Chesterton haughty. Aphorisms and quotes of Chesterton. Urgent business must be done slowly, otherwise it will turn out badly

CHESTERTON Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) was an English writer and thinker.* * * I owe my success to the fact that I listened carefully to everyone helpful advice, and then did exactly the opposite. What you think about when you fail determines how soon you

• Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and bankrupts.
• Anarchy and creativity are one. These are synonyms. The one who threw the bomb is a poet and an artist, for the great moment is above all for him.
• English radicalism has always been more a pose than a conviction - if it had been a conviction, it might have won.
• Artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs.
• Architecture is the alphabet of giants, the greatest system of visible symbols ever created.
• The poor sometimes rebelled only against bad authorities; the rich are always and against anyone.
• Without education, we are in terrible, mortal danger of taking educated people seriously.
• Adventures can be crazy, but the hero must be reasonable.
• The Bible tells us to love our neighbors and also our enemies; probably because for the most part they are the same people.
• Charity is the ability to protect what is undefendable.
• Most modern philosophers are ready to sacrifice happiness for the sake of progress, whereas only happiness is the meaning of all progress. (essay “On the Perversion of Truth”)
• Buddhism is not a faith. Buddhism is doubt.
• In great battles, the vanquished often win. Those who were defeated at the end of the battle were triumphant at the end of the matter.
• A great work always contains the simplest truth for the simplest reading.
• Nine times out of ten, the woman's lover is hated most by the wife herself.
• A woman has more immediate, momentary strength, which is called enterprise; a man has more latent stored strength, which is called laziness...
• In love, the lender shares the joy of the debtor.
• In love, the lender shares the joy of the debtor... We are not so generous as to be ascetics.
• The diversity and cruelty of ethical prohibitions reveal extreme moral promiscuity and hypocrisy.
• In the rapture of victory, mistakes are forgotten and extremes arise.
• You seem to think that the funniest thing is to behave decorously on the streets and at gala dinners, and at home, near the fireplace (you are right - a fireplace is within my means) to make guests laugh until they drop. But that's what everyone does. Take anyone - he is serious in public, but at home he is a humorist. My sense of humor tells me that it should be the other way around, that I should be a buffoon in public and sedate at home.
• There is only one biography possible - autobiography; the list of other people's actions and emotions is not a biography, but zoology, a description of the habits of a strange beast.
• Magic stories are more than true: not because they lie that dragons exist, but because they claim that a dragon can be defeated.
• A thief respects property. He just wants to appropriate her in order to honor her even more.
• Thieves respect property. They just want her to belong to them so that they can respect her even more.
• Raising children depends entirely on the attitude of adults towards them, and not on the attitude of adults to the problems of education.
• All people who really believe in themselves are in a madhouse.
• All human misfortunes arise from the fact that we enjoy what should be enjoyed and use what should be enjoyed.
• The whole difference between creation and creation boils down to this: a creature can only be loved by something that has already been created, and a creation can be loved by something that has not yet been created.
• All conservatism is based on the fact that if everything is left as it is, everything will remain in its place. But that's not true. If just one thing is left in its place, it will undergo the most incredible changes.
• The highest goal of travel is not to see a foreign country, but to see your own country as a foreign country.
• The newspaper, published extremely quickly, is interesting even for its miscalculations; the encyclopedia, coming out extremely slowly, is not interesting even for its discoveries.
• Newspapers not only report news, but also present everything as news.
• The main sin of journalism is that in his articles the newspaperman misrepresents himself.
• The person who mechanically eats caviar behaves much more naturally than the person who does not eat grapes on principle.
• It's not that the world has become a much worse place, but that the coverage has become much better.
• It's not that they are unable to see the solution. The point is that they cannot see the problem.
• Democracy means the rule of the uneducated, aristocracy means the rule of the poorly educated.
• Democrats advocate for birth equity. The tradition advocates equality after death.
• For the childish nature of a pessimist, every change in fashion is the end of the world.
• For a poet, the joy of life is the reason for faith; for a saint, it is its fruit.
• The worst days for the oppressed are those nine days out of ten when they are not oppressed.
