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067dbd6
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People, if you have any prayers, Say prayers for me: And lay me under a Christian stone In that lost land I thought my own, To wait till the holy horn is blown, And all poor men are free.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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ac39750
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Then the man smiled, and his smile was a shock, for it was all on one side, going up in the right cheek and down in the left. There was nothing, rationally speaking, to scare anyone about this. Many people have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and in many it is even attractive. But in all Syme's circumstances, with the dark dawn and the deadly errand and the loneliness on the great dripping stones, there was something unnerving in it...
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smile
nightmare
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G.K. Chesterton |
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5d7b2fc
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But of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have before us: the habit of exhaustively describing a social sickness, and then propounding a social drug.
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society
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G.K. Chesterton |
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4f5e9ec
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He had thought at first that they were all of common stature and costume, with the evident exception of the hairy Gogol. But as he looked at the others, he began to see in each of them exactly what he had seen in the man by the river, a demoniac detail somewhere. That lop-sided laugh, which would suddenly disfigure the fine face of his original guide, was typical of all these types. Each man had something about him, perceived perhaps at the..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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a4d5893
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Basil Grant and I were talking one day in what is perhaps the most perfect place for talking on earth--the top of a tolerably deserted tramcar. To talk on the top of a hill is superb, but to talk on the top of a flying hill is a fairy tale.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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2124f5c
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He spoke in that sweet and steely voice which he reserved for great occasions and practiced for hours together in his bedroom.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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6b7666f
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I believe firmly in the value of all vulgar notions, especially of vulgar jokes. When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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931f8dd
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It was like the face of some ancient archangel, judging justly after heroic wars. There was laughter in the eyes, and in the mouth honour and sorrow. There was the same white hair, the same great, grey-clad shoulders that I had seen from behind. But when I saw him from behind I was certain he was an animal, and when I saw him in front I knew he was a god.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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777a67e
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Allied to this question is the kindred question on which we so often hear an innocent British boast--the fact that our statesmen are privately on very friendly relations, although in Parliament they sit on opposite sides of the House. Here, again, it is as well to have no illusions. Our statesmen are not monsters of mystical generosity or insane logic, who are really able to hate a man from three to twelve and to love him from twelve to thr..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8cc72fc
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What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves?
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G.K. Chesterton |
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d96c6ff
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But the whole modern world, or at any rate the whole modern Press, has a perpetual and consuming terror of plain morals. Men always attempt to avoid condemning a thing upon merely moral grounds...Why on earth do the newspapers, in describing a dynamite outrage or any other political assassination, call it a "dastardly outrage" or a cowardly outrage? It is perfectly evident that it is not dastardly in the least. It is perfectly evident that ..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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616d373
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I do not admit that theological points are small points. Theology is only thought applied to religion; and those who prefer a thoughtless religion need not be so very disdainful of others with a more rationalistic taste. The old joke that the Greek sects only differed about a single letter is about the lamest and most illogical joke in the world. An atheist and a theist only differ by a single letter; yet theologians are so subtle as to dis..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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7e43d26
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The devil takes us to the top of an exceeding high mountain and makes us dizzy; but God lets us look at the mountain.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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320c166
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I do not say that there are no stronger men than these; but will any one say that there are any men stronger than those men of old who were dominated by their philosophy and steeped in their religion? Whether bondage be better than freedom may be discussed. But that their bondage came to more than our freedom it will be difficult for any one to deny.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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d14ddc3
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There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. Nothing is more keenly required than a defence of bores. When Byron divided humanity into the bores and bored, he omitted to notice that the higher qualities exist entirely in the bores, the lower qualities in the bored, among whom he counted himself. The bore, by his starry enthusiasm, his solemn happiness, may, in some sen..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8c0c4cd
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A saint is long past any desire for distinction; he is the only sort of superior man who has never been a superior person.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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fff5a6f
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A man who thinks a great deal about himself will try to be many-sided, attempt a theatrical excellence at all points, will try to be an encyclopaedia of culture, and his own real personality will be lost in that false universalism.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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cdac5c9
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Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it easier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive. Mr. Blatchford is not only an early Christian, he is the only early Christian who really ought to have been eaten by lions.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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cfcd935
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We will have have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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362ccb7
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If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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10705b8
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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79d7049
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We will have no generalizations. Mr. Bernard Shaw has put the view in a perfect epigram: "The golden rule is that there is no golden rule." We are more and more to discuss details in art, politics, literature. A man's opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter. He may turn over and explore a million objects, but he must not find that strange object, the universe; for if he does ..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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067a217
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This very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these lunatics to go down into their dark room and die for something that they could not even understand. The barrel-organ seemed to give the marching tune with the energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he could hear deep and rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of life, the drums of the pride of death.
