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While Once It Was The Rank And File That Cheered With All The Partisan Passions At Their Heights, Today It Is The Party Leaders Who Are Cheering Themselves; And All By Themselves. The Mob That Is Their Audience Is In One Vast Universal Trance, Thinking About Something Else.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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While Once It Was

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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While Once It Was The Rank And File That Cheered With All The Partisan Passions At Their Heights, Today It Is The Party Leaders Who Are Cheering Themselves; And All By Themselves. The Mob That Is Their Audience Is In One Vast Universal Trance, Thinking About Something Else.

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More From Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

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?

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

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

Somehow One Must Love The World Without Being Worldly.

The Best Way That A Man Could Test His Readiness To Encounter The Common Variety Of Mankind Would Be To Climb Down A Chimney Into Any House At Random, And Get On As Well As Possible With The People Inside. And That Is Essentially What Each One Of Us Did On The Day That He Was Born.

True Contentment Is A Thing As Active As Agriculture. It Is The Power Of Getting Out Of Any Situation All That There Is In It. It Is Arduous And It Is Rare.

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.

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

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

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

Men Spoke Much In My Boyhood About Restricted Or Ruined Men Of Genius: And It Was Common To Say That Many A Man Was A Great Might-have-been. To Me It's A More Solid And Startling Fact That Any Man In The Street Is A Great Might-not-have-been.

There'd Be A Lot Less Scandal If People Didn't Idealize Sin And Pose As Sinners.

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

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

No Man Knows He Is Young While He Is Young.

Political Economy Means That Everybody Except Politicians Must Be Economical.

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

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

The Poet Only Asks To Get His Head Into The Heavens. It Is The Logician Who Seeks To Get The Heavens Into His Head. And It Is His Head That Splits.

Men Rush Toward Complexity; But Yearn For Simplicity.

In The Fairy Tale, An Incomprehensible Happiness Rests Upon An Incomprehensible Condition. A Box Is Opened And All Evils Fly Out. A Word Is Forgotten And Cities Perish. A Lamp Is Lit And Love Flies Away. An Apple Is Eaten And The Hope Of God Is Gone.

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

The Coziness Between Church And State Is Good For The State And Bad For The Church

Church And State

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

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

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.

We Lose Our Bearings Entirely By Speaking Of The 'lower Classes' When We Mean Humanity Minus Ourselves.

It Is The Simple Truth That Man Does Differ From The Brutes In Kind And Not In Degree; And The Proof Of It Is Here; That It Sounds Like A Truism To Say That The Most Primitive Man Drew A Picture Of A Monkey And That It Sounds Like A Joke To Say That The Most Intelligent Monkey Drew A Picture Of A Man. Something Of Division And Disproportion Has Appeared; And It Is Unique. Art Is The Signature Of Man.

Adventure Is The Champagne Of Life, But I Prefer My Champagne And My Adventures Dry.

Art Is Born When The Temporary Touches The Eternal.

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.

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

The Fatal Metaphor Of Progress, Which Means Leaving Things Behind Us, Has Utterly Obscured The Real Idea Of Growth, Which Means Leaving Things Inside Us.

Journalism Largely Consists Of Saying 'lord Jones Is Dead' To People Who Never Knew That Lord Jones Was Alive.

Life Exists For The Love Of Music Or Beautiful Things.

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.

A Good Man's Work Is Effected By Doing What He Does, A Woman's By Being What She Is.

Lord! What A Strange World In Which A Man Cannot Remain Unique Even By Taking The Trouble To Go Mad!

I Have Little Doubt That When St. George Had Killed The Dragon He Was Heartily Afraid Of The Princess.

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

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.

I Will Go Forth As A Real Outlaw," He Said, "and As Men Do Robbery On The Highway I Will Do Right On The Highway; And It Will Be Counted A Wilder Crime.

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.

Every Time A Man Knocks On A Brothel Door, He Is Really Knocking For God

It [feminism] Is Mixed Up With A Muddled Idea That Women Are Free When They Serve Their Employers But Slaves When They Help Their Husbands.

We Are Like The Penny, Because We Have The Image Of The King Stamped On Us, The Divine King.

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.

Where Does A Wise Man Hide A Leaf? In The Forest. But What Does He Do If There Is No Forest? He Grows A Forest To Hide It In.

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.

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

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

Tradition Does Not Mean A Dead Town; It Does Not Mean That The Living Are Dead But That The Dead Are Alive. It Means That It Still Matters What Penn Did Two Hundred Years Ago Or What Franklin Did A Hundred Years Ago; I Never Could Feel In New York That It Mattered What Anybody Did An Hour Ago.

It Was The Mystical Dogma Of Bentham And Adam Smith And The Rest, That Some Of The Worst Of Human Passions Would Turn Out To Be All For The Best. It Was The Mysterious Doctrine That Selfishness Would Do The Work Of Unselfishness.

Cleanliness Is Not Next To Godliness Nowadays, For Cleanliness Is Made An Essential And Godliness Is Regarded As An Offence.

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

If We Desire European Civilization To Be A Raid And A Rescue, We Shall Insist Rather That Souls Are In Real Peril Than That Their Peril Is Ultimately Unreal. And If We Wish To Exalt The Outcast And The Crucified, We Shall Rather Wish To Think That A Veritable God Was Crucified, Rather Than A Mere Sage Or Hero. Above All, If We Wish To Protect The Poor We Shall Be In Favour Of Fixed Rules And Clear Dogmas. The Rules Of A Club Are Occasionally In Favour Of The Poor Member. The Drift Of A Club Is Always In Favour Of The Rich One.

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.

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.

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

Faith Is Always At A Disadvantage; It Is A Perpetually Defeated Thing Which Survives All Conquerors.

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.

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.

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

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

Progress Is The Mother Of Problems.

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.

It Is The Friction Of Two Spiritual Things, Of Tradition And Invention, Or Of Substance And Symbol, From Which The Mind Takes Fire. The Creeds Condemned As Complex Have Something Like The Secret Of Sex; They Can Breed Thoughts.

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.

English Experience Indicates That When The Two Great Political Parties Agree About Something It Is Generally Wrong.

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.

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.

Being A Success At Work Is Not Worth It If It Means Being A Failure At Home.

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.

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

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

...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.

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

The Whole Object Of Travel Is Not To Set Foot On Foreign Land; It Is At Last To Set Foot On One's Own Country As A Foreign Land.

A Radical Generally Meant A Man Who Thought He Could Somehow Pull Up The Root Without Affecting The Flower. A Conservative Generally Meant A Man Who Wanted To Conserve Everything Except His Own Reason For Conserving Anything.

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

The Old Religionist Cried Out For His God. The New Religionist Cries Out For Some God To Be His.

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

By A Curious Confusion, Many Modern Critics Have Passed From The Proposition That A Masterpiece May Be Unpopular To The Other Proposition That Unless It Is Unpopular It Cannot Be A Masterpiece.

Against A Dark Sky, All Flowers Look Like Fireworks.

It Might Reasonably Be Maintained That The True Object Of All Human Life Is Play. Earth Is A Task Garden; Heaven Is A Playground. To Be At Last In Such Secure Innocence That One Can Juggle With The Universe And The Stars, To Be So Good That One Can Treat Everything As A Joke - That May Be, Perhaps, The Real End And Final Holiday Of Human Souls.

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

I Believe What Really Happens In History Is This: The Old Man Is Always Wrong; And The Young People Are Always Wrong About What Is Wrong With Him. The Practical Form It Takes Is This: That, While The Old Man May Stand By Some Stupid Custom, The Young Man Always Attacks It With Some Theory That Turns Out To Be Equally Stupid.

The Great Intellectual Tradition That Comes Down To Us From The Past Was Never Interrupted Or Lost Through Such Trifles As The Sack Of Rome, The Triumph Of Attila, Or All The Barbarian Invasions Of The Dark Ages. It Was Lost After The Introduction Of Printing, The Discovery Of America, The Founding Of The Royal Society, And All The Enlightenment Of The Renaissance And The Modern World. It Was There, If Anywhere, That There Was Lost Or Impatiently Snapped The Long Thin Delicate Thread That Had Descended From Distant Antiquity; The Thread Of That Unusual Human Hobby: The Habit Of Thinking.

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.

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

In Catholicism, The Pint, The Pipe And The Cross Can All Fit Together.

Tradition Is Only Democracy Extended Through Time; It May Be Defined As An Extension Of The Franchise. Tradition Means Giving Votes To The Most Obscure Of All Classes, Our Ancestors. It Is The Democracy Of The Dead. Tradition Refuses To Submit To The Small And Arrogant Oligarchy Of Those Who Are Merely Walking About. All Democrats Object To Men Being Disqualified By Accident Of Birth; Tradition Objects To Their Being Disqualified By Accident Of Death. Democracy Tells Us Not To Neglect A Good Man's Opinion, Even If He Is Our Father.

Being 'contented' Ought To Mean In English, As It Does In French, Being Pleased. Being Content With An Attic Ought Not To Mean Being Unable To Move From It And Resigned To Living In It; It Ought To Mean Appreciating All There Is In Such A Position.