• For a person of passion, love and peace are a mystery, for a sensitive person they are a truth as old as the world.
• Friends love you for who you are; your wife loves you and wants to make you a different person.
• ...Fools are drawn to intellectuality like cats to fire.
• The only true good is unpaid debt.
• The only disadvantage of our democracy is that it does not tolerate equality.
• The only way to catch the train is to be late for the previous one.
• The only chance to stay alive is not to hold on to life.
• If we called cabbage a cactus, we would immediately notice a lot of interesting things about it.
• If you are told that some object is too small or too big, too red or too green, too bad in one sense and just as bad in the opposite, know: there is nothing better than this object!
• If you do not feel the desire to break at least one of the Ten Commandments, then something is wrong with you.
• If you do not understand a person, you have no right to condemn him, and if you understand, then, quite possibly, you will not want to do this.
• If you don't want to break the Ten Commandments, then something is wrong with you.
• If a woman becomes a comrade, it is quite possible that she will get a comradely knee in the ass.
• If the pilot believes in immortality, then the lives of the passengers are in danger.
• If something is really worth doing, it is worth doing it badly.
• There are only three things in the world that women do not understand: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
• Life is always serious, but you cannot always live seriously.
• Life is too good to enjoy.
• Journalism is reporting: *Lord John is dead* to people who didn't even know Lord John lived.
• Engaging in politics is like blowing your nose or writing to your fiancée. You have to do it yourself, even if you don’t know how.
• Evil creeps in like a disease. Dobro comes running out of breath, like a doctor.
• The golden rule of ethics is that there is no golden rule... The fact that there is no golden rule is also a rule, only not golden, but iron.
• Out of pure philanthropy, it doesn’t take long to hate.
• By making fun of limitations, we ourselves are in serious danger of becoming limited.
• Changes in society, called fashion, are possible only because people have two funny traits. Firstly, so much happens to every person that he will always remember at least something that foreshadowed the current turn. Secondly, almost everyone sees the past incorrectly, and in a biased memory this detail seems unusually important.
• Studying people by observing your contemporaries is like looking at mountains through a magnifying glass; studying them, looking into the distance of the past, is like looking at them through a telescope.
• It is in seriousness that the frivolity of our society, which has long forgotten how to laugh at itself, is most manifested.
• He had more than enough intelligence; a person endowed with such intelligence rises high up the official ladder and slowly descends into the grave, surrounded by honors, without ever enlightening or even amusing anyone.
• Intellectuals are divided into two categories: some worship intelligence, others use it.
• Art is always a limitation. The meaning of every picture is in its frame.
• Every politician is an up-and-coming politician.
• Everyone talks about public opinion and acts on behalf of public opinion, that is, on behalf of the opinions of everyone minus his own.
• Everyone wants to be informed fairly, impartially, truthfully - and in full accordance with their views.
• What's the point of fighting against a stupid tyrant in London if the same tyrant is all-powerful in the family?
• Carlyle said that people are mostly fools; Christianity expressed itself more precisely and categorically: everyone is a fool.
• We call a classic a writer who can be praised without reading.
• When they say that you can’t criticize the Boer War until it’s over, you shouldn’t even answer; with the same success one can say that one should not block the mother’s path to the cliff before she falls.
• When triumph is the measure of everything, fans of success cannot wait for it. While hope does remain, it is regarded as trivial and vulgar; and only when things are hopeless does hope begin to gain strength. Like all Christian virtues, it is both reckless and obligatory.
• When humanity no longer produces happy people, it begins to produce optimists.
• A man's comedy survives his tragedy.
• Blasphemy dies with religion; if you doubt it, try blasphemy against Odin.
• Critics ignore the wise advice not to throw stones if you live in a greenhouse.
• Complete fools are drawn to intellect, like cats to fire.
• It's easy to be crazy; it's easy to be a heretic.
• It is easy to be a difficult person, but it is very difficult to be easy. Strive for good.
• The frivolity of our society is manifested in the fact that it has long forgotten how to laugh at itself.
• Literature and fiction are completely different things. Literature is only a luxury, fiction is a necessity.
