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2c85040
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When modern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating one's self to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirely of people who will not accommodate themselves to anything. At its worst it consists of many millions of frightened creatures all accommodating themselves to a trend that is not there. And that is becoming more and more the situation...Every man speaks of public opinion, and..
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public-opinion
trends
sociology
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G.K. Chesterton |
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09c7079
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People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad.
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sanity
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G.K. Chesterton |
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ecdde3d
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What are we going to do?" asked the Professor. "At this moment," said Syme, with a scientific detachment, "I think we are going to smash into a lamppost."
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gabriel-syme
lamppost
professor-de-worms
scientific-detachment
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G.K. Chesterton |
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fef613b
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Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller. It is a common error, I think, among the Radical idealists of my own party and period to suggest t..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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3390333
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My brain and this world don't fit each other; and there's an end of it.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c67fbf3
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Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it. It is the contention of these pages that while the best judge of Christianity is a Christian, the next best judge would be something more like a Confucian. The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgements; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entan..
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bias
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G.K. Chesterton |
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02d3045
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If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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5bf386b
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I am the fool in this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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2d8c802
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There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical...It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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d3bd47e
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Buddhism and Christianity] are in one sense parallel and equal; as a mound and a hollow, as a valley and a hill. There is a sense in which that sublime despair is the only alternative to that divine audacity. It is even true that the truly spiritual and intellectual man sees it as sort of dilemma; a very hard and terrible choice. There is little else on earth that can compare with these for completeness. And he who does not climb the mounta..
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death
religion
darkness
life
philosophy
contrast
compare
worldview
opposites
beliefs
belief
comparison
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G.K. Chesterton |
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30db9ae
|
We have never even begun to understand a people until we have found something that we do not understand. So long as we find the character easy to read, we are reading into it our own character.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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854adef
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She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived.
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survival
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c07af08
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There are no rationalists. We all believe fairy-tales, and live in them.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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36f6d08
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Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless--like a tree? Fight the thing that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergyman who gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on his death-bed the great robber said, 'I can give you no money, but I can give you advice for a lifetime: y..
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awesomeness
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G.K. Chesterton |
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a512330
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There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place ...
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G.K. Chesterton |
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709fd00
|
Adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones. When the chord of monotony is stretched most tight, then it breaks with a sound like song.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c4dc5f5
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The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.
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materialism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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fe165d5
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of being strong and brave. The strong can not be brave. Only the weak can be brave; and yet again, in practice, only those who can be brave can be trusted, in time of doubt, to be strong.
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strength
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G.K. Chesterton |
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4ad6bdc
|
A man must love a thing very much if he practices it without any hope of fame or money, but even practice it without any hope of doing it well. Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any other man can love the rewards of it.
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passion
greatness
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G.K. Chesterton |
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614cc63
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Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.
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intelligence
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G.K. Chesterton |
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2b9c00d
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I will go forth as a real outlaw," he said, "and as men do robbery on the highway I will do right on the highway; and it will be counted a wilder crime."
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inspirational
justice
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G.K. Chesterton |
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33db5ad
|
but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not.
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disease
prison
sin
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G.K. Chesterton |
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71fa970
|
A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.
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hippogriffs
chesterton
dragons
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G.K. Chesterton |
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eb5da3c
|
Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.
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contention
contradictions
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G.K. Chesterton |
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d1aac4e
|
He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it.
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suicide
death
life
philosophy
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f7668a9
|
There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c17cb2c
|
I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him-only to bring him to life.
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life
pessimism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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d02296c
|
We are fond of talking about 'liberty'; but the way we end up actually talking of it is an attempt to avoid discussing what is 'good.' We are fond of talking about 'progress'; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about 'education'; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. The modern man says, 'Let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace unadulterated liberty.' This is, logically rende..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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eb72a64
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There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8cee2b5
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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dc0bd71
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Americans have a taste for...rocking-chairs. A flippant critic might suggest that they select rocking-chairs so that, even when they are sitting down, they need not be sitting still. Something of this restlessness in the race may really be involved in the matter; but I think the deeper significance of the rocking-chair may still be found in the deeper symbolism of the rocking-horse. I think there is behind all this fresh and facile use of w..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c055931
|
Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good--" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the p..
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marriage
politics
philosophy
moral-revolution
skepticism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8f84157
|
No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f7d4f37
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And my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from Crusoe's ship--even that had been the wild whisper of something originally wise, for, according to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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7f1d621
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We must have several word-signs," said Syme seriously -- "words that we are likely to want, fine shades of meaning. My favourite word is 'coeval.' What's yours?" "Do stop playing the goat," said the Professor plaintively. "You don't know how serious this is." "'Lush,' too, " said Syme, shaking his head sagaciously, "we must have ' lush' -- word applied to grass, don't you know?" "Do you imagine," asked the Professor furiously, "that we are ..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f9077f0
|
Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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3835366
|
I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.
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optimism
pessimism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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a4ecdb1
|
Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.
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worldviews
fashions
ideals
zeitgeist
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8434a8c
|
I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.
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philosophy
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G.K. Chesterton |
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a0af7ee
|
Man does not necessarily begin with despotism because he is barbarous, but very often finds his way to despotism because he is civilised. He finds it because he is experienced; or, what is often much the same thing, because he is exhausted
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despotism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f677e78
|
Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c0e5066
|
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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9eeb3b7
|
The secret of life lies in laughter and humility.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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5447887
|
Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else... Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course of action you give up all the other courses... Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the ..
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G.K. Chesterton |