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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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The World Will Very

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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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.

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

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

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

Americans Have A Taste For…rocking-chairs. A Flippant Critic Might Suggest That They Select Rocking-chairs So That, Even When They Are Sitting Down, They Need Not Be Sitting Still. Something Of This Restlessness In The Race May Really Be Involved In The Matter; But I Think The Deeper Significance Of The Rocking-chair May Still Be Found In The Deeper Symbolism Of The Rocking-horse. I Think There Is Behind All This Fresh And Facile Use Of Wood A Certain Spirit That Is Childish In The Good Sense Of The Word; Something That Is Innocent, And Easily Pleased.

It Seems A Pity That Psychology Has Destroyed All Our Knowledge Of Human Nature.

Men Reform A Thing By Removing The Reality From It, And Then Do Not Know What To Do With The Unreality That Is Left.

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

'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.

Acceptance Is The Truest Kinship With Humanity.

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

The Man Who Says, 'my Country Right Or Wrong' Is Like The Man Who Says, 'my Mother Drunk Or Sober'

So Far As A Man May Be Proud Of A Religion Rooted In Humility, I Am Very Proud Of My Religion; I Am Especially Proud Of Those Parts Of It That Are Most Commonly Called Superstition. I Am Proud Of Being Fettered By Antiquated Dogmas And Enslaved By Dead Creeds (as My Journalistic Friends Repeat With So Much Pertinacity), For I Know Very Well That It Is The Heretical Creeds That Are Dead, And That It Is Only The Reasonable Dogma That Lives Long Enough To Be Called Antiquated.

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

The Trouble With Christianity Is, Not That Its Failed, But That It's Never Been Tried . . . Not That It Can't Remake The World, But That It's Difficult.

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

Do Not, I Beseech You Be Troubled By The Increase Of Forces Already In Dissolution. You Have Mistake The Hour Of The Night: It Is Already Morning.

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.

We Have Had No Good Comic Operas Of Late, Because The Real World Has Been More Comic Than Any Possible Opera.

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.

[there Is] One Distinctly Human Thing - The Story. There Can Be As Good Science About A Turnip As About A Man. ... [or Philosophy, Or Theology] ...there Can Be, Without Any Question At All, As Good Higher Mathematics About A Turnip As About A Man. But I Do Not Think, Though I Speak In A Manner Somewhat Tentative, That There Could Be As Good A Novel Written About A Turnip As A Man.

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.

But There Is Good News Yet To Hear And Fine Things To Be Seen Before We Go To Paradise By Way Of Kensal Green.

Christianity Has Not Been Tried And Found Wanting; It Has Been Found Difficult And Not Tried.

"the Universe Repeats Itself, With The Possible Exception Of History." Of All Earthly Studies History Is The Only One That Does Not Repeat Itself. ... Astronomy Repeats Itself; Botany Repeats Itself; Trigonometry Repeats Itself; Mechanics Repeats Itself; Compound Long Division Repeats Itself. Every Sum If Worked Out In The Same Way At Any Time Will Bring Out The Same Answer. ... A Great Many Moderns Say That History Is A Science; If So It Occupies A Solitary And Splendid Elevation Among The Sciences; It Is The Only Science The Conclusions Of Which Are Always Wrong.

The True Savage Is A Slave, And Is Always Talking About What He Must Do; The True Civilised Man Is A Free Man, And Is Always Talking About What He May Do.

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

With All That We Hear Of American Hustle And Hurry, It Is Rather Strange That Americans Seem To Like To Linger On Longer Words.

Plato Was Only A Bernard Shaw Who Unfortunately Made His Jokes In Greek.

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.

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.

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.

I Have Formed A Very Clear Conception Of Patriotism. I Have Generally Found It Thrust Into The Foreground By Some Fellow Who Has Something To Hide In The Background. I Have Seen A Great Deal Of Patriotism; And I Have Generally Found It The Last Refuge Of The Scoundrel.

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.

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.

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

A Fairly Clear Line Separated Advertisement From Art. ... The First Effect Of The Triumph Of The Capitalist (if We Allow Him To Triumph) Will Be That That Line Of Demarcation Will Entirely Disappear. There Will Be No Art That Might Not Just As Well Be Advertisement.

Spring Never Is Spring Unless It Comes Too Soon.

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

Women Are The Only Realists; Their Whole Object In Life Is To Pit Their Realism Against The Extravagant, Excessive, And Occasionally Drunken Idealism Of Men.

