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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.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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We Are To Regard

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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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.

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

We Are Justified In Enforcing Good Morals, For They Belong To All Mankind; But We Are Not Justified In Enforcing Good Manners, For Good Manners Always Mean Our Own Manners.

Our Society Is So Abnormal That The Normal Man Never Dreams Of Having The Normal Occupation Of Looking After His Own Property. When He Chooses A Trade, He Chooses One Of The Ten Thousand Trades That Involve Looking After Other People's Property.

The Position We Have Now Reached Is This: Starting From The State, We Try To Remedy The Failures Of All The Families, All The Nurseries, All The Schools, All The Workshops, All The Secondary Institutions That Once Had Some Authority Of Their Own. Everything Is Ultimately Brought Into The Law Courts. We Are Trying To Stop The Leak At The Other End.

We Make Our Friends; We Make Our Enemies; But God Makes Our Next Door Neighbour.

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

Life Is Indeed Terribly Complicated—to A Man Who Has Lost His Principles.

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

Mr. Blatchford Says That There Was Not A Fall But A Gradual Rise. But The Very Word "rise" Implies That You Know Toward What You Are Rising. Unless There Is A Standard You Cannot Tell Whether You Are Rising Or Falling. But The Main Point Is That The Fall Like Every Other Large Path Of Christianity Is Embodied In The Common Language Talked On The Top Of An Omnibus. Anybody Might Say, "very Few Men Are Really Manly." Nobody Would Say, "very Few Whales Are Really Whaley."

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

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

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

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

It Is Very Foolish Of A Man To Be Frightened Of A Skeleton, For Nature Has Put An Insurmountable Obstacle Against Running Away From It.

No Man Can Be Merry Unless He Is Serious.

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

Americans Are A Very Backward People, With All The Real Virtues Of A Backward People; The Patriarchal Simplicity And Human Dignity Of A Democracy, And A Respect For Labor Uncorrupted By Cynicism.

Truth Is Sacred; And If You Tell The Truth Too Often Nobody Will Believe It.

Somehow One Must Love The World Without Being Worldly.

I Had Always Felt Life First As A Story: And If There Is A Story There Is A Story-teller

For When We Cease To Worship God, We Do Not Worship Nothing, We Worship Anything.

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

Happy Is He Who Still Loves Something He Loved In The Nursery: He Has Not Been Broken In Two By Time; He Is Not Two Men, But One, And He Has Saved Not Only His Soul But His Life.

Gratitude Is Happiness Doubled By Wonder.

If I Did Not Believe In God, I Should Still Want My Doctor, My Lawyer And My Banker To Do So.

He May Be Mad, But There's Method In His Madness. There Nearly Always Is Method In Madness. It's What Drives Men Mad, Being Methodical.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Classes That Wash Most Are Those That Work Least.

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.

People Generally Quarrel Because They Cannot Argue.

The Center Of Every Man's Existence Is A Dream. Death, Disease, Insanity, Are Merely Material Accidents, Like A Toothache Or A Twisted Ankle. That These Brutal Forces Always Besiege And Often Capture The Citadel Does Not Prove That They Are The Citadel.

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

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

If You'd Take Your Head Home And Boil It For A Turnip It Might Be Useful. I Can't Say. But It Might.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The Whole Modern World Has Divided Itself Into Conservatives And Progressives. The Business Of Progressives Is To Go On Making Mistakes. The Business Of Conservatives Is To Prevent Mistakes From Being Corrected.

Spring Never Is Spring Unless It Comes Too Soon.

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.

He Had Found The Thing Which The Modern People Call Impressionism, Which Is Another Name For That Final Scepticism Which Can Find No Floor To The Universe.

The Truth Is That It Is Our Attitude Towards Children That Is Right, And Our Attitude Towards Grown-up People That Is Wrong. Our Attitude Towards Our Equals In Age Consists In A Servile Solemnity, Overlying A Considerable Degree Of Indifference Or Disdain. Our Attitude Towards Children Consists In A Condescending Indulgence, Overlying An Unfathomable Respect.

The Way To Love Anything Is To Realize That It May Be Lost.

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

I Represent The Jolly Mass Of Mankind. I Am The Happy And Reckless Christian.

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.

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.

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

The Average Businessman Began To Be Agnostic, Not So Much Because He Did Not Know Where He Was, As Because He Wanted To Forget. Many Of The Rich Took To Scepticism Exactly As The Poor Took To Drink; Because It Was A Way Out.

