A few notes to begin: this is my personal file of useful/interesting quotations. As far as I can recall, all of these have been gleaned from books I have actually read; none are from other collections of quotations, except by chance. This explains why there are a great many quotes from relatively few books. Also, the grouping of quotes by topic is rather arbitrary, as the presence of the large "unknown" section (for quotations that I cannot fit into a simple topic) at the end indicates. I have taken every effort to avoid quoting anyone out of context.
This file was exported from StarOffice, thus, the HTML is probably not up to code.
Age
There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to enquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult.
The Republic, Plato
But age doth not rectify, but incurvate [make crooked] our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits, and (like diseases,) brings on incurable vices; for every day as we grow weaker in age, we grow stronger in sin, and the number of our days doth but make our sins innumerable.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
Alone
Many people seek fellowship because they are afraid to be alone.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. He will only do harm to himself and to the community. Alone you stood before God when he called you; alone you had to answer that call; alone you had to struggle and pray; and alone you will die and give an account to God. ... If you refuse to be alone you are rejecting Christ's call to you, and you can have no part in the community of those who are called.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Authority
Man made for kings! those optics are but dim
That tell you so — say, rather, they for him.
"Table Talk", William Cowper
Genuine spiritual authority is to be found only where the ministry of hearing, helping, bearing, and proclaiming is carried out. Every cult of personality that emphasizes the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another person, even though these be of an altogether spiritual nature, is worldly and has no place in the Christian community; indeed, it poisons the Christian community. The desire we so often hear expressed today for "episcopal figures," "priestly men," "authoritative personalities" spring frequently enough from a spiritually sick need for the admiration of men, for the establishment of visible human authority, because the genuine authority of service appears to be so unimpressive.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Men will submit to any rule, by which they may be exempted from the tyranny of caprice and of chance. They are glad to supply by external authority their own want of constancy and resolution, and court the government of others, when long experience has convinced them of their own inability to govern themselves.
Dr. Samuel Johnson
So far from making it a rule to believe a thing because you have heard it, you ought to believe nothing without putting yourself into the position as if you had never heard it.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
In brief, where the Scripture is silent, the Church is my Text; where that speaks, 'tis but my Comment: where there is a joynt silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my Religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
Beauty, Divine
“All said and done,” he thought, “it’s been worth it. I have had a time. I have lived in paradise.”
Perelandra, C. S. Lewis
Of Psyche’s beauty--at every age the beauty proper to that age--there is only this to be said, that there were no two opinions about it, from man or woman, once she had been seen. It was beauty that did not astonish you till afterwards when you had gone out of sight of her and reflected on it. While she was with you, you were not astonished. It seemed the most natural thing in the world. As the Fox delighted to say, she was “according to nature”; what every woman, or even every thing, ought to have been and meant to be, but had missed by some trip of chance. Indeed, when you loked at the, you believed, for a moment, that they had not missed it. She made beauty all round her. When she trod on mud, the mud was beautiful; when she ran in the rain, the rain was silver. When she picked up a toad--she had the strangest and, I thought, unchanciest love for all manner of brutes--the toad became beautiful.
Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis
Beauty, Worldly
As for the Lady--that she looked in some way worse was not doubtful. Yet there is a plainness in nudity--as we speak of “plain” bread. A sort of richness, a flamboyancy, a concession, as it were, to lower conceptions of the beautiful, had come with the purple robe. For the first (and last) time she appeared to him at that moment as a woman whom an earth-born man might conceivably love. And this was intolerable. The ghastly inappropriateness of the idea had, all in one moment, stolen something from the colours of the landscape and the scent of the flowers.
Perelandra, C. S. Lewis
Bible reading
The crude, ponderous rendition of the Bible by many a Christian grown old in experience often far surpasses the most highly polished reading of a minister.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Bigotry
Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Boredom
Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled too shake off.
The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. Nothing is more keenly required than a defense of bores. When Byron divided humanity into the bores and bored, he omitted to notice that the higher qualities exist entirely in the bores, the lower qualities in the bored, among whom he counted himself. The bore, by his starry enthusiasm, his solemn happiness, may, in some sense, have proved himself poetical. The bored has certainly proved himself prosaic.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Brethren, Christian
God did not make this person as I would have made him. He did not give him to me as a brother for me to dominate and control, but in order that I might find above him the Creator. ... Strong and weak, wise and foolish, gifted or ungifted, pious or impious, the diverse individual in the community, are no longer incentives for talking and judging and condemning, and thus excuses for self-justification. They are rather cause for rejoicing in one another and serving one another.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Certainty
If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. ... I say then we must do nothing at all, for nothing is certain, and that there is more certainty in religion than there is as to whether we may see tomorrow; for it is not certain that we may see tomorrow, and it is certainly possible that we may not see it.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
Change
We only change our fancies. All that is made perfect by progress perishes also by progress. All that has been weak can never become absolutely strong. We say in vain, "He has grown, he has changed"; he is also the same.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
The discoveries of men from age to age turn out the same. The kindness and the malice of the world in general are the same.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
The least movement affects all nature; the entire sea changes because of a rock. ... In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
There must in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable.
