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You've Got That Eternal Idiotic Idea That If Anarchy Came It Would Come From The Poor. Why Should It? The Poor Have Been Rebels, But They Have Never Been Anarchists; They Have More Interest Than Any One Else In There Being Some Decent Government. The Poor Man Really Has A Stake In The Country. The Rich Man Hasn't; He Can Go Away To New Guinea In A Yacht. The Poor Have Sometimes Been Objected To Being Governed Badly; The Rich Have Always Objected To Being Governed At All. Aristocrats Were Always Anarchists, As You Can See From The Barons' Wars.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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You've Got That Eternal

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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You've Got That Eternal Idiotic Idea That If Anarchy Came It Would Come From The Poor. Why Should It? The Poor Have Been Rebels, But They Have Never Been Anarchists; They Have More Interest Than Any One Else In There Being Some Decent Government. The Poor Man Really Has A Stake In The Country. The Rich Man Hasn't; He Can Go Away To New Guinea In A Yacht. The Poor Have Sometimes Been Objected To Being Governed Badly; The Rich Have Always Objected To Being Governed At All. Aristocrats Were Always Anarchists, As You Can See From The Barons' Wars.

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The Object Of Opening The Mind, As Of Opening The Mouth, Is To Shut It Again On Something Solid.

Fairy Tales Are More Than True.

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

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

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.

The Thing That Cannot Be Defined Is The First Thing; The Primary Fact.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Government Has Become Ungovernable; That Is, It Cannot Leave Off Governing. Law Has Become Lawless; That Is, It Cannot See Where Laws Should Stop. The Chief Feature Of Our Time Is The Meekness Of The Mob And The Madness Of The Government.

We Must Be Clear About What We Want To Paint. This Adds A Further Principle To Our Previous List Of Principles. We Have Said We Must Be Fond Of This World, Even In Order To Change It.

I Left The Fairy Tales Lying On The Floor Of The Nursery, And I Have Not Found Any Books So Sensible Since.

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 Triangle Of Truisms, Of Father, Mother And Child, Cannot Be Destroyed; It Can Only Destroy Those Civilizations Which Disregard It.

Right Is Right Even If Nobody Does It. Wrong Is Wrong Even If Everybody Is Wrong About It.

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

Man Seems To Be Capable Of Great Virtues But Not Of Small Virtues; Capable Of Defying His Torturer But Not Of Keeping His Temper.

Compromise Used To Mean That Half A Loaf Was Better Than No Bread. Among Modern Statesmen It Really Seems To Mean That Half A Loaf; Is Better Than A Whole Loaf.

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.

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

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

For Tommy, On That Hot And Empty Afternoon, Was In A State Of Mind In Which Grown-up People Go Away And Write Books About Their Whole World, And Stories About What It Is Like To Be Married, And Plays About The Important Problems Of Modern Times. Tommy, Being Only Ten Years Old, Was Not Able To Do Harm On This Large And Handsome Scale.

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

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

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

A Good Moslem King Was One Who Was Strict In Religion, Valiant In Battle, Just In Giving Judgment Among His People, But Not One Who Had The Slightest Objection In International Matters To Removing His Neighbour's Landmark.

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.

Spring Never Is Spring Unless It Comes Too Soon.

Man Is Not Merely An Evolution But Rather A Revolution.

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

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

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

It Is Ludicrous To Suppose That The More Sceptical We Are The More We See Good In Everything. It Is Clear That The More We Are Certain What Good Is, The More We Shall See Good In Everything.

Art Is The Signature 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.

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.

...but Nature Does Not Say That Cats Are More Valuable Than Mice; Nature Makes No Remark On The Subject. She Does Not Even Say That The Cat Is Enviable Or The Mouse Pitiable. We Think The Cat Superior Because We Have (or Most Of Us Have) A Particular Philosophy To The Effect That Life Is Better Than Death. But If The Mouse Were A German Pessimist Mouse, He Might Not Think That The Cat Had Beaten Him At All. He Might Think He Had Beaten The Cat By Getting To The Grave First.

