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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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The Mind Moves By

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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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.

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More From Gilbert K. Chesterton

I Am Not Absentminded. It Is The Presence Of Mind That Makes Me Unaware Of Everything Else.

Presence Of Mind

An Adventure Is Only An Inconvenience Rightly Considered. An Inconvenience Is Only An Adventure Wrongly Considered.

If There Is One Thing Worse Than The Modern Weakening Of Major Morals, It Is The Modern Strengthening Of Minor Morals.

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.

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

Surprise Is The Secret Of Joy.

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.

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

Every Act Of Will Is An Act Of Self-limitation. To Desire Action Is To Desire Limitation. In That Sense, Every Act Is An Act Of Self-sacrifice. When You Choose Anything, You Reject Everything Else.

A Thing Constructed Can Only Be Loved After It Is Constructed; But A Thing Created Is Loved Before It Exists.

Creative Thought

He Had Found The Thing Which The Modern People Call Impressionism, Which Is Another Name For That Final Scepticism Which Can Find No Floor To The Universe.

Misers Get Up Early In The Morning; And Burglars, I Am Informed, Get Up The Night Before.

There Are Many Ways To Fall Down, But There's Only One Way To Stand Up Straight.

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.

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

I Am The Fool In This Story, And No Rebel Shall Hurl Me From My Throne.

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.

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

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.

For My Part, I Should Be Inclined To Suggest That The Chief Object Of Education Should Be To Restore Simplicity. If You Like To Put It So, The Chief Object Of Education Is Not To Learn Things; Nay, The Chief Object Of Education Is To Unlearn Things.

It Is Not Only Possible To Say A Great Deal In Praise Of Play; It Is Really Possible To Say The Highest Things In Praise Of It. It Might Reasonably Be Maintained That The True Object Of All Human Life Is Play. Earth Is A Task Garden; Heaven Is A Playground.

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

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.

All Men Are Ordinary Men; The Extraordinary Men Are Those Who Know It.

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

Research Is The Search Of People Who Don't Know What They Want.

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.

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.

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

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

And I Will Add This Point Of Merely Personal Experience Of Humanity: When Men Have A Real Explanation They Explain It, Eagerly And Copiously And In Common Speech, As Huxley Freely Gave It When He Thought He Had It. When They Have No Explanation To Offer, They Give Short Dignified Replies, Disdainful Of The Ignorance Of The Multitude.

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

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.

Students Of Popular Science... Are Always Insisting That Christianity And Buddhism Are Very Much Alike, Especially Buddhism. This Is Generally Believed, And I Believed It Myself Until I Read A Book Giving The Reasons For It.

Stated Baldly, Charity Certainly Means One Of Two Things–pardoning Unpardonable Acts, Or Loving Unlovable People.

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

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

The Human Race Is Always Trying This Dodge Of Making Everything Entirely Easy; But The Difficulty Which It Shifts Off One Thing It Shifts To Another.

The 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.

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

The Word 'heresy' Not Only Means No Longer Being Wrong; It Practically Means Being Clear-headed And Courageous. The Word 'orthodoxy' Not Only No Longer Means Being Right; It Practically Means Being Wrong

An Artist Will Betray Himself By Some Sort Of Sincerity.

Fairy Tales Are More Than True.

A Man Will Not Roll In The Snow For A Stream Of Tendency By Which All Things Fulfill The Law Of Their Being. He Will Not Go Without Food In The Name Of Something, Not Ourselves, That Makes For Righteousness. He Will Do Things Like This, Or Pretty Nearly Like This, Under Quite A Different Impulse. He Will Do These Things When He Is In Love.

I Regard Golf As An Expensive Way Of Playing Marbles.

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

[consider] A Fence Or Gate Erected Across A Road] The More Modern Type Of Reformer Goes Gaily Up To It And Says, "i Don't See The Use Of This; Let Us Clear It Away." To Which The More Intelligent Type Of Reformer Will Do Well To Answer: "if You Don't See The Use Of It, I Certainly Won't Let You Clear It Away. Go Away And Think. Then, When You Can Come Back And Tell Me That You Do See The Use Of It, I May Allow You To Destroy It."

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

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

Youth Is The Period In Which A Man Can Be Hopeless. The End Of Every Episode Is The End Of The World. But The Power Of Hoping Through Everything, The Knowledge That The Soul Survives Its Adventures, That Great Inspiration Comes To The Middle-aged.

A Man Does Not Know What He Is Saying Until He Knows What He Is Not Saying.