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

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

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.

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

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

The Only Object Of Liberty Is Life.

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

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

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

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

Morality Did Not Begin By One Man Saying To Another, "i Will Not Hit You If You Do Not Hit Me"; There Is No Trace Of Such A Transaction. There Is A Trace Of Both Men Having Said, "we Must Not Hit Each Other In The Holy Place.

A Woman Uses Her Intelligence To Find Reasons To Support Her Intuition.

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.

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

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

Realism Is Simply Romanticism That Has Lost Its Reason...that Is Its Reason For Existing.

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

Could Have Been

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Religious And Philosophical Beliefs Are, Indeed, As Dangerous As Fire, And Nothing Can Take From Them That Beauty Of Danger. But There Is Only One Way Of Really Guarding Ourselves Against The Excessive Danger Of Them, And That Is To Be Steeped In Philosophy And Soaked In Religion.

Modern Man Is Staggering And Losing His Balance Because He Is Being Pelted With Little Pieces Of Alleged Fact Which Are Native To The Newspapers; And, If They Turn Out Not To Be Facts, That Is Still More Native To Newspapers.

All Architecture Is Great Architecture After Sunset; Perhaps Architecture Is Really A Nocturnal Art, Like The Art Of Fireworks.

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

Do Not Be So Open-minded That Your Brains Fall Out.

There Again," Said Syme Irritably, "what Is There Poetical About Being In Revolt? You Might As Well Say That It Is Poetical To Be Sea-sick. Being Sick Is A Revolt. Both Being Sick And Being Rebellious May Be The Wholesome Thing On Certain Desperate Occasions; But I'm Hanged If I Can See Why They Are Poetical...it Is Things Going Right," He Cried, "that Is Poetical! Our Digestions, For Instance, Going Sacredly And Silently Right, That Is The Foundation Of All Poetry...the Most Poetical Thing In The World Is Not Being Sick.

One Can Sometimes Do Good By Being The Right Person In The Wrong Place.

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.

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

Though The Academic Authorities Are Actually Proud Of Conducting Everything By Means Of Examinations, They Seldom Indulge In What Religious People Used To Descibe As Self-examination. The Consequence Is That The Modern State Has Educated Its Citizens In A Series Of Ephemeral Fads.

Mankind Is Not A Tribe Of Animals To Which We Owe Compassion. Mankind Is A Club To Which We Owe Our Subscription.

Man Is More Himself, Man Is More Manlike, When Joy Is The Fundamental Thing In Him, And Grief The Superficial. Melancholy Should Be An Innocent Interlude, A Tender And Fugitive Frame Of Mind; Praise Should Be The Permanent Pulsation Of The Soul.

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.

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

Fairy Tales Are More Than True.

Family Is The Theatre Of The Spiritual Drama, The Place Where Things Happen, Especially The Things That Matter.

There Is No Logical Connection Between Flying And Laying Eggs.

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.

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

The Diseased Pride [of Artistic Individualists] Was Not Even Conscious Of A Public Interest, And Would Have Found All Political Terms Utterly Tasteless And Insignificant. It Was No Longer A Question Of One Man One Vote, But Of One Man One Universe.

Puritanism Was An Honourable Mood; It Was A Noble Fad. In Other Words, It Was A Highly Creditable Mistake.

Every True Artist Does Feel, Consciously Or Unconsciously, That He Is Touching Transcendental Truths; That His Images Are Shadows Of Things Seen Through The Veil. In Other Words, The Natural Mystic Does Know That There Is Something There, Something Behind The Clouds Or Within The Trees; But He Believes That The Pursuit Of Beauty Is The Way To Find It; That Imagination Is A Sort Of Incantation That Can Call It Up.

Against A Dark Sky All Flowers Look Like Fireworks. There Is Something Strange About Them, At Once Vivid And Secret, Like Flowers Traced In Fire In The Phantasmal Garden Of A Witch.

[no Society Can Survive The Socialist] Fallacy That There Is An Absolutely Unlimited Number Of Inspired Officials And An Absolutely Unlimited Amount Of Money To Pay Them.

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

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

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

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

The Most Incredible Thing About Miracles Is That They Happen.

The Power Which Makes A Man Able To Entertain A Good Impulse Is The Same As That Which Enables Him To Make A Good Gun; It Is Imagination.

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.

