K. Chesterton
K. Chesterton
fiction literature world
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.
beer names cider
No sane person, I hope, would accuse me of saying that every Distributist must drink beer; especially if he could brew his own cider or found claret better for his health. But I do most emphatically scorn and scout the vulgar refinement that regards beer as something unseemly and humiliating. And I would shout the name of beer a hundred times a day, to shock all the snobs who have so shameful a sense of shame.
power criticism speech
It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it.
simplicity leaving insane
As an explanation of the world materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of a madman's arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.
friendship men two
It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men - so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two agnostics. "I say God is One," and "I say God is One but also Three," that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship.
mean too-much doe
Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.
two four may
There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.
anger divine discontent
Human anger is a higher thing than what is called divine discontent. For you must be angry with something; but you can be discontented with everything.
drinking beer thank-god
We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.
christmas summer children
Any one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate.
beautiful people may
People talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood.
advice events realistic
I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.
children giving advice
When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.
men thinking tea
At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man say, "Life is not worth living." We regard it as we regard the statement that it is a fine day; nobody thinks that it can possibly have any serious effect on the man or on the world. And yet if that utterance were really believed, the world would stand on its head.