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We All Have A Little Weakness, Which Is Very Natural But Rather Misleading, For Supposing That This Epoch Must Be The End Of The World Because It Will Be The End Of Us. How Future Generations Will Get On Without Us Is Indeed, When We Come To Think Of It, Quite A Puzzle. But I Suppose They Will Get On Somehow, And May Possibly Venture To Revise Our Judgments As We Have Revised Earlier Judgments.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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We All Have A

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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We All Have A Little Weakness, Which Is Very Natural But Rather Misleading, For Supposing That This Epoch Must Be The End Of The World Because It Will Be The End Of Us. How Future Generations Will Get On Without Us Is Indeed, When We Come To Think Of It, Quite A Puzzle. But I Suppose They Will Get On Somehow, And May Possibly Venture To Revise Our Judgments As We Have Revised Earlier Judgments.

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Somehow One Can Never Manage To Be An Atheist.

It Is The Chief Value Of Legend To Mix Up The Centuries While Preserving The Sentiment.

The Test Of Happiness Is Gratitude.

The Word Good Has Many Meanings.

America Has A Genius For The Encouragement Of Fame.

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

It Was The People Who Did Not Care Who Filled The World With Fire And Oppression. It Was The Hands Of The Indifferent That Lit The Faggots; It Was The Hands Of The Indifferent That Turned The Rack.

I Have Myself A Poetical Enthusiasm For Pigs, And The Paradise Of My Fancy Is One Where Pigs Have Wings. But It Is Only Men, Especially Wise Men, Who Discuss Whether Pigs Can Fly; We Have No Particular Proof That Pigs Ever Discuss It.

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

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

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.

The Reformer Is Always Right About What's Wrong. However, He's Often Wrong About What Is Right.

America Is The Only Country Ever Founded On A Creed.

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

A Madman Is Not Someone Who Has Lost His Reason But Someone Who Has Lost Everything But His Reason

Lost Everything

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 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.

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

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

If The Common Man In The Past Had A Grave Respect For Property, It May Conceivably Have Been Because He Sometimes Had Some Of His Own.

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.

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

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

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

I Defy Anybody To Say What Are The Rights Of A Citizen, If They Do Not Include The Control Of His Own Diet In Relation To His Own Health.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 True Object Of Human Life Is Play.

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

[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.

Mysticism Keeps Mankind Sane. As Long As You Have Mystery You Have Health; When You Destroy Mystery You Create Morbidity.

We Are All In The Same Boat, In A Stormy Sea, And We Owe Each Other A Terrible Loyalty.

A Nation Is Not Going Mad When It Does Extravagant Things, So Long As It Does Them In An Extravagant Spirit. But Whenever We See Things Done Wildly, But Taken Tamely, Then The State Is Growing Insane.

Honour Is A Luxury For Aristocrats, But It Is A Necessity For Hall-porters.

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.

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.

The Man Who Lives In A Small Community Lives In A Much Larger World. He Knows Much More Of The Fierce Variety And Uncompromising Divergences Of Men…in A Large Community, We Can Choose Our Companions. In A Small Community, Our Companions Are Chosen For Us. Thus In All Extensive And Highly Civilized Society Groups Come Into Existence Founded Upon Sympathy, And Shut Out The Real World More Sharply Than The Gates Of A Monastery. There Is Nothing Really Narrow About The Clan; The Thing Which Is Really Narrow Is The Clique.

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.

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

For The Mass Of Men The Idea Of Artistic Creation Can Only Be Expressed By An Idea Unpopular In Present Discussions - The Idea Of Property... Property Is Merely The Art Of The Democracy... One Would Think, To Hear People Talk, That The Rothschilds And The Rockefellers Were On The Side Of Property. But Obviously They Are The Enemies Of Property; Because They Are Enemies Of Their Own Limitations.

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 Can Be Merry Unless He Is Serious.

Art Is Born When The Temporary Touches The Eternal.

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

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

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

If Prosperity Is Regarded As The Reward Of Virtue It Will Be Regarded As The Symptom Of Virtue.

The Only Object Of Liberty Is Life.

