Orthodoxy

by G.K. Chesterton

Mysticism keeps men sane.

As long as you have mystery you have health;

when you destroy mystery you crea...

again so true. i think of stories of nationz that ars not belived now and so the nation dies

has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His

The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand.

Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out.

mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility.

It involves the idea of normal proportion; not only does a certain function exist, but it is rightly related to other functions. Indeed, the negation of this phrase would describe with peculiar accuracy the somewhat morbid mercy and perverse tenderness of the most representative moderns.

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues.

true

When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage.

The modern world is full of the old Christian v...

freedom, equality diversity. Cgristian virtues tht have gone mad

The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other a...

Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced.

The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance.

It is exactly this intellectual helplessness which is o...

They were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man,

by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first.

The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, mo...

If evolution destroys anything, it does not destroy religion but rationalism.

If evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially if, like the Christian God, he were outside time.

Free thought has exhausted its own freedom.

It is weary of its own success. If any eager freethinker now hails philosophic freedom as the dawn, he is only like the man in Mark Twain who came out wrapped in blankets to see the sun rise and was just in time to see it set.

The ultimate authority, they say, is in will, not in reason.

The supreme point is not why a man demands a thing, but the fact that he does demand it.

Thus Mr. Bernard Shaw has attacked the old idea that men’s acts are to be judged by the standard of the desire of happiness.

He says that a man does not act for his happiness, but from his will.

You can discuss whether a man’s act in jumping over a cliff was directed towards happiness; you cannot discuss whether it was derived from will.

Of course it was.

By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

For madness may be defined as using mental activity so as to reach mental helplessness; and they have nearly reached it.

for all we know, was afraid of a cow. Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals;

she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other.

I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election.

As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.

Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary.

This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common,

I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition.

It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time.

The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad.

big theme on madnezs in this book. here indivdualism going against authority is madness

have always been more inclined to believe the ruck of hard-working people than to believe that special and troublesome literary class to which I belong.

It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth;

but elfland that criticised the earth.

Modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods of brook and bush.

strange things physically connected them philosophically. They feel that because one incomprehensible thing constantly follows another incomprehensible thing the two together somehow make up a comprehensible thing. Two black riddles make a white answer.

In fairyland we avoid the word “law”; but in the land of science they are singularly fond of it.

Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense,

we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment.

In fact, a baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom a modern realistic novel could be read without boring him.

We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?

Mr. Yeats reads into elfland all the righteous insurrection of his own race.