Manalive Quotes

“I don't deny," he said, "that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“If Innocent is happy, it is because he is innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just because he can keep the commandments. It is just because he does not want to kill but to excite to life that a pistol is still as exciting to him as it is to a schoolboy. It is just because he does not want to steal, because he does not covet his neighbour's goods, that he has captured the trick (oh, how we all long for it!), the trick of coveting his own goods. It is just because he does not want to commit adultery that he achieves the romance of sex; it is just because he loves one wife that he has a hundred honeymoons.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“It was not the house that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it. My wife was better than all women, and yet I could not feel it.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“No,' said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity; 'I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects would make a man merry.'

'Well,' said Michael quietly, 'will you tell me one thing? Which of us has ever tried it?”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“A puddle repeats infinity, and is full of light; nevertheless, if analyzed objectively, a puddle is a piece of dirty water spread very thin on mud.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“We shall have gone deeper than the deeps of heaven and grown older than the oldest angels before we feel, even in its first faint vibrations, the everlasting violence of that double passion with which God hates and loves the world. ”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“I know he is really happy, and yet I can never catch him at it.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“His principle can be quite simply stated: he refuses to die while he is still alive. He seeks to remind himself, by every electric shock to the intellect, that he is still a man alive, walking on two legs about the world. For this reason he fires bullets at his best friends; for this reason he arranges ladders and collapsible chimneys to steal his own property; for this reason he goes plodding around a whole planet to get back to his own home; and for this reason he has been in the habit of taking the woman whom he loved with a permanent loyalty, and leaving her about (so to speak) at schools, boarding-houses, and places of business, so that he might recover her again and again with a raid and a romantic elopement. He seriously sought by a perpetual recapture of his bride to keep alive the sense of her perpetual value, and the perils that should be run for her sake.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“Oh, what's the good of talking about men?" cried Mary impatiently; "why, one might as well be a lady novelist or some horrid thing. There aren't any men. There are no such people. There's a man; and whoever he is he's quite different.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“And pray where in earth or heaven are there prudent marriages? Might as well talk about prudent suicides.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“Unhappy! of course you'll be unhappy. Who the devil are you that you shouldn't be unhappy, like the mother that bore you?”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“All habits are bad habits. (...) Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“Nothing, again, could be more prosaic and impenetrable than the domestic energies of Miss Diana Duke. But Innocent had somehow blundered on the discovery that her thrifty dressmaking went with a considerable feminine care for dress--the one feminine thing that had never failed her solitary self-respect. In consequence Smith pestered her with a theory (which he really seemed to take seriously) that ladies might combine economy with magnificence if they would draw light chalk patterns on a plain dress and then dust them off again. He set up "Smith's Lightning Dressmaking Company," with two screens, a cardboard placard, and box of bright soft crayons; and Miss Diana actually threw him an abandoned black overall or working dress on which to exercise the talents of a modiste. He promptly produced for her a garment aflame with red and gold sunflowers; she held it up an instant to her shoulders, and looked like an empress. And Arthur Inglewood, some hours afterwards cleaning his bicycle (with his usual air of being inextricably hidden in it), glanced up; and his hot face grew hotter, for Diana stood laughing for one flash in the doorway, and her dark robe was rich with the green and purple of great decorative peacocks, like a secret garden in the "Arabian Nights." A pang too swift to be named pain or pleasure went through his heart like an old-world rapier. He remembered how pretty he thought her years ago, when he was ready to fall in love with anybody; but it was like remembering a worship of some Babylonian princess in some previous existence. At his next glimpse of her (and he caught himself awaiting it) the purple and green chalk was dusted off, and she went by quickly in her working clothes.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“why, nobody’s ever survived it! Look at all the people married since Adam and Eve—and all as dead as mutton.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“I mean that God bade me love one spot and serve it, and do all things however wild in praise of it, so that this one spot might be a witness against all the infinities and the sophistries, that Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything. And”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“If you have heard that I am wild, you can contradict the rumour,(...) I am tame. I am quite tame; I am about the tamest beast that crawls. I drink too much of the same kind of whisky at the same time every night. I even drink about the same amount too much. I go to the same number of public-houses. I meet the same damned women with mauve faces. I hear the same number of dirty stories— generally the same dirty stories. You may assure my friends, Inglewood, that you see before you a person whom civilization has thoroughly tamed.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“Grass and garden trees seemed glittering with something at once good and unnatural, like a fire from fairyland.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“It would be wrong to say that she commanded; for her own efficiency was so impatient that she obeyed herself before any one else obeyed her.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“But the world's made like that; it's all survival. Some people are made to get on...and some people are made to stick quiet.... You can't help your temperament.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“There must be something to wake up to! All we do is preparations.... We're always preparing for something---something that never comes off...but what is going to happen...?”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“The man has not spoken for hours; and yet he has been speaking all the time.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“I mean to keep the remaining shots for people in the shameful state you and I were in last night—I wish we could even plead drunkenness. I mean to keep those bullets for pessimists—pills for pale people. And in this way I want to walk the world like a wonderful surprise— to float as idly as the thistledown, and come as silently as the sunrise; not to be expected any more than the thunderbolt, not to be recalled any more than the dying breeze. I don't want people to anticipate me as a well-known practical joke. I want both my gifts to come virgin and violent, the death and the life after death. I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him—only to bring him to life.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“Every revolution, like a repentance, is a return.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“There is only one good thing science ever discovered—a good thing, good tidings of great joy— that the world is round.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“Would you be so obliging as to tell me whose house this is?’ “`Mine,’ said the burglar, `May I present you to my wife?”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive