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

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Why Do All The

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

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Obviously If Any Actions, Even A Lunatic's, Can Be Causeless, Determinism Is Done For. If The Chain Of Causation Can Be Broken For A Madman, It Can Be Broken For A Man.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

There Is Nothing Harder To Learn Than Painting And Nothing Which Most People Take Less Trouble About Learning. An Art School Is A Place Where About Three People Work With Feverish Energy And Everybody Else Idles To A Degree That I Should Have Conceived Unattainable By Human Nature.

They Said That I Should Lose My Ideals And Begin To Believe In The Methods Of Practical Politicians. Now, I Have Not Lost My Ideals In The Least; My Faith In Fundamentals Is Exactly What It Always Was. What I Have Lost Is My Childlike Faith In Practical Politics.

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.

I Would Give A Woman Not More Rights, But More Privileges. Instead Of Sending Her To Seek Such Freedom As Notoriously Prevails In Banks And Factories, I Would Design Specially A House In Which She Can Be Free.

What Is Education? Properly Speaking, There Is No Such Thing As Education. Education Is Simply The Soul Of A Society As It Passes From One Generation To Another. Whatever The Soul Is Like, It Will Have To Be Passed On Somehow, Consciously Or Unconsciously, And That Transition May Be Called Education. ... What We Need Is To Have A Culture Before We Hand It Down. In Other Words, It Is A Truth, However Sad And Strange, That We Cannot Give What We Have Not Got, And Cannot Teach To Other People What We Do Not Know Ourselves.

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.

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

War Is Not The Best Way Of Settling Differences; It Is The Only Way Of Preventing Their Being Settled For You.

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

There Are No Wise Few; For In All Men Rages The Folly Of The Fall. Take Your Strongest, Happiest, Handsomest, Best Born, Best Bred, Best Instructed Men On Earth And Give Them Special Power For Half An Hour And Because They Are Men They Will Begin To [perform] Badly.

The Greenhorn Is The Ultimate Victor In Everything; It Is He That Gets The Most Out Of Life.

When You Break The Big Laws, You Do Not Get Liberty; You Do Not Even Get Anarchy. You Get The Small Laws.

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

But I Was Frightfully Fond Of The Universe And Wanted To Address It By A Diminutive. I Often Did So; And It Never Seemed To Mind.

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.

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

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

What Is The Good Of Words If They Aren't Important Enough To Quarrel Over? Why Do We Choose One Word More Than Another If There Isn't Any Difference Between Them? If You Called A Woman A Chimpanzee Instead Of An Angel, Wouldn't There Be A Quarrel About A Word? If You're Not Going To Argue About Words, What Are You Going To Argue About? Are You Going To Convey Your Meaning To Me By Moving Your Ears? The Church And The Heresies Always Used To Fight About Words, Because They Are The Only Thing Worth Fighting About.

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.

A Thing Constructed Can Only Be Loved After It Is Constructed; But A Thing Created Is Loved Before It Exists.

Creative Thought

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.

Men Invent New Ideals Because They Dare Not Attempt Old Ideals. They Look Forward With Enthusiasm, Because They Are Afraid To Look Back.

Why Are We Not Grateful To God For Filling Our Stockings With Legs?

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.

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

When You Have Really Exhausted An Experience You Always Reverence And Love It.

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

When Fishes Flew And Forests Walked And Figs Grew Upon Thorn, Some Moment When The Moon Was Blood Then Surely I Was Born. With Monstrous Head And Sickening Cry And Ears Like Errant Wings, The Devil's Walking Parody On All Four-footed Things.

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

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

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 True Object Of All Human Life Is Play. Earth Is A Task Garden; Heaven Is A Playground.

Inspirational Life

The Real Trouble With This World Of Ours Is Not That It Is An Unreasonable World, Nor Even That It Is A Reasonable One. The Commonest Kind Of Trouble Is That It Is Nearly Reasonable, But Not Quite. ... It Looks Just A Little More Mathematical And Regular Than It Is; Its Exactitude Is Obvious, But Its Inexactitude Is Hidden; Its Wilderness Lies In Wait.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

In Every Serious Doctrine Of The Destiny Of Men, There Is Some Trace Of The Doctrine Of The Equality Of Men. But The Capitalist Really Depends On Some Religion Of Inequality. The Capitalist Must Somehow Distinguish Himself From Human Kind; He Must Be Obviously Above It Or He Would Be Obviously Below It.

