K. Chesterton
K. Chesterton
men arguing apologetic
It is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer.
christian gratitude tests
The test of happiness is gratitude.
christian sadness men
Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small.
christian laughter heart
The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness of a sick room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy, because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.
certain
The more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.
loneliness allies isolation
There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally.
men mad logic
In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic.
perspective pessimist optimist
I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.
civilization tree alive
A good civilisation spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilisation stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella-artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform.
thinking civilization supposing-that
We all have a little weakness, which is very natural but rather misleading, for supposing that this epoch must be the end of the world because it will be the end of us. How future generations will get on without us is indeed, when we come to think of it, quite a puzzle. But I suppose they will get on somehow, and may possibly venture to revise our judgments as we have revised earlier judgments.
ideas annoying new-ideas
There are no new ideas.
mother humility giants
Humility is the mother of giants.
failure world trouble
The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that it's never been tried . . . not that it can't remake the world, but that it's difficult.
telescopes world microscopes
The telescope makes the world smaller; it is only the microscope that makes it larger.