Orthodoxy

by G.K. Chesterton

Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist.

Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry.

All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

Cinderella received a coach out of Wonderland and a coachman out of nowhere, but she received a command—which might have come out of Brixton—that she should be back by twelve.

To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.

It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.

And this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.

Men spoke much in my boyhood of restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it is a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.