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When "everyone Knows" That Something Is So, It Is Always More Interesting And Often Illuminating To Assumeexactly The Opposite, And To See Where That Leads.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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When "everyone Knows" That

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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When "everyone Knows" That Something Is So, It Is Always More Interesting And Often Illuminating To Assumeexactly The Opposite, And To See Where That Leads.

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More From Gilbert K. Chesterton

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.

Freethinkers Are Occasionally Thoughtful, Though Never Free.

Classic Literature Is Still Something That Hangs In The Air Like A Song.

It Is The Main Earthly Business Of A Human Being To Make His Home, And The Immediate Surroundings Of His Home, As Symbolic And Significant To His Own Imagination As He Can.

Progress Is The Mother Of Problems.

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.

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.

I Like The Americans For A Great Many Reasons. I Like Them Because Even The Modern Thing Called Industrialism Has Not Entirely Destroyed In Them The Very Ancient Thing Called Democracy. I Like Them Because They Have A Respect For Work Which Really Curbs The Human Tendency To Snobbishness.

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

Americans Have A Taste For…rocking-chairs. A Flippant Critic Might Suggest That They Select Rocking-chairs So That, Even When They Are Sitting Down, They Need Not Be Sitting Still. Something Of This Restlessness In The Race May Really Be Involved In The Matter; But I Think The Deeper Significance Of The Rocking-chair May Still Be Found In The Deeper Symbolism Of The Rocking-horse. I Think There Is Behind All This Fresh And Facile Use Of Wood A Certain Spirit That Is Childish In The Good Sense Of The Word; Something That Is Innocent, And Easily Pleased.

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

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.

Ideas Are Dangerous, But The Man To Whom They Are Least Dangerous Is The Man Of Ideas. He Is Acquainted With Ideas, And Moves Among Them Like A Lion-tamer. Ideas Are Dangerous, But The Man To Whom They Are Most Dangerous Is The Man Of No Ideas. The Man Of No Ideas Will Find The First Idea Fly To His Head Like Wine To The Head Of A Teetotaller.

No Man Can Break Any Of The Ten Commandments. He Can Only Break Himself Against Them.

The Simplification Of Anything Is Always Sensational.

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.

The Academic Mind Reflects Infinity, And Is Full Of Light By The Simple Process Of Being Shallow And Standing Still.

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

Hope Means Expectancy When Things Are Otherwise Hopeless.

A Thing May Be Too Sad To Be Believed Or Too Wicked To Be Believed Or Too Good To Be Believed; But It Cannot Be Too Absurd To Be Believed In This Planet Of Frogs And Elephants, Of Crocodiles And Cuttle-fish.

Coincidences Are Spiritual Puns.

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

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.

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

Materialists And Madmen Never Have Doubts.

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.

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.

Such Professions As The Soldier And The Lawyer ... Give Ample Opportunity For Crimes But Not Much For Mere Illusions. ... If You Have Lost A Battle You Cannot Believe You Have Won It; If Your Client Is Hanged You Cannot Pretend That You Have Gotten Him Off.

Christianity Got Over The Difficulty Of Combining Furious Opposites, By Keeping Them Both, And Keeping Them Both Furious.

The True Object Of Human Life Is Play.

Certain New Theologians Dispute Original Sin, Which Is The Only Part Of Christian Theology Which Can Really Be Proved.

People Accuse Journalism Of Being Too Personal; But To Me It Has Always Seemed Far Too Impersonal. It Is Charged With Tearing Away The Veils From Private Life; But It Seems To Me To Be Always Dropping Diaphanous But Blinding Veils Between Men And Men. The Yellow Press Is Abused For Exposing Facts Which Are Private; I Wish The Yellow Press Did Anything So Valuable. It Is Exactly The Decisive Individual Touches That It Never Gives; And A Proof Of This Is That After One Has Met A Man A Million Times In The Newspapers It Is Always A Complete Shock And Reversal To Meet Him In Real Life.

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

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.

We Are Learning To Do A Great Many Clever Things. The Next Great Task Will Be To Learn Not To Do Them.

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

Aristocracy Is An Atmosphere; It Is Sometimes A Healthy Atmosphere; But It Is Very Hard To Say When It Becomes An Unhealthy Atmosphere. You Can Prove That A Man Is Not The Son Of A King, Or That He Is Not The Delegate Of A Definite Number Of People. But You Cannot Prove That A Man Is Not A Gentleman.

Moral Issues Are Always Terribly Complex For Someone Without Principles.

Whatever The Word "great" Means, Dickens Was What It Means.

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

Aesthetes Never Do Anything But What They Are Told.

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.

Nothing Is Certain By Uncertainty.

[paradox Is] Truth Standing On Its Head To Gain Attention.

All Democrats Object To Men Being Disqualified By The Accident Of Birth; Tradition Objects To Their Being Disqualified By The Accident Of Death.

...but Out Of The Desert, From The Dry Places And The Dreadful Suns, Come The Cruel Children Of The Lonely God; The Real Unitarians Who With Scimitar In Hand Have Laid Waste The World. For It Is Not Well For God To Be Alone.

The Human Race, To Which So Many Of My Readers Belong, Has Been Playing At Children's Games From The Beginning, And Will Probably Do It Till The End, Which Is A Nuisance For The Few People Who Grow Up.

All Government Is An Ugly Necessity.

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

Presence Of Mind

All Slang Is Metaphor, And All Metaphor Is Poetry.

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

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

If, Therefore, Nonsense Is Really To Be The Literature Of The Future, It Must Have Its Own Version Of The Cosmos To Offer; The World Must Not Only Be Tragic, Romantic, And Religious, It Must Be Nonsensical Also.

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

A Great Deal Of Contemporary Criticism Reads To Me Like A Man Saying, 'of Course I Do Not Like Green Cheese. I Am Very Fond Of Brown Sherry.

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.

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

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

When People Impute Special Vices To The Christian Church, They Seem Entirely To Forget That The World (which Is The Only Other Thing There Is) Has These Vices Much More. The Church Has Been Cruel; But The World Has Been Much More Cruel. The Church Has Plotted; But The World Has Plotted Much More. The Church Has Been Superstitious; But It Has Never Been So Superstitious As The World Is When Left To Itself.

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 State Of Mind; Praise Should Be The Permanent Pulsation Of The Soul. Pessimism Is At Best An Emotional Half-holiday; Joy Is The Uproarious Labor By Which All Things Live? Christianity Satisfies Suddenly And Perfectly Man's Ancestral Instinct For Being The Right Way Up; Satisfies It Supremely In This, That By Its Creed Joy Becomes Something Gigantic, And Sadness Something Special And Small.

You Could Compile The Worst Book In The World Entirely Out Of Selected Passages From The Best Writers In The World.

Marriage Halves Our Griefs, Doubles Our Joys, And Quadruples Our Expenses

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

A Sober Man May Become A Drunkard Through Being A Coward. A Brave Man May Become A Coward Through Being A Drunkard.

The World Will Never Starve For Want Of Wonders; But Only For Want Of Wonder.

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

Life Exists For The Love Of Music Or Beautiful Things.

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

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

Christianity, Whatever Else It Is, Is An Explosion. Unless It Is Sensational There Is Simply No Sense In It. Unless The Gospel Sounds Like A Gun Going Off It Has Not Been Uttered At All.

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.

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

[marxism Will] In A Generation Or So [go] Into The Limbo Of Most Heresies, But Meanwhile It Will Have Poisoned The Russian Revolution.

We Do Not Need To Get Good Laws To Restrain Bad People. We Need To Get Good People To Restrain Us From Bad Laws.

If There Is One Thing Worse Than The Modern Weakening Of Major Morals, It Is The Modern Strengthening Of Minor Morals.

Theology Is Only Thought Applied To Religion.

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

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

Theology Is Simply That Part Of Religion That Requires Brains.

There Is Something To Be Said For Every Error; But, Whatever May Be Said For It, The Most Important Thing To Be Said About It Is That It Is Erroneous.