What's Wrong with the World, G. K. Chesterton
Charity
Another is the paradox of charity or chivalry that the weaker a thing is the more it should be respected, that the more indefensible a thing is the more it should appeal to us for a certain kind of defense.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Chivalry
'But, behold now, on this the first day of the Round Table, I lay upon you all the Order of Chivalry. All of you, and those who shall sit afterwards at this Table, are the Knights of Logres, and for the glory of Logres, the Realm of Righteousness, do not ever depart from the high virtues of this realm. Do no outrage no murder nor any cruel or wicked thing; fly from treason and all untruthfullness and dishonest dealing; give mercy unto those that seek it – or sit no more at this Table. And always give all the help in your power to ladies and damsels, go out and succor gentlewomen and widows, turn from all else to right any wrong done to any woman in the world – and never, on pain of death and eternal disgrace, do you any ill thing to a woman, or suffer it to be done. Nor, for love or gain, fight in any quarrel that is not just and righteous.'
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, Roger Lancelyn Green
Christianity
We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilization, which may last for thousands of years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparable more important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or a civilization, compared with his, is only a moment.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
They have learned that the true good should be such as all can possess at once, without diminution and without envy, and which no one can lose against his will.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
The Christian religion, then, teaches menu these two truths; that there is a God whom men can know, and that there is a corruption in their nature which renders them unworthy of Him.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
What's Wrong with the World, G. K. Chesterton
The Church
The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simple a waste of time.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
Civilization
Terrific energy is expended – civilizations are built up – excellent institutions are devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
Cliques
There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique. The men of the clan live together because they all wear the same tartan or are all descended from the same sacred cow; but in their souls, by the divine luck of things, there will always be more colours than in any tartan. But the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Comfort
In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. It you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: If you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth – only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
Community, Christian
Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
There is probably no Christian to whom God has not given the uplifting experience of genuine Christian community at least once in his life. But in this world such experiences can be no more than a gracious extra beyond the daily bread of Christian community life. We have no claim upon such experiences, and we do not live with other Christians for the sake of acquiring them. It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood, but solid and certain faith in brotherhood that holds us together.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking for some extraordinary social experience which he has not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure desires into Christian brotherhood. Just at this point Christian brotherhood is threatened most often at the very start by the greatest danger of all, the danger of being poisoned at its root, the danger of confusing Christian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of the devout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. ... A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and sacrificial.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if, on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
There God's Word alone is binding; here, besides the Word, men bind others to themselves. There all power, honor, and dominion are surrendered to the Holy Spirit, here spheres of power and influence of a personal nature are sought and cultivated. It is true, in so far as these are devout men, that they do this with the intention of serving the highest and the best, but in actuality the result is to dethrone the Holy Spirit, to relegate Him to remote unreality.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Life together under the Word will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, and order, a society, a collegium pietatis, but rather where it understands itself as being a part of the one, holy, catholic, Christian Church, where it shares actively and passively in the suffering and struggles and promise of the whole Church. Every principle of selection and every separation connected with it that is not necessitated quite objectively by common work, local conditions, or family connections is of the greatest danger to a Christian community.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
This is the test of true meditation and true Christian community. Has the fellowship served to make the individual free, strong, and mature, or has it made him weak and dependent? Has it take him by the hand for a while in order that he may learn again to walk by himself, or has it made him easy and unsure? This is one of the most searching and critical question that can be put to any Christian fellowship.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Christianity thinks of human individuals not as members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body – different from one another and each contributing what no other could. When you find yourself wanting to turn your children, or pupils, or even your neighbours, into people exactly like yourself, remember that God probably never meant them to be that.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
If you forget that [your neighbor] belongs to the same organism [the Church] as yourself you will become an Individualist. If you forget that he is a different organ from you, if you want to supress differences and make people all alike, you will be come a Totalitarian. But a Christian is must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
Convictions
The truth is, that it is quite an error to suppose that absence of definite convictions gives the mind freedom and agility. A man who believes something is ready and witty, because he has all his weapons about him. he can apply his test in an instant. The man engaged in conflict with a man like Mr. Bernard Shaw may fancy he has ten faces; similarly a man engaged against a brilliant duelist may fancy that the sword of his foe has turned to ten swords in his hand. But this is not really because the man is playing with ten swords, it is because he is aiming very straight with one. Moreover, a man with a definite belief always appears bizarre, because he does not change with the world; he has climbed into a fixed star, and the earth whizzes below him like a zoetrope. Millions of mild black-coated men call themselves sane and sensible merely because they always catch the fashionable insanity, because they are hurried into madness after madness by the maelstrom of the world.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Courage
It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a tower before ten thousand people and tell them that twice two is four.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Death
I go to die and you remain to live; and God alone knows which of us goes the better way.
or
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.
Apology, Plato
For the fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretense of knowing the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
Apology, Plato
For is not philosophy the study of death?
Phaedo, Plato
But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this?
Apology, Plato
Know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
Apology, Plato
It is an intimation that what has happened to me is a good, and that those of us who think that death is an evil are in error.
Apology, Plato
Death is a debt which must at all events be paid.
