The big sin ought always to be the nearest sin; that is, our own. If we are really fighting that, then we may fight anything else, however small. But if we fight the small thing first- then we have fled from fighting the big one. The man who sees nothing wrong in himself is the one man who is really wrong. He who wanders through the universe trying to find someone worse than himself, will find that he cannot find one.

-September 19, 1908, Daily News

Triolet of the Self-examining Journalist

Triolet of the Self-examining Journalist

My writing is bad,
And my speaking is worse;
They were all that I had,
My writing is bad;
It is frightfully sad,
And I don't care a curse.
My writing is bad,
And my speaking is worse.

February 27, 1912

Source

Johnson: Sir, there is no such thing. There is not and never has been a separation by mutual consent. I am an old man now, and have known something of the conjugal difficulties of many couples. I have known them separated by all manner of things; I have known them separated by jealousy and levity and lust, by poverty and by wealth, by sin and self-righteousness. But I never knew a couple separated by mutual consent. There is always one who divorces and the other who endures the divorce. There is always one who succeeds and one who suffers. You asked me if I believed in a supernatural fire on the hearth that would burn for ever. Let me ask you a question in return. Did you ever know two natural fires that went out at exactly the same moment?

-The Judgment of Dr. Johnson (1927)

In the end it will not matter to us whether we wrote well or ill; whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.

-All Things Considered (1908)

The creator of Peter Pan writing about GKC

"He was a glorious man, loveable beyond words and I think the greatest literary figure left to us. One aspect of him that I have not seen mentioned but that is clear to me is that he was such a gentleman. Chaucer's perfect gentle knight."

-J.M. Barrie  (creator of Peter Pan, and a good friend of GKC) in a letter dated June 21, 1936 to Frances Chesterton after GKC's death

[quoted in Nancy Carpentier Brown's book The Woman Who Was Chesterton]

Happy Easter! I will resume blogging now that Lent is over. :-)