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There Is A Law Written In The Darkest Of The Books Of Life, And It Is This: If You Look At A Thing Nine Hundred And Ninety-nine Times, You Are Perfectly Safe; If You Look At It The Thousandth Time, You Are In Frightful Danger Of Seeing It For The First Time.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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There Is A Law

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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There Is A Law Written In The Darkest Of The Books Of Life, And It Is This: If You Look At A Thing Nine Hundred And Ninety-nine Times, You Are Perfectly Safe; If You Look At It The Thousandth Time, You Are In Frightful Danger Of Seeing It For The First Time.

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The Poor Have Sometimes Objected To Being Governed Badly; The Rich Have Always Objected To Being Governed At All.

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.

It Is As Healthy To Enjoy Sentiment As To Enjoy Jam.

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.

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

There Nearly Always Is A Method In Madness.

The Catholic Church Is The Only Thing That Saves Man From The Degrading Slavery Of Being A Child Of His Age.

Employers Will Give Time To Eat, Time To Sleep; They Are In Terror Of A Time To Think.

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.

Only Poor Men Get Hanged.

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

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 The Mark Of Our Whole Modern History That The Masses Are Kept Quiet With A Fight. They Are Kept Quiet By The Fight Because It Is A Sham-fight; Thus Most Of Us Know By This Time That The Party System Has Been Popular Only In The Sense That A Football Match Is Popular.

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

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.

Agnostic Is The Greek Word, For The Latin Word, For Ignorant

Poets Do Not Go Mad, But Chess Players Do.

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.

Nothing Is Certain By Uncertainty.

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.

Thanks Are The Highest Form Of Thought.

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.

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

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

Youth Is Always Too Serious, And Just Now It Is Too Serious About Frivolity.

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

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

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 Past Is Not What It Was.

But Those Dealing In The Actual Manufacture Of Mind Are Dealing In A Very Explosive Material. The Material Is Not Merely The Clay Of Which Man Is Master, But The Truths Or Semblances Of Truth Which Have A Certain Mastery Over Man. The Material Is Explosive Because It Must Be Taken Seriously. The Men Writing Books Really Are Throwing Bombs.

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

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 Criminal Is The Creative Artist; The Detective Only The Critic.

Pessimism Is Not In Being Tired Of Evil But In Being Tired Of Good. Despair Does Not Lie In Being Weary Of Suffering, But In Being Weary Of Joy. It Is When For Some Reason Or Other Good Things In A Society No Longer Work That The Society Begins To Decline; When Its Food Does Not Feed, When Its Cures Do Not Cure, When Its Blessings Refuse To Bless.

All We Know Of The Missing Link Is That He Is Missing - And He Won't Be Missed Either.

If Seeds In The Black Earth Can Turn Into Such Beautiful Roses, What Might Not The Heart Of Man Become In Its Long Journey Toward The Stars?

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

The Great Misfortune Of The Modern English Is Not At All That They Are More Boastful Than Other People (they Are Not); It Is That They Are Boastful About Those Particular Things Which Nobody Can Boast Of Without Losing Them.

These Are The Things Which Might Conceivably And Truly Make Men Forgive Their Enemies. We Can Only Turn Hate To Love By Understanding What Are The Things That Men Have Loved; Nor Is It Necessary To Ask Men To Hate Their Loves In Order To Love One Another. Just As Two Grocers Are Most Likely To Be Reconciled When They Remember For A Moment That They Are Two Fathers, So Two Nationals Are Most Likely To Be Reconciled When They Remember (if Only For A Moment) That They Are Two Patriots.

We Cannot Fling Ourselves Into The Blank Future; We Can Only Call Up Images From The Past. This Being So, The Important Principle Follows, That How Many Images We Have Largely Depends On How Much Past We Have.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Materialists And Madmen Never Have Doubts.

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.

Mr. Mccabe Thinks That I Am Not Serious But Only Funny, Because Mr. Mccabe Thinks That Funny Is The Opposite Of Serious. Funny Is The Opposite Of Not Funny And Nothing Else.

Where Does A Wise Man Hide A Leaf? In The Forest. But What Does He Do If There Is No Forest? He Grows A Forest To Hide It In.