The Difficulty Of Explaining ‘why I Am A Catholic’ Is That There Are Ten Thousand Reasons All Amounting To One Reason: That Catholicism Is True.

The Wine They Drink In Paradise They Make In Haute Lorraine.

But Pure Wit Is Akin To Puritanism; To The Perfect And Painful Consciousness Of The Final Fact In The Universe. Very Briefly, The Man Who Sees The Consistency In Things Is A Wit - And A Calvinist. The Man Who Sees The Inconsistency In Things Is A Humorist - And A Catholic.

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

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

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.

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

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

Childlike Faith

The Present Condition Of Fame Is Merely Fashion.

There Is No Great Harm In The Theorist Who Makes Up A New Theory To Fit A New Event. But The Theorist Who Starts With A False Theory And Then Sees Everything As Making It Come True Is The Most Dangerous Enemy Of Human Reason.

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

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

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.

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

One Of The Deepest And Strangest Of All Human Moods Is The Mood Which Will Suddenly Strike Us Perhaps In A Garden At Night, Or Deep In Sloping Meadows, The Feeling That Every Flower And Leaf Has Just Uttered Something Stupendously Direct And Important, And That We Have By A Prodigy Of Imbecility Not Heard Or Understood It. There Is A Certain Poetic Value, And That A Genuine One, In This Sense Of Having Missed The Full Meaning Of Things. There Is Beauty, Not Only In Wisdom, But In This Dazed And Dramatic Ignorance.

You!" He Cried. "you Never Hated Because You Never Lived. I Know What You Are All Of You, From First To Last--you Are The People In Power! You Are The Police--the Great, Fat Smiling Men In Blue And Buttons! You Are The Law, And You Have Never Been Broken. But Is There A Free Soul Alive That Does Not Long To Break You, Only Because You Have Never Been Broken?

For Good Or Evil, A Line Has Been Passed In Our Political History; And Something That We Have Known All Our Lives Is Dead. I Will Take Only One Example Of It: Our Politicians Can No Longer Be Caricatured.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

America Has A Genius For The Encouragement Of Fame.

It Is Not Merely True That A Creed Unites Men. Nay, A Difference Of Creed Unites Men - So Long As It Is A Clear Difference. A Boundary Unites. Many A Magnanimous Moslem And Chivalrous Crusader Must Have Been Nearer To Each Other, Because They Were Both Dogmatists, Than Any Two Agnostics. "i Say God Is One," And "i Say God Is One But Also Three," That Is The Beginning Of A Good Quarrelsome, Manly Friendship.

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.

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

What We Call Emancipation Is Always And Of Necessity Simply The Free Choice Of The Soul Between One Set Of Limitations And Another.

Excuse Me If I Enjoy Myself Rather Obviously! I Don't Often Have The Luck To Have A Dream Like This. It Is New To Me For A Nightmare To Lead Me To A Lobster. It Is Commonly The Other Way.

The Old Idea That The Joke Was Not Good Enough For The Company Has Been Superseded By The New Aristocratic Idea That The Company Was Not Worthy Of The Joke. They Have Introduced An Almost Insane Individualism Into That One Form Of Intercourse Which Is Specially And Uproariously Communal. They Have Made Even Levities Into Secrets. They Have Made Laughter Lonelier Than Tears.

The Noble Temptation To See Too Much In Everything.

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

The Wisest Thing In The World Is To Cry Out Before You Are Hurt. It Is No Good To Cry Out After You Are Hurt; Especially After You Are Mortally Hurt. People Talk About The Impatience Of The Populace; But Sound Historians Know That Most Tyrannies Have Been Possible Because Men Moved Too Late. It Is Often Essential To Resist A Tyranny Before It Exists.

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

Reason Is Itself A Matter Of Faith. It Is An Act Of Faith To Assert That Our Thoughts Have Any Relation To Reality At All.

Catholic Doctrine And Discipline May Be Walls; But They Are The Walls Of A Playground.

Gratitude Produced The Most Purely Joyful Moments That Have Been Known To Man.

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.