• Any fashion is a form of madness. Christianity is unfashionable because it is healthy.
• Love doesn't blind, no matter where it goes! - love binds, and the more tightly you are connected, the clearer you see.
• Love, by its nature, binds itself, and the institution of marriage only did the average person a service by taking him at his word.
• People are afraid of the human skeleton. In fact, the fear of the skeleton is not the fear of death at all. Man, to his shame and glory, does not fear death as much as humiliation. And the skeleton reminds him that inside he is shamelessly funny and quite ugly.
• People usually quarrel because they don't know how to argue.
• People who are sentimental every day and hour are the most dangerous enemies of society. Dealing with them is like watching an endless series of poetic sunsets in the early morning.
• The small circle is as infinite as the big one, but not as big.
• Materialists and madmen have no doubts.
• I am always deeply struck by the strange quality of my compatriots: unjustified arrogance combined with even more unjustified modesty.
• The world shook and the sun was eclipsed not when God was crucified, but when a cry was heard from the cross that God had been abandoned by God.
• Many detective stories fail precisely because the criminal owes nothing to the plot other than the need to commit the crime.
• Many of those who are capable of composing an epic poem are unable to write an epigram.
• Many people think that women would bring gentleness or sensitivity to politics. But a woman is dangerous in politics because she loves men’s methods too much.
• The humble speak a lot; the proud take too much care of themselves.
• For many hours he stood on the lawn, watching bottles being broken and barrels being broken, and enjoying that fanatical joy that neither food, nor wine, nor women could give to his strange, cold soul.
• My opinion about Poland was formed as a result of observing those who vilify it. I came to one, in my opinion, indisputable conclusion that Poland’s ill-wishers, as a rule, are also fierce enemies of generosity and courage. Every time I encountered such individuals, who indulged their slave souls through usury and the cult of terror, mired in the swamp of materialistic politics, I found in them, in addition to the above-mentioned qualities, also a passionate hatred of Poland.
• Silence is an unbearable response.
• Men are people, but a Man is a woman.
• Music during dinner is an insult to both the cook and the violinist.
• We are not so generous as to be ascetics.
• We make our own friends, we create our own enemies, and only our neighbors are from God.
• We are so mired in morbid prejudices, we respect madness so much, that a sane person frightens us like a madman.
• We joke about the deathbed, but not at the deathbed. Life is always serious, but you cannot always live seriously.
• There are no words in the world that can express the difference between loneliness and friendship.
• There is no such thing as an uninteresting topic. But there is such a thing as an indifferent person.
• Hope is the ability to fight in a hopeless situation.
• An arrogant apology is another insult.
• It is possible to find the truth using logic only if it has already been found without the help of logic.
• Violence against a person is not violence, but rebellion, for every person is a king.
• Our actions and thoughts are determined by faith, especially when we do not believe in anything.
• One should not think that this or that thought did not come to the minds of the great: she did come and found there many better thoughts, ready to knock the crap out of her.
• You don't need a revolution to achieve democracy. We need democracy so that revolution can happen.
• I have no doubt that St. George, killing the snake, was deathly afraid of the princess.
• It's not that the world has become much worse, but the coverage of events has become much better.
• You cannot admire something that is not complete. That is why not a single crowd was captured by the idea of ​​gradual moral change or progress leading to God knows where.
• You can't go crazy all at once. Madness loses its moral value if no one marvels at it.
• ...There is no person in the world who could live without once plunging into fantasies, without once surrendering to the imagination, the romance of life, for in dreams he finds that shelter in which his mind will find rest.
• It's not hard to see why legend deserves more respect than history. The whole village creates a legend - a book is written by a lonely madman.
• No war deserves justification except a defensive war. And a defensive war, by its very nature and by definition, is a war from which a person returns beaten, bleeding and unable to boast of anything other than the fact that he managed to survive.
• Never break a fence without finding out why it was put up.
• Nothing brings more despondency in our age than entertainment.
• You need to learn to be happy in moments of relaxation, when you remember that you are alive, and not in moments of hectic life, when you forget about it.
