"We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong." We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong. In these current fashions it is not really a question of the religion allowing us liberty; but (at the best) of the liberty allowing us a religion.
These people merely take the modern mood, with much in it that is amiable and much that is anarchical and much that is merely dull and obvious, and then require any creed to be cut down to fit that mood. But the mood would exist even without the creed. They say they want a religion to be social, when they would be social without any religion. They say they want a religion to be practical, when they would be practical without any religion. It is a very different matter when a religion, in the real sense of a binding thing, binds men to their morality when it is not identical with their mood.
-The Catholic Church and Conversion (1927) "Whence came this extraordinary idea that laughing at a thing is hostile?" To jeer at a child is contemptible...But to laugh at a child is simply the natural thing to do and a great compliment. Whence came this extraordinary idea that laughing at a thing is hostile? Friends laugh at each other, lovers laugh at each other, all people who love each other laugh at each other. If Mrs. Stetson Gilman can by any possibility help laughing at a child the moment he puts his preposterous nose into the door, she has a different sense of humour from ourselves.
Does not Mrs. Gilman see that to suppress so essential a sentiment, to treat a baby painting his nose blue with portentous silence and solemnity is to create an atmosphere far more false, a cloud of lies a hundred times thicker, than all the conventions against which she protests? The lovable grotesqueness of children is a part of their essential poetry, it symbolises the foolish freshness of life itself, it goes down to the mysterious heart of man; the heart out of which came elves and fairies and gnomes. Quotations of G. K. Chesterton. By ACS Some of the most celebrated and notorious G.K. Chesterton quotations. Share them. All of them. Topics Timeless Truths | Free Advice | The Cult of Progress | War and Politics | Government and Politics | Society and Culture | Love, Marriage, and the Sexes | Religion and Faith | Christmas | Morality and Truth | Economic Theory and Distributism | Art and Literature | Past Words on Today’s Dilemmas | Islam | Atheism | Islam | Courage | Friendship | Liberty | The Skeptic | Today’s World Timeless Truths Free Advice Back to Top “Do not enjoy yourself.
The Cult of Progress “Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.” – Chapter 2, Heretics, 1905“Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.” – Orthodoxy, 1908“My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. War and Politics Government and Politics Society and Culture Love, Marriage and The Sexes Religion and Faith Christmas Islam. The Essential Chesterton: An Anthology of the Thought of G. K. Chesterton. Philosophy Lovers! Click Here The Essential Chesterton An Anthology of the Thought of G. K. Chesterton To hear Chesterton’s voice and platform style click HERE Adventure An adventure is, by its nature, a thing that comes to us.
Heretics. pp.191-192. An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. All Things Considered. p.33. Agnosticism It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it. A Handful of Authors. p.163. There is still a notion that the agnostic can remain secure of this world, so long as he does not wish to be what is called "other-worldly.” The Autobiography of G.K.Chesterton. p.180. Alcohol The one genuinely dangerous and immoral way of drinking alcohol is to drink it as a medicine.
The sound rule in the matter would appear to be like many other sound rules—a paradox. Heretics. pp.102-104. Anarchy Versus Adventure Orthodoxy. pp.208-209. Anthropology The Everlasting Man. pp.39-40. Architecture Argument. The God in the Cave | G.K. Chesterton | From "The Everlasting Man" | IgnatiusInsight.com. This sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals.
The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave. There is even a shadow of such a fancy in the fact that animals were again present; for it was a cave used as a stable by the mountaineers of the uplands about Bethlehem; who still drive their cattle into such holes and caverns at night. It was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded caravanserai had been shut in their faces; and it was here beneath the very feet of the passersby, in a cellar under the very floor of the world, that Jesus Christ was born But in that second creation there was indeed something symbolical in the roots of the primeval rock or the horns of the prehistoric herd.
Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet. "Other men have justified existence because it was a harmony. He justified it because it was a battle, because it was an inspiring and melodious discord." [Robert Louis Stevenson's] optimism was one which, so far from dwelling upon those flowers and sunbeams which form the stock-in-trade of conventional optimism, took a peculiar pleasure in the contemplation of skulls, and cudgels, and gallows. It is one thing to be the kind of optimist who can divert his mind from personal suffering by dreaming of the face of an angel, and quite another thing to be the kind of optimist who can divert it by dreaming of the foul fat face of Long John Silver. And this faith of his had a very definite and a very original philosophical purport. Other men have justified existence because it was a harmony. He justified it because it was a battle, because it was an inspiring and melodious discord. He appealed to a certain set of facts which lie far deeper than any logic—the great paradoxes of the soul.
-Robert Louis Stevenson (1906) Laughter and Humility (GK-CHESTERTON.ORG) "We and all the stars and winds may be riding in rigid ranks under the orders of the captain; but he is leading us on we know not how wild a raid." For, when we isolate a thing, we make it a perfect symbol of the universe. For the universe is of necessity the perfectly lonely thing. You may state the eternal problem in the form of saying: "Why is there a Cosmos? " But you can state it just as well by saying: "Why is there an omnibus? " You can say: "Why is there everything? " -The Independent Review, Volume 5, February-April. 1905. "...things must be loved first and improved afterwards." "On the contrary, stumbling on that rock of scandal is the first step."
Above all, would not such a new reader of the New Testament stumble over something that would startle him much more than it startles us? I have here more than once attempted the rather impossible task of reversing time and the historic method; and in fancy looking forward to the facts, instead of backward through the memories. So I have imagined the monster that man might have seemed at first to the mere nature around him. We should have a worse shock if we really imagined the nature of Christ named for the first time. What should we feel at the first whisper of a certain suggestion about a certain man? Certainly it is not for us to blame anybody who should find that first wild whisper merely impious and insane. -The Everlasting Man (1925)