I know I haven't been posting much of late, and I also will not be posting during Lent. Once Easter comes, I plan on resuming regular posting, however.

Sincerity

What convinces mankind of a man's sincerity is this: that every now and then he should go with his principle and against his feelings. Sincerity can be shown in surrender, if it is self-surrender. For instance, a despotist is not necessarily honest because he praises the King; but he probably is honest if he blames the King--and obeys him. He shows that it is for his theory he cares, and not for himself. Or, again, a man is not necessarily democratic because he can call up the people to support him. But he is democratic if he calls up the people to oppose him. A man who gives votes to a class that will probably vote against him certainly believes in popular government. A vegetarian who hates meat is not so serious as a vegetarian who loves meat.

-October 12, 1907, Illustrated London News

H/T to this blog

On most political platforms, in most newspapers and magazines, I observe that there are at present only two ideas, either to avoid controversy or to conduct it by mere bluff and noise.

-December 12, 1908, Daily News

"Fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

Neil Gaiman famously attributed this quote to G.K. Chesterton in the beginning of his novel Coraline

Fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten

I had been unable to locate that quote in those exact words in Chesterton's works; however, it had been suggested by others that he was paraphrasing this passage from Tremendous Trifles found here

That seemed to me the most likely possibility (though I could never discount the possibility that perhaps it had been an exact quote. Chesterton had in other cases expressed ideas that were similar in content, yet still in slightly different words, on different occasions, after all. So it was always possible that was the case here, and that I had simply not found the version Gaiman was referring to- Chesterton has plenty of work that still hasn't made it online, of course, in which it might conceivably have been found.)

As it turns out, though, the speculations were correct, and Gaiman was paraphrasing Chesterton. He explains in this post here what occurred:

http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/42909304300/my-moms-a-librarian-and-planning-to-put-literary

"...this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion."

For instance, in the matter of the inspiration of Scripture, [St. Thomas Aquinas] fixed first on the obvious fact, which was forgotten by four furious centuries of sectarian battle, that the meaning of Scripture is very far from self-evident and that we must often interpret it in the light of other truths. If a literal interpretation is really and flatly contradicted by an obvious fact, why then we can only say that the literal interpretation must be a false interpretation. But the fact must really be an obvious fact. And unfortunately, nineteenth century scientists were just as ready to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an obvious fact, as were seventeenth-century sectarians to jump to the conclusion that any guess about Scripture was the obvious explanation. Thus, private theories about what the Bible ought to mean, and premature theories about what the world ought to mean, have met in loud and widely advertised controversy, especially in the Victorian time; and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1933)