Unfortunately, 19th-century Scientists Were Just As Ready To Jump To The Conclusion That Any Guess About Nature Was An Obvious Fact, As Were 17th-century Sectarians To Jump To The Conclusion That Any Guess About Scripture Was The Obvious Explanation . . . . And This Clumsy Collision Of Two Very Impatient Forms Of Ignorance Was Known As The Quarrel Of Science And Religion.

We Have All Forgotten What We Really Are. All That We Call Common Sense And Rationality And Practicality And Positivism Only Means That For Certain Dead Levels Of Our Life We Forget That We Have Forgotten. All That We Call Spirit And Art And Ecstasy Only Means That For One Awful Instant We Remember That We Forget.

Theology Is Simply That Part Of Religion That Requires Brains.

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.

It Never Occurred To Him To Be Spiritually Won Over To The Enemy. Many Moderns, Inured To A Weak Worship Of Intellect And Force, Might Have Wavered In Their Allegiance Under This Oppression Of A Great Personality. . . . But This Was A Kind Of Modern Meanness To Which Syme Could Not Sink Even In His Extreme Morbidity. Like Any Man, He Was Coward Enough To Fear Great Force; But He Was Not Coward Enough To Admire It.

One Pleasure Attached To Growing Older Is That Many Things Seem To Be Growing Younger; Growing Fresher And More Lively Than We Once Supposed Them To Be.

Sometimes He Even Embarrassed The Company By Phrases Suggesting That There Was Some Difference Between A Liberal And A Conservative.

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.

The Ignorant Pronounce It Frood To Cavil Or Applaud The Well-informed Pronounce It Froyd But I Pronounce It Fraud.

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

The Primary Paradox Of Christianity Is That The Ordinary Condition Of Man Is Not His Sane Or Sensible Condition; That The Normal Itself Is An Abnormality.

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.

Comradeship Is Quite A Different Thing From Friendship. . .

Different Things

Life Exists For The Love Of Music Or Beautiful Things.

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

The Humorous Look Of Children Is Perhaps The Most Endearing Of All The Bonds That Hold The Cosmos Together.

A Faith Is That Which Is Able To Survive A Mood.

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

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

The First Fact About The Celebration Of A Birthday Is That It Is A Way Of Affirming Defiantly, And Even Flamboyantly, That It Is A Good Thing To Be Alive.

But They None Of Them Create The Psychological Conditions In Which I First Saw, Or Desired To See, The Flower.

It Is Unpardonable Conceit Not To Laugh At Your Own Jokes. Joking Is Undignified; That Is Why It Is So Good For One's Soul. Do Not Fancy You Can Be A Detached Wit And Avoid Being A Buffoon; You Cannot. If You Are The Court Jester You Must Be The Court Fool.

Art Is Limitation; The Essence Of Every Picture Is The Frame. If You Draw A Giraffe, You Must Draw Him With A Long Neck. If In Your Bold Creative Way You Hold Yourself Free To Draw A Giraffe With A Short Neck, You Will Really Find That You Are Not Free To Draw A Giraffe.

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.

Truths Turn Into Dogmas The Minute They Are Disputed.

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

When A Politician Is In Opposition He Is An Expert On The Means To Some End; And When He Is In Office He Is An Expert On The Obstacles To It.

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

Instead Of Looking At Books And Pictures About The New Testament I Looked At The New Testament. There I Found An Account, Not In The Least Of A Person With His Hair Parted In The Middle Or His Hands Clasped In Appeal, But Of An Extraordinary Being With Lips Of Thunder And Acts Of Lurid Decision, Flinging Down Tables, Casting Out Devils, Passing With The Wild Secrecy Of The Wind From Mountain Isolation To A Sort Of Dreadful Demagogy; A Being Who Often Acted Like An Angry God — And Always Like A God.

Humility Is The Mother Of Giants.