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

Funny Friendship

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

Anyone Who Is Not An Anarchist Agrees With Having A Policeman At The Corner Of The Street; But The Danger At Present Is That Of Finding The Policeman Half-way Down The Chimney Or Even Under The Bed.

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

The Materialist Is Sure That History Has Been Simply And Solely A Chain Of Causation, Just As The [lunatic] Is Quite Sure That He Is Simply And Solely A Chicken. Materialists And Madmen Never Have Doubts.

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.

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

"the Universe Repeats Itself, With The Possible Exception Of History." Of All Earthly Studies History Is The Only One That Does Not Repeat Itself. ... Astronomy Repeats Itself; Botany Repeats Itself; Trigonometry Repeats Itself; Mechanics Repeats Itself; Compound Long Division Repeats Itself. Every Sum If Worked Out In The Same Way At Any Time Will Bring Out The Same Answer. ... A Great Many Moderns Say That History Is A Science; If So It Occupies A Solitary And Splendid Elevation Among The Sciences; It Is The Only Science The Conclusions Of Which Are Always Wrong.

The Modern City Is Ugly Not Because It Is A City But Because It Is Not Enough Of A City, Because It Is A Jungle, Because It Is Confused And Anarchic, And Surging With Selfish And Materialistic Energies.

The Most Incredible Thing About Miracles Is That They Happen.

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

I Would Not Say That Old Men Grow Wise, For Men Never Grow Wise; And Many Old Men Retain A Very Attractive Childishness And Cheerful Innocence. Elderly People Are Often Much More Romantic Than Younger People, And Sometimes Even More Adventurous, Having Begun To Realize How Many Things They Do Not Know.

If You Do Not Understand A Man You Cannot Crush Him. And If You Do Understand Him, Very Probably You Will Not.

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

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.

The Party System Was Founded On One National Notion Of Fair Play. It Was The Notion That Folly And Futility Should Be Fairly Divided Between Both Sides.

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

Humility Is The Luxurious Art Of Reducing Ourselves To A Point, Not To A Small Thing Or A Large One, But To A Thing With No Size At All, So That To It All The Cosmic Things Are What They Really Are - Of Immeasurable Stature.

There Should Be A Burnished Tablet Let Into The Ground On The Spot Where Some Courageous Man First Ate Stilton Cheese, And Survived.

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.

I've Been To Every Park In Every City And Not Seen A Statue To A Committee.

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

Of All Modern Notions, The Worst Is This: That Domesticity Is Dull. Inside The Home, They Say, Is Dead Decorum And Routine; Outside Is Adventure And Variety. But The Truth Is That The Home Is The Only Place Of Liberty, The Only Spot On Earth Where A Man Can Alter Arrangements Suddenly, Make An Experiment Or Indulge In A Whim. The Home Is Not The One Tame Place In A World Of Adventure; It Is The One Wild Place In A World Of Rules And Set Tasks.

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.

A Man Imagines A Happy Marriage As A Marriage Of Love; Even If He Makes Fun Of Marriages That Are Without Love, Or Feels Sorry For Lovers Who Are Without Marriage.

Because A Girl Should Have Long Hair, She Should Have Clean Hair; Because She Should Have Clean Hair, She Should Not Have An Unclean Home; Because She Should Not Have An Unclean Home, She Should Have A Free And Leisured Mother; Because She Should Have A Free Mother, She Should Not Have An Usurious Landlord; Because There Should Not Be A Usurious Landlord, There Should Be A Redistribution Of Property; Because There Should Be A Redistribution Of Property, There Shall Be A Revolution.

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

Were Meant To Be

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.

Comradeship Is Quite A Different Thing From Friendship. . .

Different Things

It Is Because Artists Do Not Practise, Patrons Do Not Patronize, Crowds Do Not Assemble To Reverently Worship The Great Work Of Doing Nothing, That The World Has Lost Its Philosophy And Even Failed To Invent A New Religion.

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.

