Wit & Wisdom: G.K. Chesterton Quotes

Farewell, and Parting Gifts

Indefinite Hiatus

The truth, I think, is that obscurity is a kind of curse from God, which often falls upon people either for the sin of intellectual pride or for that of moral timidity. And it is very odd how often the two things go together. It is very odd how often you will find that the man who has enough assurance to despise you, has not enough assurance even to hit you back.

If a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkeness and gluttony, that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says that Christmas Day is only a conspiracy kept up by Poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives, then he says something which is not so much false as startling and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewellers who wanted to sell wedding rings.

An extraordinary idea has arisen that the best critic of religious institutions is the man who talks coldly about Religion. Nobody supposes that the best critic of music is the man who talks coldly about music.

The word amateur has come by the thousand oddities of language to convey an idea of tepidity; whereas the word itself has the meaning of passion. Nor is this peculiarity confined to the mere form of the word; the actual characteristic of these nameless dilettanti is a genuine fire and reality. A man must love a thing very much if he not only practises it without any hope of fame or money, but even practises it without any hope of doing it well. Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any other man can love the rewards of it.

Telling the truth about the terrible struggles of the human soul is surely a very elementary part of the ethics of honesty.  If the characters are not wicked, the book is.

The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men. As far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.

The transition from the good man to the saint is a sort of revolution; by which one for whom all things illustrate and illuminate God becomes one for whom God illustrates and illuminates all things. It is rather like the reversal whereby a lover might say at first sight that a lady looked like a flower, and say afterwards that all flowers reminded him of his lady. A saint and a poet standing by the same flower might seem to say the same thing; but indeed though they would both be telling the truth, they would be telling different truths. For one the joy of life is a cause of faith, for the other rather a result of faith.

There is undoubtedly a Bolshevist movement in the modern world, and it must undoubtedly be resisted, though I do not believe very much in your way of resisting it. But what nobody notices is that there is another movement equally modern and equally moving: the great movement towards monopoly or the turning of all trades into trusts. That also is a revolution. That also produces what all revolutions produce. Men will kill for that and against that, as they do for and against Bolshevism. It has its ultimatums and its invasions and its executions. These trust magnates have their courts like kings; they have their bodyguard and bravos; they have their spies in the enemy camp.

All talk about liberty of religion is like talk about liberty for children; it is either a truism or an insane and inhuman lie. It misses the paradox already existing in the practical state of things. It is true that a child's instincts are diviner than ours; but it is also true that a child can kill himself with a tea-kettle.

The truth is that we could all find reason for rebelling against theology every week; just as we could all find reason for rebelling against Government every week. But rebelling against Government is dangerous, so modern people (very characteristically) prefer to rebel against theology, which is safe.

For some mad reason in this mad world of ours the things about which men differ most are exactly the things about which they must be got to agree. Men can agree on the fact that the earth goes round the sun. But then it simply does not matter a dump whether the earth goes around the sun or the Pleiades. But men cannot agree about morals; sex, property, individual rights, fixity of contracts, patriotism, suicide, public habits of health - these are exactly the things that men tend to fight about.  And these are exactly the things that must be settled somehow, and settled on strict principles. Study each of them, and you will find each of them works back certainly to a philosophy, probably to a religion. Every Society has to act upon dogmas, and dogmas are exactly those things that are most disputable. It puts a man in prison for the dogma of the sanctity of human life. All punishment is religious persecution.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree - with themselves? The doctors will always disagree and humanity will always decide.

There is no more dangerous or disgusting habit than that of celebrating Christmas early