G. K. Chesterton ( 10 of 64 )
Commemoration of Mary Slessor, Missionary in West Africa, 1915 It is vain for bishops and pious bigwigs to discuss read more
Commemoration of Mary Slessor, Missionary in West Africa, 1915 It is vain for bishops and pious bigwigs to discuss what dreadful things will happen if wild skepticism runs its course. It has run its course. It is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that will be revealed if once we see free thought begin. We have seen it end. It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself. You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves. You cannot fancy a more skeptical world than that in which men doubt whether there is a world. It might certainly have reached its bankruptcy more quickly and cleanly if it had not been feebly hampered by the application of indefensible laws of blasphemy or by the absurd pretense that modern England is Christian. But it would have reached the bankruptcy anyhow.
Feast of Bartholomew the Apostle It is often said with a sneer that the God of Israel was only read more
Feast of Bartholomew the Apostle It is often said with a sneer that the God of Israel was only a God of Battles, "a mere barbaric Lord of Hosts" pitted in rivalry against other gods only as their envious foe. Well it is for the world that He was indeed a God of Battles. Well it is for us that He was to all the rest only a rival and a foe. In the ordinary way, it would have been only too easy for them to have achieved the desolate disaster of conceiving Him as a friend. It would have been only too easy for them to have seen Him stretching out His hands in love and reconciliation, embracing Baal and kissing the painted face of Astarte... It would have been easy enough for His worshipers to follow the enlightened course of Syncretism and the pooling of all the pagan traditions. It is obvious indeed that His followers were always sliding down this easy slope; and it required the almost demoniac energy of certain inspired demagogues, who testified to the divine unity in words that are still like winds of inspiration and ruin, [to stop them]. The more we really understand of the ancient conditions that contributed to the final culture of the Faith, the more we shall have a real and even a realistic reverence for the greatness of the Prophets of Israel. As it was, while the whole world melted into this mass of confused mythology, this Deity who is called tribal and narrow, precisely because He was what is called tribal and narrow, preserved the primary religion of all mankind. He was tribal enough to be universal. He was as narrow as the universe.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best
advice, and then going away and doing the read more
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best
advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been read more
A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.
Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology for every error. The strong and read more
Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology for every error. The strong and virtuous admit no destiny. On earth conscience guides; in heaven God watches. And destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one and dethrone the other.
The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.
The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.
There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.
There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.
People generally quarrel because they can't argue.
People generally quarrel because they can't argue.
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writes in the read more
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writes in the world.
The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.
The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.
