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Orthodoxy QUOTES

Orthodoxy QUOTES

121 " The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

122 " We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

123 " All roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never get there. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

124 " The mere machinery of voting is not democracy, though at present it is not easy to effect any simpler democratic method. But "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

125 " I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

126 " That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, “Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?” The young sceptic says, “I have a right to think for myself.” But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, “I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.” There "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

127 " I prefer to call it reform. For reform implies form. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

128 " Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals. Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

129 " The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

130 " A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

131 " Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

132 " It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

133 " Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

134 " Those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

135 " All the terms used in the science books, 'law,' 'necessity,' 'order,' 'tendency,' and so on, are really unintellectual .... The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, 'charm,' 'spell,' 'enchantment.' They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched. I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

136 " When I was a boy there were two curious men running about who were called the optimist and the pessimist. I constantly used the words myself, but I cheerfully confess that I never had any very special idea of what they meant. The only thing which might be considered evident was that they could not mean what they said; for the ordinary verbal explanation was that the optimist thought this world as good as it could be, while the pessimist thought it as bad as it could be. Both these statements being obviously raving nonsense, one had to cast about for other explanations. An optimist could not mean a man who thought everything right and nothing wrong. For that is meaningless; it is like calling everything right and nothing left. Upon the whole, I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

137 " Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

138 " It is true that a man (a silly man) might make change itself his object or ideal. But as an ideal, change itself becomes unchangeable. If the change-worshipper wishes to estimate his own progress, he must be sternly loyal to the ideal of change; he must not begin to flirt gaily with the ideal of monotony. Progress itself cannot progress "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

139 " Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy

140 " [...] central Christian theology (sufficiently summarized in the Apostles' Creed) is the best root of energy and sound ethics. "

― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy