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G. K. Chesterton Books

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Orthodoxy

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“Facts,” murmured Basil, like one mentioning some strange, far-off animals, “how facts obscure the truth. I may be silly—in fact, I'm off my head—but I never could believe in that man—what's his name, in those capital stories?—Sherlock Holmes. Every detail points to something, certainly; but generally to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree. It's only the life of the tree that has unity and goes up—only the green blood that springs, like a fountain, at the stars.”

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Book:The Club of Queer Trades Illustrated
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“The sincerity of Darwin really admitted this; and that is how we came to use such a term as the Missing Link. But the dogmatism of Darwinians has been too strong for the agnosticism of Darwin; and men have insensibly fallen into turning this entirely negative term into a positive image. They talk of searching for the habits and habitat of the Missing Link; as if one were to talk of being on friendly terms with the gap in a narrative or the hole in an argument, of taking a walk with a non-sequitur or dining with an undistributed middle.”

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Author:G. K. Chesterton
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“Theosophists for instance will preach an obviously attractive idea like re-incarnation; but if we wait for its logical results, they are spiritual superciliousness and the cruelty of caste. For if a man is a beggar by his own pre-natal sins, people will tend to despise the beggar. But Christianity preaches an obviously unattractive idea, such as original sin; but when we wait for its results, they are pathos and brotherhood, and a thunder of laughter and pity; for only with original sin we can at once pity the beggar and distrust the king.”

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Author:G. K. Chesterton
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“Do you remember when we went Under a dragon moon, And 'mid volcanic tints of night Walked where they fought the unknown fight And saw black trees on the battle-height, Black thorn on Ethandune? And I thought, "I will go with you, As man with God has gone, And wander with a wandering star, The wandering heart of things that are, The fiery cross of love and war That like yourself, goes on.”

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Author:G. K. Chesterton
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“Usted dice que es extraño y yo digo que es extraño, pero ambos queremos decir cosas opuestas. La mente moderna confunde siempre dos ideas diferentes: misterio, en el sentido de lo maravilloso, y misterio, en el sentido de lo complicado. En materia de milagros, esta confusión es la mitad del problema. Un milagro es admirable, pero simple. Simple por lo mismo que es un milagro. Es la revelación de un poder que dimana directamente de Dios (o del diablo) en vez de proceder indirectamente a través de la naturaleza o la voluntad humana. Aquí, usted dice que este caso es maravilloso porque es milagroso, porque es una brujería obrada por ese indio malvado. Entiéndame usted bien: yo no niego que sea un hecho espiritual o diabólico. Sólo el cielo y el infierno conocen las extrañas influencias que determinan los pecados humanos. Pero lo que yo digo es esto: si, como usted lo supone, es un caso de magia, claro es que será maravilloso, pero no será misterioso, es decir, no será complicado. La calidad del milagro es misteriosa, pero su procedimiento es simple. Y he aquí que, a mi modo de ver, el procedimiento de este asunto ha sido todo lo contrario de lo simple.”

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Book:El candor del padre Brown
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“Now, the mere repetition made the things to me rather more weird than more rational. It was as if, having seen a curiously shaped nose in the street and dismissed it as an accident, I had then seen six other noses of the same astonishing shape. I should have fancied for a moment that it must be some local secret society. So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.”

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Book:Orthodoxy
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“Moderns think of the earth as a globe, as something one can easily get round, the spirit of a schoolmistress. This is shown in the odd mistake perpetually made about Cecil Rhodes. His enemies say that he may have had large ideas, but he was a bad man. His friends say that he may have been a bad man, but he certainly had large ideas. The truth is that he was not a man essentially bad, he was a man of much geniality and many good intentions, but a man with singularly small views. There is nothing large about painting the map red; it is an innocent game for children. It is just as easy to think in continents as to think in cobble-stones. The difficulty comes in when we seek to know the substance of either of them. Rhodes' prophecies about the Boer resistance are an admirable comment on how the "large ideas" prosper when it is not a question of thinking in continents but of understanding a few two-legged men. And under all this vast illusion of the cosmopolitan planet, with its empires and its Reuter's agency, the real life of man goes on concerned with this tree or that temple, with this harvest or that drinking-song, totally uncomprehended, totally untouched. And it watches from its splendid parochialism, possibly with a smile of amusement, motor-car civilization going its triumphant way, outstripping time, consuming space, seeing all and seeing nothing, roaring on at last to the capture of the solar system, only to find the sun cockney and the stars suburban.”

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Book:Heretics and Orthodoxy
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“Let me take once again a rough parable. Suppose I advertised in the papers that I had a place for any one who was too stupid to be a clerk. Probably I should receive no replies; possibly one. Possibly also (nay, probably) it would be from the one man who was not stupid at all. But suppose I had advertised that I had a place for any one who was too clever to be a clerk. My office would be instantly besieged by all the most hopeless fools in the four kingdoms. To advertise for exceptions is simply to advertise for egoists. To advertise for egoists is to advertise for idiots. It is exactly the bore who does think that his case is interesting. It is precisely the really common person who does think that his case is uncommon. It is always the dull man who does think himself rather wild. To ask solely for strange experiences of the soul is simply to let loose all the imbecile asylums about one's ears.”

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Author:G. K. Chesterton
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“He aquí lo que quiero significar: que si se encuentran ciertos enigmas y frases difíciles en aquella historia de Galilea y se da con la respuesta de aquellos enigmas en la historia de Asís, ello demuestra, en realidad, que ha sido transmitido un secreto en una sola tradición religiosa, y en ninguna otra; demuestra que el arca cerrada en Palestina puede ser abierta en Asís, porque es la Iglesia quien guarda las llaves.”

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Book:Saint Francis of Assisi Illustrated
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“Teach him to worry about whether he wants to be free, and he will not free himself. Again, it may be said that this instance is remote or extreme. But, again, it is exactly true of the men in the streets around us. It is true that the negro slave, being a debased barbarian, will probably have either a human affection of loyalty, or a human affection for liberty. But the man we see every day--the worker in Mr. Gradgrind's factory, the little clerk in Mr. Gradgrind's office--he is too mentally worried to believe in freedom.”

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Book:Orthodoxy
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“If you try to talk about a truth that’s merely moral, people always think it’s merely metaphorical. A real live man with two legs once said to me: ‘I only believe in the Holy Ghost in a spiritual sense.’ Naturally, I said: ‘In what other sense could you believe it?’ And then he thought I meant he needn’t believe in anything except evolution, or ethical fellowship, or some bilge. . . . -- The Secret of Father Brown”

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Author:G. K. Chesterton
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