To Be Wrong, And To Be Carefully Wrong, That Is The Definition Of Decadence.

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

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

There Is A Road From The Eye To The Heart That Does Not Go Through The Intellect.

The Doctrine Of Human Equality Reposes On This: That There Is No Man Really Clever Who Has Not Found That He Is Stupid.

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

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

The Whole Point Of The Eugenic Pseudo-scientific Theories Is That They Are To Be Applied Wholesale, By Some More Sweeping And Generalizing Money Power Than The Individual Husband Or Wife Or Household. Eugenics Asserts That All Men Must Be So Stupid That They Cannot Manage Their Own Affairs; And Also So Clever That They Can Manage Each Other's.

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.

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.

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

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

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

It Has Been Often Said, Very Truly, That Religion Is The Thing That Makes The Ordinary Man Feel Extraordinary; It Is An Equally Important Truth That Religion Is The Thing That Makes The Extraordinary Man Feel Ordinary.

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.

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

Your Offer," He Said, "is Far Too Idiotic To Be Declined.

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

Big Business And State Socialism Are Very Much Alike, Especially Big Business.

Be Careful How You Suggest Things To Me. For There Is In Me A Madness Which Goes Beyond Martyrdom, The Madness Of An Utterly Idle Man.

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.

The Honest Poor Can Sometimes Forget Poverty. The Honest Rich Can Never Forget It.

Faith Means Believing The Unbelievable.

Very Few People In The World Would Care To Listen To The Real Defense Of Their Own Characters. The Real Defense, The Defense Which Belongs To The Day Of Judgment, Would Make Such Damaging Admissions, Would Clear Away So Many Artificial Virtues, Would Tell Such Tragedies Of Weakness And Failure, That A Man Would Sooner Be Misunderstood And Censured By The World Than Exposed To That Awful And Merciless Eulogy.

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

The Great Majority Of People Will Go On Observing Forms That Cannot Be Explained; They Will Keep Christmas Day With Christmas Gifts And Christmas Benedictions; They Will Continue To Do It; And Some Day Suddenly Wake Up And Discover Why.

Free Verse'? You May As Well Call Sleeping In A Ditch 'free Architecture'.

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

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

Most Modern Freedom Is At Root Fear. It Is Not So Much That We Are Too Bold To Endure Rules; It Is Rather That We Are Too Timid To Endure Responsibilities.

With All That We Hear Of American Hustle And Hurry, It Is Rather Strange That Americans Seem To Like To Linger On Longer Words.

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

I Regard Golf As An Expensive Way Of Playing Marbles.

All Good Writers Express The State Of Their Souls, Even (as Occurs In Some Cases Of Very Good Writers) If It Is A State Of Damnation.

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.

Unless A Man Becomes The Enemy Of An Evil, He Will Not Even Become Its Slave But Rather Its Champion.

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

A Puritan Is A Person Who Pours Righteous Indignation Into The Wrong Things.

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

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

An Adventure Is Only An Inconvenience Rightly Considered. An Inconvenience Is Only An Adventure Wrongly Considered.

How Quickly Revolutions Grow Old; And, Worse Still, Respectable.

If Seeds In The Black Earth Can Turn Into Such Beautiful Roses, What Might Not The Heart Of Man Become In Its Long Journey Toward The Stars?

All True Friendliness Begins With Fire And Food And Drink And The Recognition Of Rain Or Frost.

There Is Only One Thing That Stands In Our Midst, Attenuated And Threatened, But Enthroned In Some Power Like A Ghost Of The Middle Ages: The Trade Unions.

The Trouble With Always Trying To Preserve The Health Of The Body Is That It Is So Difficult To Do Without Destroying The Health Of The Mind.

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

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.

Savages And Modern Artists Are Alike Strangely Driven To Create Something Uglier Than Themselves. But The Artists Find It Harder.

It Is Hard To Make Government Representative When It Is Also Remote.

