Background Image

...

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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Tradition Is Only Democracy

Gilbert K. Chesterton

...

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.

Views: 96166

Topic

More From Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

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.

Men Do Not Differ Much About What Things They Will Call Evils; They Differ Enormously About What Evils They Will Call Excusable.

If We Want To Give Poor People Soap We Must Set Out Deliberately To Give Them Luxuries. If We Will Not Make Them Rich Enough To Be Clean, Then Empathically We Must Do What We Did With The Saints. We Must Reverence Them For Being Dirty.

The Men Of The Clique Live Together Because They Have The Same Kind Of Soul, And Their Narrowness Is A Narrowness Of Spiritual Coherence And Contentment, Like That Which Exists In Hell . . .

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

Imagination Does Not Breed Insanity. Exactly What Does Breed Insanity Is Reason. Poets Do Not Go Mad, But Chess Players Do.

The Evolutionists Seem To Know Everything About The Missing Link Except The Fact That It Is Missing.

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

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.

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

People In High Life Are Hardened To The Wants And Distresses Of Mankind As Surgeons Are To Their Bodily Pains.

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

All Real Democracy Is An Attempt Like That Of A Jolly Hostess To Bring The Shy People Out.

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

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

Oscar Wilde Said That Sunsets Were Not Valued Because We Could Not Pay For Sunsets. But Oscar Wilde Was Wrong; We Can Pay For Sunsets. We Can Pay For Them By Not Being Oscar Wilde.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

If I Can Put One Touch Of Rosy Sunset Into The Life Of Any Man Or Woman, I Shall Feel That I Have Worked With God.

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.

There Are Many Definite Methods, Honest And Dishonest, Which Make People Rich; The Only Instinct I Know Of Which Does It Is That Instinct Which Theological Christianity Crudely Describes As The Sin Of Avarice.

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

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

The Modern Mind Will Accept Nothing On Authority, But Will Accept Anything On No Authority. Say That The Bible Or The Pope Says So And It Will Be Dismissed Without Further Examination. But Preface Your Remark With "i Think I Heard Somewhere," Or, Try But Fail To Remember The Name Of Some Professor Who Might Have Said "such-and-such," And It Will Be Immediately Accepted As An Unshakable Fact.

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

Internationalism

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

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

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 Only Way To Be Sure Of Catching A Train Is To Miss The One Before It.

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.

Any One Of The Strange Laws We Suffer Is A Compromise Between A Fad And A Vested Interest.

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

There Is A Certain Poetic Value, And That A Genuine One, In This Sense Of Having Missed The Full Meaning Of Things. There Is Beauty, Not Only In Wisdom, But In This Dazed And Dramatic Ignorance.

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

Wherever There Is Animal Worship, There Is Human Sacrifice.

When We Were Children We Were Grateful To Those Who Filled Our Stockings At Christmas Time. Why Are We Not Grateful To God For Filling Our Stockings With Legs?

How Can It Be A Large Career To Tell Other People's Children About The Rule Of Three, And A Small Career To Tell One's Own Children About The Universe? How Can It Be Broad To Be The Same Thing To Everyone, And Narrow To Be Everything To Someone? No; A Woman's Function Is Laborious, But Because It Is Gigantic, Not Because It Is Minute. I Will Pity Mrs. Jones For The Hugeness Of Her Task; I Will Never Pity Her For Its Smallness.

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

People Wonder Why The Novel Is The Most Popular Form Of Literature; People Wonder Why It Is Read More Than Books Of Science Or Books Of Metaphysics. The Reason Is Very Simple; It Is Merely That The Novel Is More True Than They Are.

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

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

We Are To Regard Existence As A Raid Or Great Adventure; It Is To Be Judged, Therefore, Not By What Calamities It Encounters, But By What Flag It Follows And What High Town It Assaults. The Most Dangerous Thing In The World Is To Be Alive; One Is Always In Danger Of One's Life. But Anyone Who Shrinks From That Is A Traitor To The Great Scheme And Experiment Of Being.

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

On The Third Day The Friends Of Christ Coming At Daybreak To The Place Found The Grave Empty And The Stone Rolled Away. In Varying Ways They Realized The New Wonder; But Even They Hardly Realized That The World Had Died In The Night. What They Were Looking At Was The First Day Of A New Creation, With A New Heaven And A New Earth; And In A Semblance Of The Gardener God Walked Again In The Garden, In The Cool Not Of The Evening But Of The Dawn.

The Long Words Are Not The Hard Words, It Is The Short Words That Are Hard. There Is Much More Metaphysical Subtlety In The Word "damn" Than In The Word "degeneration."