First Apology, Justin Martyr
The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Let us imagine a number of men in chains, and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows, and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of men.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
And what is sleeping and waking, but living and dying? what is spring and autumn, youth and old age, morning and evening, but real images of life and death?
Holy Living, Jeremy Taylor
I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof. 'Tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us, that our nearest friends, Wife, and Children, stand afraid and start at us: the Birds and Beasts of the field, that before in a natural fear obeyed us, forgetting all allegiance, begin to prey upon us.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
It is a brave act of valour to contemn death; but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
Men that look no farther than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I, that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that Fabrick hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and, considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once. 'Tis not onely the mischief of diseases, and the villany of poysons, that make an end of us; we vainly accuse the fury of Guns, and the new inventions of death; it is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholding unto every one we meet, he doth not kill us.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
There is therefore but one comfort left, that, though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death: God would not exempt Himself from that, the misery of immortality in the flesh, He undertook not that was immortal.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
He forgets that he can dye who complains of misery; we are in the power of no calamity while death is in our own.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
I have therefore enlarged that common Memento mori, [Remember you must die] into a more Christian memorandum, Memento quatuor Novissima, [Remember the four last things] those four inevitable points of us all, Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
Deception
It may be observed that the more excellent anything is, the more will be the counterfeits of it. Thus there are many more counterfeits of silver and gold, than of iron and copper: there are many false diamonds and rubies, but who goes about to counterfeit common stones?
Religious Affectations, Jonathan Edwards
Democracy
Democracy is not founded on pity for the common man; democracy is founded on reverence for the common man, or, if you will, even fear of him.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Differentiation
Unless you are going deliberately to prevent a thing being good, you cannot prevent it being worth fighting for. It is impossible to prevent a possible conflict of civilizations, because it is impossible to prevent a possible conflict between ideals. If there were no longer our modern strife between nations, there would only be a strife between Utopias. For the highest thing does not tend to union only; the highest thing, tends also to differentiation. You can often get men to fight for the union; but you can never prevent them from fighting also for the differentiation.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Discernment
"Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they be of God." I told them, they were not to judge of the spirit whereby any one spoke, either by appearances, or by common report, or by there own inward feelings: No, nor by any dreams, visions, or revelations, supposed to be made by their souls; any more than by their tears, or any involuntary effects wrought upon their bodies. I warned them, all these were, in themselves, of a doubtful, disputable, nature; they might be from God, and they might not; and were therefore not simply to be relied on (any more than simply to be condemned,) but to be tried by a farther rule, to be brought to the only certain test, the Law and the Testimony.
The Journal of John Wesley, John Wesley
But whatever doctrine is new must be wrong; for the old religion is the only true one; and no doctrine can be right unless it is the very same "which was from the beginning."
"Sin in Believers", Sermon XIII, John Wesley
... If it really had been as you assert, it is certain Christ must have known it. And if he had known it, he surely would have warned us; he would have revealed it long ago. Therefore, because he has not, because there is no tittle of this in the whole revelation of Jesus Christ, I am as fully assured your assertion is false, as that this revelation is of God.
"The Means of Grace", Sermon XVI, John Wesley
Doctrine
If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has not facts to bother about.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
Dogma
There are two things, and two things only, for the human mind, a dogma and a prejudice.
What's Wrong with the World, G. K. Chesterton
Dreams
If we were to dream every night that we were pursued by enemies, and harassed by these painful phantoms ... we should suffer almost as much as if it were real, and should fear to sleep, as we fear to wake when we dread in fact to enter on such mishaps.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
Education
The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.
What's Wrong with the World, G. K. Chesterton
Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.
Dr. Samuel Johnson
To explain, requires the use of terms less abtruse than that which is to be explained, and such terms cannot always be found. For as nothing can be proved but by supposing something intuitively known, and evident without proof, so nothing can be defined but by the use of words too plain to admit of definition. Sometimes easier words are changed into harder; as, burial, into sepulture or interment; dry into desiccative; dryness, into siccity or aridity; fit, into paroxysm; for the easiest word, whatever it be, can never be translated into one more easy.
Dictionary, Preface, Dr. Samuel Johnson
Emotions
God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Faith
Whatever may be the meaning of faith, it must always mean a certainty about something we cannot prove. Thus, for instance, we believe by faith in the existence of other people.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Again, no person is certain, apart from faith, whether he is awake or sleeps, seeing that during sleep we believe that we are awake as firmly as we do when we are awake.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
Fashion
The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all rushing to that side of the boat that is already nearly gunwale under. Thus we make it fashionable to to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm; a century later, when we are really making them all Byronic and drunk with emotion, the fashionable outcry is directed against the dangers of mere “understanding.” Cruel ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make liberalism the prime bogey.
The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis
If thou "follow a multitude" at all, it must be "to do evil." Let not custom or fashion be thy guide, but reason and religion.
"Sermon XXV", John Wesley
"The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer. It keeps the key of a permanent virtue."
The Ball and the Cross, G. K. Chesterton
Friendship
If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.
Dr. Samuel Johnson.
A sensible friend who will unsparingly criticize you from week to week will be a far greater blessing to you than a thousand undiscriminating admirers if you have sense enough to bear his treatment, and grace enough to be thankful for it.
