G.K. Chesterton Quote
But when fundamentals are doubted, as at present, we must try to recoverthe candour and wonder of the child; the unspoilt realism and objectivity of innocence. Or if we cannot do that, wemust try at least to shake off the cloud of mere custom and see the thing as new, if only by seeing it as unnatural.Things that may well be familiar so long as familiarity breeds affection had much better become unfamiliar when familiarity breeds contempt. For in connection with things so great as are here considered, whatever our view of them,contempt must be a mistake. Indeed contempt must be an illusion. We must invoke the most wild and soaring sort ofimagination; the imagination that can see what is there.
But when fundamentals are doubted, as at present, we must try to recoverthe candour and wonder of the child; the unspoilt realism and objectivity of innocence. Or if we cannot do that, wemust try at least to shake off the cloud of mere custom and see the thing as new, if only by seeing it as unnatural.Things that may well be familiar so long as familiarity breeds affection had much better become unfamiliar when familiarity breeds contempt. For in connection with things so great as are here considered, whatever our view of them,contempt must be a mistake. Indeed contempt must be an illusion. We must invoke the most wild and soaring sort ofimagination; the imagination that can see what is there.
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About G.K. Chesterton
Chesterton created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and wrote on apologetics, such as his works Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an orthodox Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting from high church Anglicanism. Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman and John Ruskin.
He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox". Of his writing style, Time observed: "Whenever possible, Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out." His writings were an influence on Jorge Luis Borges, who compared his work with that of Edgar Allan Poe.