Representatives

Research Is The Search Of People Who Don't Know What They Want.

Powerful Men Who Have Powerful Passions Use Much Of Their Strength In Forging Chains For Themselves.

It Is The Beginning Of All True Criticism Of Our Time To Realize That It Has Really Nothing To Say, At The Very Moment When It Has Invented So Tremendous A Trumpet For Saying It.

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

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

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.

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

He Is Only A Very Shallow Critic Who Cannot See An Eternal Rebel In The Heart Of The Conservative.

On The Third Day The Friends Of Christ Coming At Daybreak To The Place Found The Grave Empty And The Stone Rolled Away. In Varying Ways They Realized The New Wonder; But Even They Hardly Realized That The World Had Died In The Night. What They Were Looking At Was The First Day Of A New Creation, With A New Heaven And A New Earth; And In A Semblance Of The Gardener God Walked Again In The Garden, In The Cool Not Of The Evening But Of The Dawn.

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

Half A Truth Is Better Than No Politics.

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.

It Is Always The Secure Who Are Humble.

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 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.

Plato Was Right, But Not Quite Right.

The Aim Of Life Is Appreciation; There Is No Sense In Not Appreciating Things; And There Is No Sense In Having More Of Them If You Have Less Appreciation Of Them.

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

If Man Is Not The Image Of God, Then He Is A Disease Of The Dust.

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

The Theory Of Free Speech, That Truth Is So Much Larger And Stranger And More Many-sided Than We Know Of, That It Is Very Much Better At All Costs To Hear Everyone's Account Of It, Is A Theory Which Has Been Justified On The Whole By Experiment, But Which Remains A Very Daring And Even A Very Surprising Theory. It Is Really One Of The Great Discoveries Of The Modern Time.

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.

You Cannot Grow A Beard In A Moment Of Passion.

It's The First Effect Of Not Believing In God That You Lose Your Common Sense.

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

The Artistic Temperament Is A Disease That Afflicts Amateurs. It Is A Disease Which Arises From Men No Having Sufficient Power Of Expression To Utter And Get Rid Of The Element Of Art In Their Being.

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

Every Man Is Important If He Loses His Life;and Every Man Is Funny If He Loses His Hat And Has To Run After It.

The Human Race Is Always Trying This Dodge Of Making Everything Entirely Easy; But The Difficulty Which It Shifts Off One Thing It Shifts To Another.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Black And White

We Do Not Admire, We Hardly Excuse, The Fanatic Who Wrecks This World For Love Of The Other. But What Are We To Say Of The Fanatic Who Wrecks This World Out Of Hatred Of The Other? He Sacrifices The Very Existence Of Humanity To The Non-existence Of God. He Offers His Victims Not To The Altar, But Merely To Assert The Idleness Of The Altar And The Emptiness Of The Throne. He Is Ready To Ruin Even That Primary Ethic By Which All Things Live, For His Strange And Eternal Vengeance Upon Some One Who Never Lived At All.

Coincidences Are Spiritual Puns.

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.

No Animal Ever Invented Anything As Bad As Drunkenness - Or So Good As Drink.

The Chief Object Of Education Is Not To Learn Things But To Unlearn Things.

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

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.

The Great Misfortune Of The Modern English Is Not At All That They Are More Boastful Than Other People (they Are Not); It Is That They Are Boastful About Those Particular Things Which Nobody Can Boast Of Without Losing Them.

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

For The Mass Of Men The Idea Of Artistic Creation Can Only Be Expressed By An Idea Unpopular In Present Discussions - The Idea Of Property... Property Is Merely The Art Of The Democracy... One Would Think, To Hear People Talk, That The Rothschilds And The Rockefellers Were On The Side Of Property. But Obviously They Are The Enemies Of Property; Because They Are Enemies Of Their Own Limitations.

The Old Assumption Of The Approximate Impossibility Of War Really Rested On A Similar Assumption About The Impossibility Of Evil-and Especially Of Evil In High Places.