When We Look Upon Lives So Human And Yet So Small, We Feel As If We Ourselves Were Enlarged To An Embarrassing Bigness Of Stature. We Feel The Same Kind Of Obligation To These Creatures That A Deity Might Feel If He Had Created Something That He Could Not Understand.

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.

That All War Is Physically Frightful Is Obvious; But If That Were A Moral Verdict, There Would Be No Difference Between A Torturer And A Surgeon. There Are Certain Intellectuals Who Are Too Bright To Be Content With Merely Praising Peace But Who Are Infuriated By Anybody Praising War. If No War Is Possible, All Criminality Has Its Chance

There Have Been Household Gods And Household Saints And Household Fairies. I Am Not Sure That There Have Yet Been Any Factory Gods Or Factory Saints Or Factory Fairies. I May Be Wrong, As I Am No Commericial Expert, But I Have Not Heard Of Them As Yet.

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.

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.

He Is A [sane] Man Who Can Have Tragedy In His Heart And Comedy In His Head.

Architecture Is The Alphabet Of Giants; It Is The Largest Set Of Symbols Ever Made To Meet The Eyes Of Men. A Tower Stands Up Like A Sort Of Simplified Stature, Of Much More Than Heroic Size.

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

Humor Can Get In Under The Door While Seriousness Is Still Fumbling At The Handle

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

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

We All Know That The 'divine Glory Of The Ego' Is Socially A Great Nuisance; We All Do Actually Value Our Friends For Modesty, Freshness, And Simplicity Of Heart. Whatever May Be The Reason, We All Do Warmly Respect Humility - In Other People.

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.

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.

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.

Were Patrick Henry To Return To Earth And Look Around On The Vast Economic Order Of The Day, He Might Revise His Observation And Merely Say ‘give Me Death’-the Alternative Being Manifestly Impossible Under Modern Conditions.

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.

The Moderns Do Not Realize Modernity.

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

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. . . .

There Is No Logical Connection Between Flying And Laying Eggs.

Brave Men Are All Vertebrates; They Have Their Softness On The Surface And Their Toughness In The Middle.

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

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

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

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

Every Politician Is Emphatically A Promising Politician.

All Architecture Is Great Architecture After Sunset.

Hope Means Hoping When Everything Seems Hopeless.

Unbelievable Things

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.

For Us Who Live In Cities Nature Is Not Natural. Nature Is Supernatural. Just As Monks Watched And Strove To Get A Glimpse Of Heaven, So We Watch And Strive To Get A Glimpse Of Earth. It Is As If Men Had Cake And Wine Every Day But Were Sometimes Allowed Common Bread.

The State Did Not Own Men So Entirely, Even When It Could Send Them To The Stake, As It Sometimes Does Now Where It Can Send Them To The Elementary School.

Most Americans ... Have A Sort Of Permanent Intoxication From Within, A Sort Of Invisible Champagne.

[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.

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

The Word 'good' Has Many Meanings. For Example, If A Man Were To Shoot His Grandmother At A Range Of Five Hundred Yards, I Should Call Him A Good Shot, But Not Necessarily A Good Man.

...but This Is The Real Objection To That Torrent Of Modern Talk About Treating Crime As Disease, About Making Prison Merely A Hygienic Environment Like A Hospital, Of Healing Sin By Slow Scientific Methods. The Fallacy Of The Whole Thing Is That Evil Is A Matter Of Active Choice Whereas Disease Is Not.

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 Object Of A New Year Is Not That We Should Have A New Year. It Is That We Should Have A New Soul And A New Nose; New Feet, A New Backbone, New Ears, And New Eyes. Unless A Particular Man Made New Year Resolutions, He Would Make No Resolutions. Unless A Man Starts Afresh About Things, He Will Certainly Do Nothing Effective.

Moderate Strength Is Shown In Violence, Supreme Strength Is Shown In Levity.