If You Argue With A Madman, It Is Extremely Probable That You Will Get The Worst Of It; For In Many Ways His Mind Moves All The Quicker For Not Being Delayed By The Things That Go With Good Judgment.

Christian Inspirational

The Byzantines Hammered Away At Their Hard And Orthodox Symbols, Because They Could Not Be In A Mood To Believe That Men Could Take A Hint. The Moderns Drag Out Into Lengths And Reels Of Extravagance Their New Orthodoxy Of Being Unorthodox, Because They Also Cannot Give A Hint -- Or Take A Hint. Yet All Perfect And Well-poised Art Is Really A Hint.

It Is Generally The Man Who Is Not Ready To Argue, Who Is Ready To Sneer.

Silver Is Sometimes More Valuable Than Gold, That Is, In Large Quantities.

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

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.

The Idea Of Private Property Universal But Private, The Idea Of Families Free But Still Families, Of Domesticity Democratic But Still Domestic, Of One Man One House - This Remains The Real Vision And Magnet Of Mankind. The World May Accept Something More Official And General, Less Human And Intimate. But The World Will Be Like A Broken-hearted Woman Who Makes A Humdrum Marriage Because She May Not Make A Happy One; Socialism May Be The World's Deliverance, But It Is Not The World's Desire.

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.

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.

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

In Our Time The Blasphemies Are Threadbare. Pessimism Is Now Patently, As It Always Was Essentially, More Commonplace Than Piety. Profanity Is Now More Than An Affectation - It Is A Convention. The Curse Against God Is Exercise I In The Primer Of Minor Poetry.

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

Plato Was Right, But Not Quite Right.

Before The Gods That Made The Gods Had Seen Their Sunrise Pass, The White Horse Of The White Horse Vale Was Cut Out Of The Grass.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Presence Of Mind

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

The Timidity Of The Child Or The Savage Is Entirely Reasonable; They Are Alarmed At This World, Because This World Is A Very Alarming Place. They Dislike Being Alone Because It Is Verily And Indeed An Awful Idea To Be Alone. Barbarians Fear The Unknown For The Same Reason That Agnostics Worship It - Because It Is A Fact.

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

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.

The Truth Is That It Is Our Attitude Towards Children That Is Right, And Our Attitude Towards Grown-up People That Is Wrong.

There Must Be Some Good In The Life Of Battle, For So Many Good Men Have Enjoyed Being Soldiers.

From The Standpoint Of Any Sane Person, The Present Problem Of Capitalist Concentration Is Not Only A Question Of Law, But Of Criminal Law, Not To Mention Criminal Lunacy.

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.

Do Not Be Proud Of The Fact That Your Grandmother Was Shocked At Something Which Your Are Accustomed To Seeing Or Hearing Without Being Shocked. ... It May Be That Your Grandmother Was An Extremely Lively And Vital Animal And That You Are A Paralytic.

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

The Atheist Is Not Interested In Anything Except Attacks On Atheism.

I Have Argued With Him On Almost Every Subject In The World, And We Have Always Been On Opposite Sides, Without Affectation Or Animosity... It Is Necessary To Disagree With Him As Much As I Do, In Order To Admire Him As I Do; And I Am Proud Of Him As A Foe Even More Than As A Friend.

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.

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

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

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

The Vault Above Us Is Not Deaf Because The Universe Is An Idiot; The Silence Is Not The Heartless Silence Of An Endless And Aimless World. Rather The Silence Around Us Is A Small And Pitiful Stillness Like The Prompt Stillness Of A Sick Room. We Are Perhaps Permitted Tragedy As A Sort Of Merciful Comedy, Because The Frantic Energy Of Divine Things Would Knock Us Down Like A Drunken Farce. We Can Take Our Own Tears More Lightly Than We Could Take The Tremendous Levities Of The Angels. So We Sit Perhaps In A Starry Chamber Of Silence While The Laughter Of The Heavens Is Too Loud For Us To Hear.

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

The Simplification Of Anything Is Always Sensational.

. . . For Friendship Implies Individuality; Whereas Comradeship Really Implies The Temporary Subordination, If Not The Temporary Swamping Of Individuality. Friends Are The Better For Being Two; But Comrades Are The Better For Being Two Million.

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

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

Internationalism

All Government Is An Ugly Necessity.

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

Fairy Tales Are More Than True.

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.

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.

The Past Is Not What It Was.

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.

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

To Mix Science Up With Philosophy Is Only To Produce A Philosophy That Has Lost All Its Ideal Value And A Science That Has Lost All Its Practical Value. It Is For My Private Physician To Tell Me Whether This Or That Food Will Kill Me. It Is For My Private Philosopher To Tell Me Whether I Ought To Be Killed.

