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53eab4b
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Our civilization has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the thing that I felt in that jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wish..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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56b699b
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An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one. The Greek witch may have turned sailors to swine with a stroke of the wand. But to see a naval gentleman of our acquaintance looking a little more like a pig every day, till he ended with four trotters and a curly tail, would not b..
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evolution
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G.K. Chesterton |
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6df4fe0
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And though St. John saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9653499
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He thought his detective brain as good as the criminal's, which was true. But he fully realised the disadvantage. "The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic," he said with a sour smile, and lifted his coffee cup to his lips slowly, and put it down very quickly. He had put salt in it."
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9a02b18
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It is you who are unpoetical," replied the poet Syme. "If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Ba..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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dd8d6a0
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Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past
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G.K. Chesterton |
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024c54f
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Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?
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gratitude
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G.K. Chesterton |
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069cf3d
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A pickpocket is obviously a champion of private enterprise. But it would perhaps be an exaggeration to say that a pickpocket is a champion of private property. The point about Capitalism and Commercialism, as conducted of late, is that they have really preached the extension of business rather than the preservation of belongings; and have at best tried to disguise the pickpocket with some of the virtues of the pirate.
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commerce
goods
property
theft
capitalism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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be611df
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If grass grows and withers, it can only mean that it is part of a greater thing, which is even more real; not that the grass is less real than it looks. St. Thomas (Aquinas) has a really logical right to say, in the words of the modern mystic, A. E.: "I begin by the grass to be bound again to the Lord."
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sovereignty-of-god
mysticism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9303e29
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The chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist.
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humour
teleology
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G.K. Chesterton |
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45dde84
|
A] permanent possibility of selfishness arises from the mere fact of having a self, and not from any accidents of education or ill-treatment. And the weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether ..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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e8c3cd8
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The men who made the joke saw something deep which they could not express except by something silly and emphatic.
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humour
humor
seriousness
language
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9e3bbe9
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Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy....The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the city because they know the city; but it will always be an exceptional sort of citizen who has or claims the right to rule over ten cities, and these remote and altogether alien cities...To make all politics cosmopolitan is to create an aristocracy of globe-trotters. If your political ..
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politics
one-world-government
local-government
nationalism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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fa06070
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There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. That is a perfectly simple fact which the modern world will find out more and more to be a fact. Every other basis is a sort of sentimental confusion, full of merely verbal echoes of the older creeds. Those verbal associations are always vain for the vital purpose of constraining the tyrant.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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ee5df04
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There fared a mother driven forth Out of an inn to roam; In the place where she was homeless All men are at home. The crazy stable close at hand, With shaking timber and shifting sand, Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand Than the square stones of Rome. For men are homesick in their homes, And strangers under the sun, And they lay on their heads in a foreign land Whenever the day is done. Here we have battle and blazing eyes, And chan..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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b97336a
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A] finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more essential and more strange.
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immortality
writing
unfinished-works
fame
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G.K. Chesterton |
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4055237
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You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know what you are all of you, from first to last--you are the people in power! You are the police--the great, fat smiling men in blue and buttons! You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive that does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken?"
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G.K. Chesterton |
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873e1e9
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To-day all our novels and newspapers will be found to be swarming with numberless allusions to the popular character called a Cave-Man. He seems to be quite familiar to us, not only as a public character but as a private character. His psychology is seriously taken into account in psychological fiction and psychological medicine. So far as I can understand, his chief occupation in life was knocking his wife about, or treating women in gener..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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42b2663
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tradition is only democracy extended through time.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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06c43cd
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Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed when you and I were young.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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7ec4b57
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The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic, it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true.
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nativity
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G.K. Chesterton |
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775ee21
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The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statues, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen--that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began wit..
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science
eugenics
materialism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c8873a4
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I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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56b7801
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Another savage trait of our time is the disposition to talk about material substances instead of about ideas. The old civilisation talked about the sin of gluttony or excess. We talk about the Problem of Drink--as if drink could be a problem. When people have come to call the problem of human intemperance the Problem of Drink, and to talk about curing it by attacking the drink traffic, they have reached quite a dim stage of barbarism. The t..
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brilliance
modern-barbarism
g-k-chesterton
sin
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c52d22f
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The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact.
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humour
truth
joke
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G.K. Chesterton |
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4d29b5d
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If better conditions will make the poor more fit to govern themselves, why should not better conditions already make the rich more fit to govern them? On the ordinary environment argument the matter is fairly manifest. The comfortable class must be merely our vanguard in Utopia...Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides? Is there any answer to the argument that th..
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the-rich
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8aff6a1
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Man is more himself, more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing and grief superficial.
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joy
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c79ad08
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To each man one soul only is given; to each soul only is given a little power - the power at some moments to outgrow and swallow up the stars.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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91a6186
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Well, you have said that you were quite certain I was not a serious anarchist. Does this place strike you as being serious?" "It does seem to have a moral under all its gaiety," assented Syme; "but may I ask you two questions? You need not fear to give me information, because, as you remember, you very wisely extorted from me a promise not to tell the police, a promise I shall certainly keep. So it is in mere curiosity that I make my querie..
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anarchism
moral
right-and-wrong
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f638d0a
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Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not quite coward enough to admire it.
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fear
force
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G.K. Chesterton |
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5e929ba
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For these disguises did not disguise, but reveal.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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122384e
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The modern world is insane, not so much because it admits the abnormal as because it cannot recover the normal.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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d5e1eb0
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In the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is often true that familiarity is fatigue. I am convinced that if we could tell the supernatural story of Christ word for word as of a Chinese hero, call him the Son of Heaven instead of the Son of God, and trace his rayed nimbus in the gold thread of Chine..
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myth
jesus
fable
skepticism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f8980a9
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Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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514d498
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But, as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren't a priest." "What?" asked the thief, almost gaping. "You attacked reason," said Father Brown. "It's bad theology."
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c820fb3
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Nine times out of ten a man's broad-mindedness is necessarily the narrowest thing about him. This is not particularly paradoxical; it is, when we come to think of it, quite inevitable. His vision of his own village may really be full of varieties; and even his vision of his own nation may have a rough resemblance to the reality. But his vision of the world is probably smaller than the world...hence he is never so inadequate as when he is un..
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nonsectarianism
open-mindedness
multiculturalism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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d8e988e
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The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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6836f53
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Modern art has to be what is called 'intense.' it is not easy to define being intense; but, roughly speaking, it means saying only one thing at a time, and saying it wrong.
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modern-art
modernity
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G.K. Chesterton |
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af23d24
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We can't turn life into a pleasure. But we can choose such pleasures as are worthy of us and our immortal souls.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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a5f5cb8
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He is a man, I think," he said, "who cares for nothing but a joke. He is a dangerous man." Lambert laughed in the act of lifting some macaroni to his mouth. "Dangerous!" he said. "You don't know little Quin, sir!" "Every man is dangerous," said the old man, without moving, "Who cares only for one thing. I was once dangerous myself."
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humor
potential
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f41473c
|
You don't expect me," he said, "to revolutionize society on this lawn?" Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly. "No, I don't," he said; "but I suppose that if you were serious about your anarchism, that is exactly what you would do."
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revolutionize
society
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G.K. Chesterton |
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94fa171
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There are degrees of seriousness," replied Syme. "I have never doubted that you were perfectly sincere in this sense, that you thought what you said well worth saying, that you thought a paradox might wake men up to a neglected truth."
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G.K. Chesterton |
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27cd777
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Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin are (in their personal intercourse with the man) almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head. A man's friend likes him but leaves hi..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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cbf1683
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The truth is that exploration and enlargement make the world smaller. The telegraph and the steamboat make the world smaller. The telescope makes the world smaller; it is only the microscope that makes it larger. Before long the world will be cloven with a war between the telescopists and the microscopists. The first study large things and live in a small world; the second study small things and live in a large world. It is inspiriting with..
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wonder
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G.K. Chesterton |