The Whole Curse Of The Last Century Has Been What Is Called The Swing Of The Pendulum; That Is, The Idea That Man Must Go Alternately From One Extreme To The Other. It Is A Shameful And Even Shocking Fancy; It Is The Denial Of The Whole Dignity Of The Mankind. When Man Is Alive He Stands Still. It Is Only When He Is Dead That He Swings.

Marxism: The Theory That All The Important Things In History Are Rooted In An Economic Motive, That History Is A Science, A Science Of The Search For Food.

Hope Means Hoping When Things Are Hopeless, Or It Is No Virtue At All. And Faith Means Believing The Incredible, Or It Is No Virtue At All.

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

Passion Makes Every Detail Important.

Do Not Be Proud Of The Fact That Your Grandmother Was Shocked At Something Which Your Are Accustomed To Seeing Or Hearing Without Being Shocked. ... It May Be That Your Grandmother Was An Extremely Lively And Vital Animal And That You Are A Paralytic.

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.

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

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

I Was Planning To Go Into Architecture. But When I Arrived, Architecture Was Filled Up. Acting Was Right Next To It, So I Signed Up For Acting Instead.

In Every Serious Doctrine Of The Destiny Of Men, There Is Some Trace Of The Doctrine Of The Equality Of Men. But The Capitalist Really Depends On Some Religion Of Inequality. The Capitalist Must Somehow Distinguish Himself From Human Kind; He Must Be Obviously Above It Or He Would Be Obviously Below It.

Men Always Talk About The Most Important Things To Perfect Strangers.

The Most Important Fact About The Subject Of Education Is That There Is No Such Thing. Education Is Not A Subject And It Does Not Deal In Subjects. It Is Instead The Transfer Of A Way Of Life.

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.

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

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

He May Be Mad, But There's Method In His Madness. There Nearly Always Is Method In Madness. It's What Drives Men Mad, Being Methodical.

Every Time A Man Knocks On A Brothel Door, He Is Really Knocking For God

We Fear Men So Much, Because We Fear God So Little. One Fear Cures Another. When Man's Terror Scares You, Turn Your Thoughts To The Wrath Of God.

This Is The Age In Which Thin And Theoretic Minorities Can Cover And Conquer Unconscious And Untheoretic Majorities.

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

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

I Owe My Success To Having Listened Respectfully To The Very Best Advice, And Then Going Away And Doing The Exact Opposite.

America Is The Only Country Ever Founded On A Creed.

Man Is Not Merely An Evolution But Rather A Revolution.

...a Figure Of Speech Can Often Get Into A Crack Too Small For A Definition.

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

If A Rhinoceros Were To Enter This Restaurant Now, There Is No Denying He Would Have Great Power Here. But I Should Be The First To Rise And Assure Him That He Had No Authority Whatever.

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.

To Downgrade The Human Mind Is Bad Theology.

Because Our Expression Is Imperfect We Need Friendship To Fill Up The Imperfections.

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.

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

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

We Are All Ordinary People. And It's The Extraordinary People Who Know It.

People Decided That It Was Impossible To Achieve Any Of The Good Of Socialism, But They Comforted Themselves By Achieving All The Bad.

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

To Be Simple Is The Best Thing In The World.

All The Exaggerations Are Right, If They Exaggerate The Right Thing.

The Objection To Fairy Stories Is That They Tell Children There Are Dragons. But Children Have Always Known There Are Dragons. Fairy Stories Tell Children That Dragons Can Be Killed.

Puritanism Was An Honourable Mood; It Was A Noble Fad. In Other Words, It Was A Highly Creditable Mistake.

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

It Was Not The House That Grew Dull, But I That Grew Dull In It. My Wife Was Better Than All Women, And Yet I Could Not Feel It.

I Still Think Sincere Pessimism The Unpardonable Sin.

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.

A Great Man Knows He Is Not God, And The Greater He Is The Better He Knows It.

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

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

Why Should Anything Go Right; Even Observation And Deduction? Why Should Not Good Logic Be As Misleading As Bad Logic? They Are Both Movements In The Brain Of A Bewildered Ape?

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

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

In A World Flagrant With The Failures Of Civilization, What Is There Particularly Immortal About Our Own?

A New Philosophy Generally Means In Practice The Praise Of Some Old Vice.

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

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

The Academic Mind Reflects Infinity, And Is Full Of Light By The Simple Process Of Being Shallow And Standing Still.

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.

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

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

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.

