21 May 2003

I'm too lazy to come up with anything even as boring as what I've been posting. So, for those who happen to read this, here are a few of my favorite quotes:

From G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy:

The devotee is entirely free to criticize; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic.

Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain.

Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit our vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision.

Silly examples are always simpler.

From other Chesterton work:

They think us barbarians because we cling to the past. We think them barbarians because they do not cling to the past. (Time's Abstract and Brief Chronicle)

Dogmas are not dark and mysterious; rather, a dogma is like a flash of lightening--an instantaneous lucidity that opens across a whole landscape. (Chesterton on Shaw; the Irishman)

Music is mere beauty; it is beauty in the abstract, beauty in solution. (Chesterton on Shaw; the Critic)

The vessel was just comfortable for two people; there was room only for necessities, and Flambeau had stocked it with such things as his special philosophy considerd necessary. They reduced themselves, apparently, to four essentials: tins of salmon, if he should want to eat; loaded revolvers, if he should want to fight; a bottle of brandy, presumably in case he should faint; and a priest, presumably in case he should die. (The Sins of Prince Saradine, from The Innocence of Father Brown)

From People Who Are Not G.K. Chesterton:

The freedom of the liberal arts consists in their not being disposable for purposes, that they do not need to be legitimated by a social function, by being "work." (Josef Pieper, Leisure, the Basis of Culture)

Why lose your temper if by doing so you offend God, annoy other people, give yourself a bad time, and have to find it again in the end? (St. Josemaria Escriva)

Lord, make us crazy with that infectious craziness that will draw many to your apostolate. (St. Josemaria Escriva, "The Way")

Sometimes the message of the Holy Spirit to those who have ears to hear is that the thing they are being told is a load of rubbish and they would be better off in the pub. (Amos, a poster on the website Ship of Fools, which I highly recommend)

If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few of them. (St. Teresa of Avila, who happens to be my patroness, yay!)

All right, enough. You get the point that I've read a lot of Chesterton and like him. (Got 14 volumes of the Collected Works for my birthday two years ago and have worked my way through about four of them.)


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