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d43f4e8
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In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f36f578
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Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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825b6d7
|
Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontan..
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motherhood
women
family
family-life
catholicism
womanhood
mother
women-s-strength
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G.K. Chesterton |
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2388780
|
The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshipers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Word..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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5b83fd0
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All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by lif..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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e3473a6
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Why does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for ord..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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2e7ce21
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I don't deny," he said, "that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet." --
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G.K. Chesterton |
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87a6bf6
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Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory ... we are all kings in exile.
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happiness
exile
home
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c3731f0
|
The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap... When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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18b5e91
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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7c55b7d
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The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the place, and my soul sang for joy like a bird in spring.
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joy
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G.K. Chesterton |
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a2161f8
|
The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn't obeyed.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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b2be0f2
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The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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087892b
|
Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad," replied Syme with perfect calm; "but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition."
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9eca4ce
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I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its meat from God. But now I really was happy, for I had learnt that man is a monstrosity. I had been right in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse and better than all things. The optimist's pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness o..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8828bd7
|
Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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884b85a
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White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9c09eb6
|
The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth. In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from another land than of a mere growth of this one. He cannot sleep in his own skin; he cannot trust his own instincts. He is at once a creator moving miraculous hands and fingers and a kind of cripple. He is wrapped in artificial ba..
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human
pilgrim
stranger
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G.K. Chesterton |
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85b1d8d
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The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.
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new-year
growth
effort
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9292bec
|
Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; b..
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christianity
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G.K. Chesterton |
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205a3c1
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But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun.; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic monotony that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger th..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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5980f5c
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The men of the East may spell the stars, And times and triumphs mark, But the men signed of the cross of Christ Go gaily in the dark.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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2883b2f
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Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain.
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poetry
reason
serenity
mysticism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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d155009
|
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 noth..
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small-towns
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G.K. Chesterton |
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02b2f80
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Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sight seers.
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marshes
monotony
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G.K. Chesterton |
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645d57d
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Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy.
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fear
mathmaticians
ordeals
monogamy
isolation
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G.K. Chesterton |
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79958dd
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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.
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politics
government
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G.K. Chesterton |
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5a81450
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That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and e..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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5571cde
|
He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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0d3016f
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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b0e512a
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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7a14d88
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Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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bfe3396
|
The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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6050a99
|
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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8ed96b4
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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 anyone 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 objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected ..
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aristocrats
poor
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G.K. Chesterton |
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787ae59
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The ignorant pronounce it Frood To cavil or applaud
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G.K. Chesterton |
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ed35651
|
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 ..
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despotism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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e39e327
|
Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realize that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions.
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religion
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G.K. Chesterton |
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e4f72cc
|
Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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52d0b93
|
Chattering finch and water-fly Are not merrier than I; Here among the flowers I lie Laughing everlastingly. No: I may not tell the best; Surely, friends, I might have guessed
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laughter
hope
skeleton
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8182ede
|
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.
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death
euthanasia
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G.K. Chesterton |
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bbbb1e2
|
Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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803eb83
|
When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its cornerstone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward - in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have failed, because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong ..
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the-catholic-church
the-papacy
the-pope
peter
|
G.K. Chesterton |
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c5b23cd
|
The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.
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sick
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G.K. Chesterton |