Man Is An Exception, Whatever Else He Is. If He Is Not The Image Of God, Then He Is A Disease Of The Dust. If It Is Not True That A Divine Being Fell, Then We Can Only Say That One Of The Animals Went Entirely Off Its Head.

Somehow One Can Never Manage To Be An Atheist.

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.

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

A Man's Minor Actions And Arrangements Ought To Be Free, Flexible, Creative; The Things That Should Be Unchangeable Are His Principles, His Ideals. But With Us The Reverse Is True; Our Views Change Constantly; But Our Lunch Does Not Change. Now, I Should Like Men To Have Strong And Rooted Conceptions, But As For Their Lunch, Let Them Have It Sometimes In The Garden, Sometimes In Bed, Sometimes On The Roof, Sometimes In The Top Of A Tree. Let Them Argue From The Same First Principles, But Let Them Do It In A Bed, Or A Boat, Or A Balloon.

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

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

Listening And Hearing

The Word Good Has Many Meanings.

Among The Rich You Will Never Find A Really Generous Man Even By Accident. They May Give Their Money Away, But They Will Never Give Themselves Away; They Are Egotistic, Secretive, Dry As Old Bones. To Be Smart Enough To Get All That Money You Must Be Dull Enough To Want It.

I Still Hold. . .that The Suburbs Ought To Be Either Glorified By Romance And Religion Or Else Destroyed By Fire From Heaven, Or Even By Firebrands From The Earth.

The Martyr Endured Tortures To Affirm His Belief In Truth But He Never Asserted His Disbelief In Torture.

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

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

Meaninglessness Does Not Come From Being Weary Of Pain. Meaninglessness Comes From Being Weary Of Pleasure.

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.

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

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.

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

The Average Woman Is At The Head Of Something With Which She Can Do As She Likes; The Average Man Has To Obey Orders And Do Nothing Else.

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

I Always Like A Dog So Long As He Isn't Spelled Backward.

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.

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

Once Remove The Old Arena Of Theological Quarrels, And You Will Throw Open The Whole World To The Most Horrible, The Most Hopeless, The Most Endless, The Most Truly Interminable Quarrels; The Untheological Quarrels.

Well, If I Am Not Drunk, I Am Mad," Replied Syme With Perfect Calm; "but I Trust I Can Behave Like A Gentleman In Either Condition.

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.

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.

Free Verse Is Like Free Love; It Is A Contradiction In Terms.

The Oligarchic Character Of The Modern English Commonwealth Does Not Rest, Like Many Oligarchies, On The Cruelty Of The Rich To The Poor. It Does Not Even Rest On The Kindness Of The Rich To The Poor. It Rests On The Perennial And Unfailing Kindness Of The Poor To The Rich.

The Main Point Of Christianity Was This: That Nature Is Not Our Mother: Nature Is Our Sister.

The Catholic Church Is Like A Thick Steak, A Glass Of Red Wine, And A Good Cigar.

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.

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

America Has A Genius For The Encouragement Of Fame.

A Good Moslem King Was One Who Was Strict In Religion, Valiant In Battle, Just In Giving Judgment Among His People, But Not One Who Had The Slightest Objection In International Matters To Removing His Neighbour's Landmark.

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

I Tell You Naught For Your Comfort, Yea, Naught For Your Desire, Save That The Sky Grows Darker Yet And The Sea Rises Higher.

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

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

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

The English Are No Nearer Than They Were A Hundred Years Ago To Knowing What Jefferson Really Meant When He Said That God Had Created All Men Equal.

Jesus Promised His Disciples Three Things—that They Would Be Completely Fearless, Absurdly Happy, And In Constant Trouble.

People That Insist Upon Drinking And Driving, Are Putting The Quart Before The Hearse.

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.

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

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

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

A Strange Fanaticism Fills Our Time: The Fanatical Hatred Of Morality, Especially Of Christian Morality.

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

A Citizen Can Hardly Distinguish Between A Tax And A Fine, Except That The Fine Is Generally Much Lighter.

Destiny Is But A Phrase Of The Weak Human Heart - The Dark Apology For Every Error. The Strong And Virtuous Admit No Destiny. On Earth Conscience Guides; In Heaven God Watches. And Destiny Is But The Phantom We Invoke To Silence The One And Dethrone The Other.

I Am Myself So Exceedingly Nordic, As Far As Physical Constitution Is Concerned, That I Can Enjoy Almost Any Weather Except What Is Called Glorious Weather. At The End Of A Few Days, I Am Left Wondering How The Men Of The Mediterranean Ever Managed To Do Almost All The Most Active And Astonishing Things That Have Been Done.

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.

