01c. 1890 AD[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 mountain of Christ does indeed fall into the abyss of Buddha.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
02c. 1890 ADI do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
03c. 1890 ADClassic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
04c. 1890 ADA good novel tells us the truth about its hero, but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. It does much more than that, it tells us the truth about its readers; and, oddly enough, it tells us this all the more the more cynical and immoral be the motive of its manufacture.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
05c. 1890 ADIn other words, we may, by fixing our attention almost fiercely on the facts actually before us, force them to turn into adventures; force them to give up their meaning and fulfill their mysterious purpose.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
06c. 1890 ADAny man living in complete luxury and security who chooses to write a play or a novel which causes a flutter and exchange of compliments in Chelsea and Chiswick and a faint thrill in Streatham and Surbiton, is described as "daring," though nobody on earth knows what danger it is that he dares. I speak, of course, of terrestrial dangers; or the only sort of dangers he believes in. To be extravagantly flattered by everybody he considers enlightened, and rather feebly rebuked by everybody he considers dated and dead, does not seem so appalling a peril that a man should be stared at as a heroic warrior and militant martyr because he has had the strength to endure it.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
07c. 1890 ADSomewhere embedded in every ordinary book are the five or six words for which really all the rest will be written.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
08c. 1890 ADBut there is another possible attitude towards the records of the past, and I have never been able to understand why it has not been more often adopted. To put it in its curtest form, my proposal is this: That we should not read historians, but history. Let us read the actual text of the times. Let us, for a year, or a month, or a fortnight, refuse to read anything about Oliver Cromwell except what was written while he was alive. There is plenty of material; from my own memory (which is all I have to rely on in the place where I write) I could mention offhand many long and famous efforts of English literature that cover the period. Clarendon’s History, Evelyn’s Diary, the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. Above all let us read all Cromwell’s own letters and speeches, as Carlyle published them. But before we read them let us carefully paste pieces of stamp-paper over every sentence written by Carlyle. Let us blot out in every memoir every critical note and every modern paragraph. For a time let us cease altogether to read the living men on their dead topics. Let us read only the dead men on their living topics.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
09c. 1890 ADI was waiting for you," said Gregory. "Might I have a moment's conversation?""Certainly. About what?" asked Syme in a sort of weak wonder.Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the tree. "About this and this," he cried; "about order and anarchy. There is your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing itself--there is anarchy, splendid in green and gold.""All the same," replied Syme patiently, "just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
10c. 1890 ADThe curse that came before history has laid on us all a tendency to be weary of wonders. If we saw the sun for the first time it would be the most fearful and beautiful of meteors. Now that we see it for the hundredth time we call it, in the hideous and blasphemous phrase of Wordsworth, "the light of common day." We are inclined to increase our claims. We are inclined to demand six suns, to demand a blue sun, to demand a green sun. Humility is perpetually putting us back in the primal darkness. There all light is lightning, startling and instantaneous. Until we understand that original dark, in which we have neither sight nor expectation, we can give no hearty and childlike praise to the splendid sensationalism of things.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
11c. 1890 ADThere is a limit to human charity," said Lady Outram, trembling all over."There is," said Father Brown dryly, "and that is the real difference between human charity and Christian charity. You must forgive me if I was not altogether crushed by your contempt for my uncharitableness today; or by the lectures you read me about pardon for every sinner. For it seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don't really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don't regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. So you tolerate a conventional duel, just as you tolerate a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn't anything to be forgiven.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
12c. 1890 ADThe dreadful joy Thy Son has sentIs heavier than any care;We find, as Cain his punishment,Our pardon more than we can bear.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
13c. 1890 ADMan is more himself, more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing and grief superficial.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
14c. 1890 ADThe point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
16c. 1890 ADImagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
17c. 1890 ADI left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
18c. 1890 ADYou are my only friend in the world, and I want to talk to you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
19c. 1890 ADThe man, like the mouse, undermines what he cannot understand. Because he bumps into a thing, he calls it the nearest obstacle; though the obstacle may happen to be the pillar that holds the roof over his head. he industriously removes the obstacle; and in return the obstacle removes him; and much more valuable things than he.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
21c. 1890 ADA 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.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
22c. 1890 ADShe(Joan of Arc) put her dreams and her sentiment into her aims, where they ought to be; she put her practicality into her practice. In modern Imperial wars, the case is reversed. Our dreams, our aims are always, we insist, quite practical. It is our practice that is dreamy.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
23c. 1890 ADWhen 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 men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
24c. 1890 ADThe traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