It Has Been Left To The Last Christians, Or Rather To The First Christians Fully Committed To Blaspheming And Denying Christianity, To Invent A New Kind Of Worship Of Sex, Which Is Not Even A Worship Of Life. It Has Been Left To The Very Latest Modernists To Proclaim An Erotic Religion Which At Once Exalts Lust And Forbids Fertility . . . The New Priests Abolish The Fatherhood And Keep The Feast - To Themselves.

Atheism Is Too Theological.

To Downgrade The Human Mind Is Bad Theology.

Like Every Book I Never Wrote, It Is By Far The Best Book I Have Ever Written.

If There Is One Fact We Really Can Prove, From The History That We Really Do Know, It Is That Despotism Can Be A Development, Often A Late Development And Very Often Indeed The End Of Societies That Have Been Highly Democratic. A Despotism May Almost Be Defined As A Tired Democracy. As Fatigue Falls On A Community, The Citizens Are Less Inclined For That Eternal Vigilance Which Has Truly Been Called The Price Of Liberty; And They Prefer To Arm Only One Single Sentinel To Watch The City While They Sleep.

I Would Rather A Boy Learnt In The Roughest School The Courage To Hit A Politician, Or Gained In The Hardest School The Learning To Refute Him - Rather Than That He Should Gain In The Most Enlightened School The Cunning To Copy Him.

It Is A Quaint Comment On The Notion That The English Are Practical And The French Merely Visionary, That We Were Rebels In Arts While They Were Rebels In Arms.

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

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

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

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

The Problem Of Disbelieving In God Is Not That A Man Ends Up Believing Nothing. Alas, It Is Much Worse. He Ends Up Believing Anything.

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

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.

Soldiers Have Many Faults, But They Have One Redeeming Merit; They Are Never Worshippers Of Force. Soldiers More Than Any Other Men Are Taught Severely And Systematically That Might Is Not Right. The Fact Is Obvious. The Might Is In The Hundred Men Who Obey. The Right (or What Is Held To Be Right) Is In The One Man Who Commands Them.

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

The Sort Of Man Who Admires Italian Art While Despising Italian Religion Is A Tourist And A Cad.

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

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

Progress Is The Mother Of All Problems.

The Materialist Theory Of History, That All Politics And Ethics Are The Expression Of Economics, Is A Very Simple Fallacy Indeed. It Consists Simply Of Confusing The Necessary Conditions Of Life With The Normal Preoccupations Of Life, That Are Quite A Different Thing.

Youth Is Always Too Serious, And Just Now It Is Too Serious About Frivolity.

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

Impartiality Is A Pompous Name For Indifference, Which Is An Elegant Name For Ignorance.

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

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.

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.

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

Every Politician Is Emphatically A Promising Politician.

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.

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.

A Fairly Clear Line Separated Advertisement From Art. ... The First Effect Of The Triumph Of The Capitalist (if We Allow Him To Triumph) Will Be That That Line Of Demarcation Will Entirely Disappear. There Will Be No Art That Might Not Just As Well Be Advertisement.

The Word 'heresy' Not Only Means No Longer Being Wrong; It Practically Means Being Clear-headed And Courageous. The Word 'orthodoxy' Not Only No Longer Means Being Right; It Practically Means Being Wrong

In The Modern Conflict Between The Smile And The Laugh, I Am All In Favor Of Laughing. The Recent Stage Of Culture And Criticism Might Very Well Be Summed Up As The Men Who Smile Criticizing The Men Who Laugh.

Then I Only Wondered Who Put The Toys In The Stocking; Now I Wonder Who Put The Stocking By The Bed, And The Bed In The Room, And The Room In The House, And The House On The Planet, And The Great Planet In The Void.

Faith Means Believing The Unbelievable.

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

There Is No Such Thing On Earth As An Uninteresting Subject; The Only Thing That Can Exist Is An Uninterested Person.

Artistic Temperament

The Men Who Really Believe In Themselves Are All In Lunatic Asylums.

Once Abolish The God, And The Government Becomes The God.

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

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

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.

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

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.

And Pray Where In Earth Or Heaven Are There Prudent Marriages-might As Well Talk About Prudent Suicides.

All That We Call Spirit And Art And Ecstacy Only Means That For One Awful Instant We Remember That We Forgot.

The Real Pleasure-seeking Is The Combination Of Luxury And Austerity In Such A Way That The Luxury Can Really Be Felt.

