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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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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These Are The Things

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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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.

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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.

Hell Is God's Great Compliment To The Reality Of Human Freedom And The Dignity Of Human Choice.

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

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

Man Is Always Something Worse Or Something Better Than An Animal; And A Mere Argument From Animal Perfection Never Touches Him At All. Thus, In Sex No Animal Is Either Chivalrous Or Obscene. And Thus No Animal Invented Anything So Bad As Drunkeness - Or So Good As Drink.

Making The Landlord And The Tenant The Same Person Has Certain Advantages, As That The Tenant Pays No Rent, While The Landlord Does A Little Work.

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

Listening And Hearing

A Modern Vegetarian Is Also A Teetotaler, Yet There Is No Obvious Connection Between Consuming Vegetables And Not Consuming Fermented Vegetables. A Drunkard, When Lifted Laboriously Out Of The Gutter, Might Well Be Heard Huskily To Plead That He Had Fallen There Through Excessive Devotion To A Vegetable Diet.

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.

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

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.

We Do Not Want, As The Newspapers Say, A Church That Will Move With The World. We Want A Church That Will Move The World.

Suppose, My Dear Chadd, Suppose It Is We Who Are The Idiots Because We Are Not Afraid Of Devils In The Dark?

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

Let Us Not Decide What Is Good, But Let It Be Considered Good Not To Decide It.

An Imbecile Habit Has Arisen In Modern Controversy Of Saying That Such And Such A Creed Can Be Held In One Age But Cannot Be Held In Another. Some Dogma, We Are Told, Was Credible In The Twelfth Century, But Is Not Credible In The Twentieth. You Might As Well Say That A Certain Philosophy Can Be Believed On Mondays, But Cannot Be Believed On Tuesdays. You Might As Well Say Of A View Of The Cosmos That It Was Suitable To Half-past Three, But Not Suitable To Half-past Four. What A Man Can Believe Depends Upon His Philosophy, Not Upon The Clock Or The Century.

Those Who Leave The Tradition Of Truth Do Not Escape Into Something Which We Call Freedom. They Only Escape Into Something Else, Which We Call Fashion.

America Is The Only Country Ever Founded On A Creed.

Thanks Are The Highest Form Of Thought.

Bowing Down In Blind Credulity, As Is My Custom, Before Mere Authority And The Tradition Of The Elders, Superstitiously Swallowing A Story I Could Not Test At The Time By Experiment Or Private Judgment, I Am Firmly Of The Opinion That I Was Born On The 29th Of May, 1874, On Campden Hill, Kensington; And Baptised According To The Formularies Of The Church Of England In The Little Church Of St. George Opposite The Large Waterworks Tower That Dominated That Ridge.

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.

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

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.

We Can’t Turn Life Into A Pleasure. But We Can Choose Such Pleasures As Are Worthy Of Us And Our Immortal Souls.

The Center Of Every Man's Existence Is A Dream.

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

There Is A Road From The Eye To The Heart That Does Not Go Through The Intellect.

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

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.

It Is Generally The Man Who Is Not Ready To Argue, Who Is Ready To Sneer.

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.

In Dealing With The Arrogant Asserter Of Doubt, It Is Not The Right Method To Tell Him To Stop Doubting. It Is Rather The Right Method To Tell Him To Go On Doubting, To Doubt A Little More, To Doubt Every Day Newer And Wilder Things In The Universe, Until At Last, By Some Strange Enlightenment, He May Begin To Doubt Himself.

The Old Idea That The Joke Was Not Good Enough For The Company Has Been Superseded By The New Aristocratic Idea That The Company Was Not Worthy Of The Joke. They Have Introduced An Almost Insane Individualism Into That One Form Of Intercourse Which Is Specially And Uproariously Communal. They Have Made Even Levities Into Secrets. They Have Made Laughter Lonelier Than Tears.

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.

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

...it's Natural To Believe In The Supernatural. It Never Feels Natural To Accept Only Natural Things.

A Crown Of Roses Is Also A Crown Of Thorns.

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

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

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

I Still Think Sincere Pessimism The Unpardonable Sin.

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

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.

Every One Of The Great Revolutionists, From Isaiah To Shelley, Have Been Optimists. They Have Been Indignant, Not About The Badness Of Existence, But About The Slowness Of Men In Realizing Its Goodness.

The Woman Does Not Work Because The Man Tells Her To Work And She Obeys. On The Contrary, The Woman Works Because She Has Told The Man To Work And He Hasn’t Obeyed.

It Seems To Me,' Said The Other, 'that You Are Simply Seeking A Pretext To Insult The Marquis.' By George!' Said Syme Facing Round And Looking At Him, 'what A Clever Chap You Are!

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

Lying In Bed Would Be An Altogether Perfect And Supreme Experience If Only One Had A Colored Pencil Long Enough To Draw On The Ceiling.