Customs Are Generally Unselfish. Habits Are Nearly Always Selfish.

If Man Is Not The Image Of God, Then He Is A Disease Of The Dust.

There Is A Great Deal Of Difference Between An Eager Man Who Wants To Read A Book And The Tired Man Who Wants A Book To Read.

We Should Always Endeavor To Wonder At The Permanent Thing, Not At The Mere Exception. We Should Be Startled By The Sun, And Not By The Eclipse. We Should Wonder Less At The Earthquake, And Wonder More At The Earth.

Journalism Only Tells Us What Men Are Doing; It Is Fiction That Tells Us What They Are Thinking, And Still More What They Are Feeling. If A New Scientific Theory Finds The Soul Of A Man In His Dreams, At Least It Ought Not To Leave Out His Day-dreams. And All Fiction Is Only A Diary Of Day-dreams Instead Of Days. And This Profound Preoccupation Of Men's Minds With Certain Things Always Eventually Has An Effect Even On The External Expression Of The Age.

Humility Is The Mother Of Giants.

I Regard Golf As An Expensive Way Of Playing Marbles.

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.

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.

It Is Still Bad Taste To Be An Avowed Atheist. But Now It Is Equally Bad Taste To Be An Avowed Christian.

Let Your Religion Be Less Of A Theory And More Of A Love Affair.

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

London Is A Riddle. Paris Is An Explanation.

Theology Is Only Thought Applied To Religion.

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

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

Presence Of Mind

The Moderns Do Not Realize Modernity.

We Do Not Admire, We Hardly Excuse, The Fanatic Who Wrecks This World For Love Of The Other. But What Are We To Say Of The Fanatic Who Wrecks This World Out Of Hatred Of The Other? He Sacrifices The Very Existence Of Humanity To The Non-existence Of God. He Offers His Victims Not To The Altar, But Merely To Assert The Idleness Of The Altar And The Emptiness Of The Throne. He Is Ready To Ruin Even That Primary Ethic By Which All Things Live, For His Strange And Eternal Vengeance Upon Some One Who Never Lived At All.

Men Rush Toward Complexity; But Yearn For Simplicity.

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.

[capitalism Is] That Commercial System In Which Supply Immediately Answers To Demand, And In Which Everybody Seems To Be Thoroughly Dissatisfied And Unable To Get Anything He Wants.

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.

There Are No Uninteresting Things, Only Uninterested People.

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

There Are Some Desires That Are Not Desirable.

When We Reverence Anything In The Mature, It Is Their Virtues Or Their Wisdom, And This Is An Easy Matter. But We Reverence The Faults And Follies Of Children. We Should Probably Come Considerably Nearer To The True Conception Of Things If We Treated All Grown-up Persons, Of All Titles And Types, With Precisely That Dark Affection And Dazed Respect With Which We Treat The Infantile Limitations.

A Mystic Is A Man Who Separates Heaven And Earth Even If He Enjoys Them Both.

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

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

Nothing Is Poetical If Plain Daylight Is Not Poetical; And No Monster Should Amaze Us If The Normal Man Does Not Amaze.

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

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.

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

I Say That A Man Must Be Certain Of His Morality For The Simple Reason That He Has To Suffer For It.

What Is Called Matriarchy Is Simply Moral Anarchy, In Which The Mother Alone Remains Fixed Because All The Fathers Are Fugitive And Irresponsible.

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

If The Barricades Went Up In Our Streets And The Poor Became Masters, I Think The Priests Would Escape, I Fear The Gentlemen Would; But I Believe The Gutters Would Simply Be Running With The Blood Of Philanthropists.

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.

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

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.

If You Convey To A Woman That Something Ought To Be Done, There Is Always A Dreadful Danger That She Will Suddenly Do It.

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

A Good Civilisation Spreads Over Us Freely Like A Tree, Varying And Yielding Because It Is Alive. A Bad Civilisation Stands Up And Sticks Out Above Us Like An Umbrella-artificial, Mathematical In Shape; Not Merely Universal, But Uniform.

The Strangest Whim Has Seized Me ... After All I Think I Will Not Hang Myself Today.

This Is The Perpetual And Pitiful Tragedy Of The Practical Man In Practical Affairs. He Always Begins With A Flourish Of Contempt For What He Calls Theorizing And What People Who Can Do It Call Thinking. He Will Not Wait For Logic-that Is, In The Most Exact Sense, He Will Not Listen To Reason. It Will Therefore Appear To Him An Idle And Ineffectual Proceeding To Say That There Is A Reason For His Present Failure. Nevertheless, It May Be Well To Say It, And To Try And Make It Clear Even To Him.

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?

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.

