(1874-1936) British essayist, critic, poet, and novelist
"The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost."

"The theory of free speech, that truth is so much larger and stranger and more many-sided than we know of, that it is very much better at all costs to hear everyone's account of it, is a theory which has been justified on the whole by experiment, but which remains a very daring and even a very surprising theory. It is really one of the great discoveries of the modern time."

from  'Robert Browning', 1914

"The patriot never under any circumstances boasts of the largeness of his country, but always, and of necessity, boasts of the smallness of it."

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

"Forms of expression always appear turgid to those who do not share the emotions they represent."

Source: A Handful of Authors

"We all have a little weakness, which is very natural but rather misleading, for supposing that this epoch must be the end of the world because it will be the end of us. How future generations will get on without us is indeed, when we come to think of it, quite a puzzle. But I suppose they will get on somehow, and may possibly venture to revise our judgments as we have revised earlier judgments."

Source: Illustrated London News, Aug 15, 1925

"Weak things must boast of being new, like so many new German philosophies. But strong things can boast of being old. Strong things can boast of being moribund."
 
"We are perpetually being told that what is wanted is a strong man who will do things. What is 
really wanted is a strong man who will undo things; and that will be the real test of strength."
"Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors."

"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."

"The Modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; but their truth is pitiless. And thus some humanitarians care only for pity; but their pity - I am sorry to say - is often untruthful."

"The great intellectual tradition that comes down to us from the past was never interrupted or lost through such trifles as the sack of Rome, the triumph of Attila, or all the barbarian invasions of the Dark Ages. It was lost after the introduction of printing, the discovery of America, the founding of the Royal Society, and all the enlightenment of the Renaissance and the modern world. It was there, if anywhere, that there was lost or impatiently snapped the long thin delicate thread that had descended from distant antiquity; the thread of that unusual human hobby: the habit of thinking."

"You cannot escape the revelation of the identical by taking refuge in the illusion of the multiple."

"Despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been very democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty."

"The fairy tale can be more sane about a seven-headed dragon than the Duchess of Somerset can be about a School Board."

"I wonder at not wondering."

"It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all."
"I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young 
people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, 
while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some 
theory that turns out to be equally stupid."
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types -- the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins.
He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution."

Source: Illustrated London News, 1924
"Whatever else is true, it is emphatically not true that the ideas of Jesus of Nazareth were 
suitable to his time, but are no longer suitable to our time. Exactly how suitable they were to 
his time is perhaps suggested in the end of his story."

The Everlasting Man, 1925
"There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect."
 
"You don't have to accept every invitation you get to a fight."
"Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilizations, what there is 
particularly immortal about yours?"
"But those dealing in the actual manufacture of minds are dealing in a very explosive material. The material is not merely the clay of which man is master, but the truths or semblances of truth which have a certain mastery over man. The material is explosive because it must be taken seriously. The men writing books really are throwing bombs."

Source: Illustrated London News, 1924

"The only defensible war is a war of defense."
 
"Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal 
negative."

Source: Charles II, Twelve Types

"'Progress' is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always 
perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting 
coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle."

Source: Wells and the World State," What I Saw in America

"If there were no God, there would be no atheists."

Source: Where All Roads Lead

"Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which you are 
accustomed to seeing or hearing without being shocked. It may be that your grandmother was an 
extremely lively and vital animal, and that you are a paralytic."

Source: As I Was Saying

"When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time.  Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?"

"A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over ... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen."
 
"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness 
doubled by wonder."
"We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain bad laws."

"The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums."
 
"The Party System was founded on one national notion of fair play. It was the notion that folly 
and futility should be fairly divided between both sides."
"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people."

"The real American is all right. It is the ideal American who is all wrong."

"The old tyrants invoked the past. The new tyrants will invoke the future."

"Most men now are not so much rushing to extremes as sliding to extremes; and even reaching the most violent extremes by being almost entirely passive."

"The morality of a great writer is not the morality he teaches, but the morality he takes for granted."

"There is more simplicity in a man who eats caviar on impulse than in a man who eats grape-nuts on principle."

"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."

