G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) is one of Christianity's finest writers, and I would venture to say that he is among the English language's finest writers as well. While I'm at it, I might as well state also that his book Orthodoxy is one of Christianity's finest books, although at this point I should offer my sincere apologies for being so repetitive. Chesterton thought quite outside the box, drawing unexpected connections between things and using delightful metaphors. He was quite adept at finding mots justes, as well as "phrases justes" and "paragraphe justes." His writing always seems to have an undercurrent of irony and subtle humour, which becomes clear and obvious in the occasional sentence, and makes his works even more enjoyable.
I highly recommend this book to lovers of literature – bookworms, wordsmiths, and wannabe writers alike – as well as to those interested in religion, philosophy, Christianity, and Christian apologetics. Some parts can be difficult to understand, but if you can decipher my incoherent ramblings (and more importantly, appreciate my self-deprecating humour), I trust you have the intelligence to comprehend Chesterton's literary masterpiece.
Here are some of my favourite quotes from Orthodoxy:
Chapter 1:
I know nothing so contemptible as a mere paradox; a mere ingenious defence of the indefensible.
Chapter 2:
Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true.
Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To except everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
Mysticism keeps men sane.
Chapter 3:
The phrases of the street are not only forcible but subtle: for a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.
Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs... But what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.
That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a skeptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape." The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all."
For we can hear skepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.
We have no more questions to ask. We have looked for questions in the darkest corners and on the wildest peaks. We have found all the questions that can be found. It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers.
Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. Every man who will not have the softening of the heart must at last have the softening of the brain.
Madness may be defined as using mental activity so as to reach mental helplessness.
Chapter 4:
There is the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable.
Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?
Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on not doing something which you could at any moment do, and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should not do.
Chapter 5:
For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but the decorate things already adorable… Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.
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.
An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays.
Chapter 7:
A strict rule is not only necessary for ruling; it is also necessary for rebelling. This fixed and familiar ideal is necessary to any sort of revolution.
As long as the vision of Heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind.
What on earth is the current morality, except in its literal sense – the morality that is always running away?
The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate.
Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them.
I know that the most modern manufacture has been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle. I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious to discover a very small camel.
(A reference to Matthew 19:16-26)
Chapter 8:
Insisting that God is inside man, man is always inside himself. By insisting that God transcends man, man has transcended himself.
Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church.
Chapter 9:
Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff's edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.
Christianity is a super-human paradox whereby two opposite passions may blaze beside each other.
If anyone says that faith arose in ignorance and savagery, the answer is simple: it didn't. It arose in the Mediterranean civilization in the full summer of the Roman Empire.
How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.
A false ghost disproves the reality of ghosts exactly as much as a forged banknote disproves the existence of the Bank of England – if anything, it proves its existence.
This or that rite or doctrine may look as ugly and extraordinary as a rake; but I have found by experience that such things end somehow in grass and flowers. A clergyman may be apparently as useless as a cat, but he is also as fascinating, for there must be some strange reason for his existence.
This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion, and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true: only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true.
The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within. And its despair is this, that is does not really believe that there is any meaning in the universe; therefore it cannot hope to find any romance; its romances will have no plots.
Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul.
Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.
There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when he walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was his mirth.
(The last sentence in the book, making for a mysterious and dramatic ending)