Nobody Understands The Nature Of The Church, Or The Ringing Note Of The Creed Descending From Antiquity, Who Does Not Realize That The Whole World Once Very Nearly Died Of Broadmindedness And The Brotherhood Of All Religions.

Art Consists Of Limitation. The Most Beautiful Part Of Every Picture Is The Frame.

O God Of Earth And Altar, Bow Down And Hear Our Cry, Our Earthly Rulers Falter, Our People Drift And Die; The Walls Of Gold Entomb Us, The Swords Of Scorn Divide, Take Not Thy Thunder From Us, But Take Away Our Pride.

The Most Valuable Book We Can Read, About Countries We Have Visited, Is That Which Recalls To Us Something That We Did Notice, But Did Not Notice That We Noticed.

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

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

A Man Cannot Have The Energy To Produce Good Art Without Having The Energy To Wish To Pass Beyond It.

In A World Flagrant With The Failures Of Civilization, What Is There Particularly Immortal About Our Own?

Surprise Is The Secret Of Joy.

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.

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

It Is Cold Anarchy To Say That All Men Are To Meddle In All Men'smarriages. It Is Cold Anarchy To Say That Any Doctor May Seize Andsegregate Anyone He Likes. But It Is Not Anarchy To Say That A Fewgreat Hygienists Might Enclose Or Limit The Life Of All Citizens,as Nurses Do With A Family Of Children. It Is Not Anarchy, It Istyranny; But Tyranny Is A Workable Thing.

Plato Was Right, But Not Quite Right.

When Men Cease To Believe In God, They Will Believe In Anything

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

According To Most Philosophers, God In Making The World Enslaved It. According To Christianity, In Making It, He Set It Free. God Had Written, Not So Much A Poem, But Rather A Play; A Play He Had Planned As Perfect, But Which Had Necessarily Been Left To Human Actors And Stage-managers, Who Had Since Made A Great Mess Of It.

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

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.

Art Is The Signature Of Man.

Romance Is The Combination Of Something That Is Strange With Something That Is Secure.

The Universe Is The Most Extraordinary Masterpiece Ever Constructed By Nobody.

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

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

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

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

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.

The Original Quality In Any Man Of Imagination Is Imagery.

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.

Comradeship Is Obvious And Universal And Open; But It Is Only One Kind Of Affection; It Has Characteristics That Would Destroy Any Other Kind. Anyone Who Has Known True Comradeship In A Club Or In A Regiment, Knows That It Is Impersonal.

Think Of All Those Ages Through Which Men Have Had The Courage To Die, And Then Remember That We Have Actually Fallen To Talking About Having The Courage To Live.

It Was Not The House That Grew Dull, But I That Grew Dull In It. My Wife Was Better Than All Women, And Yet I Could Not Feel It.

Christendom Has Had A Series Of Revolutions And In Each One Of Them Christianity Has Died. Christianity Has Died Many Times And Risen Again; For It Had A God Who Knew The Way Out Of The Grave.

All But The Hard Hearted Man Must Be Torn With Pity For This Pathetic Dilemma Of The Rich Man, Who Has To Keep The Poor Man Just Stout Enough To Do The Work And Just Thin Enough To Have To Do It.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Inspirational Life

Properly Speaking, Of Course, There Is No Such Thing As A Return To Nature, Because There Is No Such Thing As A Departure From It. The Phrase Reminds One Of The Slightly Intoxicated Gentleman Who Gets Up In His Own Dining Room And Declares Firmly That He Must Be Getting Home.

We Have Not Made Cricket And Football [soccer] Professional Because Of Any Astonishing Avarice Or New Vulgarity. We Have Made Them Professional Because We Would Have Them Perfect. We Have Dedicated Men To Them As To Some God Of Inhuman Excellence. We Care More For Football Than For The Fun Of Playing Football.

Whatever Else May Be Said Of Man, This One Thing Is Clear: He Is Not What He Is Capable Of Being.

A Man Does Not Know What He Is Saying Until He Knows What He Is Not Saying.

In The Struggle For Existence, It Is Only On Those Who Hang On For Ten Minutes After All Is Hopeless, That Hope Begins To Dawn.

A Man Will Not Roll In The Snow For A Stream Of Tendency By Which All Things Fulfill The Law Of Their Being. He Will Not Go Without Food In The Name Of Something, Not Ourselves, That Makes For Righteousness. He Will Do Things Like This, Or Pretty Nearly Like This, Under Quite A Different Impulse. He Will Do These Things When He Is In Love.