• Anything can be said about a madman, except that his actions are causeless. On the contrary, a madman sees a reason in everything.
• They don’t argue about tastes: they scold, make scandals and swear because of tastes.
• It is customary to talk about laws as something cold and shy. In fact, only in a wild impulse, maddened and intoxicated with freedom, can people create laws. When people are tired, they fall into anarchy; when they are strong and resilient, they invariably create boundaries and rules.
• The most intimate things are told only to complete strangers.
• The usual view of madness is deceptive: it is not logic at all that a person loses; he loses everything except logic.
• It's one thing to love people, it's another thing to be a philanthropist.
• He felt in its entirety that joy that is unknown to the proud; a joy that borders on humiliation, no - which is inseparable from it. It is known to those who escaped death, and to those to whom love has returned, and to those whose iniquities are covered.
• He understood what all romantics have long known: that adventures do not happen in sunny days and the days are gray. Strain a monotonous string to the limit, and it will break as sonorously as if a song were starting to sound.
• ...They forgot an important force - newspapermen. They forgot that in our day (perhaps for the first time in history) there are people who are concerned not with the fact that some event is moral or immoral, not with the fact that it is beautiful or ugly, not with the fact that it is useful or harmful, but simply because it happened.
• They (modern philosophers) subordinate goodness to expediency, although every good is an end, and every expediency is nothing more than a means to achieve this goal.
• Orthodoxy is normality, health, and health is more interesting and more difficult than madness.
• Orthodoxy is normality, health, and health is more interesting and more difficult than madness. It's easy to be crazy; it's easy to be a heretic.
• There is a road from the eyes to the heart that does not go through the intellect.
• Putting aside vanity and false modesty (which healthy people always use as a joke), I must say with all frankness: my contribution to literature boils down to the fact that I distorted several very good ideas of my time.
• The paradox is reminiscent of a forgotten truth.
• The paradox of courage is that you should not care too much about your life even in order to save it.
• Drink when you are happy, and never drink when you are unhappy.
• The first of the most democratic doctrines is that all people are interesting.
• Sadness is the other side of joy.
• We truly remember only what we have forgotten.
• Only those men who are not afraid of women are truly cowardly.
• Victory over the barbarians. Exploitation of barbarians. Alliance with the barbarians. Victory of the barbarians. Such is the fate of the empire.
• Believe me, it is not people with a rich imagination who go crazy. Even in the most tragic state of mind, they do not lose their minds. You can always shake them up, wake them up from a bad dream, luring them with lighter views, because they have imagination. People without imagination go crazy. Stubborn stoics, dedicated to one idea and taking it too literally. Silent people who sulk and sulk, seething until they explode.
• The pursuit of health always leads to unhealthy things. You cannot obey nature, you cannot worship - you can only rejoice.
• We only truly remember what we have forgotten.
• To constantly be exposed to dangers that do not threaten us, to take oaths that bind us in no way, to challenge enemies that we are not afraid of - this is the false tyranny of decadence, which is called freedom.
• Why don't we argue about words? What then is there to argue about? What are we given words for if we cannot argue about them? Why do we prefer one word over another? If the poet calls his lady not an angel, but a monkey, might she find fault with the word? How are you going to argue if not with words? Ear movements?
• The holiday, like liberalism, means human freedom. A miracle is the freedom of God.
• In the past, “compromise” meant that half a loaf of bread was better than none. For today's politicians, "compromise" means that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.
• Older idealistic Republicans used to found democracy on the assumption that all people were equally intelligent. However, I assure you: a strong and healthy democracy is based on the fact that all people are the same idiots.
• The criminal is an artist-creator; the detective is just a critic.
• Adventures can be crazy, but their hero must be reasonable.
• Progress and expediency, by their very essence, are only a means to achieve the good.
• Ordinary people will always be sentimental - he is sentimental who does not hide his innermost feelings, who does not try to invent a new way of expressing them.
• Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.
• A Puritan is a man who vents righteous indignation at the wrong things.
• The Puritan seeks to understand the truth; the Catholic is content that it exists.