"The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear", C. H. Spurgeon
Future
[People] think of the future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain — not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis
God
I fear God, yet am not afraid of Him: His Mercies make me ashamed of my sins, before His Judgements afraid thereof.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
Therefore to adore, honour, and admire Him, is a debt of gratitude due from the obligation of our nature, states, and conditions.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
God, False
The Life-Force God is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
Good and Evil
Evil is easy, and has infinite forms; good is almost unique. But a certain kind of evil is just as difficult to find as what we call good; and often on this account such particular evil gets passed off as good.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong – acting the part of a good man or of a bad.
Apology, Plato
The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.
Apology, Plato
Happiness
All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
Hate
All men naturally hate one another. They employ lust as far as possible in the service of the public weal. But this is only a pretense and a false image of love; for at bottom it is only hate.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
Heaven
The point is not that God will refuse you admission to His eternal world if you have not got certain qualities of character; the point is that if people have not got at least the beginnings of those qualities inside them, then no possible external conditions could make a "Heaven" for them – that is, could make them happy with the deep, strong, unshakable kind of happiness God intends for us.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
Briefly therefore, where the Soul hath the full measure and complement of happiness; where the boundless appetite of that spirit remains compleatly satisfied, that it can neither desire addition nor alteration: that, I think, is truly Heaven: and this can onely be in the enjoyment of that essence, whose infinite goodness is able to terminate the desires of it self, and the unsatiable wishes of ours: wherever God will thus manifest Himself, there is Heaven, though within the circle of this sensible world.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
Hell
The heart of man is the place the Devils dwell in: I feel sometimes a Hell within my self; Lucifer keeps his Court in my breast, Legion is revived in me.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
I can hardly think there was ever any scared into Heaven; they go the fairest way to Heaven that would serve God without a Hell; other Mercenaries, that crouch into Him in fear of Hell, though they term themselves the servants, are indeed but the slaves, of the Almighty.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell, choose it."
The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis
Heresy
For indeed Heresies perish not with their Authors, but, like the river Arethusa, though they lose their currents in one place, they rise up again in another.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
Holidays
A bank holiday means presumably a day which bankers regard as holy. A half-holiday means, I suppose, a day on which a schoolboy is only partially holy.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Hope
As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is a mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
The truth is that the tradition of Christianity (which is still the only coherent ethic of Europe) rests on two or three paradoxes or mysteries which can easily be impugned in argument and as easily justified in life. One of them, for instance, is the paradox of hope or faith-- that the more hopeless is the situation the more hopeful must be the man.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Humility
The man who said, "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed," put the eulogy quite inadequately and even falsely. The truth is "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised."
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
It is the humble man who does the big things. It is the humble man who does the bold things. It is the humble man who has the sensational sights vouchsafed to him, and this for three obvious reasons: first, that he strains his eyes more than any other men to see them; second, that he is more overwhelmed and uplifted with them when they come; third, that he records them more exactly and sincerely and with less adulteration from his more commonplace and more conceited everyday self. Adventures are to those to whom they are most unexpected--that is, most romantic. Adventures are to the shy: in this sense adventures are to the unadventurous.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
I wish I had got a bit further with humility myself: if I had, I could probably tell you more about the relief, the comfort, of taking the fancy-dress off – getting rid of the false self, with all its "Look at me" and "Aren't I a good boy?" and all its poising and posturing. To get near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
Hypocrisy
Intoxicating joys are theirs,
Who, while they boast their light,
And seem to soar above the stars,
Are plunging into night.
Lull’d in a soft and fatal sleep,
They sin, and yet rejoice;
Were they indeed the Saviour’s sheep,
Would they not hear his voice?
"True and False Comforts", William Cowper
Imagination
They often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
Indifference
But it is impossible for a Cynic, who makes indifference his end, to know any good but indifference.
Second Apology, Chapter III, Justin Martyr
Intercession
A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Jehovah-Jireh" – The Lord Will Provide
"Jehovah-Rophi" – I am the Lord that Healeth Thee
"Jehovah-Nissi" – The Lord My Banner
"Jehovah-Shalom" – The Lord Send Peace
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride, and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
Jesus is in a garden, not of delight as the first Adam, where he lost himself and the whole human race, but in one of agony, where He saved Himself and the whole human race.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
When God becomes a Man and lives as a creature among His own creatures in Palestine, then indeed His life is one of supreme self-sacrifice and leads to Calvary.
The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis
Judgment
“The gods have been accused by you. Now’s their turn.”
“I cannot hope for mercy.”
“Infinite hopes--and fears--may both be yours. Be sure that, whatever else you get, you will not get justice.”
“Are the gods not just?”
“Oh no, child. What would become of us if the were?”
Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis
When we merely say that we are bad, the "wrath" of God seems a barbarous doctrine; as soon as we perceive our badness, it appears inevitable, a mere corollary from God's goodness.
