For instance, if a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkenness and gluttony that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says that Christmas Day is only a conspiracy kept up by poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives, then he says something which is not so much false as startlingly and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewellers who wanted to sell wedding rings.

-George Bernard Shaw (1909)

"[T]he principal humour about a hippopotamus is that he exists."

[T]he only perfect pleasure in life is the pleasure of fighting for something in which one passionately believes, and [...] if that were left to me I would do without daylight and tobacco. I do think my own opinions very funny, but I also think them absolutely true. I think it very funny, for instance, that Mr. Kipling should be, as he is, psychologically incapable of a patriotic emotion and be, nevertheless, hailed everywhere as a patriotic poet. But I think it funny because I think it is the fact. The humour of it is like the humour of a hippopotamus; the principal humour about a hippopotamus is that he exists.

-October 10, 1903, Daily News

[T]he shortest cut to the practical is through the theoretical[.]

-July 28, 1906, Illustrated London News

In that paralysis of the commonwealth which is called plutocracy, we allow powers intrinsically anti-social not to attack society, but rather to control it.

-October 28, 1916, Illustrated London News

"Luxury has become almost another name for politics."

But there was another element in the old Republican ideal, thus so swiftly and strangely ruined. This was the fact that it did originally denounce Luxury as the great enemy of Liberty [...] I need not attempt to measure the huge and ghastly reversal of all that in modern politics; in which so many liberals have been so very liberal to themselves. Luxury has become almost another name for politics; there is no world where it is so insolently assumed that money must fly on the most flying pleasures [...]  I am not Puritanical about these things; and I do not mind the pothouse politician nor grudge him his pot of beer. But I do remark that professional politics has got itself mixed up with a plutocratic orgy at the very opposite extreme from its original ideals. That excessive exorbitant ever-encroaching Luxury is the cause of three-quarters of the corruption that has rotted out the vitals of Parliamentary government. And when next we hear poor old Robespierre, or some rather priggish Republican, jeered at as a sentimental bore for saying that the Republic is founded on Virtue, and that it cannot endure without the simple and laborious worth of the Virtuous Man-let us look a little at the sequel and salute him; and admit that he was not so far wrong.

-The Resurrection of Rome (1930)

For so much still lingers of that great dream of Jefferson and the thing that men have called Democracy that in his country, while the rich rule like tyrants, the poor do not talk like slaves; but there is candour between the oppressor and the oppressed.

-The Incredulity of Father Brown (1926)

[H]istory without tradition is dead.

-The Everlasting Man (1925)

[T]he sense of wonder is a virtue requiring religious cultivation. Astonishment is a tradition, like everything else. Cuttlefish never seem astonished. We require an ancient simplicity even in order to have a new surprise. And it is the traditional teaching of certain systematic duties, such as gratitude and humility, that makes all the difference even in the act of being startled. Certain moral ideas make all the difference between the boy who declares, with a shout, that a mountain is high and he who declares, with a sniff, it might have been higher.

-December 7, 1907, Daily News

We can never conquer an evil influence till we have taken [account] of all its virtues.

-July 16, 1901, Daily News

[P]eople are losing the power to enjoy Christmas through identifying it with enjoyment. When once they lose sight of the old suggestion that it is all about something, they naturally fall into blank pauses of wondering what it is all about. To be told to rejoice on Christmas Day is reasonable and intelligible, if you understand the name, or even look at the word. To be told to rejoice on the twenty-fifth of December is like being told to rejoice at a quarter-past eleven on Thursday week. You cannot suddenly be frivolous unless you believe there is a serious reason for being frivolous. A man might make a feast if he had come into a fortune; and he might make a great many jokes about the fortune. But he would not do it if the fortune were a joke [..] You cannot even start a lark about a legacy you believe to be a sham legacy. You cannot even start a lark to celebrate a miracle you believe to be a sham miracle. The result of dismissing the divine side of Christmas and demanding only the human, is that you are demanding too much on human nature. You are asking men to illuminate the town for a victory that has not taken place [...] Our modern task therefore is to save festivity from frivolity. That is the only way in which it will ever again become festive.

-December 26, 1925, G.K.'s Weekly

Art Garfunkel and GKC

I just discovered yesterday one person who has read a couple of GKC's books: Art Garfunkel.

Apparently he has read both "The Man Who Was Thursday"  as well as "The Club of Queer Trades."

(Of course, I have no idea if Paul Simon has ever read GKC or even heard of him, but Simon does cite Dion DiMucci as a prime influence on him, and has even recorded a song together with DiMucci, "New York is My Home".

And DiMucci is on record as referring to GKC as one of his "heroes".)

For let it never be forgotten that a hypocrite is a very unhappy man; he is a man who has devoted himself to a most delicate and arduous intellectual art in which he may achieve masterpieces which he must keep secret, fight thrilling battles, and win hair's-breadth victories for which he cannot have a whisper of praise. A really accomplished impostor is the most wretched of geniuses; he is a Napoleon on a desert island.

-Robert Browning (1903)