A Catholic Is A Person Who Has Plucked Up Courage To Face The Incredible And Inconceivable Idea That Something Else May Be Wiser Than He Is.

Is Ditchwater Dull? Naturalists With Microscopes Have Told Me That It Teems With Quiet Fun.

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

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

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.

Poets Do Not Go Mad, But Chess Players Do.

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.

It Is Only Great Men Who Take Up A Great Space By Not Being There.

If The World Grows To Worldly, It Can Be Rebuked By The Church; But If The Church Grows To Worldly, It Cannot Be Adequately Rebuked For Worldlyness By The World.

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

Listening And Hearing

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

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

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

A Man Was Meant To Be Doubtful About Himself, But Undoubting About The Truth; This Has Been Exactly Reversed.

Were Meant To Be

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.

The Historic Glory Of America Lies In The Fact That It Is The One Nation That Was Founded Like A Church. That Is, It Was Founded On A Faith That Was Not Merely Summed Up After It Had Exited, But Was Defined Before It Existed.

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.

Why Do All The Clerks And Navvies In The Railway Trains Look So Sad And Tired, So Very Sad And Tired? I Will Tell You. It Is Because They Know That The Train Is Going Right. It Is Because They Know That Whatever Place They Have Taken A Ticket For That Place They Will Reach. It Is Because After They Have Passed Sloane Square They Know That The Next Station Must Be Victoria, And Nothing But Victoria. Oh, Their Wild Rapture! Oh, Their Eyes Like Stars And Their Souls Again In Eden, If The Next Station Were Unaccountably Baker Street!

All Slang Is Metaphor, And All Metaphor Is Poetry.

Science Only Means Knowledge; And For [greek] Ancients It Did Only Mean Knowledge. Thus The Favorite Science Of The Greeks Was Astronomy, Because It Was As Abstract As Algebra. ... We May Say That The Great Greek Ideal Was To Have No Use For Useful Things. The Slave Was He Who Learned Useful Things; The Freeman Was He Who Learned Useless Things. This Still Remains The Ideal Of Many Noble Men Of Science, In The Sense They Do Desire Truth As The Great Greeks Desired It; And Their Attitude Is An External Protest Against Vulgarity Of Utilitarianism.

You Say Grace Before Meals. All Right. But I Say Grace Before The Concert And The Opera, And Grace Before The Play And Pantomime, And Grace Before I Open A Book, And Grace Before Sketching, Painting, Swimming, Fencing, Boxing, Walking, Playing, Dancing And Grace Before I Dip The Pen In The Ink.

Your Offer," He Said, "is Far Too Idiotic To Be Declined.

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

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.

To Desire Money Is Much Nobler Than To Desire Success. Desiring Money May Mean Desiring To Return To Your Country, Or Marry The Woman You Love, Or Ransom Your Father From Brigands. But Desiring Success Must Mean That You Take An Abstract Pleasure In The Unbrotherly Act Of Distancing And Disgracing Other Men.

We're All In The Same Boat, And We're All Seasick.

A Faith Is That Which Is Able To Survive A Mood.

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

Different Experiences

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

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

It Is True That I Am Of An Older Fashion; Much That I Love Has Been Destroyed Or Sent Into Exile.

Oh, Most Unhappy Man,' He Cried, 'try To Be Happy! You Have Red Hair Like Your Sister.' My Red Hair, Like Red Flames, Shall Burn Up The World,' Said Gregory.

Sir Hiram Maxim Is A Genuine And Typical Example Of The Man Of Science, Romantic, Excitable, Full Of Real But Somewhat Obvious Poetry, A Little Hazy In Logic And Philosophy, But Full Of Hearty Enthusiasm And An Honorable Simplicity. He Is, As He Expresses It, "an Old And Trained Engineer," And Is Like All Of The Old And Trained Engineers I Have Happened To Come Across, A Man Who Indemnifies Himself For The Superhuman Or Inhuman Concentration Required For Physical Science By A Vague And Dangerous Romanticism About Everything Else.

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

I Am Concerned With A Certain Way Of Looking At Life, Which Was Created In Me By The Fairy Tales, But Has Since Been Meekly Ratified By The Mere Facts.