"It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men -- so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites.... It is exactly the same with politics. Our political vagueness divides men, it does not fuse them. Men will walk along the edge of a chasm in clear weather, but they will edge miles away from it in a fog. So a Tory can walk up to the very edge of Socialism, if he knows what is Socialism. But if he is told that Socialism is a spirit, a sublime atmosphere, a noble, indefinable tendency, why, then he keeps out of its way; and quite right too. One can meet an assertion with argument; but healthy bigotry is the only way in which one can meet a tendency."

"All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change."

Orthodoxy

"Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church."

Orthodoxy, p.258

"The sceptic is too credulous; he believes in newspapers or even in encyclopaedias."

Orthodoxy, p.275

"Christianity is rational; but it is not simple. It is an accumulation of varied facts, like the attitude of the ordinary agnostic. But the ordinary agnostic has got his facts all wrong. He is a non-believer for a multitude of reasons; but they are untrue reasons. He doubts because the Middle Ages were barbaric, but they weren't; because Darwinism is demonstrated, but it isn't; because miracles do not happen, but they do; because monks were lazy, but they were very industrious; because nuns are unhappy, but they are particularly cheerful; because Christian art was sad and pale, but it was picked out in peculiarly bright colours and gay with gold; because modern science is moving away from the supernatural, but it isn't, it is moving towards the supernatural with the rapidity of a railway train.

Orthodoxy, p.277

"There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions."

"We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera."

"Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive."

"The truth is that all feeble spirits naturally live in the future, because it is featureless; it is a soft job; you can make it what you like. The next age is blank, and I can paint it freshly with my favourite colour. It requires real courage to face the past, because the past is full of facts which cannot be got over; of men certainly wiser than we, and of things done which we could not do. I know I cannot write a poem as good as 'Lycidas.' But it is always easy to say that the particular sort of poetry I can write will be the poetry of the future."

"Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverent realism, says that they are all fools. This doctrine is sometimes called the doctrine of original sin. It may also be described as the doctrine of the equality of men. But the essential point of it is merely this, that whatever primary and far-reaching moral dangers affect any man, affect all men. All men can be criminals, if tempted; all men can be heroes, if inspired. And this doctrine does away altogether with Carlyle's pathetic belief (or any one else's pathetic belief) in 'the wise few.'"

"It is not that they cannot see the solution. It is that they cannot see the problem."

"It is rather ridiculous to ask a man just about to be boiled in a pot and eaten, at a purely religious feast, why he does not regard all religions as equally friendly and fraternal."

The Everlasting Man, 1925

"If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments."

"These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own."

"Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance."

The Speaker, 12/15/00

"Of course I believe in the devil. If I did not, I should have to believe that I am the devil myself."

"The modern habit of saying, "Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me"--the habit of saying this is mere weak mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon."

Book of Job, 1907

"Creeds must disagree: it is the whole fun of the thing. If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit; but, obviously, we must argue. Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence. To say that I must not deny my opponent's faith is to say I must not discuss it . . . It is absurd to have a discussion on Comparative Religions if you don't compare them."

"The mind of modern man is a curious mixture of decayed Calvinism and diluted Buddhism; and he expresses his philosophy without knowing that he holds it. We [i.e., Catholics] say what it is natural for us to say; but we know what we are saying; therefore it is assumed that we are saying it for effect. He says what it is natural for him to say; but he does not know what he is saying, still less why he is saying it . . . He is just as partisan; . . . just as much depending on one doctrinal system as distinct from another. But he has taken it for granted so often that he has forgotten what it is. So his literature does not seem to him partisan, even when it is. But our literature does seem to him propagandist, even when it isn't."

{The Thing, NY: Sheed & Ward, 1929, p.120}

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."

What's Wrong With the World, pt. 1, ch. 5, 1910

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." 1/14/11

"The earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant, we shall see wars and persecution the like of which the world has never seen."

(Webmaster's note: I believe the above quote is from 1905, just after the dawning of the bloodiest century in history. RAB)

"Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought."

"In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it."

"At least five times, . . . with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist sceptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died."

{The Everlasting Man, Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1925, p. 254}

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