But Perhaps God Is Strong Enough To Exult In Monotony. It Is Possible That God Says Every Morning, "do It Again" To The Sun.; And Every Evening, "do It Again" To The Moon. It May Not Be Automatic Monotony That Makes All Daisies Alike; It May Be That God Makes Every Daisy Separately, But Has Never Gotten Tired Of Making Them. It May Be That He Has The Eternal Appetite Of Infancy; For We Have Sinned And Grown Old, And Our Father Is Younger Than We.

There Are No New Lies, No New Heresies. Man Is Simply Not That Creative.

Either Criticism Is No Good At All (a Very Defensible Position) Or Else Criticism Means Saying About An Author The Very Things That Would Have Made Him Jump Out Of His Boots.

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.

Somehow One Can Never Manage To Be An Atheist.

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.

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

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

It Is Always The Secure Who Are Humble.

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

It Is Customary To Complain Of The Bustle And Strenuousness Of Our Epoch. But In Truth The Chief Mark Of Our Epoch Is A Profound Laziness And Fatigue; And The Fact Is That The Real Laziness Is The Cause Of The Apparent Bustle.

The Riddles Of God Are More Satisfying Than The Solutions Of Man.

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.

There Is A Corollary To The Conception Of Being Too Proud To Fight. It Is That The Humble Have To Do Most Of The Fighting.

Boyhood Is A Most Complex And Incomprehensible Thing. Even When One Has Been Through It, One Does Not Understand What It Was. A Man Can Never Quite Understand A Boy, Even When He Has Been The Boy.

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

These Are The Things Which Might Conceivably And Truly Make Men Forgive Their Enemies. We Can Only Turn Hate To Love By Understanding What Are The Things That Men Have Loved; Nor Is It Necessary To Ask Men To Hate Their Loves In Order To Love One Another. Just As Two Grocers Are Most Likely To Be Reconciled When They Remember For A Moment That They Are Two Fathers, So Two Nationals Are Most Likely To Be Reconciled When They Remember (if Only For A Moment) That They Are Two Patriots.

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

In The End It Will Not Matter To Us Whether We Wrote Well Or Ill; Whether We Fought With Flails Or Reeds. It Will Matter To Us Greatly On What Side We Fought.

I Need Not Pause To Explain That Crime Is Not A Disease. It Is Criminology That Is A Disease.

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

Reason Is Always A Kind Of Brute Force; Those Who Appeal To The Head Rather Than The Heart, However Pallid And Polite, Are Necessarily Men Of Violence. We Speak Of 'touching' A Man's Heart, But We Can Do Nothing To His Head But Hit It.

Romance Is The Deepest Thing In Life. It Is Deeper Than Reality.

An Almost Unnatural Vigilance Is Really Required Of The Citizen Because Of The Horrible Rapidity With Which Human Institutions Grow Old.

Fairy Tales Do Not Tell Children The Dragons Exist. Children Already Know That Dragons Exist. Fairy Tales Tell Children The Dragons Can Be Killed.

I Regard Golf As An Expensive Way Of Playing Marbles.

Artistic Temperament Is The Disease That Afflicts Amateurs.

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

Where Does A Wise Man Kick A Pebble? On The Beach. Where Does A Wise Man Hide A Leaf? In The Forest.

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

(tradition) Is The Democracy Of The Dead.

Here Ends Another Day, During Which I Have Had Eyes, Ears, Hands And The Great World Around Me. Tomorrow Begins Another Day. Why Am I Allowed Two?

They Say Travel Broadens The Mind, But You Must Have The Mind.

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

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

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

But There Is In Everything A Reasonable Division Of Labour. I Have Written The Book, And Nothing On Earth Would Induce Me To Read It.

Love Means To Love That Which Is Unlovable; Or It Is No Virtue At All.

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.

How You Think When You Lose Determines How Long It Will Be Until You Win.

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.

I Owe My Success To Having Listened Respectfully To The Very Best Advice, And Then Going Away And Doing The Exact Opposite.

If An Editor Can Only Make People Angry Enough, They Will Write Half His Newspaper For Him For Nothing.

You Have Not Wasted Your Time; You Have Helped To Save The World. We Are Not Buffoons, But Very Desperate Men At War With A Vast Conspiracy.

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

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.

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