I Said To Him, "shall I Tell You Where The Men Are Who Believe Most In Themselves? For I Can Tell You. I Know Of Men Who Believe In Themselves More Colossally Than Napoleon Or Caesar. I Know Where Flames The Fixed Star Of Certainty And Success. I Can Guide You To The Thrones Of The Super-men. The Men Who Really Believe In Themselves Are All In Lunatic Asylums.

My Brain And This World Don't Fit Each Other; And There's An End Of It.

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

There Are Many Books Which We Think We Have Read When We Have Not. There Are, At Least, Many That We Think We Remember When We Do Not. An Original Picture Was, Perhaps, Imprinted Upon The Brain, But It Has Changed With Our Own Changing Minds. We Only Remember Our Remembrance.

No Man Who Worships Education Has Got The Best Out Of Education... Without A Gentle Contempt For Education No Man's Education Is Complete.

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.

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.

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

Inspirational Life

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.

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

The One Created Thing Which We Cannot Look At Is The One Thing In The Light Of Which We Look At Everything.

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

Every Politician Is Emphatically A Promising Politician.

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.

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.

The Modern Habit Of Saying "this Is My Opinion, But I May Be Wrong" Is Entirely Irrational. If I Say That It May Be Wrong, I Say That Is Not My Opinion. The Modern Habit Of Saying "every Man Has A Different Philosophy; This Is My Philosophy And It Suits Me" – The Habit Of Saying This Is Mere Weak-mindedness. A Cosmic Philosophy Is Not Constructed To Fit A Man; A Cosmic Philosophy Is Constructed To Fit A Cosmos. A Man Can No More Possess A Private Religion Than He Can Possess A Private Sun And Moon.

As Long As The Vision Of Heaven Is Always Changing, The Vision Of Earth Will Be Exactly The Same. No Ideal Will Remain Long Enough To Be Realized, Or Even Partly Realized. The Modern Young Man Will Never Change His Environment; For He Will Always Change His Mind.

How Much Happier You Would Be, How Much More Of You There Would Be, If The Hammer Of A Higher God Could Smash Your Small Cosmos.

Man Does Not Live By Soap Alone; And Hygiene, Or Even Health, Is Not Much Good Unless You Can Take A Healthy View Of It Or, Better Still, Feel A Healthy Indifference To It.

Artistic Temperament Is The Disease That Afflicts Amateurs.

Architecture Approaches Nearer Than Any Other Art To Being Irrevocable Because It Is So Difficult To Get Rid Of.

If You Know What A Man's Doing, Get In Front Of Him; But If You Want To Guess What He's Doing Keep Behind Him.

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.

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

Democracy Means Government By The Uneducated, While Aristocracy Means Government By The Badly Educated.

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

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

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

There Is Nothing The Matter With Americans Except Their Ideals. The Real American Is All Right; It Is The Ideal American Who Is All Wrong.

I Wish We Could Sometimes Love The Characters In Real Life As We Love The Characters In Romances. There Are A Great Many Human Souls Whom We Should Accept More Kindly, And Even Appreciate More Clearly, If We Simply Thought Of Them As People In A Story.

There Are A Great Many Good People, And A Great Many Sane People Here This Afternoon. Unfortunately, By A Kind Of Coincidence, All The Good People Are Mad, And All The Sane People Are Wicked.

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

Modern Man Is Educated To Understand Foreign Languages And Misunderstand Foreigners.

I've Searched All The Parks In All The Cities - And Found No Statues Of Committees.

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

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

Tea, Although An Orientalis A Gentleman At Least;cocoa Is A Cad And Coward,cocoa Is A Vulgar Beast.

The Thing I Hate About An Argument Is That It Always Interrupts A Discussion.

It's The First Effect Of Not Believing In God That You Lose Your Common Sense.

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.

Materialists And Madmen Never Have Doubts.

Men In England Are Ruled, At This Minute By The Clock, By Brutes Who Refuse Them Bread, By Liars Who Refuse Them News, And By Fools Who Cannot Govern, And Therefore Wish To Enslave.

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

All Government Is An Ugly Necessity.

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.