Pleasure Seeking

I Like The Cyclostyle Ink; It Is So Inky. I Do Not Think There Is Anyone Who Takes Quite Such A Fierce Pleasure In Things Being Themselves As I Do. The Startling Wetness Of Water Excites And Intoxicates Me: The Fieriness Of Fire, The Steeliness Of Steel, The Unutterable Muddiness Of Mud. It Is Just The Same With People.... When We Call A Man "manly" Or A Woman "womanly" We Touch The Deepest Philosophy.

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.

There Is Only One Thing Certain And That Is That Nothing Is Certain

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

The Long Words Are Not The Hard Words, It Is The Short Words That Are Hard. There Is Much More Metaphysical Subtlety In The Word "damn" Than In The Word "degeneration."

Physical Science Is Like Simple Addition: It Is Either Infallible Or It Is False.

Physical Science

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 Rolling Stone Rolls Echoing From Rock To Rock; But The Rolling Stone Is Dead. The Moss Is Silent Because The Moss Is Alive.

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

If Our Caricaturists Do Not Hate Their Enemies, It Is Not Because They Are Too Big To Hate Them, But Because Their Enemies Are Not Big Enough To Hate.

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

The Highest And Noblest Thing That History Can Be Is A Good Story.

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.

When You With Velvets Mantled O'er, Defy December's Tempests Frore, Oh! Spare One Garment From Your Store, To Clothe The Poor At Christmas.

Some Of The Most Frantic Lies On The Face Of Life Are Told With Modesty And Restraint; For The Simple Reason That Only Modesty And Restraint Will Save Them.

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.

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

I Never Said A Word Against Eminent Men Of Science. What I Complain Of Is A Vague Popular Philosophy Which Supposes Itself To Be Scientific When It Is Really Nothing But A Sort Of New Religion And An Uncommonly Nasty One. When People Talked About The Fall Of Man, They Knew They Were Talking About A Mystery, A Thing They Didn't Understand. Now They Talk About The Survival Of The Fittest: They Think They Do Understand It, Whereas They Have Not Merely No Notion, They Have An Elaborately False Notion Of What The Words Mean.

People Seem To Fight About Things Very Unsuitable For Fighting. They Make A Frightful Noise In Support Of Very Quiet Things. They Knock Each Other About In The Name Of Very Fragile Things.

To Complain That I Could Only Be Married Once Was Like Complaining That I Had Only Been Born Once.

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

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.

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.

Everyone Seems To Assume That The Unscrupulous Parts Of Journalism Will Be The Frivolous Or Jocular Parts. This Is Against All Ethical Experience. Jokes Are Generally Honest. Complete Solemnity Is Almost Always Dishonest. The Writer Of The Snippet Merely Refers To A Frivolous And Fugitive Fact In A Frivolous And Fugitive Way. The Writer Of The Leading Article Has To Write About A Fact He Has Known For 20 Minutes As Though He Has Studied It For 20 Years.

Thrift Is The Really Romantic Thing; Economy Is More Romantic Than Extravagance... Thrift Is Poetic Because It Is Creative; Waste Is Unpoetic Because It Is Waste... If A Man Could Undertake To Make Use Of All The Things In His Dustbin, He Would Be A Broader Genius Than Shakespeare.

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

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

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.

But The Truth Is That It Is Only By Believing In God That We Can Ever Criticise The Government. Once Abolish The God, And The Government Becomes The God.

If We Are Bound To Improve, We Need Not Trouble To Improve. The Pure Doctrine Of Progress Is The Best Of All Reasons For Not Being A Progressive.

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

We Have Passed The Age Of The Demagogue, The Man Who Has Little To Say And Says It Loud. We Have Come To The Age Of The Mystagogue Or Don, The Man Who Has Nothing To Say, But Says It Softly And Impressively In An Indistinct Whisper.

Ritual Will Always Mean Throwing Away Something: Destroying Our Corn Or Wine Upon The Altar Of Our Gods.

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.

This Is The Perpetual And Pitiful Tragedy Of The Practical Man In Practical Affairs. He Always Begins With A Flourish Of Contempt For What He Calls Theorizing And What People Who Can Do It Call Thinking. He Will Not Wait For Logic-that Is, In The Most Exact Sense, He Will Not Listen To Reason. It Will Therefore Appear To Him An Idle And Ineffectual Proceeding To Say That There Is A Reason For His Present Failure. Nevertheless, It May Be Well To Say It, And To Try And Make It Clear Even To Him.