The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis
Knowledge
The knowledge of God without that of man's misery causes pride. The knowledge of man's misery without that of God causes despair. The knowledge of Jesus Christ constitutes the middle course, because in Him we find both God and our misery.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
Legalism
On of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons – marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken a wrong turning.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
Listening
Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Literature
Good literature may tell us the mind of one man; but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
A man who writes a book, thinks himself wiser or wittier than the rest of mankind; he supposes that he can instruct of amuse them, and the publick to whom he appeals , must, after all, be the judges of his pretensions.
Dr. Samuel Johnson, quoted in Life of Johnson, Boswell
Literature, Old Books
I get rather annoyed at this endless talk about books "living by the style". Jeremy Taylor "lives by the style in spite of his obsolete theology"; Thos. Browne does the same, in spite of "the obsolete cast of his mind": Ruskin and Carlyle do the same in spite of their "obsolete social and political philosophy". To read histories of literature, one would suppose that the great authors of the past were a sort of chorus of melodious idiots who said, in beautifully cadenced language that black was white and that two and two made five. When one turns to the books themselves – well I, at any rate, find nothing obsolete. The silly things these great men say, were as silly then as they are now: the wise ones are as wise now as they were then...
Letters of C. S. Lewis, C. S. Lewis
Love
On the whole, God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him. Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian Love, either towards god or towards man, is an affair of the will. If we are trying to do His will we are obeying the commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." He will give us feelings of love if he pleases.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
To love, and to lose what we love, are equally things appointed for our nature.
Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis
Man
Man is neither angel nor brute, and the unfortunate thing is that he would act the angel acts the brute.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
Marriage
Only by the hypocritical ignoring of a huge fact can any one contrive to talk of "free love"; as if love were an episode like lighting a cigarette, or whistling a tune. Suppose whenever a man lit a cigarette, a towering genie arose from the rings of smoke and followed him everywhere as a huge slave. Suppose whenever a man whistled a tune he "drew an angel down" and had to walk about forever with a seraph on a string. These catastrophic images are but faint parallels to the earthquake consequences that Nature has attached to sex; and it is perfectly plain at the beginning that a man cannot be a free lover; he is either a traitor or a tied man.
What's Wrong with the World, G. K. Chesterton
If Americans can be divorced for "incompatibility of temper" I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one.
What's Wrong with the World, G. K. Chesterton
Meditation, Prayerful
Above all, it is not necessary that we should have any unexpected, extraordinary experiences in meditation. This can happen, but if it does not, it is not a sign that the meditation period has been useless.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Has it [meditation] transported him for a moment into a spiritual ecstasy that vanishes when everyday life returns, or has it lodged the Word of God so securely and deeply in his heart that it holds and fortifies him, impelling him to active love, to obedience, to good works?
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Merits
When we are seeking for the real merits of a man it is unwise to go to his enemies, and much more foolish to go to himself.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Morality
In the beginning He made the human race with the power of thought and of choosing the truth and doing right, so that all men are without excuse before God; for they have been born rational and contemplative. And if any one disbelieves that God cares for these things, he will thereby either insinuate that God does not exist, or he will assert that though He exists He delights in vice, or exists like a stone, and that neither virtue nor vice are anything, but only in the opinion of men these things are reckoned good or evil. And this is the greatest profanity and wickedness.
First Apology, Chapter XXVIII, Justin Martyr
Neighbors
We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Original Sin
But the essential point of it is merely this, that whatever primary and far-reaching moral dangers affect any man, affect all men. All men can be criminals, if tempted; all men can be heroes, if inspired. And this doctrine does away altogether with Carlyle's pathetic belief (or any one else's pathetic belief) in "the wise few." There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Pastors
A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Prayer
Why God has established prayer.
1. To communicate to His creatures the dignity of causality.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
Public Opinion
When modern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating one's self to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirely of people who will not accommodate themselves to anything. At its worst it consists of many millions of frightened creatures all accommodating themselves to a trend that is not there. ... Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion. Every man makes his contribution negative under the erroneous impression that the next man's contribution is positive. Every man surrenders his fancy to a general tone which is itself a surrender.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Reason
How melancholy, if there be such a thing as truth or certainty or possibility of knowledge – that a man should have lighted upon some argument or other which at first seemed true and then turned out to be false, and instead of blaming himself and his own want of wit, because he is annoyed, should at last be too glad to transfer the blame from himself to arguments in general: and for ever afterwards should hate and revile them, and lose truth and the knowledge of realities.
Phaedo, Plato
Reason directs those who are truly pious and philosophical to honor and love only what is true, declining to follow traditional opinions, if these be worthless. For not only does sound reason direct us to refuse the guidance of those who did or taught anything wrong, but it is incumbent on the lover of truth, by all means, and if death be threatened, even before his own life, to choose to do and say what is right.
First Apology, Justin Martyr
The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. (Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point.)
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
The feeble-minded are people who know the truth, but only affirm it so far as consistent with their own interest. But, apart from that, they renounce it.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
A good cause needs not to be patron'd by passion, but can sustain itself upon a temperate dispute.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
If the value of our reasoning is in doubt, you cannot try to establish it by reasoning. If, as I said above, a proof that there are no proofs is nonsensical, so is a proof that there are proofs. Reason is our starting point. There can be no question either of attacking or defending it.