If Our Caricaturists Do Not Hate Their Enemies, It Is Not Because They Are Too Big To Hate Them, But Because Their Enemies Are Not Big Enough To Hate.

It Is Really Not So Repulsive To See The Poor Asking For Money As To See The Rich Asking For More Money. And Advertisement Is The Rich Asking For More Money.

An Enormous Amount Of Modern Ingenuity Is Expended On Finding Defences For The Indefensible Conduct Of The Powerful. As I Have Said Above, These Defences Generally Exhibit Themselves Most Emphatically In The Form Of Appeals To Physical Science. And Of All The Forms In Which Science, Or Pseudo-science, Has Come To The Rescue Of The Rich And Stupid, There Is None So Singular As The Singular Invention Of The Theory Of Races.

Men Rush Toward Complexity; But Yearn For Simplicity.

The Artistic Temperament Is A Disease That Affects Amateurs. Artists Of A Large And Wholesome Vitality Get Rid Of Their Art Easily, As They Breathe Easily Or Perspire Easily. But In Artists Of Less Force, The Thing Becomes A Pressure, And Produces A Definite Pain, Which Is Called The Artistic Temperament.

A Good Joke Is The Closest Thing We Have To Divine Revelation.

Divine Revelation

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

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.

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.

'as You Have Made Your Bed, So You Must Lie On It'; Which Again Is Simply A Lie. If I Have Made My Bed Uncomfortable, Please God I Will Make It Again.

According To Most Philosophers, God In Making The World Enslaved It. According To Christianity, In Making It, He Set It Free. God Had Written, Not So Much A Poem, But Rather A Play; A Play He Had Planned As Perfect, But Which Had Necessarily Been Left To Human Actors And Stage-managers, Who Had Since Made A Great Mess Of It.

The Word Good Has Many Meanings.

Excuse Me If I Enjoy Myself Rather Obviously! I Don't Often Have The Luck To Have A Dream Like This. It Is New To Me For A Nightmare To Lead Me To A Lobster. It Is Commonly The Other Way.

There'd Be A Lot Less Scandal If People Didn't Idealize Sin And Pose As Sinners.

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

Men Invent New Ideals Because They Dare Not Attempt Old Ideals. They Look Forward With Enthusiasm, Because They Are Afraid To Look Back.

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

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

Even In A Minute Instance, It Is Best To Look First To The Main Tendencies Of Nature. A Particular Flower May Not Be Dead In Early Winter, But The Flowers Are Dying; A Particular Pebble May Never Be Wetted With The Tide, But The Tide Is Coming In. To The Scientific Eye All Human History Is A Series Of Collective Movements, Destructions Or Migrations, Like The Massacre Of Flies In Winter Or The Return Of Birds In Spring.

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

We Should Thank God For Beer And Burgundy By Not Drinking Too Much Of Them.

Realism Is Simply Romanticism That Has Lost Its Reason...that Is Its Reason For Existing.

There Are Two Ways To Get Enough. One Is To Continue To Accumulate More And More. The Other Is To Desire Less.

Only Friendliness Produces Friendship. And We Must Look Far Deeper Into The Soul Of Man For The Thing That Produces Friendliness.

The Dignity Of The Artist Lies In His Duty Of Keeping Awake The Sense Of Wonder In The World.

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.

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

Wit Is A Sword; It Is Meant To Make People Feel The Point As Well As See It.

A Thing May Be Too Sad To Be Believed Or Too Wicked To Be Believed Or Too Good To Be Believed; But It Cannot Be Too Absurd To Be Believed In This Planet Of Frogs And Elephants, Of Crocodiles And Cuttle-fish.

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.

It Is The Main Earthly Business Of A Human Being To Make His Home, And The Immediate Surroundings Of His Home, As Symbolic And Significant To His Own Imagination As He Can.

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

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

Journalism Largely Consists Of Saying 'lord Jones Is Dead' To People Who Never Knew That Lord Jones Was Alive.

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.

What Embitters The World Is Not Excess Of Criticism, But Absence Of Self-criticism.

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

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

The Miser Is The Man Who Starves Himself And Everybody Else, In Order To Worship Wealth In Its Dead Form, As Distinct From Its Living Form.

A Child's Instinct Is Almost Perfect In The Matter Of Fighting. The Child's Hero Is Always The Man Or Boy Who Defends Himself Suddenly And Splendidly Against Aggression.

No Animal Ever Invented Anything As Bad As Drunkenness - Or So Good As Drink.