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

There Is Nothing Harder To Learn Than Painting And Nothing Which Most People Take Less Trouble About Learning. An Art School Is A Place Where About Three People Work With Feverish Energy And Everybody Else Idles To A Degree That I Should Have Conceived Unattainable By Human Nature.

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.

The Best Kind Of Giving Is Thanksgiving.

"are You A Devil?" "i Am A Man," Answered Father Brown Gravely; "and Therefore Have All Devils In My Heart."

For Scotland Has A Double Dose Of The Poison Called Heredity; The Sense Of Blood In The Aristocrat, The Sense Of Doom In The Calvinist.

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

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

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

Half A Truth Is Better Than No Politics.

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

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?

To Be Simple Is The Best Thing In The World; To Be Modest Is The Next Best Thing. I Am Not Sure About Being Quiet.

The Sort Of Man Who Admires Italian Art While Despising Italian Religion Is A Tourist And A Cad.

Children Are Simply Human Beings Who Are Allowed To Do What Everyone Else Really Desires To Do, As For Instance, To Fly Kites, Or When Seriously Wronged To Emit Prolonged Screams For Several Minutes.

The Great Ideals Of The Past Failed Not By Being Outlived (which Must Mean Over-lived), But By Not Being Lived Enough. Mankind Has Not Passed Through The Middle Ages. Rather Mankind Has Retreated From The Middle Ages In Reaction And Rout. The Christian Ideal Has Not Been Tried And Found Wanting. It Has Been Found Difficult And Left Untried.

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

The Mass Is Not Only About God Becoming Man, It Is About Man Becoming More Himself.

For The Only Courage Worth Calling Courage Must Necessarily Mean That The Soul Passes A Breaking Point And Does Not Break.

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

History Is Not A Toboggan Slide, But A Road To Be Reconsidered And Even Retraced

If Christianity Should Happen To Be True - That Is To Say, If Its God Is The Real God Of The Universe - Then Defending It May Mean Talking About Anything And Everything.

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.

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

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

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'.

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.

There Are An Infinity Of Angles At Which One Falls, Only One At Which One Stands.

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

Listening And Hearing

The Supreme Adventure Is Being Born

There Is A Corollary To The Conception Of Being Too Proud To Fight. It Is That The Humble Have To Do Most Of The Fighting.

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.

Against A Dark Sky, All Flowers Look Like Fireworks.

Thinking In Isolation And With Pride Ends In Being An Idiot.

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

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.

Fable Is More Historical Than Fact, Because Fact Tells Us About One Man And Fable Tells Us About A Million Men.

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.

There Is Less Difference Than Many Suppose Between The Ideal Socialist System, In Which The Big Businesses Are Run By The State, And The Present Capitalist System, In Which The State Is Run By The Big Businesses.

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.

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. Thus Some Scientists Care For Truth; And Their Truth Is Pitiless. Thus Some Humanitarians Only Care For Pity; And Their Pity (i Am Sorry To Say) Is Often Untruthful.

Paradox - Truth Standing On Her Head To Get Attention.

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

It Is The Friction Of Two Spiritual Things, Of Tradition And Invention, Or Of Substance And Symbol, From Which The Mind Takes Fire. The Creeds Condemned As Complex Have Something Like The Secret Of Sex; They Can Breed Thoughts.

Virtue Is Not The Absence Of Vices Or The Avoidance Of Moral Dangers; Virtue Is A Vivid And Separate Thing, Like Pain Or A Particular Smell.

Of Being Strong And Brave. The Strong Can Not Be Brave. Only The Weak Can Be Brave; And Yet Again, In Practice, Only Those Who Can Be Brave Can Be Trusted, In Time Of Doubt, To Be Strong.

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

No Man's Really Any Good Till He Knows How Bad He Is, Or Might Be.

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.

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

The Essence Of All Pantheism, Evolutionism, And Modern Cosmic Religion Is Really This Proposition: That Nature Is Our Mother. Unfortunately, If You Regard Nature As A Mother, You Discover She Is A Step-mother.

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

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

Men Always Talk About The Most Important Things To Perfect Strangers. In The Perfect Stranger We Perceive Man Himself; The Image Of A God Is Not Disguised By Resemblances To An Uncle Or Doubts Of Wisdom Of A Mustache.

...it Is Not Necessary To The Child To Awaken To The Sense Of The Strange And Humorous By Giving A Man A Luminous Nose...to The Child It Is Sufficiently Strange And Humorous To Have A Nose At All.

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

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

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

He Who Has No Sympathy With Myths Has No Sympathy With Men.

Freethinkers Are Occasionally Thoughtful, Though Never Free.

A Man Who Says That No Patriot Should Attack The Boer War Until It Is Over Is Not Worth Answering Intelligently; He Is Saying That No Good Son Should Warn His Mother Off A Cliff Until She Has Fallen Over It.

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

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.

In Matters Of Truth The Fact That You Don't Want To Publish Something Is, Nine Times Out Of Ten, A Proof That You Ought To Publish It.

Every Remedy Is A Desperate Remedy. Every Cure Is A Miraculous Cure. Curing A Madman Is Not Arguing With A Philosopher; It Is Casting Out A Devil.

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.

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

I Like The Cyclostyle Ink; It Is So Inky. I Do Not Think There Is Anyone Who Takes Quite Such A Fierce Pleasure In Things Being Themselves As I Do. The Startling Wetness Of Water Excites And Intoxicates Me: The Fieriness Of Fire, The Steeliness Of Steel, The Unutterable Muddiness Of Mud. It Is Just The Same With People.... When We Call A Man "manly" Or A Woman "womanly" We Touch The Deepest Philosophy.

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

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

Anyone Who Is Not An Anarchist Agrees With Having A Policeman At The Corner Of The Street; But The Danger At Present Is That Of Finding The Policeman Half-way Down The Chimney Or Even Under The Bed.

The Moderns Do Not Realize Modernity.

Comradeship Is Quite A Different Thing From Friendship. . .

Different Things

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

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

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

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

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.

We Ought To Be Interested In That Darkest And Most Real Part Of A Man In Which Dwell Not The Vices That He Does Not Display, But The Virtues That He Cannot.

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.

We All Live In The Past, Because There Is Nothing Else To Live In. To Live In The Present Is Like Proposing To Sit On A Pin. It Is Too Minute, It Is Too Slight A Support, It Is Too Uncomfortable A Posture, And It Is Of Necessity Followed Immediately By Totally Different Experiences, Analogous To Those Of Jumping Up With A Yell.

Different Experiences

There Cannot Be A Nation Of Millionaires, And There Never Has Been A Nation Of Utopian Comrades; But There Have Been Any Number Of Nations Of Tolerably Contented Peasants.

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

Funny Friendship

Vigorous Organisms Talk Not About Their Processes, But About Their Aims.

We Must Be Clear About What We Want To Paint. This Adds A Further Principle To Our Previous List Of Principles. We Have Said We Must Be Fond Of This World, Even In Order To Change It.

The True Soldier Fights Not Because He Hates What Is In Front Of Him, But Because He Loves What Is Behind Him.

The Whole Order Of Things Is As Outrageous As Any Miracle Which Could Presume To Violate It.

A Nation That Has Nothing But Its Amusements Will Not Be Amused For Long.

What A Glorious Garden Of Wonders The Lights Of Broadway Would Be To Anyone Lucky Enough To Be Unable To Read.

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

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

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

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

Could Have Been

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

There Is No Better Test Of A Man's Ultimate Chivalry And Integrity Than How He Behaves When He Is Wrong... A Stiff Apology Is A Second Insult.

In Our Time The Blasphemies Are Threadbare. Pessimism Is Now Patently, As It Always Was Essentially, More Commonplace Than Piety. Profanity Is Now More Than An Affectation - It Is A Convention. The Curse Against God Is Exercise I In The Primer Of Minor Poetry.

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.

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

All Slang Is Metaphor, And All Metaphor Is Poetry.

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

Creative Thought

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.

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

I've Been To Every Park In Every City And Not Seen A Statue To A Committee.

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.

The Bible Tells Us To Love Our Neighbors, And Also To Love Our Enemies; Probably Because They Are Generally The Same People.

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.

Progress Is A Comparative Of Which We Have Not Settled The Superlative.

Progress Of Society

We All Know That The 'divine Glory Of The Ego' Is Socially A Great Nuisance; We All Do Actually Value Our Friends For Modesty, Freshness, And Simplicity Of Heart. Whatever May Be The Reason, We All Do Warmly Respect Humility - In Other People.

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

It Is Impossible Without Humility To Enjoy Anything - Even Pride.

