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| GILBERT K. CHESTERTON |
| �Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.�
�Comparative religion is very comparative indeed. That is, it is so much a matter of degree and distance and difference that it is only comparatively successful when it tries to compare. When we come to look at it closely we find it comparing things that are really quite incomparable.� ~The Everlasting Man �Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.� �Egypt is a green ribbon along the river edging the dark red desolation of the desert.� ~The Everlasting Man �every sane sort of history must begin with man as man, a thing standing absolute and alone. How he came there, or indeed how anything else came there, is a thing for theologians and philosophers and scientists and not for historians. But an excellent test case of this isolation and mystery is the matter of the impulse of art. This creature was truly different from all other creatures; because he was a creator as well as a creature.� ~The Everlasting Man �Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching trancendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there; something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; the imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up.� ~The Everlasting Man �For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one. The Greek witch may have turned sailors to swine with a stroke of the wand. But to see a naval gentleman of our acquaintance looking a little more like a pig every day, till he ended with four trotters and a curly tail, would not be any more soothing. It might be rather more creepy and uncanny. The medieval wizard may have flown through the air from the top of a tower; but to see an old gentleman walking through the air, in a leisurely and lounging manner, would still seem to call for some explanation.� ~The Everlasting Man �Governments fight for colonies or commercial rights; governments firght about harbours or high tariffs; governments fight for a gold mine or a pearl fishery. It seems sufficient to answer that governments do not fight at all. Why do the fighters fight? What is the psychology that sustains the terrible and wonderful thing called a war?� ~The Everlasting Man �If he has made a mistake in his calculations, the aeroplane will correct it by crashing to the ground. But if he has made a mistake about the arboreal habitat of his ancestor, he cannot see his arboreal ancestor falling off the tree.� ~The Everlasting Man |