... As Hercule Poirot would say of using one's mind. Try reading some Chesterton, he seems to be doing a rather grand job of making my mind bend about things I'd never considered before. Maybe I'll be posting some more quotes up tomorrow too.
"When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale." - Heretics, CW, I, p.143
"The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right." - ILN 10-28-22
"Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it." - "Charles II" Twelve Types
"When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any." - ILN 11-7-08
"The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are." - Introduction to The Defendant
"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." - A Short History of England, Ch.10
"I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid." - ILN 6-3-22
"Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before." - Tremendous Trifles
"A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man." - A Utopia of Usurers, CW, V, p396
"The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice." - A Defense of Humilities, The Defendant, 1901
"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." - Everlasting Man, 1925
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." - ILN, 4/19/30
"Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance." - The Speaker, 12/15/00
"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered." - On Running After Ones Hat, All Things Considered, 1908
I love the first one . . . I really should get around to reading 'Heretics'. I've been reading other Chesterton works lately . . . 'The Colored Lands' was good, and did you ever read his essay about cheese? Good stuff!
ReplyDeleteI have pitifully limited access to Chesterton (our library has zilch) and must therefore rely on my father's finds when he goes to Anchorage and the bookstores there. (Which isn't always successful.)
ReplyDeleteI now simply must find this essay on cheese... it has excited my interest. :)