Instead Of Looking At Books And Pictures About The New Testament I Looked At The New Testament. There I Found An Account, Not In The Least Of A Person With His Hair Parted In The Middle Or His Hands Clasped In Appeal, But Of An Extraordinary Being With Lips Of Thunder And Acts Of Lurid Decision, Flinging Down Tables, Casting Out Devils, Passing With The Wild Secrecy Of The Wind From Mountain Isolation To A Sort Of Dreadful Demagogy; A Being Who Often Acted Like An Angry God — And Always Like A God.

Pride Consists In A Man Making His Personality The Only Test, Instead Of Making Truth The Test. The Sceptic Feels Himself Too Large To Measure Life By The Largest Things; And Ends By Measuring It By The Smallest Thing Of All.

Take Not Thy Thunder From Us, But Take Away Our Pride.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The Great Saint May Be Said To Mix All His Thoughts With Thanks. All Goods Look Better When They Look Like Gifts.

One Sees Great Things From The Valley; Only Small Things From The Peak.

Truths Turn Into Dogmas The Minute They Are Disputed.

All That We Call Spirit And Art And Ecstacy Only Means That For One Awful Instant We Remember That We Forgot.

If I Had Only One Sermon To Preach It Would Be A Sermon Against Pride.

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

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

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

Blasphemy Is An Artistic Effect, Because Blasphemy Depends Upon A Philosophical Conviction. Blasphemy Depends Upon Belief And Is Fading With It. If Any One Doubts This, Let Him Sit Down Seriously And Try To Think Blasphemous Thoughts About Thor.

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

I May Not Practice What I Preach But God Forbid I Should Preach What I Practice

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

You Can Never Have A Revolution In Order To Establish A Democracy. You Must Have A Democracy In Order To Have A Revolution.

Democracies Have

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.

No Sane Person, I Hope, Would Accuse Me Of Saying That Every Distributist Must Drink Beer; Especially If He Could Brew His Own Cider Or Found Claret Better For His Health. But I Do Most Emphatically Scorn And Scout The Vulgar Refinement That Regards Beer As Something Unseemly And Humiliating. And I Would Shout The Name Of Beer A Hundred Times A Day, To Shock All The Snobs Who Have So Shameful A Sense Of Shame.

If We Are Bound To Improve, We Need Not Trouble To Improve. The Pure Doctrine Of Progress Is The Best Of All Reasons For Not Being A Progressive.

Were Patrick Henry To Return To Earth And Look Around On The Vast Economic Order Of The Day, He Might Revise His Observation And Merely Say ‘give Me Death’-the Alternative Being Manifestly Impossible Under Modern Conditions.

What People Call Impartiality May Simply Mean Indifference, And What People Call Partiality May Simply Mean Mental Activity.

Feminists Are Those Who Cannot Stand Female Characteristics.

Characteristics

The Wisest Thing In The World Is To Cry Out Before You Are Hurt. It Is No Good To Cry Out After You Are Hurt; Especially After You Are Mortally Hurt. People Talk About The Impatience Of The Populace; But Sound Historians Know That Most Tyrannies Have Been Possible Because Men Moved Too Late. It Is Often Essential To Resist A Tyranny Before It Exists.

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.

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

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

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

Childlike Faith

Correctitude Implies Nowadays A Formal Or Fastidious Use Of Words; And What Is Wanted Is Not So Much The Correct As The Living Use Of Words. It Is The Memory Of The Meaning Of A Word Which Is The Life Of The Word.

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

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.

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

The Mind That Finds Its Way To Wild Places Is The Poet's; But The Mind That Never Finds Its Way Back Is The Lunatic's.

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.

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

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.

There Are Two Kinds Of Rebellion. The First Is One In Which The Slave Demands Something That The Tyrant Has Got. The Second Is One In Which He Demands Something That The Tyrant Has Not Got.

Pride Juggles With Her Toppling Towers, They Strike The Sun And Cease, But The Firm Feet Of Humility They Grip The Ground Like Trees.

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

Modern Masters Of Science Are Much Impressed With The Need Of Beginning All Inquiry With A Fact. The Ancient Masters Of Religion Were Quite Equally Impressed With That Necessity. They Began With The Fact Of Sin-a Fact As Practical As Potatoes. Whether Or Not Man Could Be Washed In Miraculous Waters, There Was No Doubt At Any Rate That He Wanted Washing.

Very Few Reputations Are Gained By Unsullied Virtue.

A Detective Story Generally Describes Six Living Men Discussing How It Is That A Man Is Dead. A Modern Philosophic Story Generally Describes Six Dead Men Discussing How Any Man Can Possibly Be Alive.

There Nearly Always Is A Method In Madness.

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

Atheism Is Too Theological.

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