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0f526ed
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Nobody can understand the greatness of the thirteenth century, who does not realize that it was a great growth of new things produced by a living thing. In that sense it was really bolder and freer than what we call the renaissance, which was a resurrection of old things discovered in a dead thing... and the Gospel according to St. Thomas... was a new thrust like the titanic thrust of Gothic engineering; and its strength was in a God that m..
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history
thirteenth-century
renaissance
civilization
culture
europe
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8debfc2
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It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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33d1edb
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If the moderns really want a simple religion of love, they must look for it in the Athanasian Creed. The truth is that the trumpet of true Christianity, the challenge of the charities and simplicities of Bethlehem or Christmas Day never rang out more arrestingly and unmistakably than in the defiance of Athanasius to the cold compromise of the Arians. It was emphatically he who really was fighting for a God of Love against a God of colourles..
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christianity
god
love
god-is-love
pagans
the-trinity
heretics
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G.K. Chesterton |
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cbb5ed5
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We ought to be interested in that darkest and most real part of a man in which dwell not the vices that he does not display, but the virtues that he cannot.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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12b4056
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No man demands what he desires; each man demands what he fancies he can get. Soon people forget what the man really wanted first; and after a successful and vigorous political life, he forgets it himself. The whole is an extravagant riot of second bests, a pandemonium of pis-aller.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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fdba0fa
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Always be comic in a tragedy
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G.K. Chesterton |
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1610b65
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It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money.
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irony
philanthropy
hypocrisy
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G.K. Chesterton |
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a1822cc
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Why is it," he asked vaguely, "that I think you are quite a decent fellow? Why do I positively like you, Gregory?" He paused a moment, and then added with a sort of fresh curiosity, "Is it because you are such an ass?"
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c205961
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Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul.
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praise
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G.K. Chesterton |
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3ed94e8
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The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.
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freedom-of-speech
political-correctness
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G.K. Chesterton |
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4fef06a
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He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one. It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a tower before ten thousand people and tell them that twice two is four.
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truth
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f94c810
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Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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d2751ec
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The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best ..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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88e200a
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We are in this fairyland on sufferance; it is not for us to quarrel with the conditions under which we enjoy this wild vision of the world.
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fantasy
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G.K. Chesterton |
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4bac1e1
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While most science moves in a sort of curve, being constantly corrected by new evidence, this science flies off into space in a straight line uncorrected by anything. But the habit of forming conclusions, as they can really be formed in more fruitful fields, is so fixed in the scientific mind that it cannot resist talking like this. It talks about the idea suggested by one scrap of bone as if it were something like the aeroplane which is co..
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science
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f569984
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Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth' even if you only mean 'In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.' For God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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3446da7
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The greatest of poems is an inventory. Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because Crusoe might have dropped it in the sea. It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship on to the solitary island.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c373ea0
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I felt in my bones; first, that this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean i..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c2180fe
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No man knows he is young while he is young.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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022472d
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Somewhere embedded in every ordinary book are the five or six words for which really all the rest will be written.
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words
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G.K. Chesterton |
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2809e02
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There is only one thing which is generally safe from plagiarism -- self-denial.
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individuality
wisdom
self-denial
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G.K. Chesterton |
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878dc30
|
Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8d10f8b
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I do not know by what extraordinary mental accident modern writers so constantly connect the idea of progress with the idea of independent thinking. Progress is obviously the antithesis of independent thinking. For under independent or individualistic thinking, every man starts at the beginning, and goes, in all probability, just as far as his father before him. But if there really be anything of the nature of progress, it must mean, above ..
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progress
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G.K. Chesterton |
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38398ec
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It is quite certain that the skirt means female dignity, not female submission; it can be proved by the simplest of all tests. No ruler would deliberately dress up in the recognized fetters of a slave; no judge would would appear covered with broad arrows. But when men wish to be safely impressive, as judges, priests or kings, they do wear skirts, the long, trailing robes of female dignity. The whole world is under petticoat government; for..
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women
skirts
womanhood
modesty
femininity
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G.K. Chesterton |
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4be9b37
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Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried to turn "revolutionise" from a transitive to an intransitive verb. The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what was more important) the system he would not rebel against, the system he would trust. But the new rebel is a sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fa..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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5909555
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To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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3947028
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I cannot count the pebbles in the brook. Well hath He spoken: "Swear not by thy head. Thou knowest not the hairs," though He, we read, writes that wild number in His own strange book. I cannot count the sands or search the seas, death cometh, and I leave so much untrod. Grant my immortal aureole, O my God, and I will name the leaves upon the trees, In heaven I shall stand on gold and glass, still brooding earth's arithmetic to spell;
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G.K. Chesterton |
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94ebb5b
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Men have not got tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of. Men have never wearied of political justice; they have wearied of waiting for it.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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cf74230
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I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about 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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91f6ee9
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Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?
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G.K. Chesterton |
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a3ba0f2
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Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing. Say to them "The persuasive and even coercive powers of the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of longevity in the previous generation does not become disproportionate and intolerable, especially to the f..
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eugenics
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G.K. Chesterton |
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53d2081
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No,' said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity; 'I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects would make a man merry.' 'Well,' said Michael quietly, 'will you tell me one thing? Which of us has ever tried it?
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happiness
righteous
purity
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G.K. Chesterton |
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4a773f1
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But in order that life should be a story or romance to us, it is necessary that a great part of it, at any rate, should be settled for us without our permission. If we wish life to be a system, this may be a nuisance; but if we wish it to be a drama, it is an essential. It may often happen, no doubt, that a drama may be written by somebody else which we like very little. But we should like it still less if the author came before the curtain..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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84e9003
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I don't want the universe broken up just yet," drawled the Marquis. "I want to do a lot of beastly things before I die. I thought of one yesterday in bed."
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G.K. Chesterton |
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82ef917
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The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong. And Right and Left, said Syme with a simple eagerness, I hope you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me.
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humor
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G.K. Chesterton |
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a6b89c7
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Yes, he said in a voice indescribable, you are right. I am afraid of him. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this man whom I fear until I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If heaven were his throne and the earth his footstool, I swear that I would pull him down. How? asked the staring Professor. Why? Because I am afraid of him, said Syme; and no man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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ee3cd49
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Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. We might say that his mind had no background, except perhaps that divine darkness out of which the divine love had called up every colored creature one by one. He saw everything as dramatic, distinct from its setting, not all of a piece like a picture but in action like a play. A bird went by him like an arrow; something with a story and a purpose, though it was a purpose of life and n..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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677dfad
|
Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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1b931cf
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I am not good at deception,' said Tuesday gloomily, flushing. Right, my boy, right,' said the President with a ponderous heartiness, 'You aren't good at anything.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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0a4de25
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Thrift is poetic because it is creative.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8ebd2c1
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There is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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278ee96
|
I cannot betray you, but I might betray myself. Come, come! wait and see me betray myself. I shall do it so nicely.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9e854c2
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There is no harm in our criticizing foreigners, if only we would also criticize ourselves. In other words, the world might need even less of its new charity, if it had a little more of the old humility.
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humilty
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G.K. Chesterton |
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d47e2a8
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You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it. You cannot fight without something to fight for. To love a thing without wishing to fight for it is not love at all; it is lust. It may be an airy, philosophical, and disinterested lust; it may be, so to speak, a virgin lust; but it is lust, because it is wholly self-indulgent and invites no attack. On the other hand, fighting for a thing without loving it is not even fighting; it can..
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love
hold-fast
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G.K. Chesterton |