We Are Learning To Do A Great Many Clever Things. The Next Great Task Will Be To Learn Not To Do Them.

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

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.

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

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

Tolerance Is The Virtue Of Those Who Don't Believe Anything.

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

These Are The Days When The Christian Is Expected To Praise Every Creed Except His Own.

One Can No More Have A Private Religion Than One Can Have A Private Sun Or A Private Moon.

There Is No Bigot Like The Atheist.

Without Education We Are In A Horrible And Deadly Danger Of Taking Educated People Seriously.

The Beautification Of The World Is Not A Work Of Nature, But A Work Of Art, Then It Involves An Artist.

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

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

[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 Moderns Do Not Realize Modernity.

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 Highest And Noblest Thing That History Can Be Is A Good Story.

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

All Men Thirst To Confess Their Crimes More Than Tired Beasts Thirst For Water; But They Naturally Object To Confessing Them While Other People, Who Have Also Committed The Same Crimes, Sit By And Laugh At Them.

You've Got That Eternal Idiotic Idea That If Anarchy Came It Would Come From The Poor. Why Should It? The Poor Have Been Rebels, But They Have Never Been Anarchists; They Have More Interest Than Any One Else In There Being Some Decent Government. The Poor Man Really Has A Stake In The Country. The Rich Man Hasn't; He Can Go Away To New Guinea In A Yacht. The Poor Have Sometimes Been Objected To Being Governed Badly; The Rich Have Always Objected To Being Governed At All. Aristocrats Were Always Anarchists, As You Can See From The Barons' Wars.

The Last Few Decades Have Been Marked By A Special Cultivation Of The Romance Of The Future. We Seem To Have Made Up Our Minds To Misunderstand What Has Happened; And We Turn, With A Sort Of Relief, To Stating What Will Happen-which Is Apparently Much Easier...the Modern Mind Is Forced Towards The Future By A Certain Sense Of Fatigue, Not Unmixed With Terror, With Which It Regards The Past.

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

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

The Issue Is Now Clear. It Is Between Light And Darkness And Everyone Must Choose His Side.

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.

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

Children Feel The Whiteness Of The Lily With A Graphic And Passionate Clearness Which We Cannot Give Them At All. The Only Thing We Can Give Them Is Information-the Information That If You Break The Lily In Two It Won't Grow Again.

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

Man In The Moon

Drink Because You Are Happy, But Never Because You Are Miserable.

The Chief Object Of Education Is Not To Learn Things But To Unlearn Things.

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.

If A Man Called Christmas Day A Mere Hypocritical Excuse For Drunkenness And Gluttony, That Would Be False, But It Would Have A Fact Hidden In It Somewhere. But When Bernard Shaw Says The Christmas Day Is Only A Conspiracy Kept Up By Poulterers And Wine Merchants From Strictly Business Motives, Then He Says Something Which Is Not So Much False As Startling And Arrestingly Foolish. He Might As Well Say That The Two Sexes Were Invented By Jewellers Who Wanted To Sell Wedding Rings.

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

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

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.

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

My Life Is Passed In Making Bad Jokes And Seeing Them Turn Into True Prophecies.

I Left The Fairy Tales Lying On The Floor Of The Nursery, And I Have Not Found Any Books So Sensible Since.

Nobody Notices Postmen, Yet They Have Passions Like Other Men.

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.

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

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

Big Business And State Socialism Are Very Much Alike, Especially Big Business.

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

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.

Brave Men Are All Vertebrates; They Have Their Softness On The Surface And Their Toughness In The Middle.

Classic Literature Is Still Something That Hangs In The Air Like A Song.

I Never Could See Anything Wrong In Sensationalism; And I Am Sure Our Society Is Suffering More From Secrecy Than From Flamboyant Revelations.

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

They Said That I Should Lose My Ideals And Begin To Believe In The Methods Of Practical Politicians. Now, I Have Not Lost My Ideals In The Least; My Faith In Fundamentals Is Exactly What It Always Was. What I Have Lost Is My Childlike Faith In Practical Politics.

You Could Compile The Worst Book In The World Entirely Out Of Selected Passages From The Best Writers In The World.

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

The Primary Paradox Of Christianity Is That The Ordinary Condition Of Man Is Not His Sane Or Sensible Condition; That The Normal Itself Is An Abnormality.