When The Chord Of Monotony Is Stretched To Its Tightest, It Breaks With The Sound Of A Song.

The Supreme Adventure Is Being Born

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.

I Have Investigated The Dust-heaps Of Humanity, And Found A Treasure In All Of Them. I Have Found That Humanity Is Not Incidentally Engaged, But Eternally And Systematically Engaged, In Throwing Gold Into The Gutter And Diamonds Into The Sea.

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

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

The Object Of A New Year Is Not That We Should Have A New Year, But Rather That We Should Have A New Soul.

The Wine They Drink In Paradise They Make In Haute Lorraine.

The Lunatic Is The Man Who Lives In A Small World But Thinks It Is A Large One; He Is The Man Who Lives In A Tenth Of The Truth, And Thinks It Is The Whole. The Madman Cannot Conceive Any Cosmos Outside A Certain Tale Or Conspiracy Or Vision.

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.

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

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

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

The Most Dangerous Criminal Now Is The Entirely Lawless Modern Philosopher. Compared To Him, Burglars And Bigamists Are Essentially Moral Men.

A Puritan Is A Person Who Pours Righteous Indignation Into The Wrong Things.

Every Man Who Will Not Have Softening Of The Heart Must At Last Have Softening Of The Brain

You Never Know The Best About Men Until You Know The Worst About Them.

There Are No Uninteresting Things, Only Uninterested People.

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

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

People Seem To Fight About Things Very Unsuitable For Fighting. They Make A Frightful Noise In Support Of Very Quiet Things. They Knock Each Other About In The Name Of Very Fragile Things.

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

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

What Are We Going To Do?" Asked The Professor. "at This Moment," Said Syme, With A Scientific Detachment, "i Think We Are Going To Smash Into A Lamppost.

Reason Is Itself A Matter Of Faith. It Is An Act Of Faith To Assert That Our Thoughts Have Any Relation To Reality At All.

Folk-lore Means That The Soul Is Sane, But That The Universe Is Wild And Full Of Marvels. Realism Means That The World Is Dull And Full Of Routine, But That The Soul Is Sick And Screaming. The Problem Of The Fairy Tale Is: What Will A Healthy Man Do With A Fantastic World? The Problems Of The Modern Novel Is: What Will A Madman Do With A Dull World? In The Fairy Tales The Cosmos Goes Mad; But The Hero Does Not Go Mad. In The Modern Novels The Hero Is Mad Before The Book Begins, And Suffers From The Harsh Steadiness And Cruel Sanity Of The Cosmos.

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

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

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.

If A Man Says That He Is Jesus Christ, It Is No Answer To Tell Him That The World Denies His Divinity; For The World Denied Christ's.

All Literary Style, Especially National Style, Is Made Up Of Such Coincidences, Which Are A Spiritual Sort Of Puns. That Is Why Style Is Untranslatable.

The More Truly We Can See Life As A Fairytale, The More Clearly The Tale Resolves Itself Into War With The Dragon Who Is Wasting Fairyland.

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

Men Feel That Cruelty To The Poor Is A Kind Of Cruelty To Animals. They Never Feel That It Is An Injustice To Equals; Nay It Is Treachery To Comrades.

A Man Is Angry At A Libel Because It Is False, But At A Satire Because It Is True.

It Is A Strange Thing That Many Truly Spiritual Men, Such As General Gordon, Have Actually Spent Some Hours In Speculating Upon The Precise Location Of The Garden Of Eden. Most Probably We Are In Eden Still. It Is Only Our Eyes That Have Changed.

Art Is Born When The Temporary Touches The Eternal.

A Man Making The Confession Of Any Creed Worth Ten Minutes' Intelligent Talk, Is Always A Man Who Gains Something And Gives Up Something. So Long As He Does Both He Can Create: For He Is Making An Outline And A Shape.

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.

Every Man Speaks Of Public Opinion, And Means By Public Opinion, Public Opinion Minus His Opinion.

You Can Only Find Truth With Logic If You Have Already Found Truth Without It.

Criticism Is Only Words About Words, And Of What Use Are Words About Such Words As These?

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

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

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 Professional Soldier Gains More And More Power As The General Courage Of A Community Declines.

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

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

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

Funny Friendship

The Person Who Is Really In Revolt Is The Optimist, Who Generally Lives And Dies In A Desperate And Suicidal Effort To Persuade Other People How Good They Are.

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

Now It Has Appeared To Me Unfair That Humanity Should Be Engaged Perpetually In Calling All Those Things Bad Which Have Been Good Enough To Make Other Things Better, In Everlastingly Kicking Down The Ladder By Which It Has Climbed. It Has Appeared To Me That Progress Should Be Something Else Besides A Continual Parricide; Therefore I Have Investigated The Dust-heaps Of Humanity, And Found A Treasure In All Of Them. I Have Found That Humanity Is Not Incidentally Engaged, But Eternally And Systematically Engaged, In Throwing Gold Into The Gutter And Diamonds Into The Sea.

