Gilbert!
Gilbert!
If G. K. Chesterton is one of the most neglected of great twentieth century Christian writers, he is also one of the most quotable. Even if you have never read one of his books, essays or plays, it is likely that you have come across several of his delightfully witty and percipient quotations. Here is a scant selection of my personal favorites.
Education
"We are learning to do a great many clever things... The next great task will be to learn not to do them.” Varied Types.
“To put it shortly, the evil I am trying to warn you of is not excessive democracy, it is not excessive ugliness, it is not excessive anarchy. It might be stated thus: It is standardisation by a low standard.” Culture and the Coming Peril.
“Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of Examinations, they seldom indulge in what religious people used to describe as Self-Examination. The consequence is that the modern State has educated its citizens in a series of ephemeral fads.” Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine, April 1935.
“The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their common sense.” ILN.
“It is especially the educational film that threatens to darken and weaken the human intelligence... A false film might be refuted in a hundred books, without much affecting the million dupes who had never read the books but only seen the film.” As I Was Saying.
The State and Society
"The position we have now reached is this: starting from the State, we try to remedy the failures of all the families, all the nurseries, all the schools, all the workshops, all the secondary institutions that once had some authority of their own. Everything is ultimately brought into the Law Courts. We are trying to stop the leak at the other end." ILN, 1923.
"Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property." Commonwealth, 1932.
War
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." ILN, 1911.
"War is not 'the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you." ILN, 1915.
Women
"To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes, and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.”
“I would give a woman not more rights, but more privileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in which she can be free.” What’s Wrong with the World.
“Women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow; on the contrary, they were kept at home in order to keep them broad.”
“A good man’s work is affected by what he does, a woman’s by being what she is.” Robert Browning.
“Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue.” Charles Dickens.
Christianity
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” What’s Wrong With the World.
“It has been often said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.” Charles Dickens.
“The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.” ILN, 1920.
“If there were no God, there would be no atheists.” Where All Roads Lead.
“There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.” ILN, 1906.
“Take away the supernatural and what remains is the unnatural.” Heretics.
Virtue and Morality
“Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.” ILN, 1909.
“Love means loving the unlovable, or it is no virtue at all.” Heretics.
“It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them” ILN, 1908.
“It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.” The Catholic Church and Conversion.
"’There is a limit to human charity,’ said Lady Outram, trembling all over. ‘There is,’ said Father Brown dryly; ‘and that is the real difference between human charity and Christian charity. You must forgive me if I was not altogether crushed by your contempt for my uncharitableness today; or by the lectures you read me about pardon for every sinner. For it seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don't really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don't regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. So you tolerate a conventional duel, just as you tolerate a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn't anything to be forgiven.’" The Secret of Father Brown.
Mystery of the Universe
“The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.” Introduction to the Book of Job, 1907.
“All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead, but the darker secret of why he is alive.” The Thing.
“The poet asks only to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” Heretics.
“Jackson: ‘Truth is one’s own conception of things.’
“Chesterton: ‘The Big Blunder. All though is an attempt to discover if one’s own conception is true or not.’” Platitudes Undone.
Nature and Creation
“The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.” What I Saw in America, 1922.
"It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything." St. Thomas Aquinas.
"To this question 'Is there anything?' St. Thomas begins by answering 'Yes'; if he began by answering 'No', it would not be the beginning, but the end. That is what some of us call common sense.” St. Thomas Aquinas.
"Properly speaking, of course, there is no such thing as a return to nature, because there is no such thing as a departure from it. The phrase reminds one of the slightly intoxicated gentleman who gets up in his own dining room and declares firmly that he must be getting home." Chesterton Review, August 1993.
Fiction
“Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
“Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.” Heretics.
More Quotations
“The past is not what it was.” A Short History of England.
“Each was bound by a chain, the heaviest chain ever tied to a man. It is called a watch chain.” Daylight and Nightmare.
"Lost somewhere in the enormous plains of time, there wanders a dwarf who is the image of God, who has produced on a yet more dwarfish scale an image of creation. The pigmy picture of God we call Man; the pigmy picture of creation we call Art." On Lying in Bed and Other Essays.
“He who has the impatience to interrupt the words of another seldom has the patience rationally to select his own.” The Judgment of Dr. Johnson.
"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time." The Napoleon of Notting Hill.
“The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason." The Superstition of Divorce.
“Some people leave money for the improvement of public buildings. I can leave dynamite for the improvement of public buildings,” ILN, 1906.
“The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.” Daily News, 1905.
"Of all modern phenomena, the most monstrous and ominous, the most manifestly rotting with disease, the most grimly prophetic of destruction, the most clearly and unmistakably inspired by evil spirits, the most instantly and awfully overshadowed by the wrath of heaven, the most near to madness and moral chaos, the most vivid with deviltry and despair, is the practice of having to listen to loud music while eating a meal in a restaurant." Avowals and Denials.
“‘Do you know what psychology means?’ asked Flambeau with friendly surprise. ‘Psychology means being off your chump.’” Father Brown Omnibus.
“You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.” Tremendous Trifles.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009