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We Do Not Want Joy And Anger To Neutralize Each Other And Produce A Surly Contentment; We Want A Fiercer Delight And A Fiercer Discontent. We Have To Feel The Universe At Once As An Ogre's Castle, To Be Stormed, And Yet As Our Own Cottage, To Which We Can Return To At Evening.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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We Do Not Want

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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We Do Not Want Joy And Anger To Neutralize Each Other And Produce A Surly Contentment; We Want A Fiercer Delight And A Fiercer Discontent. We Have To Feel The Universe At Once As An Ogre's Castle, To Be Stormed, And Yet As Our Own Cottage, To Which We Can Return To At Evening.

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Busy Editors Cannot Be Expected To Put On Their Posters, "mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," Or "mr. Jones, Of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They Cannot Announce The Happiness Of Mankind At All. They Cannot Describe All The Forks That Are Not Stolen, Or All The Marriages That Are Not Judiciously Dissolved. Hence The Complex Picture They Give Of Life Is Of Necessity Fallacious; They Can Only Represent What Is Unusual.

To Downgrade The Human Mind Is Bad Theology.

People Have Fallen Into A Foolish Habit Of Speaking Of Orthodoxy As Something Heavy, Humdrum, And Safe. There Never Was Anything So Perilous Or So Exciting As Orthodoxy. It Was Sanity: And To Be Sane Is More Dramatic Than To Be Mad.

There Is No Bigot Like The Atheist.

I Despise Birth-control First Because It Is ... An Entirely Meaningless Word; And Is Used So As To Curry Favour Even With Those Who Would First Recoil From Its Real Meaning. The Proceeding These Quack Doctors Recommend Does Not Control Any Birth.

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

A Naked Moon Stood In A Naked Sky.

Hope Means Hoping When Things Are Hopeless, Or It Is No Virtue At All. And Faith Means Believing The Incredible, Or It Is No Virtue At All.

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

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.

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

There Are No Wise Few. Every Aristocracy That Has Ever Existed Has Behaved, In All Essential Points, Exactly Like A Small Mob.

The Family Is The Test Of Freedom; Because The Family Is The Only Thing That The Free Man Makes For Himself And By Himself.

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.

At The Back Of Our Brains Is A Blaze Of Astonishment At Our Own Existence. The Object Of The Artistic And Spiritual Life Is To Dig For This Sunrise Of Wonder.

Chastity Does Not Mean Abstention From Sexual Wrong; It Means Something Flaming, Like Joan Of Arc.

Against A Dark Sky, All Flowers Look Like Fireworks.

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

Dogma Does Not Mean The Absence Of Thought, But The End Of Thought.

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

By Experts In Poverty I Do Not Mean Sociologists, But Poor Men.

I Did Try To Found A Little Heresy Of My Own; And When I Had Put The Last Touches To It, I Discovered That It Was Orthodoxy.

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.

The Hands That Had Made The Sun And Stars Were Too Small To Reach The Huge Heads Of The Cattle. Upon This Paradox, We Might Almost Say Upon This Jest, All The Literature Of Our Faith Is Founded.

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.

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

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.

But There Is Good News Yet To Hear And Fine Things To Be Seen Before We Go To Paradise By Way Of Kensal Green.

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

All Things Are From God; And Above All, Reason And Imagination And The Great Gifts Of The Mind. They Are Good In Themselves; And We Must Not Altogether Forget Their Origin Even In Their Perversion.

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.

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

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

Lost Everything

As Regards Moral Courage, Then, It Is Not So Much That The Public Schools Support It Feebly, As That They Suppress It Firmly.

To Say That A Man Is An Idealist Is Merely To Say That He Is A Man.

The Bible Tells Us To Love Our Neighbors, And Also To Love Our Enemies; Probably Because They Are Generally The Same People.

The Vulgar Man Is Always The Most Distinguished, For The Very Desire To Be Distinguished Is Vulgar.