Miracles, C. S. Lewis
If I am wrong, then the sooner I am refuted the better not only for you but for me.
Miracles, C. S. Lewis
Salvation
I believe many are saved, who to man seem reprobated; and many are reprobated, who, in the opinion and sentence of man, stand elected. There will appear at the Last day strange and unexpected examples both of His Justice and His Mercy; and therefore to define either, is folly in man, and insolency even in the Devils.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
Sanity
As to mental maladies, is any man altogether sane? Are we not all a little off the balance?
"The Minister's Fainting Fits", C. H. Spurgeon
Scripture, Authority
How often we hear innumerable arguments "from life" and "from experience" put forward as the basis for most crucial decisions, but the argument of Scripture is missing. And this authority would perhaps point in exactly the opposite direction. It is not surprising, of course, that the person who attempts to cast discredit upon their wisdom should be the one who himself does not read, know, and study the Scriptures. But one who will not learn to handle the Bible for himself is not an evangelical Christian.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Christianity, as it includes the whole moral law of God both by way of injunction and of promise, if we will hear him is designed of God to be the last of all his dispensations. There is no other to come after this. This is to endure till the consummation of all things. Of consequence, all such new revelations are of Satan, and not of God; and all pretenses to another more perfect dispensation fall to the ground of course. "Heaven and earth shall pass away;" but this word "shall not pass away."
"Sermon XXV", John Wesley
Thus without the Scripture, which has Jesus Christ alone for its object, we know nothing, and see only darkness and confusion in the nature of God, and in our own nature.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
I am as fully convinced today that the Scriptures are of God, as that the sun shines.
"Letters to Mr. John Smith", XLII, John Wesley
Silence
Silence is nothing else but waiting for God's Word and coming from God's Word with a blessing.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Simplicity
The only simplicity that matters is the simplicity of the heart. If that be gone, it can be brought back by no turnips or cellular clothing; but only by tears and terrors and the fires that are not quenched.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Sin
Let us fear sin, more than death or hell.
"Privilege of Those that are Born of God", Sermon XIX, John Wesley
Every sin, the oftner it is committed, the more it acquireth in the quality of evil; as it succeeds in time, so it proceeds in degrees of badness; for as they proceed they ever multiply, and, like figures in Arithmetick, the last stands for more than all that went before it.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil.
The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis
Spiritual Pain
It was like a blow in the face. It was like the first spasm of well-remembered pain warning a man who had thought he was cured that his family have deceived him and he is dying after all. It was like the first lie from the mouth of a friend on whose truth one was will to stake a thousand pounds. It was irrevocable. ... The thing was an intolerable obscenity which afflicted him with shame. It would have been better, or so he thought at that moment, for the whole universe never to have existed than for this one thing to have happened.
Perelandra, C. S. Lewis
Strength
The strong cannot be brave. Only the weak can be brave; and yet again, in practice, only those who can be brave can be trusted, in time of doubt, to be strong.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
A great man is not a man so strong that he feels less than other men; he is a man so strong that he feels more.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
When men were tough and raw, when they lived amid hard knocks and hard laws, when they knew what fighting really was, they had only two kinds of songs. The first was a rejoicing that the weak had conquered the strong, the second a lamentation that the strong had, for once in a way, conquered the weak.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Subjectivism
Nothing is more dogmatic that the dogmatic claim that nothing can be known for sure. There is nothing of which we should be more suspicious than the view that demands that we be suspicious of everything else.
Systematic Theology, Vol. I, Normal Geisler
Suffering
O you that have borne things more terrible, to this also God shall give an end.
???, Virgil
The incarnation shows man the greatness of his misery by the greatness of the remedy which he required.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
It is a barbarous part of inhumanity to add unto any afflicted parties misery, or indeavour to multiply in any man a passion whose single nature is already above his patience. This was the greatest affliction of Job, and those oblique expostulations of his Friends a deeper injury than the down-right blows of the Devil.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
Suspicion
It would be better to be deceived a hundred times than to live a life of suspicion. It is intolerable.
"The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear", C. H. Spurgeon
Thankfulness
We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what He does give us daily.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Only he who gives thanks for little things receives the big things. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts He has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Travel
And under all this vast illusion of the cosmopolitan planet, with its empires and its Reuter's agency, the real life of man goes on concerned with this tree or that temple, with this harvest or that drinking-song, totally uncomprehended, totally untouched. And it watches from its splendid parochialism, possibly with a smile of amusement, motor-car civilization going its triumphant way, outstripping time, consuming space, seeing all and seeing nothing, roaring on at last to the capture of the solar system, only to find the sun cockney and the stars suburban.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Truth
Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Whether to see life as it is, will give us much consolation, I know not; but the consolation which is drawn from truth, if any there be, is solid and durable; that which may be derived from error must be, like its original, fallacious and fugitive.
Dr. Samuel Johnson
Yet there remains still among us, not wholly extinguished, a zeal for truth, a desire of establishing right in opposition to fashion.
Dr. Samuel Johnson
No man who goes to war with you or any other multitude, honestly striving against the many lawless and unrighteous deeds which are done in a state, will save his life; he who will fight for the right, if he would live even for a brief space, must have a private station and not a public one.