The First Fact About The Celebration Of A Birthday Is That It Is A Way Of Affirming Defiantly, And Even Flamboyantly, That It Is A Good Thing To Be Alive.

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

Literature And Fiction Are Two Entirely Different Things. Literature Is A Luxury; Fiction Is A Necessity.

The Modern World Is Not Evil; In Some Ways The Modern World Is Far Too Good. It Is Full Of Wild And Wasted Virtues. When A Religious Scheme Is Shattered (as Christianity Was Shattered At The Reformation), It Is Not Merely The Vices That Are Let Loose. The Vices Are, Indeed, Let Loose, And They Wander And Do Damage. But The Virtues Are Let Loose Also; And The Virtues Wander More Wildly, And The Virtues Do More Terrible Damage. The Modern World Is Full Of The Old Christian Virtues Gone Mad. The Virtues Have Gone Mad Because They Have Been Isolated From Each Other And Are Wandering Alone.

Jokes Are Generally Honest. Complete Solemnity Is Always Dishonest.

I Would Look At The First Chapter Of Any New Novel As A Final Test Of Its Merits. If There Was A Murdered Man Under The Sofa In The First Chapter, I Read The Story. If There Was No Murdered Man Under The Sofa In The First Chapter, I Dismissed The Story As Tea-table Twaddle, Which It Often Really Was.

There Is More Simplicity In The Man Who Eats Caviar On Impulse Than In The Man Who Eats Grape-nuts On Principle.

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.

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.

Like Every Book I Never Wrote, It Is By Far The Best Book I Have Ever Written.

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

It Is 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.

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.

Hope Is The Power Of Being Cheerful In Circumstances Which We Know To Be Desperate.

A Third-class Carriage Is A Community, While A First-class Carriage Is A Place Of Wild Hermits.

There Is No Way In Which A Man Can Earn A Star Or Deserve A Sunset.

Art Is The Signature Of Man.

Christianity Satisfies Suddenly And Perfectly Man's Ancestral Instinct For Being The Right Way Up; Satisfies It Supremely In This, That By Its Creed Joy Becomes Something Gigantic, And Sadness Something Special And Small.

Humor Can Get In Under The Door While Seriousness Is Still Fumbling At The Handle

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

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.

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

The More We Are Proud That The Bethlehem Story Is Plain Enough To Be Understood By The Shepherds, And Almost By The Sheep, The More Do We Let Ourselves Go, In Dark And Gorgeous Imaginative Frescoes Or Pageants About The Mystery And Majesty Of The Three Magian Kings.

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

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

It Has Always Been One Of My Unclerical Sermons To Myself, That That Remark Which Peter Made On Seeing The Vision Of A Single Hour, Ought To Be Made By Us All, In Contemplating Every Panoramic Change In The Long Vision We Call Life... "it Is Good For Us To Be Here - It Is Good For Us To Be Here", Repeating Itself Eternally.

Aristocracy: Government By The Badly Educated.

A Tragedy Means Always A Mans Struggle With That Which Is Stronger Than Man.

Every Great Literature Has Always Been Allegorical - Allegorical Of Some View Of The Whole Universe. The 'iliad' Is Only Great Because All Life Is A Battle, The 'odyssey' Because All Life Is A Journey, The Book Of Job Because All Life Is A Riddle.

I Am A Journalist And Have No Earthly Motives Except Curiosity And Personal Vanity.

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.

The Poet Only Asks To Get His Head Into The Heavens. It Is The Logician Who Seeks To Get The Heavens Into His Head. And It Is His Head That Splits.

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

Atheism Is Indeed The Most Daring Of All Dogmas . . . For It Is The Assertion Of A Universal Negative.

The Most Incredible Thing About Miracles Is That They Happen.

The Present Condition Of Fame Is Merely Fashion.

Human Anger Is A Higher Thing Than What Is Called Divine Discontent. For You Must Be Angry With Something; But You Can Be Discontented With Everything.

The Perils, Rewards, Punishments, And Fulfillments Of An Adventure Must Be Real, Or The Adventure Is Only A Shifting And Heartless Nightmare. If I Bet I Must Be Made To Pay, Or There Is No Poetry In Betting. If I Challenge I Must Be Made To Fight, Or There Is No Poetry In Challenging. If I Vow To Be Faithful I Must Be Cursed When I Am Unfaithful, Or There Is No Fun Vowing.