We Do Not Want, As The Newspapers Say, A Church That Will Move With The World. We Want A Church That Will Move The World.

It Is Terrible To Contemplate How Few Politicians Are Hanged.

Life Is Serious All The Time, But Living Cannot Be. You May Have All The Solemnity You Wish In Your Neckties, But In Anything Important (such As Sex, Death, And Religion), You Must Have Mirth Or You Will Have Madness.

Suppose, My Dear Chadd, Suppose It Is We Who Are The Idiots Because We Are Not Afraid Of Devils In The Dark?

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.

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.

It Isn't That They Can't See The Solution. It Is That They Can't See The Problem.

The Original Quality In Any Man Of Imagination Is Imagery.

[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.

Indeed The Book Of Job Avowedly Only Answers Mystery With Mystery. Job Is Comforted With Riddles; But He Is Comforted. Herein Is Indeed A Type, In The Sense Of A Prophecy, Of Things Speaking With Authority. For When He Who Doubts Can Only Say, ‘i Do Not Understand,’ It Is True That He Who Knows Can Only Reply Or Repeat ‘you Do Not Understand.’ And Under That Rebuke There Is Always A Sudden Hope In The Heart; And The Sense Of Something That Would Be Worth Understanding.

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

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.

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

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

Leisure Is Being Allowed To Do Nothing.

What Embitters The World Is Not Excess Of Criticism, But Absence Of Self-criticism.

Education Is The Period During Which You Are Being Instructed By Somebody You Do Not Know, About Something You Do Not Want To Know.

All Men Matter. You Matter. I Matter. It's The Hardest Thing In Theology To Believe.

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

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

There Are Two Kinds Of Paradoxes. They Are Not So Much The Good And The Bad, Nor Even The True And The False. Rather They Are The Fruitful And The Barren; The Paradoxes Which Produce Life And The Paradoxes That Merely Announce Death. Nearly All Modern Paradoxes Merely Announce Death.

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.

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

The Past Is Democratic, Because It Is A People. The Future Is Despotic, Because It Is A Caprice. Every Man Is Alone In His Prediction, Just As Each Man Is Alone In A Dream.

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

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 People Has No Definite Disbelief In The Temples Of Theology. The People Has A Very Fiery And Practical Disbelief In The Temples Of Physical Science.

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

Customs Are Generally Unselfish. Habits Are Nearly Always Selfish.

I Suppose Every One Must Have Reflected How Primeval And How Poetical Are The Things That One Carries In One's Pocket; The Pocket-knife, For Instance, The Type Of All Human Tools, The Infant Of The Sword. Once I Planned To Write A Book Of Poems Entirely About Things In My Pockets. But I Found It Would Be Too Long; And The Age Of The Great Epics Is Past.

A Man Looking At A Hippopotamus May Sometimes Be Tempted To Regard A Hippopotamus As An Enormous Mistake; But He Is Also Bound To Confess That A Fortunate Inferiority Prevents Him Personally From Making Such Mistakes.

Whenever You Remove Any Fence, Always Pause Long Enough To Ask Why It Was Put There In The First Place.

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.

The Most Unfathomable Schools And Sages Have Never Attained To The Gravity Which Dwells In The Eyes Of A Baby Of Three Months Old. It Is The Gravity Of Astonishment At The Universe, And Astonishment At The Universe Is Not Mysticism, But A Transcendent Common-sense. The Fascination Of Children Lies In This: That With Each Of Them All Things Are Remade, And The Universe Is Put Again Upon Its Trial.

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

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.

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

The Modern World Is A Crowd Of Very Rapid Racing Cars All Brought To A Standstill And Stuck In A Block Of Traffic.

The Modern World... Has No Notion Except That Of Simplifying Something By Destroying Nearly Everything.

When A Person Has Found Something Which He Prefers To Life Itself, He For The First Time Has Begun To Live.

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.

To Be Clever Enough To Get All That Money, One Must Be Stupid Enough To Want It.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Hope Means Hoping When Things Are Hopeless, Or It Is No Virtue At All... As Long As Matters Are Really Hopeful, Hope Is Mere Flattery Or Platitude; It Is Only When Everything Is Hopeless That Hope Begins To Be A Strength.

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

A Good Joke Is The Closest Thing We Have To Divine Revelation.

Divine Revelation

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

It May Not Be Automatic Necessity That Makes All Daisies Alike; It May Be That God Makes Every Daisy Separately, But Has Never Gotten Tired Of Making Them

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

A Stiff Apology Is A Second Insult... The Injured Party Does Not Want To Be Compensated Because He Has Been Wronged; He Wants To Be Healed Because He Has Been Hurt.

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.

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Pope John XXIII

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