Apology, Plato
Tyrrany
To turn this into a general charter for afflicting humanity "because affliction is good for them" (as Marlowe's lunatic Tamberlain boasted himself the "scourge of God") is not indeed to break the divine scheme but to volunteer for the post of Satan within that scheme. If you do his work, you must be prepared for his wages.
The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis
Understanding
The man who is misunderstood has always this advantage over his enemies, that they do not know his weak point or his plan of campaign. They go out against a bird with nets and against a fish with arrows.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Utopia
And the weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motor-car or balloon.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Virtue
“There’s nothing I want less. Still--I could if I liked.”
“You mean you could if you chose.”
“Where’s the difference?”
“All the difference in the world.”
The Pilgrim’s Regress, C. S. Lewis
Our [the devil’s] cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis
What riches will you offer to this man? what commands? what kingdoms? He who regards these things as human, judges his own advantages to be divine.
The Republic, Cicero
I do not admire the excess of a virtue, except I see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue. For otherwise it is not to rise, it is to fall. We do not display greatness by going to one extreme, but in touching both at once, and filling all the intervening space.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
There is no road or ready way to virtue: it is not an easie point of art to disentangle our selves from this riddle, or web of Sin. To perfect virtue, as to Religion, there is required a Panoplia, or compleat armour; that, whilst we lye at close ward against one Vice, we lye not open to the venny [assault] of another.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
"Visioning"
God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Vulgarity
Let no man deceive himself; if by vulgarity we mean coarseness of speech, rowdiness of behavior, gossip, horseplay, and some heavy drinking, vulgarity there always was wherever there was joy, wherever there was faith in the gods. Wherever you have belief you will have hilarity, wherever you have hilarity you will have some dangers.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Work
Decisions which our work demands will be simpler and easier when they are made, not in the fear of men, but solely in the presence of God.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Worry
Cast the burden of the present, along with the sin of the past and the fear of the future, upon the Lord, who forsaketh not his saints. Live by the day – ay, by the hour. Put no trust in frames and feelings. Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement. Trust in God alone, and lean not on the reeds of human help. Be not surprised when friends fail you: it is a failing world. Never count upon immutability in man: inconstancy you may reckon upon without fear of disappointment.
"The Minister's Fainting Fits", C. H. Spurgeon
Worship
Every man, however brave, who begins by worshipping violence, must end in mere timidity. Every man, however wise, who begins by worshipping success, must end in mere mediocrity. This strange and paradoxical fate is involved, not in the individual, but in the philosophy, in the point of view. It is not the folly of the man which brings about this necessary fall; it is his wisdom. The worship of success is the only one out of all possible worships of which this is true, that its followers are foredoomed to become slaves and cowards.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
And hence the worship of great men always appears in times of weakness and cowardice; we never hear of great men until the time when all other men are small.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good – above all, that we are better than someone else – I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
Worship, Fixed Form
The advantage of a fixed form of service is that we know what is coming. Ex tempore public prayer has this difficulty: we don't know whether we can mentally join in until we've hear it – it might be phoney or heretical.
Letters of C. S. Lewis, C. S. Lewis
Unknown/Misc.
In the heated idleness of youth we were all rather inclined to quarrel with the implication of that proverb which says that a rolling stone gathers no moss. We were inclined to ask, "Who wants to gather moss, except silly old ladies?" But for all that we begin to perceive that the proverb is right. The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
Their whole method consists in saying, with large and elaborate emphasis, the things which everybody else says casually, and without remembering what they have said.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
For it is one of the most dangerous things on earth genuinely to surprise anybody. If you make any sentient creature jump, you render it by no means improbable that it will jump on you.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
With the whole world full of big and dubious institutions, with the whole wickedness of civilization staring them in the face, their idea of being bold and bright is to attack the War Office. They might as well start a campaign against the weather, or form a secret society in order to make jokes about mothers-in-law.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
This has been discovered by that very able and honest journalist, Mr. Blatchford, who started his campaign against Christianity, warned on all sides, I believe, that it would ruin his paper, but who continued from an honourable sense of intellectual responsibility. He discovered, however, that while he had undoubtedly shocked his readers, he had also greatly advanced his newspaper. It was bought--first, by all the people who agreed with him and wanted to read it; and secondly, by all the people who disagreed with him, and wanted to write him letters. Those letters were voluminous (I helped, I am glad to say, to swell their volume), and they were generally inserted with a generous fulness. Thus was accidentally discovered (like the steam-engine) the great journalistic maxim--that if an editor can only make people angry enough, they will write half his newspaper for him for nothing.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
But charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
The misanthropes pretend that they despise humanity for its weakness. As a matter of fact, they hate it for its strength.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
There is something highly maddening in the circumstance that when modern people attack an institution that really does demand reform, they always attack it for the wrong reasons.