Government Has Become Ungovernable; That Is, It Cannot Leave Off Governing. Law Has Become Lawless; That Is, It Cannot See Where Laws Should Stop. The Chief Feature Of Our Time Is The Meekness Of The Mob And The Madness Of The Government.

You!" He Cried. "you Never Hated Because You Never Lived. I Know What You Are All Of You, From First To Last--you Are The People In Power! You Are The Police--the Great, Fat Smiling Men In Blue And Buttons! You Are The Law, And You Have Never Been Broken. But Is There A Free Soul Alive That Does Not Long To Break You, Only Because You Have Never Been Broken?

There Is A Road From The Eye To The Heart That Does Not Go Through The Intellect. Men Do Not Quarrel About The Meaning Of Sunsets; They Never Dispute That The Hawthorn Says The Best And Wittiest Thing About The Spring.

Christianity Even When Watered Down Is Hot Enough To Boil All Modern Society To Rags.

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?

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

[v]ariety Of Climate Should Always Go With Stability Of Abode.... An Englishman’s House Is Not Only His Castle; It Is His Fairy Castle. Clouds And Colours Of Every Varied Dawn And Eve Are Perpetually Touching And Turning It From Clay To Gold, Or From Gold To Ivory. There Is A Line Of Woodland Beyond A Corner Of My Garden Which Is Literally Different On Every One Of The Three Hundred And Sixty-five Days. Sometimes It Seems As Near As A Hedge, And Sometimes As Far As A Faint And Fiery Evening Cloud.

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.

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

We Are Talking About An Artist; And For The Enjoyment Of The Artist The Mask Must Be To Some Extent Moulded On The Face. What He Makes Outside Him Must Correspond To Something Inside Him; He Can Only Make His Effects Out Of Some Of The Materials Of His Soul.

It Is A Mathematical Fact That If A Line Be Not Perfectly Directed Towards A Point, It Will Actually Go Further Away From It As It Comes Nearer To It.

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.

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.

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.

There Are Two Kinds Of People In The World, The Conscious Dogmatists And The Unconscious Dogmatists. I Have Always Found Myself That The Unconscious Dogmatists Were By Far The Most Dogmatic.

Coincidences Are Spiritual Puns.

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

At The Back Of Our Brains Is A Blaze Of Astonishment At Our Own Existence. The Object Of The Artistic And Spiritual Life Is To Dig For This Sunrise Of Wonder.

The Men Of The East May Spell The Stars, And Times And Triumphs Mark, But The Men Signed Of The Cross Of Christ Go Gaily In The Dark.

Ritual Will Always Mean Throwing Away Something: Destroying Our Corn Or Wine Upon The Altar Of Our Gods.

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.

It Is Always The Secure Who Are Humble.

Such Professions As The Soldier And The Lawyer ... Give Ample Opportunity For Crimes But Not Much For Mere Illusions. ... If You Have Lost A Battle You Cannot Believe You Have Won It; If Your Client Is Hanged You Cannot Pretend That You Have Gotten Him Off.

When We Really Worship Anything, We Love Not Only Its Clearness But Its Obscurity. We Exult In Its Very Invisibility.

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

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

I Did Try To Found A Little Heresy Of My Own; And When I Had Put The Last Touches To It, I Discovered That It Was Orthodoxy.

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

The More I Considered Christianity, The More I Found That While It Had Established A Rule And Order, The Chief Aim Of That Order Was To Give Room For Good Things To Run Wild.

Coincidence Is A Spiritual Pun.

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.

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.

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.

The Humorous Look Of Children Is Perhaps The Most Endearing Of All The Bonds That Hold The Cosmos Together.

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.

As To The Doubt Of The Soul I Discover It To Be False: A Mood Not A Conclusion. My Conclusion Is The Faith. Corporate, Organized, A Personality, Teaching. A Thing, Not A Theory. It.

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

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.

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

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

Thoughts On The Merits Of Work The Worst Of Work Nowadays Is What Happens To People When They Cease To Work.

Gluttony Is A Great Fault; But We Do Not Necessarily Dislike A Glutton. We Only Dislike The Glutton When He Becomes A Gourmet-that Is, We Only Dislike Him When He Not Only Wants The Best For Himself, But Knows What Is Best For Other People.

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

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

I Don't Deny," He Said, "that There Should Be Priests To Remind Men That They Will One Day Die. I Only Say That At Certain Strange Epochs It Is Necessary To Have Another Kind Of Priests, Called Poets, Actually To Remind Men That They Are Not Dead Yet.

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

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Colin Greenwood

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