Facts As Facts Do Not Always Create A Spirit Of Reality, Because Reality Is A Spirit.

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.

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

It Is The Simple Truth That Man Does Differ From The Brutes In Kind And Not In Degree; And The Proof Of It Is Here; That It Sounds Like A Truism To Say That The Most Primitive Man Drew A Picture Of A Monkey And That It Sounds Like A Joke To Say That The Most Intelligent Monkey Drew A Picture Of A Man. Something Of Division And Disproportion Has Appeared; And It Is Unique. Art Is The Signature Of Man.

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 Only Words That Ever Satisfied Me As Describing Nature Are The Terms Used In Fairy Books, Charm, Spell, Enchantment; They Express The Arbitrariness Of The Fact And Its Mystery.

To Hurry Through One's Leisure Is The Most Unbusiness-like Of Actions.

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

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.

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.

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

Internationalism

Tolerance Is The Virtue Of People Who Do Not Believe In Anything.

The Act Of Defending Any Of The Cardinal Virtues Has Today All The Exhilaration Of A Vice.

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

I Do Not Know Much About Mohammed Or Mohammedanism. I Do Not Take The Koran To Bed With Me Every Night. But, If I Did On Some One Particular Night, There Is One Sense At Least In Which I Know What I Should Not Find There. I Apprehend That I Should Not Find The Work Abounding In Strong Encouragements To The Worship Of Idols; That The Praises Of Polytheism Would Not Be Loudly Sung; That The Character Of Mohammed Would Not Be Subjected To Anything Resembling Hatred And Derision; And That The Great Modern Doctrine Of The Unimportance Of Religion Would Not Be Needlessly Emphasised.

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

The Best Way That A Man Could Test His Readiness To Encounter The Common Variety Of Mankind Would Be To Climb Down A Chimney Into Any House At Random, And Get On As Well As Possible With The People Inside. And That Is Essentially What Each One Of Us Did On The Day That He Was Born.

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

Not Only Is Suicide A Sin, It Is The Sin. It Is The Ultimate And Absolute Evil, The Refusal To Take An Interest In Existence; The Refusal To Take The Oath Of Loyalty To Life. 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.

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.

Even In An Empire Of Atheists The Dead Man Is Always Sacred.

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.

The True Object Of Human Life Is Play.

We Actually Love Ourselves More Than We Love Joy.

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

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

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.

Doing Nothing Is Sometimes One Of The Highest Of The Duties Of Man.

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

The New Community Which The Capitalists Are Now Constructing Will Be A Very Complete And Absolute Community; And One Which Will Tolerate Nothing Really Independent Of Itself.

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.

Latter-day Scepticism Is Fond Of Calling Itself Progressive; But Scepticism Is Really Reactionary. Scepticism Goes Back; It Attempts To Unsettle What Has Already Been Settled. Instead Of Trying To Break Up New Fields With Its Plough, It Simply Tries To Break Up The Plough.

Women Have A Thirst For Order And Beauty As For Something Physical; There Is A Strange Female Power Of Hating Ugliness And Waste As Good Men Can Only Hate Sin And Bad Men Virtue.

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

All Good Writers Express The State Of Their Souls, Even (as Occurs In Some Cases Of Very Good Writers) If It Is A State Of Damnation.

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

The Voice Of The Special Rebels And Prophets, Recommending Discontent, Should, As I Have Said, Sound Now And Then Suddenly, Like A Trumpet. But The Voices Of The Saints And Sages, Recommending Contentment, Should Sound Unceasingly, Like The Sea.

Time And Again, The Faith Has To All Appearances Gone To The Dogs. But Each Time, It Was The Dog That Died.

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

Inspirational Life

In A World Where Everything Is Ridiculous, Nothing Can Be Ridiculed. You Cannot Unmask A Mask.

What Was Wonderful About Childhood Is That Anything In It Was A Wonder. It Was Not Merely A World Full Of Miracles; It Was A Miraculous World.

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

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

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

While Once It Was The Rank And File That Cheered With All The Partisan Passions At Their Heights, Today It Is The Party Leaders Who Are Cheering Themselves; And All By Themselves. The Mob That Is Their Audience Is In One Vast Universal Trance, Thinking About Something Else.

What The World Wants, What The World Is Waiting For, Is Not Modern Poetry Or Classical Poetry Or Neo-classical Poetry - But Good Poetry. And The Dreadful Disreputable Doubt, Which Stirs In My Own Skeptical Mind, Is Doubt About Whether It Would Really Matter Much What Style A Poet Chose To Write In, In Any Period, As Long As He Wrote Good Poetry.