What's Wrong with the World, G. K. Chesterton
For the longest way round is the shortest way home.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
"Whether it was but recently (for time is nothing), or at the beginning of the world, I sent you out to war. I sat in darkness, where there is not any created thing, and to you I was only a voice commanding valour and an unnatural virtue. You heard the voice in the dark, and you never heard it again. The sun in heaven denied it, the earth and sky denied it, all human wisdom denied it. And when I met you in the daylight I denied it myself. ... But you were men. You did not forget your secret honour, though the whole cosmos turned an engine of torture to tear it out of you."
The Man Who Was Thursday, G. K. Chesterton
There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul. For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit.
Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis
It may well be that by trickery of priests men have sometimes taken a mortal's voice for a god's. But it will not work the other way. No one who hears a god's voice takes it for a mortal's.
Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis
So there is open war among men, in which each must take a part, and side either with dogmatism or skepticism. For he who thinks to remain neutral is above all a skeptic.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
We must love God only and hate self only.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
The most cruel war God can make with men in this life is to leave them without that war which He came to bring.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners, who believe themselves righteous.
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet at law ought I or any man to use every way of escaping death.
Apology, Plato
"When you're really shipwrecked, you do really find what you want. When you're really on a desert island, you never find it a desert. If we were really besieged in this garden, we'd find a hundred English birds and English berries that we never knew were here. If we were snowed up in this room, we'd be the better for reading scores of books in that bookcase that we don't even know are there; we'd have talks with each other, good, terrible talks, that we shall go to the grave without guessing; we'd find materials for everything -- christening, marriage, or funeral; yes, even for a coronation."
Manalive, G. K. Chesterton
"All is gold that glitters--
Tree and tower of brass;
Rolls the golden evening air
Down the golden grass.
Kick the cry to Jericho,
How yellow mud is sold,
All is gold that glitters,
For the glitter is the gold."
Manalive, G. K. Chesterton
The principle is this: that in everything worth having, even in every pleasure, there is a point of pain or tedium that must be survived, so that the pleasure may revive and endure.
What's Wrong with the World, G. K. Chesterton
In everything on this earth that is worth doing, there is a stage when no one would do it, except for necessity or honor.
What's Wrong with the World, G. K. Chesterton
War is a dreadful thing; but it does prove two points sharply and unanswerably--numbers, and an unnatural valor. One does discover the two urgent matters; how many rebels there are alive, and how many are ready to be dead.
What's Wrong with the World, G. K. Chesterton
The worst form of slavery is that which is called Caesarism, or the choice of some bold or brilliant man as despot because he is suitable.
Heretics, G. K. Chesterton
No man seeks, except him who either never possessed, or else has lost.
"The Prescription Against Heresies", Tertullian
"It is greed and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the dignity out of a man, and make him look mean."
The Princess and the Curdie, George MacDonald
In brief, all things are artificial; for Nature is the Art of God.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
And though I think no man can live well once, but he that could live twice, yet for my own part I would not live over my hours past, or begin again the thread of my days: not upon Cicero's ground, because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live them worse.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
That general opinion that the World grows near its end, hath possessed all ages past as nearly as ours.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne (written in 1635)
Thus, our offences being mortal, and deserving not only Death, but
Damnation, if the goodness of God be content to traverse and pass
them over with a loss, misfortune, or disease, what frensie were it
to term this a punishment, rather than an extremity of mercy, and to
groan under the rod of His Judgements, rather than admire the Scepter
of His Mercies!
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
Lastly, I do desire with God that all, but yet affirm with men that few, shall know Salvation; that the bridge is narrow, the passage strait, unto life: yet those who do confine the Church of God, either to particular Nations, Churches, or Families, have made it far narrower than our Saviour ever meant it.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
For there are mystically in our faces certain Characters which carry in them the motto of our Souls, wherein he that cannot read A. B. C. may read our natures.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
For even in things alike there is diversity; and those that do seem to accord do manifestly disagree. And thus is man like God; for in the same things that we resemble Him, we are utterly different from Him.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
For, indeed heads of capacity, and such as are not full with a handful or easie measure of knowledge, think they know nothing till they know all; which being impossible, they fall upon the opinion of Socrates, and only know they know not anything.
Religio Medici, Thomas Browne
It is the part of the generous to treat passionate words as if they had never been uttered.
"The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear", C. H. Spurgeon
A system which cannot touch the outside world, but must leave arousing and converting work to others, whom it judges to be unsound, writes its own condemnation.
"On Conversion as Our Aim", C. H. Spurgeon
Sinners are quick-witted people, and soon detect even the smallest effort to glorify self.
"On Conversion as Our Aim", C. H. Spurgeon
But do not forget this. At first, it is natural for a baby to take its mother's milk without knowing its mother. It is equally natural for us to see the man who helps us without seeing Christ behind him. But we must not remain babies. We must go on to recognize the real Giver. It is madness not to. Because, if we do not, we shall be relying on human beings. And that is going to let us down. The best of them will make mistakes; all of them will die. We must be thankful to all the people who have helped us, we must honour them and love them. But never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world.
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
The kind and degree of obedience which a creature owes to its Creator is unique: no inference can be drawn from it to any political proposition whatsoever.
The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis
A society where the simple many obey the few seers can live: a society were all were seers could live even more fully. But a society where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end extinction. On or back we must go; to stay here is death.
Miracles, C. S. Lewis