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

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 . . .

America Is The Only Nation In The World That Is Founded On Creed. That Creed Is Set Forth With Dogmatic And Even Theological Lucidity In The Declaration Of Independence; Perhaps The Only Piece Of Practical Politics That Is Also Theoretical Politics And Also Great Literature.

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

I Still Hold. . .that The Suburbs Ought To Be Either Glorified By Romance And Religion Or Else Destroyed By Fire From Heaven, Or Even By Firebrands From The Earth.

Madness Does Not Come By Breaking Out, But By Giving In; By Settling Down In Some Dirty, Little, Self-repeating Circle Of Ideas; By Being Tamed.

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

A Great Man Is Not A Man So Strong That He Feels Less Than Other Men; He Is A Man So Strong That He Feels More.

The Dignity Of The Artist Lies In His Duty Of Keeping Awake The Sense Of Wonder In The World.

The Objection To Fairy Stories Is That They Tell Children There Are Dragons. But Children Have Always Known There Are Dragons. Fairy Stories Tell Children That Dragons Can Be Killed.

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

Man Is Always Something Worse Or Something Better Than An Animal; And A Mere Argument From Animal Perfection Never Touches Him At All. Thus, In Sex No Animal Is Either Chivalrous Or Obscene. And Thus No Animal Invented Anything So Bad As Drunkeness - Or So Good As Drink.

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.

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

The Coming Peril Is The Intellectual, Educational, Psychological And Artistic Overproduction, Which, Equally With Economic Overproduction, Threatens The Well-being Of Contemporary Civilisation. People Are Inundated, Blinded, Deafened, And Mentally Paralysed By A Flood Of Vulgar And Tasteless Externals, Leaving Them No Time For Leisure, Thought, Or Creation From Within Themselves.

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.

The Scientific Facts, Which Were Supposed To Contradict The Faith In The Nineteenth Century, Are Nearly All Of Them Regarded As Unscientific Fictions In The Twentieth Century.

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

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

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.

An Event Is Not Any More Intrinsically Intelligible Or Unintelligible Because Of The Pace At Which It Moves. For A Man Who Does Not Believe In A Miracle, A Slow Miracle Would Be Just As Incredible As A Swift One. The Greek Witch May Have Turned Sailors To Swine With A Stroke Of The Wand. But To See A Naval Gentleman Of Our Acquaintance Looking A Little More Like A Pig Every Day, Till He Ended With Four Trotters And A Curly Tail, Would Not Be Any More Soothing. It Might Be Rather More Creepy And Uncanny.

Gluttony Is A Great Fault; But We Do Not Necessarily Dislike A Glutton. We Only Dislike The Glutton When He Becomes A Gourmet-that Is, We Only Dislike Him When He Not Only Wants The Best For Himself, But Knows What Is Best For Other People.

You Can Never Have A Revolution In Order To Establish A Democracy. You Must Have A Democracy In Order To Have A Revolution.

Democracies Have

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

Presence Of Mind

Contemporary Society Has Become Dry, Not For Lack Of Wonders But For Lack Of Wonder.

Tolerance Is A Virtue Of People Who Don't Believe In Anything Anymore.

The Life Of A Thinking Man Will Probably Be Divided Into Two Parts -- The First In Which He Desires To Exterminate Modern Thinkers, And The Second In Which He Desires To Watch Them Exterminating Each Other. ... Suppose, For Instance, There Is An Old Story And A New Skeptic Who Is Skeptical Of The Story. We Have Only To Wait A Little While For A Yet Newer Skeptic Who Is Skeptical Of The Skeptic. He Will Probably Find The Old Notion Actually A Help In His New Notion. This Process Is An Abstract Truth Applying To Anything, Apart From Agreement Or Disagreement.

The Christian Pities Men Because They Are Dying, And The Buddhist Pities Them Because They Are Living. The Christian Is Sorry For What Damages The Life Of A Man; But The Buddhist Is Sorry For Him Because He Is Alive.

The Museum Is Not Meant Either For The Wanderer To See By Accident Or For The Pilgrim To See With Awe. It Is Meant For The Mere Slave Of A Routine Of Self- Education To Stuff Himself With Every Sort Of Incongruous Intellectual Food In One Indigestible Meal.

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

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

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Jorge Luis Borges

Friedrich Nietzsche

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