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

I Believe Your Own Accent Is Inimitable, Though I Shall Practice It In My Bath.

It Is Quite Easy To See Why A Legend Is Treated, And Ought To Be Treated, More Respectfully Than A Book Of History. The Legend Is Generally Made By The Majority Of People In The Village, Who Are Sane. The Book Is Generally Written By The One Man In The Village Who Is Mad.

It Is Not Merely True That A Creed Unites Men. Nay, A Difference Of Creed Unites Men - So Long As It Is A Clear Difference. A Boundary Unites. Many A Magnanimous Moslem And Chivalrous Crusader Must Have Been Nearer To Each Other, Because They Were Both Dogmatists, Than Any Two Agnostics. "i Say God Is One," And "i Say God Is One But Also Three," That Is The Beginning Of A Good Quarrelsome, Manly Friendship.

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.

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

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

The Sincere Love Of Books Has Nothing To Do With Cleverness Or Stupidity Any More Than Any Other Sincere Love. It Is A Quality Of Character, A Freshness, A Power Of Pleasure, A Power Of Faith. A Silly Person May Delight In Reading Masterpieces Just As A Silly Person May Delight In Picking Flowers. A Fool May Be In Love With A Poet As He May Be In Love With A Woman.

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

Progress Of Society

The Danger Of Loss Of Faith In God Is Not That One Will Believe In Nothing, But Rather That One Will Believe In Anything.

I Should Say That Psycho-analysis Was Confession Without Absolution.

No Man Knows He Is Young While He Is Young.

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

Truths Turn Into Dogmas The Minute They Are Disputed.

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

When Some English Moralists Write About The Importance Of Having Character, They Appear To Mean Only The Importance Of Having A Dull Character.

It's Not That We Don't Have Enough Scoundrels To Curse; It's That We Don't Have Enough Good Men To Curse Them.

If There Were No God, There Would Be No Atheists.

Christian Inspirational

I Entertain A Private Suspicion That Physical Sports Were Much More Really Effective And Beneficent When They Were Not Taken Quite So Seriously. One Of The First Essentials Of Sport Being Healthy Is That It Should Be Delightful; It Is Rapidly Becoming A False Religion With Austerities And Prostrations.

It Might Reasonably Be Maintained That The True Object Of All Human Life Is Play. Earth Is A Task Garden; Heaven Is A Playground. To Be At Last In Such Secure Innocence That One Can Juggle With The Universe And The Stars, To Be So Good That One Can Treat Everything As A Joke - That May Be, Perhaps, The Real End And Final Holiday Of Human Souls.

Once Abolish The God, And The Government Becomes The God.

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.

And When It Rains On Your Parade, Look Up Rather Than Down. Without The Rain, There Would Be No Rainbow.

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

The Best Kind Of Giving Is Thanksgiving.

Marriage Is An Adventure, Like Going To War.

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.

For Religion All Men Are Equal, As All Pennies Are Equal, Because The Only Value Of Any Of Them Is That They Bear The Image Of The King.

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.

Instead Of The Machine Being A Giant To Which The Man Is The Pygmy, We Must At Last Reverse The Proportions Until Man Is A Giant To Whom The Machine Is The Toy.

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

Before The Gods That Made The Gods Had Seen Their Sunrise Pass, The White Horse Of The White Horse Vale Was Cut Out Of The Grass.

No Man Must Be Superior To The Things That Are Common To Men.... Not Only Are We All In The Same Boat, But We Are All Seasick.

A Building Is Akin To Dogma; It Is Insolent, Like Dogma. Whether Or No It Is Permanent, It Claims Permanence, Like A Dogma. People Ask Why We Have No Typical Architecture Of The Modern World, Like Impressionism In Painting. Surely It Is Obviously Because We Have Not Enough Dogmas; We Cannot Bear To See Anything In The Sky That Is Solid And Enduring, Anything In The Sky That Does Not Change Like The Clouds Of The Sky.

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

Dear Sir: Regarding Your Article 'what's Wrong With The World?' I Am. Yours Truly.

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

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.

People Talk Of The Pathos And Failure Of Plain Women; But It Is A More Terrible Thing That A Beautiful Woman May Succeed In Everything But Womanhood.

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.

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.

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

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

When It Comes To Life The Critical Thing Is Whether You Take Things For Granted Or Take Them With Gratitude.

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 That Arrogant Oligarchy Who Merely Happen To Be Walking Around.

No Man Should Leave In The Universe Anything Of Which He Is Afraid.

A Teacher Who Is Not Dogmatic Is Simply A Teacher Who Is Not Teaching.

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

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.

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.

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

The Rolling Stone Rolls Echoing From Rock To Rock; But The Rolling Stone Is Dead. The Moss Is Silent Because The Moss Is Alive.

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

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Clement Clarke Moore

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