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7df9266
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And the greatest of the poets, when he defined the poet, did not say that he gave us the universe or the absolute or the infinite; but, in his own larger language, a local habitation and a name.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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adb894e
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You've got to understand one of the tricks of the modern mind, a tendency that most people obey without noticing it. In the village or suburb outside there's an inn with the sign of St. George and the Dragon. Now suppose I went about telling everybody that this was only a corruption of King George and the Dragoon. Scores of people would believe it, without any inquiry, from a vague feeling that it's probable because it's prosaic. It turns s..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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4195c06
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The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard it not as a deception but rather as a dream. Even if the people were not 'artists,' the whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face--that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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3f532c5
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I know too much," he said. "That's what's the matter with me. That's what's the matter with all of us, and the whole show; we know too much. Too much about one another; too much about ourselves."
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G.K. Chesterton |
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dc34df0
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The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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6972ede
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There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical. And he never goes on sitting there after sunset, with the whole place getting dark.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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09348aa
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We matter to God -- God only knows why.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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1ad26be
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Through all this modern muddle there runs the curious principle of sacrificing the ancient uses of things because they do not fit in with the modern abuses.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f473d02
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Perhaps I might put up my notice of warning, and warn the reader not to read the second chapter. Now I come to think of it, I might warn him not to read the book at all.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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66f0b88
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If [things] seem to have a relative unreality ... it is because they are potential and not actual; they are unfulfilled ... They have it in them to be more real than they are.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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630db4c
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Far be it from a poor friar to deny that you have these dazzling diamonds in your head, all designed in the most perfect mathematical shapes and shining with a purely celestial light; all there, almost before you begin to think, let alone to see or hear or feel. But I am not ashamed to say that I find my reason fed by my senses; that I owe a great deal of what I think to what I see and smell and taste and handle; and that so far as my reaso..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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56127be
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The Fear of the Lord, that is the beginning of wisdom, and therefore belongs to the beginnings, and is felt in the first cold hours before the dawn of civilisation; the power that comes out of the wilderness and rides on the whirlwind and breaks the gods of stone; the power before which the eastern nations are prostrate like a pavement; the power before which the primitive prophets run naked and shouting, at once proclaiming and escaping fr..
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fear-of-the-lord
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G.K. Chesterton |