A Change Of Opinions Is Almost Unknown In An Elderly Military Man.

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.

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.

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

Every One On This Earth Should Believe, Amid Whatever Madness Or Moral Failure, That His Life And Temperament Have Some Object On The Earth. Every One On The Earth Should Believe That He Has Something To Give To The World Which Cannot Otherwise Be Given.

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.

Feminists Are Those Who Cannot Stand Female Characteristics.

Characteristics

Truth Must Necessarily Be Stranger Than Fiction, For Fiction Is The Creation Of The Human Mind And Therefore Congenial To It.

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.

When Men Have Come To The Edge Of A Precipice, It Is The Lover Of Life Who Has The Spirit To Leap Backwards, And Only The Pessimist Who Continues To Believe In Progress.

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.

And We Were Angry And Poor And Happy, And Proud Of Seeing Our Names In Print.

I Regard Golf As An Expensive Way Of Playing Marbles.

There Are Two Ways Of Getting Home; And One Of Them Is To Stay There.

He Walked By Instinct Along One White Road, On Which Early Birds Hopped And Sang, And Found Himself Outside A Fenced Garden. There He Saw The Sister Of Gregory, The Girl With The Gold-red Hair, Cutting Lilac Before Breakfast, With The Great Unconscious Gravity Of A Girl.

A Yawn Is A Silent Shout.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Nothing Can Ever Overcome That One Enormous Sex (female) Superiority That Even The Male Child Is Born Closer To His Mother Than To His Father.

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.

The Disadvantage Of Men Not Knowing The Past Is That They Do Not Know The Present.

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.

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

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

Wherever There Is Animal Worship, There Is Human Sacrifice.

Whatever Else We May Say Of Our Own Age, For Good Or Evil, Nobody Is Likely To Call It An Age Of Reason.

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

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

But They None Of Them Create The Psychological Conditions In Which I First Saw, Or Desired To See, The Flower.

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.

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

The Full Value Of This Life Can Only Be Got By Fighting; The Violent Take It By Storm. And If We Have Accepted Everything We Have Missed Something - War. This Life Of Ours Is A Very Enjoyable Fight, But A Very Miserable Truce.

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

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

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

And They That Rule In England, In Stately Conclaves Met, Alas, Alas For England They Have No Graves As Yet.

'my Country, Right Or Wrong' Is A Thing No Patriot Would Ever Think Of Saying Except In A Desperate Case. It Is Like Saying 'my Mother, Drunk Or Sober.'

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

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

Man Knows That There Are In The Soul Tints More Bewildering, More Numberless, And More Nameless That The Colors Of An Autumn Forest....yet He Seriously Believes That These Things Can Every One Of Them , In All Their Tones And Semi-tones, In All Their Blends And Unions, Be Accurately Represented By An Arbitrary System Of Grunts And Squeals. He Believes That An Ordinary Civilized Stockbroker Can Really Produce Out Of His Own Inside Noises Which Denote All The Mysteries Of Memory And All The Agonies Of Desire.

Marriage Is A Duel To The Death Which No Man Of Honour Should Decline.

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

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

The Doctrine Of Human Equality Reposes On This: That There Is No Man Really Clever Who Has Not Found That He Is Stupid.

The Perplexity Of Life Arises From There Being Too Many Interesting Things In It For Us To Be Interested Properly In Any Of Them.

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.

Over-civilization And Barbarism Are Within An Inch Of Each Other. And A Mark Of Both Is The Power Of Medicine-men.

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

The Real Great Man Is The Man Who Makes Every Man Feel Great.

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.

A Society Is In Decay, Final Or Transitional, When Common Sense Really Becomes Uncommon.

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 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.

The Traveler Sees What He Sees, The Tourist Sees What He Has Come To See.

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

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

A Man Must Be Prepared Not Only To Be A Martyr, But To Be A Fool. It Is Absurd To Say That A Man Is Ready To Toil And Die For His Convictions If He Is Not Even Ready To Wear A Wreathe Around His Head For Them.

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

The Present Condition Of Fame Is Merely Fashion.

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

If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Badly. (on Not Perfectionism To Put Things Off) .

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

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