"...but we always contrive to forget the manhood of anybody who can contrive to get mentioned under any other special description."

Most of the modern controversies arise out of a complete inability to grasp the idea of human fraternity. We talk a huge amount of rhetoric about mankind and manhood and man as man; but we always contrive to forget the manhood of anybody who can contrive to get mentioned under any other special description. We constantly say, for instance, that So-and-So will certainly be exact, impartial, and veracious because he is a man of science. But we only remember the word "science" and forget the word "man." In so far as he is of science he will doubtless be exact, impartial, and veracious. In so far as he is a man of science he will be loose, partial, and a liar. So in the same way we speak of a military man, and say that if he is a military man he will be firm, masculine, and indomitable. In so far as he is military he is liable to have these merits. In so far as he is a man he liable to run away. So again we speak of a medical man, and do not adequately reflect that he is a man, however medical. Even of the more attractive word "gentleman" the same principle is true. The man is inside the gentleman as certainly as the word "man" is inside the word "gentleman." The gentleman means only the man who is gentle. And the man is not always gentle.

-January 27, 1906, Illustrated London News

"I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess."

I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess.

-The Victorian Age in Literature (1913)

"That is the sort of expression which it would be necessary for the happy crowd to cry with one voice, if it elected me to Parliament."

That is the sort of expression which it would be necessary for the happy crowd to cry with one voice, if it elected me to Parliament. I am a Radical Nationalist Anti-Imperialist Anti-Collectivist Distributivist Christian Social Democrat. I am all that; and there are about three more of me. But my party, though of a wisdom and virtue vastly superior to all others, has not reached the stage which distracts it with the temptations of power and patronage. And my revolutionary movement has at present no axe to grind, not even the axe of the guillotine.

-July 16, 1921, Illustrated London News

"Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard..."

Extract from the poem Lepanto (1911), which recalls the great naval victory in 1571, and the great hero of that battle, Don John of Austria, that helped turn back the Islamic forces "threatening to attack both Venice and Rome, which could have led to the collapse of Christian Europe" as Dale Ahlquist notes.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young.
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain--hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.

"Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind."

A man's friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else. Women who are utter mystics in their creed are utter cynics in their criticism. Thackeray expressed this well when he made Pendennis' mother, who worshipped her son as a god, yet assume that he would go wrong as a man. She underrated his virtue, though she overrated his value. The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

-Orthodoxy (1908)

"Missing the point is a very fine art; and has been carried to something like perfection by politicians and Pressmen to-day"

Missing the point is a very fine art; and has been carried to something like perfection by politicians and Pressmen to-day. For the point is generally a very sharp point; and is, moreover, sharp at both ends. That is to say that both parties would probably impale themselves in an uncomfortable manner if they did not manage to avoid it altogether.

-Utopia of Usurers and Other Essays (1917)

"As we have said, it is exactly this backdoor, this sense of having a retreat behind us, that is....the sterilizing spirit in modern pleasure."

As we have said, it is exactly this backdoor, this sense of having a retreat behind us, that is, to our minds, the sterilizing spirit in modern pleasure. Everywhere there is the persistent and insane attempt to obtain pleasure without paying for it. Thus, in politics the modern Jingoes practically say, 'Let us have the pleasures of conquerors without the pains of soldiers: let us sit on sofas and be a hardy race.' Thus, in religion and morals, the decadent mystics say: 'Let us have the fragrance of sacred purity without the sorrows of self-restraint; let us sing hymns alternately to the Virgin and Priapus.' Thus in love the free-lovers say: 'Let us have the splendour of offering ourselves without the peril of committing ourselves; let us see whether one cannot commit suicide an unlimited number of times.'

Emphatically it will not work. There are thrilling moments, doubtless, for the spectator, the amateur, and the aesthete; but there is one thrill that is known only to the soldier who fights for his own flag, to the ascetic who starves himself for his own illumination, to the lover who makes finally his own choice. And it is this transfiguring self-discipline that makes the vow a truly sane thing...All around us is the city of small sins, abounding in backways and retreats, but surely, sooner or later, the towering flame will rise from the harbour announcing that the reign of the cowards is over and a man is burning his ships.

-The Defendant (1901)

Gilbert/Fiddler's Green ("The Sandman")

GKC was the inspiration for the character "Fiddler's Green" ("Gilbert") in the series "The Sandman" by Neil Gaiman. Here you can see some panels from the series with "Gilbert" in them

Gilbert/Fiddler's Green

"Creation was the greatest of all Revolutions."

There is at the back of all our lives an abyss of light, more blinding and unfathomable than any abyss of darkness; and it is the abyss of actuality, of existence, of the fact that things truly are, and that we ourselves are incredibly and sometimes almost incredulously real. It is the fundamental fact of being, as against not being; it is unthinkable, yet we cannot unthink it, though we may sometimes be unthinking about it; unthinking and especially unthanking. For he who has realized this reality knows that it does outweigh, literally to infinity, all lesser regrets or arguments for negation, and that under all our “rumblings there is a subconscious substance of gratitude. That light of the positive is the business of the poets, because they see all things in the light of it more than do other men. Chaucer was a child of light and not merely of twilight, the mere red twilight of one passing dawn of revolution, or the grey twilight of one dying day of social decline. He was the immediate heir of something like what Catholics call the Primitive Revelation; that glimpse that was given of the world when God saw that it was good; and so long as the artist gives us glimpses of that, it matters nothing that they are fragmentary or even trivial; whether it be in the mere fact that a medieval Court poet could appreciate a daisy, or that he could write, in a sort of flash of blinding moonshine, of the lover who ‘slept no more than does the nightingale’. These things belong to the same world of wonder as the primary wonder at the very existence of the world; higher than any common pros and cons, or likes and dislikes, however legitimate. Creation was the greatest of all Revolutions. It was for that, as the ancient poet said, that the morning stars sang together; and the most modern poets, like the medieval poets, may descend very far from that height of realization and stray and stumble and seem distraught; but we shall know them for the Sons of God, when they are still shouting for joy. This is something much more mystical and absolute than any modern thing that is called optimism; for it is only rarely that we realize, like a vision of the heavens filled with a chorus of giants, the primeval duty of Praise.

-Chaucer (1932)

"America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed."

America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.

-What I Saw in America (1922)

The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal.

There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. That is a perfectly simple fact which the modern world will find out more and more to be a fact. Every other basis is a sort of sentimental confusion, full of merely verbal echoes of the older creeds. Those verbal associations are always vain for the vital purpose of constraining the tyrant. An idealist may say to a capitalist, 'Don't you sometimes feel in the rich twilight, when the lights twinkle from the distant hamlet in the hills, that all humanity is a holy family?' But it is equally possible for the capitalist to reply with brevity and decision, 'No, I don't,' and there is no more disputing about it further than about the beauty of a fading cloud. And the modern world of moods is a world of clouds, even if some of them are thunderclouds.

What I Saw in America (1922)

"For [St. Francis] treated the whole mob of men as a mob of kings."

For [St. Francis] treated the whole mob of men as a mob of kings. And this was really and truly the only attitude that will appeal to that part of man to which he wished to appeal. It cannot be done by giving gold or even bread; for it is a proverb that any reveller may fling largesse in mere scorn. It cannot even be done by giving time and attention; for any number of philanthropists and benevolent bureaucrats do such work with a scorn far more cold and horrible in their hearts. No plans or proposals or efficient rearrangements will give back to a broken man his self-respect and sense of speaking with an equal. One gesture will do it.

-St. Francis of Assisi (1923)

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

...the great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.

-What's Wrong With the World (1910)