theology Is Only Thought Applied To Religion.

If The Devil Tells You Something Is Too Fearful To Look At, Look At It. If He Says Something Is Too Terrible To Hear, Hear It. If You Think Some Truth Unbearable, Bear It.

Nothing Taken For Granted; Everything Received With Gratitude; Everything Passed On With Grace.

Materialists And Madmen Never Have Doubts.

All Slang Is Metaphor, And All Metaphor Is Poetry.

The Unconscious Democracy Of America Is A Very Fine Thing. It Is A True And Deep And Instinctive Assumption Of The Equality Of Citizens, Which Even Voting And Elections Have Not Destroyed.

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.

Hope Means Expectancy When Things Are Otherwise Hopeless.

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.

Artistic Temperament Is The Disease That Afflicts Amateurs.

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

We Talk Of Wild Animals, But The Wildest Animal Is Man.

I Have Argued With Him On Almost Every Subject In The World, And We Have Always Been On Opposite Sides, Without Affectation Or Animosity... It Is Necessary To Disagree With Him As Much As I Do, In Order To Admire Him As I Do; And I Am Proud Of Him As A Foe Even More Than As A Friend.

We Are Justified In Enforcing Good Morals, For They Belong To All Mankind; But We Are Not Justified In Enforcing Good Manners, For Good Manners Always Mean Our Own Manners.

But Perhaps God Is Strong Enough To Exult In Monotony. It Is Possible That God Says Every Morning, "do It Again" To The Sun.; And Every Evening, "do It Again" To The Moon. It May Not Be Automatic Monotony That Makes All Daisies Alike; It May Be That God Makes Every Daisy Separately, But Has Never Gotten Tired Of Making Them. It May Be That He Has The Eternal Appetite Of Infancy; For We Have Sinned And Grown Old, And Our Father Is Younger Than We.

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.

And My Haunting Instinct That Somehow Good Was Not Merely A Tool To Be Used, But A Relic To Be Guarded, Like The Goods From Crusoe's Ship--even That Had Been The Wild Whisper Of Something Originally Wise, For, According To Christianity, We Were Indeed The Survivors Of A Wreck, The Crew Of A Golden Ship That Had Gone Down Before The Beginning Of The World.

Be Careful How You Suggest Things To Me. For There Is In Me A Madness Which Goes Beyond Martyrdom, The Madness Of An Utterly Idle Man.

Hope Means Hoping When Everything Seems Hopeless.

Unbelievable Things

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.

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

The Rich Are The Scum Of The Earth In Every Country.

Scum Of The Earth

The Greatest Political Storm Flutters Only A Fringe Of Humanity. But An Ordinary Man And An Ordinary Woman And Their Ordinary Children Literally Alter The Destiny Of Nations.

If A Man Does Not Talk To Himself, It Is Because He Is Not Worth Talking To.

The Modern World... Has No Notion Except That Of Simplifying Something By Destroying Nearly Everything.

In Truth, There Are Only Two Kinds Of People; Those Who Accept Dogma And Know It, And Those Who Accept Dogma And Don't Know It.

Joy, Which Was The Small Publicity Of The Pagan, Is The Gigantic Secret Of The Christian.

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

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.

Romance Is The Deepest Thing In Life. It Is Deeper Than Reality.

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

To Downgrade The Human Mind Is Bad Theology.

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.

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

The Truth Is, Of Course, That The Curtness Of The Ten Commandments Is An Evidence, Not Of The Gloom And Narrowness Of A Religion, But, On The Contrary, Of Its Liberality And Humanity. It Is Shorter To State The Things Forbidden Than The Things Permitted; Precisely Because Most Things Are Permitted, And Only A Few Things Are Forbidden.

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.

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

Man Is At His Tallest When He Bows.

When Belief In God Becomes Difficult, The Tendency Is To Turn Away From Him; But In Heaven's Name To What?

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

...the Primary Paradox That Man Is Superior To All The Things Around Him And Yet Is At Their Mercy.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 Classes That Wash Most Are Those That Work Least.

It Is Quite An Old-fashioned Fallacy To Suppose That Our Objection To Scepticism Is That It Removes The Discipline From Life. Our Objection To Scepticism Is That It Removes The Motive Power. Materialism Is Not A Thing Which Destroys Mere Restraint. Materialism Itself Is The Great Restraint.

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.

There's A Lot Of Difference Between Listening And Hearing.

Listening And Hearing

The Full Value Of This Life Can Only Be Got By Fighting; The Violent Take It By Storm. And If We Have Accepted Everything We Have Missed Something - War. This Life Of Ours Is A Very Enjoyable Fight, But A Very Miserable Truce.

One Of The Chief Uses Of Religion Is That It Makes Us Remember Our Coming From Darkness, The Simple Fact That We Are Created.

It Is Largely Because The Free-thinkers, As A School, Have Hardly Made Up Their Minds Whether They Want To Be More Optimist Or More Pessimist Than Christianity That Their Small But Sincere Movement Has Failed.

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

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.

I Have Myself A Poetical Enthusiasm For Pigs, And The Paradise Of My Fancy Is One Where Pigs Have Wings. But It Is Only Men, Especially Wise Men, Who Discuss Whether Pigs Can Fly; We Have No Particular Proof That Pigs Ever Discuss It.

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

We're All In The Same Boat, And We're All Seasick.

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

The Aim Of Life Is Appreciation; There Is No Sense In Not Appreciating Things; And There Is No Sense In Having More Of Them If You Have Less Appreciation Of Them.

The Most Incredible Thing About Miracles Is That They Happen.

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

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

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.

An Almost Unnatural Vigilance Is Really Required Of The Citizen Because Of The Horrible Rapidity With Which Human Institutions Grow Old.

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

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.

I Would Give A Woman Not More Rights, But More Privileges. Instead Of Sending Her To Seek Such Freedom As Notoriously Prevails In Banks And Factories, I Would Design Specially A House In Which She Can Be Free.

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.

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Desiderius Erasmus

Robert B. Laughlin

Marcus Tullius Cicero

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