I Have Known Many Happy Marriages, But Never A Compatible One. The Whole Aim Of Marriage Is To Fight Through And Survive The Instant When Incompatibility Becomes Unquestionable. For A Man And A Woman, As Such, Are Incompatible.

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.

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.

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

The One Stream Of Poetry Which Is Continually Flowing Is Slang.

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

It Is Terrible To Contemplate How Few Politicians Are Hanged.

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

Madness Does Not Come By Breaking Out, But By Giving In; By Settling Down In Some Dirty, Little, Self-repeating Circle Of Ideas; By Being Tamed.

What Is The Good Of Words If They Aren't Important Enough To Quarrel Over? Why Do We Choose One Word More Than Another If There Isn't Any Difference Between Them? If You Called A Woman A Chimpanzee Instead Of An Angel, Wouldn't There Be A Quarrel About A Word? If You're Not Going To Argue About Words, What Are You Going To Argue About? Are You Going To Convey Your Meaning To Me By Moving Your Ears? The Church And The Heresies Always Used To Fight About Words, Because They Are The Only Thing Worth Fighting About.

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.

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

Impartiality Is A Pompous Name For Indifference, Which Is An Elegant Name For Ignorance.

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.

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

Only Poor Men Get Hanged.

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.

Now, Among The Heresies That Are Spoken In This Matter Is The Habit Of Calling A Grey Day A "colourless" Day. Grey Is A Colour, And Can Be A Very Powerful And Pleasing Colour.... A Grey Clouded Sky Is Indeed A Canopy Between Us And The Sun; So Is A Green Tree, If It Comes To That. But The Grey Umbrellas Differ As Much As The Green In Their Style And Shape, In Their Tint And Tilt. One Day May Be Grey Like Steel, And Another Grey Like Dove’s Plumage. One May Seem Grey Like The Deathly Frost, And Another Grey Like The Smoke Of Substantial Kitchens.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Teach To The Young, Men's Enduring Truths, And Let The Learned Amuse Themselves With Their Passing Errors.

Free Verse'? You May As Well Call Sleeping In A Ditch 'free Architecture'.

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

Who Would Condescend To Strike Down The Mere Things That He Does Not Fear? Who Would Debase Himself To Be Merely Brave, Like Any Common Prizefighter? Who Would Stoop To Be Fearless--like A Tree? Fight The Thing That You Fear. You Remember The Old Tale Of The English Clergyman Who Gave The Last Rites To The Brigand Of Sicily, And How On His Death-bed The Great Robber Said, 'i Can Give You No Money, But I Can Give You Advice For A Lifetime: Your Thumb On The Blade, And Strike Upwards.' So I Say To You, Strike Upwards, If You Strike At The Stars.

Circumstances Break Men's Bones; It Has Never Been Shown That They Break Men's Optimism.

For Children Are Innocent And Love Justice, While Most Of Us Are Wicked And Naturally Prefer Mercy.

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

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.

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.

Every True Artist Feels That He Is Touching Transcendental Truths; That His Images Are Shadows Of Things Seen Through The Veil.

But We Are The People Of England; And We Have Not Spoken Yet. Smile At Us, Pay Us, Pass Us. But Do Not Quite Forget.

Bigotry May Be Roughly Defined As The Anger Of Men Who Have No Opinions.

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

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.

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

At Any Innocent Tea-table We May Easily Hear A Man Say, "life Is Not Worth Living." We Regard It As We Regard The Statement That It Is A Fine Day; Nobody Thinks That It Can Possibly Have Any Serious Effect On The Man Or On The World. And Yet If That Utterance Were Really Believed, The World Would Stand On Its Head.

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

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

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

In Anything That Does Cover The Whole Of Your Life - In Your Philosophy And Your Religion - You Must Have Mirth. If You Do Not Have Mirth You Will Certainly Have Madness.

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

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

The Difficulty Of Explaining ‘why I Am A Catholic’ Is That There Are Ten Thousand Reasons All Amounting To One Reason: That Catholicism Is True.

Only Men To Whom The Family Is Sacred Will Ever Have A Standard Or A Status By Which To Criticize The State. They Alone Can Appeal To Something More Holy Than The Gods Of The City.

Poetry Is Sane Because It Floats Easily In An Infinite Sea; Reason Seeks To Cross The Infinite Sea And So Make It Finite. The Result Is Mental Exhaustion. To Accept Everything Is An Exercise, To Understand Everything A Strain.

Why Be Something To Everybody When You Can Be Everything To Somebody?

Every Heresy Has Been An Effort To Narrow The Church.

Trending Author

Gael Garcia Bernal

Eduardo Chillida

Category