Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy….The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the city because they know the city; but it wil...
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 h...
The dreadful joy Thy Son has sentIs heavier than any care;We find, as Cain his punishment,Our pardon more than we can bear.
Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.
To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a cer...
The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.
In the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is often true...
The objection to an aristocracy is that it is a priesthood without a god.
Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.
Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.
Revolutionists amke a reform, Conservatives only conserve the reform. They never reform the reform, which is often very much wanted.
The Americans are very patriotic, and wish to make their new citizens patriotic Americans. But it is the idea of making a new nation literally out of any old nation that comes along. In a word, what i...
There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.
Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left — sanity. But there was just enough in him of the blo...
The modern mind is merely a blank about the philosophy of toleration; and the average agnostic of recent times has really had no notion of what he meant by religious liberty and equality. He took his...
I need not pause to explain that crime is not a disease. It is criminology that is a disease.
Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does notfear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any commonprizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless--like a tree? Fight t...
All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ...Each human soul has in a sense to enact for itself the gigantic humility of the Incarnation. Every ma...
The true soldier fights
You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyon...