K. Chesterton
K. Chesterton
sex shouting thousand
Ten thousand women marched through the streets shouting, 'We will not be dictated to,' and went off and became stenographers.
adventure men dragons
A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.
suicide waiting coward
He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it.
men principles life-is
Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles.
stars sunset men
There is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset.
favour obvious skepticism
It is assumed that the skeptic has no bias; whereas he has a very obvious bias in favour of skepticism.
jobs book heart
Indeed the Book of Job avowedly only answers mystery with mystery. Job is comforted with riddles; but he is comforted. Herein is indeed a type, in the sense of a prophecy, of things speaking with authority. For when he who doubts can only say, ‘I do not understand,’ it is true that he who knows can only reply or repeat ‘You do not understand.’ And under that rebuke there is always a sudden hope in the heart; and the sense of something that would be worth understanding.
mad people religion
People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad.
sweet children grateful
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?
men thinking talking
Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live.
opposites balance christianity
Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.
thinking sin pessimism
I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.
exercise sea infinite
Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain.
said survived
She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived.