K. Chesterton
K. Chesterton
real men community
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 nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique.
misunderstood modern used
In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.
steps stories certain
With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.
lying math science
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.
mad people wicked
There are a great many good people, and a great many sane people here this afternoon. Unfortunately, by a kind of coincidence, all the good people are mad, and all the sane people are wicked.
complaining married born
To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.
peace men nuts
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.
men absurd absurdity
Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
dream men insanity
The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.
confusion may modern
By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.
beautiful hope stars
If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?
law people needs
We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws.
adventure flags alive
We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one's life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.
war men world
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.