There Is No Such Thing On Earth As An Uninteresting Subject; The Only Thing That Can Exist Is An Uninterested Person. Nothing Is More Keenly Required Than A Defence Of Bores. When Byron Divided Humanity Into The Bores And Bored, He Omitted To Notice That The Higher Qualities Exist Entirely In The Bores, The Lower Qualities In The Bored, Among Whom He Counted Himself. The Bore, By His Starry Enthusiasm, His Solemn Happiness, May, In Some Sense, Have Proved Himself Poetical. The Bored Has Certainly Proved Himself Prosaic.

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

The Church Is A House With A Hundred Gates: And No Two Men Enter At Exactly The Same Angle

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

The Humorous Look Of Children Is Perhaps The Most Endearing Of All The Bonds That Hold The Cosmos Together. Their Top-heavy Dignity Is More Touching Than Any Humility; Their Solemnity Gives Us More Hope For All Things Than A Thousand Carnivals Of Optimism; Their Large And Lustrous Eyes Seem To Hold All The Stars In Their Astonishment; Their Fascinating Absence Of Nose Seems To Give To Us The Most Perfect Hint Of The Humour That Awaits Us In The Kingdom Of Heaven.

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.

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.

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

At The Bottom Of All The Tributes Paid To Democracy Is The Little Man, Walking Into The Little Booth, With A Little Pencil, Making A Little Cross On A Little Bit Of Paper. . . .

The Most Poetical Thing In The World Is Not Being Sick.

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.

Modern Toleration Is Really A Tyranny. It Is A Tyranny Because It Is A Silence.

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

There Are Two Ways Of Dealing With Nonsense In This World. One Way Is To Put Nonsense In The Right Place; As When People Put Nonsense Into Nursery Rhymes. The Other Is To Put Nonsense In The Wrong Place; As When They Put It Into Educational Addresses, Psychological Criticisms, And Complaints Against Nursery Rhymes Or Other Normal Amusements Of Mankind.

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.

As An Explanation Of The World Materialism Has A Sort Of Insane Simplicity. It Has The Quality Of A Madman's Arguments; We Have At Once The Sense Of It Covering Everything And The Sense Of It Leaving Everything Out.

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

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

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

Most Americans Are Born Drunk, And Really Require A Little Wine Or Beer To Sober Them.

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

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.

Fallacies Do Not Cease To Be Fallacies Because They Become Fashions.

Only Poor Men Get Hanged.

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

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

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

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.

The Wise Old Fairy Tales Never Were So Silly As To Say That The Prince And The Princess Lived Peacefully Ever Afterwards. The Fairy Tales Said That The Prince And Princess Lived Happily Ever Afterwards; And So They Did. They Lived Happily, Although It Is Very Likely That From Time To Time They Threw The Furniture At Each Other.

Self-denial Is The Test And Definition Of Self-government.

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

I Still Think Sincere Pessimism The Unpardonable Sin.

It Is A Good Sign In A Nation When Things Are Done Badly. It Shows That All The People Are Doing Them. And It Is Bad Sign In A Nation When Such Things Are Done Very Well, For It Shows That Only A Few Experts And Eccentrics Are Doing Them, And That The Nation Is Merely Looking On.

It Is Assumed That The Skeptic Has No Bias; Whereas He Has A Very Obvious Bias In Favour Of Skepticism.

I Doubt If Anyone Of Any Tenderness Or Imagination Can See The Hand Of A Child And Not Be A Little Frightened Of It. It Is Awful To Think Of The Essential Human Energy Moving So Tiny A Thing; It Is Like Imagining That Human Nature Could Live In The Wing Of A Butterfly Or The Leaf Of A Tree. When We Look Upon Lives So Human And Yet So Small... We Feel The Same Kind Of Obligation To These Creatures That A Deity Might Feel...

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.

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

Were Meant To Be

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

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

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

A Great Classic Means A Man Whom One Can Praise Without Having Read.

Nothing Is Certain By Uncertainty.

The Old Restriction Meant That Only The Orthodox Were Allowed To Discuss Religion. Modern Liberty Means That Nobody Is Allowed To Discuss It. Good Taste, The Last And Vilest Of Human Superstitions, Has Succeeded In Silencing Us Where All The Rest Have Failed.

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

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.

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.

I May Not Practice What I Preach But God Forbid I Should Preach What I Practice

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

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.

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

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

There Is Also An Insulting Speech About 'one Grey Day Just Like Another'. You Might As Well Talk About One Green Tree Like Another.

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

If I Think The Universe Is Triangular, And You Think It Is Square, There Cannot Be Room For Two Universes. We May Argue Politely, We May Argue Humanely, We May Argue With Great Mutual Benefit: But, Obviously, We Must Argue.

To The Humble Man, And To The Humble Man Alone, The Sun Is Really A Sun; To The Humble Man, And To The Humble Man Alone, The Sea Is Really A Sea.

The New School Of Art And Thought Does Indeed Wear An Air Of Audacity, And Breaks Out Everywhere Into Blasphemies, As If It Required Any Courage To Say A Blasphemy. There Is Only One Thing That It Requires Real Courage To Say, And That Is A Truism.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Literary Men Are Being Employed To Praise A Big Business Man Personally, As Men Used To Praise A King. They Not Only Find Political Reasons For The Commercial Schemes That They Have Done For Some Time Past They Also Find Moral Defences For The Commercial Schemers... I Do Resent The Whole Age Of Patronage Being Revived Under Such Absurd Patrons; And All Poets Becoming Court Poets, Under Kings That Have Taken No Oath.

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

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

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

My Attitude Toward Progress Has Passed From Antagonism To Boredom. I Have Long Ceased To Argue With People Who Prefer Thursday To Wednesday Because It Is Thursday.

...a Figure Of Speech Can Often Get Into A Crack Too Small For A Definition.

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.

Even In A Minute Instance, It Is Best To Look First To The Main Tendencies Of Nature. A Particular Flower May Not Be Dead In Early Winter, But The Flowers Are Dying; A Particular Pebble May Never Be Wetted With The Tide, But The Tide Is Coming In. To The Scientific Eye All Human History Is A Series Of Collective Movements, Destructions Or Migrations, Like The Massacre Of Flies In Winter Or The Return Of Birds In Spring.

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'.

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

Do Not, I Beseech You Be Troubled By The Increase Of Forces Already In Dissolution. You Have Mistake The Hour Of The Night: It Is Already Morning.

Art Is The Signature Of Man.

Education Is Implication. It Is Not The Things You Say Which Children Respect; When You Say Things, They Very Commonly Laugh And Do The Opposite. It Is The Things You Assume Which Really Sink Into Them. It Is The Things You Forget Even To Teach That They Learn.

We Do Not Need A Censorship Of The Press. We Have A Censorship By The Press... It Is Not We Who Silence The Press. It Is The Press Who Silences Us.

It Is Not Bigotry To Be Certain We Are Right; But It Is Bigotry To Be Unable To Imagine How We Might Possibly Have Gone Wrong.

Art, Like Morality, Consists In Drawing The Line Somewhere.

To Do Mohammed Justice, His Main Attack Was Against The Idolatries Of Asia. Only He Thought, Just As The Arians Did And Just As The Unitarians Do, That He Could Attack Them Better With A Greater Approximation To Plain Theism. What Distinguishes His Heresy From Anything Like An Arian Or Albigensian Heresy Is That, As It Sprang Up On The Borders Of Christendom, It Could Spread Outwards To A Barbaric World.

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

Just At Present You Only See The Tree By The Light Of The Lamp. I Wonder When You Would Ever See The Lamp By The Light Of The Tree.

Progress Is Providence Without God. That Is, It Is A Theory That Everything Has Always Perpetually Gone Right By Accident. It Is A Sort Of Atheistic Optimism, Based On An Everlasting Coincidence Far More Miraculous Than A Miracle.