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life
pride
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G.K. Chesterton |
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78d99a2
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What had happened to the human imagination, as a whole, was that the whole world was coloured by dangerous and rapidly deteriorating passions; by natural passions becoming unnatural passions.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9fa5020
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If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it is wrong. Some will call it insane; that is, will accuse it of a deficiency of intelligence. This is not necessarily true at all. You could not tell whether the act was unintelligent or not unless you knew my grandmother. Some will call it vulgar,..
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good
death
efficiency
journalism
manners
insanity
evil
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G.K. Chesterton |
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06c49b7
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A waiter came swiftly along the room, and then stopped dead. His stoppage was as silent as his tread; but all those vague and kindly gentlemen were so used to the utter smoothness of the unseen machinery which surrounded and supported their lives, that a waiter doing anything unexpected was a start and a jar. They felt as you and I would feel if the inanimate world disobeyed-- if a chair ran away from us.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8fd0487
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The modern instinct is that if the heart of man is evil, there is nothing that remains good. But the older feeling was that if the heart of man was ever so evil, there was something that remained good--goodness remained good.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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121563d
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Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. "He that will lose his life, the same shall save it," is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut ..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f1db101
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The sages have a hundred maps to give That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree They rattle reason out through many a sieve That stores the sand but lets the gold go free
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G.K. Chesterton |
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bbb57ed
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He seemed like a walking blasphemy, a blend of the angel and the ape.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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6bfdaea
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He defended respectability with violence and exaggeration.
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fundamentalism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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71d9bfe
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Even in an empire of atheists the dead man is always sacred.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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be7355a
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Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8ab6a23
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Let me explain a little: Certain things are bad so far as they go, such as pain, and no one, not even a lunatic, calls a tooth-ache good in itself; but a knife which cuts clumsily and with difficulty is called a bad knife, which it certainly is not. It is only not so good as other knives to which men have grown accustomed. A knife is never bad except on such rare occasions as that in which it is neatly and scientifically planted in the midd..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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a1af75f
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He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists.
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reactionaries
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G.K. Chesterton |
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2160be1
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I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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5e6ec8b
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Happiness is a state of the soul; a state in which our natures are full of the wine of an ancient youth, in which banquets last for ever, and roads lead everywhere, where all things are under the exuberant leadership of faith, hope, and charity.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9d3de4e
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She was not in the least afraid of loneliness, because she was not afraid of devils. I think they were afraid of her.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9a749ef
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The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.
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modern-world
the-sexes
separation
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G.K. Chesterton |
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468d99f
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We're all really dependent in nearly everything, and we all make a fuss about being independent in something.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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446a7cb
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To be in the weakest camp is to be in the strongest school. Nor can I imagine anything that would do humanity more good than the advent of a race of Supermen, for them to fight like dragons. If the Superman is better than we, of course we need not fight him; but in that case, why not call him a Saint? But if he is merely stronger (whether physically, mentally, or morally stronger, I do not care a farthing), then he ought to have to reckon w..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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559d78e
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When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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18cd82a
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If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfort..
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classic
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G.K. Chesterton |
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dc02e7b
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Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, "I will not hit you if you do not hit me"; there is no trace of such a transaction. There IS a trace of both men having said, We must not hit each other in the holy place. They gained their morality by guarding their religion. They did not cultivate courage. They fought for the shrine, and found they had become courageous. They did not cultivate cleanliness. They purified themselves for t..
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G.K. Chesterton |