If A Man Only Likes Victory He Must Always Come Late For The Battle.

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.

A Man Running After A Hat Is Not Half So Ridiculous As A Man Running After A Woman.

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.

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

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.

All Real Democracy Is An Attempt Like That Of A Jolly Hostess To Bring The Shy People Out.

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

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

Do Not Enjoy Yourself. Enjoy Dances And Theaters And Joy-rides And Champagne And Oysters; Enjoy Jazz And Cocktails And Night-clubs If You Can Enjoy Nothing Better; Enjoy Bigamy And Burglary And Any Crime In The Calendar, In Preference To The Other Alternative; But Never Learn To Enjoy Yourself.

A Great City Is The Place To Escape The True Drama Of Provincial Life, And Find Solace In Fantasy.

I Don't Need A Church To Tell Me I'm Wrong Where I Already Know I'm Wrong; I Need A Church To Tell Me I'm Wrong Where I Think I'm Right

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

The Great Ideals Of The Past Failed Not By Being Outlived (which Must Mean Over-lived), But By Not Being Lived Enough. Mankind Has Not Passed Through The Middle Ages. Rather Mankind Has Retreated From The Middle Ages In Reaction And Rout. The Christian Ideal Has Not Been Tried And Found Wanting. It Has Been Found Difficult And Left Untried.

Architecture Approaches Nearer Than Any Other Art To Being Irrevocable Because It Is So Difficult To Get Rid Of.

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

London Is A Riddle. Paris Is An Explanation.

The Sane Man Knows That He Has A Touch Of The Beast, A Touch Of The Devil, A Touch Of The Saint, A Touch Of The Citizen. Nay, The Really Sane Man Knows That He Has A Touch Of The Madman.

God Is Not A Symbol Of Goodness; Goodness Is A Symbol Of God

There Is Not Really Any Courage At All In Attacking Hoary Or Antiquated Things, Any More Than In Offering To Fight One's Grandmother. The Really Courageous Man Is He Who Defies Tyrannies Young As The Morning And Superstitions Fresh As The First Flowers. The Only True Free-thinker Is He Whose Intellect Is As Much Free From The Future As From The Past.

Boys Like Romantic [fairy] Tales; But Babies Like Realistic Tales - Because They Find Them Romantic...this Proves That Even Nursery Tales Only Echo An Almost Prenatal Leap Of Interest And Amazement. These Tales Say That Apples Were Golden Only To Refresh The Forgotten Moment When We Found That They Were Green. They Make Rivers Run With Wine Only To Make Us Remember, For One Wild Moment, That They Run With Water.

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

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.

We Can’t Turn Life Into A Pleasure. But We Can Choose Such Pleasures As Are Worthy Of Us And Our Immortal Souls.

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

Man Knows That There Are In The Soul Tints More Bewildering, More Numberless, And More Nameless That The Colors Of An Autumn Forest....yet He Seriously Believes That These Things Can Every One Of Them , In All Their Tones And Semi-tones, In All Their Blends And Unions, Be Accurately Represented By An Arbitrary System Of Grunts And Squeals. He Believes That An Ordinary Civilized Stockbroker Can Really Produce Out Of His Own Inside Noises Which Denote All The Mysteries Of Memory And All The Agonies Of Desire.

Thanks Are The Highest Form Of Thought.

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.

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

Misers Get Up Early In The Morning; And Burglars, I Am Informed, Get Up The Night Before.

Man Is At His Tallest When He Bows.

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

The Outer Ring Of Christianity Is A Rigid Guard Of Ethical Abnegations And Professional Priests; But Inside That Inhuman Guard You Will Find The Old Human Life Dancing Like Children And Drinking Wine Like Men; For Christianity Is The Only Frame For Pagan Freedom. But In The Modern Philosophy The Case Is Opposite; It Is Its Outer Ring That Is Obviously Artistic And Emancipated; Its Despair Is Within.

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Benjamin Jowett

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