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

Playing As Children Means Playing Is The Most Serious Thing In The World.

We Talk Of Wild Animals, But The Wildest Animal Is Man.

Angels Can Fly Because They Take Themselves Lightly. Never Forget That The Devil Fell By Force Of Gravity. He Who Has The Faith Has The Fun.

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

The Only Thing That Has Kept The Race Of Men From The Mad Extremes Of The Convent And The Pirate-galley, The Night-club And The Lethal Chamber, Has Been Mysticism - The Belief That Logic Is Misleading, And That Things Are Not What They Seem.

The Noble Temptation To See Too Much In Everything.

White... Is Not A Mere Absence Of Colour; It Is A Shining And Affirmative Thing, As Fierce As Red, As Definite As Black... God Paints In Many Colours; But He Never Paints So Gorgeously, I Had Almost Said So Gaudily, As When He Paints In White.

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

The Modern World Has Far Too Little Understanding Of The Art Of Keeping Young. Its Notion Of Progress Has Been To Pile One Thing On Top Of Another, Without Caring If Each Thing Was Crushed In Turn. People Forgot That The Human Soul Can Enjoy A Thing Most When There Is Time To Think About It And Be Thankful For It. And By Crowding Things Together They Lost The Sense Of Surprise; And Surprise Is The Secret Of Joy.

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

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

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

The Truth Is That There Are No Things For Which Men Will Make Such Herculean Efforts As The Things Of Which They Know They Are Unworthy.

Gratitude, Being Nearly The Greatest Of Human Duties, Is Also Nearly The Most Difficult.

There Is, Therefore, About All Complete Conviction A Kind Of Huge Helplessness.

He Said He Didn't Very Well Understand How George Was Going To Sleep Any More Than He Did Now, Seeing That There Were Only Twenty-four Hours In Each Day.

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

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

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.

La Mejor Prueba De La Cultura Y La Liberalidad De Un Hombre Es Su Actitud Ante Las Cosas Que Nunca Sucedieron.

A Turkey Is More Occult And Awful Than All The Angels And Archangels. In So Far As God Has Partly Revealed To Us An Angelic World, He Has Partly Told Us What An Angel Means. But God Has Never Told Us What A Turkey Means. And If You Go And Stare At A Live Turkey For An Hour Or Two, You Will Find By The End Of It That The Enigma Has Rather Increased Than Diminished.

Most Americans Are Born Drunk, And Really Require A Little Wine Or Beer To Sober Them. They Have A Sort Of Permanent Intoxication From Within, A Sort Of Invisible Champagne. Americans Do Not Need To Drink To Inspire Them To Do Anything, Though They Do Sometimes, I Think, Need A Little For The Deeper And More Delicate Purpose Of Teaching Them How To Do Nothing.

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.

Odd, Isn't It, That A Thief And A Vagabond Should Repent, When So Many Who Are Rich And Secure Remain Hard And Frivolous, And Without Fruit For God Or Man?

Half A Truth Is Better Than No Politics.

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

Now There Is Any Amount Of This Nonsense Cropping Up Among American Cranks. Anybody May Propose To Establish Coercive Eugenics; Or Enforce Psychoanalysis That Is, Enforce Confession Without Absolution.

He Wondered Why The Pelican Was The Symbol Of Charity, Except It Was That It Wanted A Good Deal Of Charity To Admire A Pelican.

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

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.

Precisely Because Our Political Speeches Are Meant To Be Reported, They Are Not Worth Reporting. Precisely Because They Are Carefully Designed To Be Read, Nobody Reads Them.

Political Speeches

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

Listening And Hearing

It Isn't That They Can't See The Solution. It's That They Can't See The Problem. They Can't See The Problem If They Are Looking In The Wrong Place. They Can't See The Problem If They Have Blinders On - For 'none Are So Blind As Those That Will Not See'.

What Affects Men Sharply About A Foreign Nation Is Not So Much Finding Or Not Finding Familiar Things; It Is Rather Not Finding Them In The Familiar Place.

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

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.

One Can Hardly Think Too Little Of One's Self. One Can Hardly Think Too Much Of One's Soul.

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

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

They Have Invented A Phrase, A Phrase That Is A Black And White Contradiction In Two Words - 'free-love' - As If A Lover Ever Had Been, Or Ever Could Be, Free.

Black And White

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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