"The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder."

I have my doubts about all this real value in mountaineering, in getting to the top of everything and overlooking everything. Satan was the most celebrated of Alpine guides, when he took Jesus to the top of an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth. But the joy of Satan in standing on a peak is not a joy in largeness, but a joy in beholding smallness, in the fact that all men look like insects at his feet. It is from the valley that things look large; it is from the level that things look high; I am a child of the level and have no need of that celebrated Alpine guide. I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help; but I will not lift up my carcass to the hills, unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything is in an attitude of mind; and at this moment I am in a comfortable attitude. I will sit still and let the marvels and the adventures settle on me like flies. There are plenty of them, I assure you. The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

-Tremendous Trifles (1909)

UPDATE: Ronald Reagan quoted the part of the quote that is in bold in his address to the nation on Christmas in 1981, which you can see here. (He quotes Chesterton about 41 seconds into the video):

Ray Bradbury on GKC

Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451) describes Chesterton as one of his literary heroes, and wrote a long story-poem about his heroes, mentioning Chesterton in the title itself, entitled: "The R.B., G.K.C., and G.B.S. Forever Orient Express." As he describes it in his book The Cat's Pajama's:

"The R.B., G.K.C., and G.B.S. Forever Orient Express" is not a story, per se, but more a story-poem, and it is a perfect demonstration of my complete love for the library and its authors from the time I was eight years old. I didn't make it to college, so the library became my meeting place with people like G.K. Chesterton and Shaw and the rest of that fabulous group who inhabited the stacks. My dream was to one day walk into the library and see one of my books leaning against one of theirs.I never was jealous of my heroes, nor did I envy them, I only wanted to trot along as lapdog to their fame. (p. xviii-xix)

Here are just the first eight lines (the poem runs around eight pages...)

And when I die, will this dream truly be
Entrained with Shaw and Chesterton and me?
O, glorious Lord, please make it so
That down along eternity we'll row
Atilted headlong, nattering the way
All mouth, no sleep, and endless be our day;
The Chesterton Night Tour, the Shaw Express
A picknicking of brains in London dress...

"A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy"

If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly 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; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep...

...It is far more probable that a primitive society was something like a pure democracy. To this day the comparatively simple agricultural communities are by far the purest democracies. Democracy is a thing which is always breaking down through the complexity of civilisation. Anyone who likes may state it by saying that democracy is the foe of civilisation. But he must remember that some of us really prefer democracy to civilisation, in the sense of preferring democracy to complexity. Anyhow, peasants tilling patches of their own land in a rough equality, and meeting to vote directly under a village tree, are the most truly self-governing of men.

-The Everlasting Man (1925)

"The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse."

Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

-Heretics (1905)

The G.K. Chesterton Society of Ireland

The G.K. Chesterton Society of Ireland!

Awesome! :-)

It looks like a great blog!

"He did not always manage to make his characters men, but he always managed, at the least, to make them gods."

Dickens was a mythologist rather than a novelist; he was the last of the mythologists, and perhaps the greatest. He did not always manage to make his characters men, but he always managed, at the least, to make them gods. They are creatures like Punch or Father Christmas. They live statically, in a perpetual summer of being themselves. It was not the aim of Dickens to show the effect of time and circumstance upon a character; it was not even his aim to show the effect of a character on time and circumstance...it was his aim to show character hung in a kind of happy void, in a world apart from time

-Charles Dickens (1906)

"It happens that most of my literary admirers live in aslums."

It happens that most of my literary admirers live in asylums. Every day or two I receive a warm and flattering letter beginning "Hanwell. Friday Morning. Dear Sir,- I am in full intellectual agreement with your admirable," etc., or "Colney Hatch. Tuesday. Sir,- We are evidently kindred spirits," or words to that effect.

-November 27, 1909, Illustrated London News

"He generally ends either in an asylum or on the throne of an Emperor."

When a man begins to think that the grass will not grow at night unless he lies awake to watch it, he generally ends either in an asylum or on the throne of an Emperor.

-Robert Browning (1903)

"I believe in getting into hot water. I think it keeps you clean"

I see that Mr. Bernard Shaw has again got into hot water, if indeed he can be said ever to get out of it. For my part, in a world so full of secrecies and corruption as this, I sympathise with the man who makes a row; making a row is certainly the essential prelude to making anything else. The man who kicks up a shindy will probably improve the morals of mankind; he will beyond any question improve his own. In short, I believe in getting into hot water. I think it keeps you clean

-March 10, 1906, Illustrated London News,

A great article. :-)

Since I am from the St. Louis area, and I love GKC, of course, I especially liked this bit I found on stltoday.com. :-)

G.K. Chesterton: Happy St. Gilbert’s Day!

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe..."

Now, there is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.

-The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

"But anybody who holds it at all will hold it as a philosophy, not hung on one text but on a hundred truths."

Thus, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an intelligent man in other matters, says that there is only a "theological" opposition to divorce, and that it is entirely founded on "certain texts" in the Bible about marriages. This is exactly as if he said that a belief in the brotherhood of men was only founded on certain texts in the Bible, about all men being the children of Adam and Eve. Millions of peasants and plain people all over the world assume marriage to be static, without having ever clapped eyes on any text. Numbers of more modern people, especially after the recent experiments in America, think divorce is a social disease, without having ever bothered about any text. It may be maintained that even in these, or in any one, the idea of marriage is ultimately mystical; and the same may be maintained about the idea of brotherhood. It is obvious that a husband and wife are not visibly one flesh, in the sense of being one quadruped. It is equally obvious that Paderewski and Jack Johnson are not twins, and probably have not played together at their mother's knee. There is indeed a very important admission, or addition, to be realised here. What is true is this: that if the nonsense of Nietzsche or some such sophist submerged current culture, so that it was the fashion to deny the duties of fraternity; then indeed it might be found that the group which still affirmed fraternity was the original group in whose sacred books was the text about Adam and Eve. Suppose some Prussian professor has opportunely discovered that Germans and lesser men are respectively descended from two such very different monkeys that they are in no sense brothers, but barely cousins (German) any number of times removed. And suppose he proceeds to remove them even further with a hatchet, suppose he bases on this a repetition of the conduct of Cain, saying not so much "Am I my brother's keeper?" as "Is he really my brother?" And suppose this higher philosophy of the hatchet becomes prevalent in colleges and cultivated circles, as even more foolish philosophies have done. Then I agree it probably will be the Christian, the man who preserves the text about Cain, who will continue to assert that he is still the professor's brother; that he is still the professor's keeper. He may possibly add that, in his opinion, the professor seems to require a keeper.

And that is doubtless the situation in the controversies about divorce and marriage to-day. It is the Christian church which continues to hold strongly, when the world for some reason has weakened on it, what many others hold at other times. But even then it is barely picking up the shreds and scraps of the subject to talk about a reliance on texts. The vital point in the comparison is this: that human brotherhood means a whole view of life, held in the light of life, and defended, rightly or wrongly, by constant appeals to every aspect of life. The religion that holds it most strongly will hold it when nobody else holds it; that is quite true, and that some of us may be so perverse as to think a point in favour of the religion. But anybody who holds it at all will hold it as a philosophy, not hung on one text but on a hundred truths. Fraternity may be a sentimental metaphor; I may be suffering a delusion when I hail a Montenegrin peasant as my long lost brother. As a fact, I have my own suspicions about which of us it is that has got lost. But my delusion is not a deduction from one text, or from twenty; it is the expression of a relation that to me at least seems a reality. And what I should say about the idea of a brother, I should say about the idea of a wife.

-The Superstition of Divorce (1920)