It's Not The World That's Got So Much Worse But The News Coverage That's Got So Much Better.

You Cannot Grow A Beard In A Moment Of Passion.

There Is Nothing Harder To Learn Than Painting And Nothing Which Most People Take Less Trouble About Learning.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Our Civilization Has Decided That Determining The Guilt Or Innocence Of Men Is A Thing Too Important To Be Trusted To Trained Men. When It Wants A Library Catalogued, Or The Solar System Discovered, Or Any Trifle Of That Kind, It Uses Up Its Specialists. But When It Wishes Anything Done Which Is Really Serious, It Collects Twelve Of The Ordinary Men Standing Round. The Same Thing Was Done, If I Remember Right, By The Founder Of Christianity.

For Good Or Evil, A Line Has Been Passed In Our Political History; And Something That We Have Known All Our Lives Is Dead. I Will Take Only One Example Of It: Our Politicians Can No Longer Be Caricatured.

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.

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

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

A Dead Thing Goes With The Stream, But Only A Living Thing Can Go Against It.

When You Break The Big Laws, You Do Not Get Liberty; You Do Not Even Get Anarchy. You Get The Small Laws.

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.

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

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

Spring Never Is Spring Unless It Comes Too Soon.

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.

You Don't Want To Be So Open Minded That Your Brains Fall Out!

I Might Inform Those Humanitarians Who Have A Nightmare Of New And Needless Babies (for Some Humanitarians Have That Sort Of Horror Of Humanity) That If The Recent Decline In The Birth-rate Were Continued For A Certain Time, It Might End In There Being No Babies At All; Which Would Console Them Very Much.

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.

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

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.

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

Coincidences Are Spiritual Puns.

Aesthetes Never Do Anything But What They Are Told.

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

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

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

There Are No Uninteresting Things, Only Uninterested People.

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

No One Can Understand Paris And Its History Who Does Not Understand That Its Fierceness Is The Balance And Justification Of Its Frivolity. It Is Called A City Of Pleasure; But It May Also Very Specially Be Called A City Of Pain. The Crown Of Roses Is Also A Crown Of Thorns. Its People Are Too Prone To Hurt Others, But Quite Ready Also To Hurt Themselves. They Are Martyrs For Religion, They Are Martyrs For Irreligion; They Are Even Martyrs For Immorality.

...but Out Of The Desert, From The Dry Places And The Dreadful Suns, Come The Cruel Children Of The Lonely God; The Real Unitarians Who With Scimitar In Hand Have Laid Waste The World. For It Is Not Well For God To Be Alone.

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.

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

The Worst Moment For An Atheist Is When He Feels A Profound Sense Of Gratitude And Has No One To Thank.

And Though St. John Saw Many Strange Monsters In His Vision, He Saw No Creature So Wild As One Of His Own Commentators.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Paradox - Truth Standing On Her Head To Get Attention.

The Poor Complain That They Are Governed Badly. The Rich Complain That They Are Governed At All.

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

Monotony Has Nothing To Do With A Place; Monotony, Either In Its Sensation Or Its Infliction, Is Simply The Quality Of A Person. There Are No Dreary Sights; There Are Only Dreary Sight Seers.

But There Is In Everything A Reasonable Division Of Labour. I Have Written The Book, And Nothing On Earth Would Induce Me To Read It.

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

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

Truth, Of Course, Must Of Necessity Be Stranger Than Fiction, For We Have Made Fiction To Suit Ourselves.

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

The Life Of A Thinking Man Will Probably Be Divided Into Two Parts -- The First In Which He Desires To Exterminate Modern Thinkers, And The Second In Which He Desires To Watch Them Exterminating Each Other. ... Suppose, For Instance, There Is An Old Story And A New Skeptic Who Is Skeptical Of The Story. We Have Only To Wait A Little While For A Yet Newer Skeptic Who Is Skeptical Of The Skeptic. He Will Probably Find The Old Notion Actually A Help In His New Notion. This Process Is An Abstract Truth Applying To Anything, Apart From Agreement Or Disagreement.

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.

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