The modern mind is like the eye of a man who is too tired to see the difference between blue and green. It fails in the quality that is truly called distinction; and,being incapable of distinction, it falls back on generalisation. The man, instead of having the sense to say he is tired, says he is emancipated and enlightened and liberal and universal....
...we find it less trouble to let in a jungle of generalisations than to keep watch upon a logical frontier. But this shapeless assimilation is not only found in accepting things in the lump; it is also found in condemning them in the lump. When the same modern mind does begin to be intolerant, it is just as universally intolerant as it was universally tolerant. It sends things in batches to the gallows just as it admitted them in mobs to the sanctuary. It cannot limit its limitations any more than its license....There are...lunatics now having power to lay down the law, who have somehow got it into their heads that any artistic representation of anything wicked must be forbidden as encouraging wickedness. This would obviously be a veto on any tragedy and practically on any tale. But a moment's thought...would show them that this is simply an illogical generalisation from the particular problem of sex. All dignified civilisations conceal sexual things, for the perfectly sensible reason that their mere exhibition does affect the passions. But seeing another man forge a cheque does not make me want to forge a cheque. Seeing the tools for burgling a safe does not arouse an appetite for being a burglar. But the intelligence in question cannot stop itself from stopping anything. It is automatically autocratic; and its very prohibition proceeds in a sort of absence of mind. Indeed, that is the most exact word for it; it is emphatically absence of mind. For the mind exists to make those very distinctions and definitions which these people refuse. They refuse to draw the line anywhere; and drawing a line is the beginning of all philosophy, as it is the beginning of all art. They are the people who are content to say that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and are condemned to pass their lives in looking for eggs from the cock as well as the hen.
Stichwörter: sexuality morality philosophy intolerance tolerance
He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists.
G.K. ChestertonStichwörter: conservatism reactionaries
Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not quite coward enough to admire it.
G.K. ChestertonStichwörter: fear cowardice force
Později se budeme musit podrobněji zabývat faktem, že čistě duchovní či mystická stránka katolicismu nabyla neobyčejné převahy v prvních katolických stoletích - vlivem génia svatého Augustina, který byl kdysi platonikem a snad jím nikdy nepřestal být, a působením transcendentalismu domnělého díla Areopagitova, jakož i orientálních sklonů pozdního Imperia a jakéhosi asiatského nádechu byzantského vladařství, jež bylo téměř vladařstvím velekněžským. Všechny tyto věci zatlačily to, co bychom dnes nazvali západnickým prvkem, ačkoli to má stejně dobré právo být nazýváno prvkem křesťanským, ježto jeho zdravý rozum jest jen svatou důvěrností slova učiněného tělem. Buď jak buď. pro tu chvíli musí stačit, řekneme-Ii, že theologové jaksi ustrnuli v jisté platónské pýše, v držení nedotknutelných a nesdělitelných vnitřních pravd.
G.K. ChestertonSvětcem může býti člověk jakéhokoli typu, ale vždycky k tomu přistupuje jistý rys, který je zároveň jedinečný i universální. Mohli bychom dokonce říci, že jediná věc, která odděluje světce od obyčejných lidí, jest jeho ochota být zajedno s obyčejnými lidmi. Světec už dávno netouží po vyniknutí; je to jediný typ lepšího člověka, který netrpí povýšeností.
G.K. ChestertonIn the modern world, we are primarily confronted with the extraordinary spectacle of people turning to new ideals because they have not tried the old. Men have not gotten tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of. Men have never wearied of political justice; they have wearied of waiting for it.
G.K. ChestertonStichwörter: politics christianity ideals
I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.
G.K. ChestertonStichwörter: marriage compatibility
The Donkey
When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.
Stichwörter: poem donkey palm-sunday
The Last Hero
The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day,
There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away,
And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide,
Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride.
The heavens are bowed about my head, shouting like seraph wars,
With rains that might put out the sun and clean the sky of stars,
Rains like the fall of ruined seas from secret worlds above,
The roaring of the rains of God none but the lonely love.
Feast in my hall, O foemen, and eat and drink and drain,
You never loved the sun in heaven as I have loved the rain.
The chance of battle changes -- so may all battle be;
I stole my lady bride from them, they stole her back from me.
I rent her from her red-roofed hall, I rode and saw arise,
More lovely than the living flowers the hatred in her eyes.
She never loved me, never bent, never was less divine;
The sunset never loved me, the wind was never mine.
Was it all nothing that she stood imperial in duresse?
Silence itself made softer with the sweeping of her dress.
O you who drain the cup of life, O you who wear the crown,
You never loved a woman's smile as I have loved her frown.
The wind blew out from Bergen to the dawning of the day,
They ride and run with fifty spears to break and bar my way,
I shall not die alone, alone, but kin to all the powers,
As merry as the ancient sun and fighting like the flowers.
How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,
Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.
Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,
When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.
The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, --
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.
Know you what earth shall lose to-night, what rich uncounted loans,
What heavy gold of tales untold you bury with my bones?
My loves in deep dim meadows, my ships that rode at ease,
Ruffling the purple plumage of strange and secret seas.
To see this fair earth as it is to me alone was given,
The blow that breaks my brow to-night shall break the dome of heaven.
The skies I saw, the trees I saw after no eyes shall see,
To-night I die the death of God; the stars shall die with me;
One sound shall sunder all the spears and break the trumpet's breath:
You never laughed in all your life as I shall laugh in death.
Stichwörter: hero
The poor have been rebels, but they have never become anarchists: they have got more interest than anyone in there being some decent government. The poor man has a stake in the country, the rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
G.K. ChestertonStichwörter: politics
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