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

Not Only Is Suicide A Sin, It Is The Sin. It Is The Ultimate And Absolute Evil, The Refusal To Take An Interest In Existence; The Refusal To Take The Oath Of Loyalty To Life. The Man Who Kills A Man, Kills A Man. The Man Who Kills Himself, Kills All Men. As Far As He Is Concerned He Wipes Out The World.

There Is No Such Thing As Education. The Thing Is Merely A Loose Phrase For The Passing On To Others Of Whatever Truth Or Virtue We Happen To Have Ourselves. It Is Typical Of Our Time That The More Doubtful We Are About The Value Of Philosophy, The More Certain We Are About The Value Of Education. That Is To Say, The More Doubtful We Are About Whether We Have Any Truth, The More Certain We Are (apparently) That We Can Teach It To Our Children.

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

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.

Surprise Is The Secret Of Joy.

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

The Things We See Every Day Are The Things We Never See At All.

Any Man Who Preaches Real Love Is Bound To Beget Hate. It Is As True Of Democratic Fraternity As A Divine Love; Sham Love Ends In Compromise And Common Philosophy; But Real Love Has Always Ended In Bloodshed.

The Supreme Adventure Is Being Born. There We Do Walk Suddenly Into A Splendid And Startling Trap... When We Step Into The Family, By The Act Of Being Born, We Do Step Into A World Which Is Incalculable, Into A World Which Has Its Own Strange Laws, Into A World Which Could Do Without Us, Into A World We Have Not Made. In Other Words, When We Step Into The Family We Step Into A Fairy-tale.

It Is A Mathematical Fact That If A Line Be Not Perfectly Directed Towards A Point, It Will Actually Go Further Away From It As It Comes Nearer To It.

Facts By Themselves Can Often Feed The Flame Of Madness, Because Sanity Is A Spirit.

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

Science Boasts Of The Distance Of Its Stars; Of The Terrific Remoteness Of The Things Of Which It Has To Speak. But Poetry And Religion Always Insist Upon The Proximity, The Almost Menacing Closeness Of The Things With Which They Are Concerned. Always The Kingdom Of Heaven Is "at Hand."

Of Being Strong And Brave. The Strong Can Not Be Brave. Only The Weak Can Be Brave; And Yet Again, In Practice, Only Those Who Can Be Brave Can Be Trusted, In Time Of Doubt, To Be Strong.

There Are Two Kinds Of Peacemakers In The Modern World; And They Are Both, Though In Various Ways, A Nuisance. The First Peacemaker Is The Man Who Goes About Saying That He Agrees With Everybody. He Confuses Everybody. The Second Peacemaker Is The Man Who Goes About Saying That Everybody Agrees With Him. He Enrages Everybody. Between The Two Of Them They Produce A Hundred Times More Disputes And Distractions Than We Poor Pugnacious People Would Ever Have Thought Of In Our Lives.

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

Once I Planned To Write A Book Of Poems Entirely About The Things In My Pocket. But I Found It Would Be Too Long; And The Age Of The Great Epics Is Past.

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

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

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.

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.

We Call A Man A Bigot Or A Slave Of Dogma Because He Is A Thinker Who Has Thought Thoroughly And To A Definite End.

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

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

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.

It Is The Root Of All Religion That A Man Knows That He Is Nothing In Order To Thank God That He Is Something.

Women Prefer To Talk In Twos, While Men Prefer To Talk In Threes.

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.

And It Is Always The Humble Man Who Talks Too Much; The Proud Man Watches Himself Too Closely.

The Philosophy Of This World May Be Founded On Facts, But Its Business Is Run On Spiritual Impressions And Atmospheres.

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

Why Should Anything Go Right; Even Observation And Deduction? Why Should Not Good Logic Be As Misleading As Bad Logic? They Are Both Movements In The Brain Of A Bewildered Ape?

We All Feel The Riddle Of The Earth Without Anyone To Point It Out. The Mystery Of Life Is The Plainest Part Of It. The Clouds And Curtains Of Darkness, The Confounding Vapors, These Are The Daily Weather Of This World.

