K. Chesterton
K. Chesterton
beautiful christmas home
Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.
firsts stories ifs
I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller
book pages st-thomas
St Thomas (Aqinas) loved books and lived on books... When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, ‘I have understood every page I ever read’.
keys bangs enough
Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.
mind boring subjects
There are no boring subjects, only disinterested minds.
men holy-places morality
Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, "I will not hit you if you do not hit me"; there is no trace of such a transaction. There IS a trace of both men having said, "We must not hit each other in the holy place.
life-is bad-jokes prophecy
My life is passed in making bad jokes and seeing them turn into true prophecies.
fall sleep tired
If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.
believe moving men
An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one. The Greek witch may have turned sailors to swine with a stroke of the wand. But to see a naval gentleman of our acquaintance looking a little more like a pig every day, till he ended with four trotters and a curly tail, would not be any more soothing. It might be rather more creepy and uncanny.
children war views
As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War—they might as well say that the Ark was discredited by the Flood. When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right. The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do.
doe moral sanity
Right is Right even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it.
baby children dragons
Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
fighting battle glimpse
The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God's paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle - and not lose it.
gratitude wonder
Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.