He Has Come To The Most Dreadful Conclusion A Literary Man Can Come To, The Conclusion That The Ordinary View Is The Right One. It Is Only The Last And Wildest Kind Of Courage That Can Stand On A Tower Before Ten Thousand People And Tell Them That Twice Two Is Four.

The Trouble With Christianity Is, Not That Its Failed, But That It's Never Been Tried . . . Not That It Can't Remake The World, But That It's Difficult.

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.

Hope Means Expectancy When Things Are Otherwise Hopeless.

Always Be Comic In A Tragedy. What The Deuce Else Can You Do?

Modern Intelligence Won't Accept Anything On Authority. But It Will Accept Anything Without Authority.

A Yawn Is A Silent Shout.

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

Science In The Modern World Has Many Uses; Its Chief Use, However, Is To Provide Long Words To Cover The Errors Of The Rich.

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

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.

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.

I Am A Bad Reporter Because Everything Seems To Me Worth Reporting; And A Bad Reviewer Because Every Sentence In Every Book Suggests A Separate Essay.

Theology Is Simply That Part Of Religion That Requires Brains.

If The Apple Hit Newton’s Nose, Newton’s Nose Hit The Apple.

I Think The Oddest Thing About The Advanced People Is That, While They Are Always Talking About Things As Problems, They Have Hardly Any Notion Of What A Real Problem Is.

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

It Is Not Greedy To Enjoy A Good Dinner, Any More Than It Is To Enjoy A Good Concert. But I Do Think There Is Something Greedy About Trying To Enjoy The Dinner And The Concert At The Same Time.

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

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

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

One May Understand The Cosmos, But Never The Ego; The Self Is More Distant Than Any Star.

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

Civilisation Is Not To Be Judged By The Rapidity Of Communication, But By The Value Of What Is Communicated.

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

The Grinding Power Of The Plain Words Of The Gospel Story Is Like The Power Of Mill-stones, And Those Who Can Read Them Simply Enough Will Feel As If Rocks Had Been Rolled Upon Them.

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.

There Nearly Always Is A Method In Madness.

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.

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

The Declaration Of Independence Dogmatically Bases All Rights On The Fact That God Created All Men Equal; And It Is Right; For If They Were Not Created Equal, They Were Certainly Evolved Unequal. There Is No Basis For Democracy Except In A Dogma About The Divine Origin Of Man.

I Am More Than A Devil; I Am A Man. I Can Do The One Thing Which Satan Himself Cannot Do— I Can Die.

Science Must Not Impose Any Philosophy, Any More Than The Telephone Must Tell Us What To Say.

Posting A Letter And Getting Married [sic] Are Among The Few Things Left That Are Entirely Romantic; For To Be Entirely Romantic, A Thing Must Be Irrevocable

The Mass Is Not Only About God Becoming Man, It Is About Man Becoming More Himself.

It Is Really Not So Repulsive To See The Poor Asking For Money As To See The Rich Asking For More Money. And Advertisement Is The Rich Asking For More Money.

It Is The Test Of A Good Religion Whether You Can Joke About It.

Childlike Faith

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

A Fad Or Heresy Is The Exaltation Of Something Which Even If True, Is Secondary Or Temporary In Its Nature Against Those Things Which Are Essential And Eternal, Those Things Which Always Prove Themselves True In The Long Run. In Short, It Is The Setting Up Of The Mood Against The Mind.

When We Really Worship Anything, We Love Not Only Its Clearness But Its Obscurity. We Exult In Its Very Invisibility.

I Came To The Conclusion That The Optimist Thought Everything Good Except The Pessimist, And That The Pessimist Thought Everything Bad, Except Himself.

Man Is Not Merely An Evolution But Rather A Revolution.

The Simple Sense Of Wonder At The Shapes Of Things, And At Their Exuberant Independence Of Our Intellectual Standards And Our Trivial Definitions, Is The Basis Of Spirituality.

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

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

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

Religious Unity Can Look Like A Carnival And Religious Liberty Can Look Like A Funeral.

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

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