• The traveler sees what he sees; the tourist sees what he came to see.
• Travel develops the mind, if, of course, you have one.
• Since a person learns to play for his own pleasure, why not learn to think for his own pleasure?
• The growing need for a strong person is an irrefutable sign of weakness.
• A speech needs an exciting beginning and a compelling ending. The job of a good speaker is to bring these two things as close as possible.
• The human race, and a considerable share of my readers belong to it, has been committed to children's games from time to time and will never leave them, don't be angry for those few who somehow managed to grow up.
• A novel in which there is no death seems to me a novel in which there is no life.
• In himself, every person seems to be a rational being: he eats, sleeps, and makes plans. What about humanity? It is changeable and mysterious, fastidious and charming. In a word, people are mostly men, but Man is a woman.
• The most unfortunate person in the world is an atheist, he sees a sea sunset, and he has no one to thank for this beauty.
• Freedom is the artist in man...
• Today I saw something worse than death. This is called the world.
• Serious doubts are most often caused by insignificant details.
• The strength of every artist is the ability to control and tame one’s incontinence.
• Fairy tales do not tell children that there are dragons - children themselves know about it. Fairy tales say that dragons can be killed.
• Speed, as you know, is known by comparison: when two trains move at the same speed, it seems that both are standing still. It’s the same with society: it stands still if all its members run around like clockwork.
• Following tradition means giving your votes to the most mysterious party - the party of our ancestors.
• Listening to music while eating is an insult to both the cook and the violinist.
• You can laugh at anything, but not at any time. We joke about the deathbed, but not at the deathbed. Life is always serious, but you cannot always live seriously.
• The snob claims that only on his head is a real hat; reasoner insists that only under his hat is a real head.
• The modern world is not destined to see the future unless we understand that instead of striving for everything extraordinary and exciting, it makes more sense to turn to what is considered boring.
• The modern city is ugly not because it is a city, but because it is a jungle...
• A modern critic goes something like this: “Of course I don’t like green cheese. But I really love beige sherry.”
• Haste is bad because it takes a lot of time.
• Try to maintain a sense of proportion and a sense of humor!
• Suffering with its fear and hopelessness powerfully attracts a young and inexperienced artist, just as a schoolboy draws devils, skeletons and gallows in his notebooks.
• The desire for free love is tantamount to the desire to become a married bachelor or a white Negro.
• Crazy people are serious people; They go crazy because of the lack of humor.
• A madman is a person who has lost everything except his mind.
• There is a big difference between a person who wants to read a book and a person who needs a book to read.
• There are many misconceptions about friendly conversation, especially about intimate conversation. People rarely tell the truth when they speak, even modestly, about themselves; but much is revealed when they talk about something else.
• Happy is the one who has preserved childish spontaneity - such a person saves not only his own soul, but also his life.
• Now they say that heresy cannot be punished. I often wonder if we have the right to punish for anything else.
• Tolerance is a virtue of people without convictions.
• What we call "progress" is only a comparative degree of something from which there is no superior.
• The only good religion is the one you can make fun of.
• Only someone who knows nothing about cars would try to drive without gasoline; only one who knows nothing about reason will try to reason without a solid, indisputable basis.
• The passion with which people pursue pleasure is the best proof that they are unable to find it.
• He who wants everything wants nothing.
• “That person is the most dangerous of all,” the old man remarked, without moving, “who has one thing on his mind, and only one thing.” I was once dangerous myself.
• The hardest thing is to really love what you love.
• Lord Ivywood had a flaw common to many people who learned the world from books - he did not suspect that it was not only possible, but also necessary to learn something differently.
• A murderer kills a person, a suicide kills humanity.
• The ability to fight in circumstances that inspire nothing but utter despair.
• It is all the easier to establish an immutable truth in a dispute because it does not exist in nature.
• Fact is what man owes to the world, while fantasy, fiction is what the world owes to man.
• A fanatic is someone who takes his own opinions seriously.
• A good person is easy to recognize: he has sadness in his heart and a smile on his face.
• A good novel tells the truth about its hero, a bad one - about its author.
• While I don't necessarily think we should eat beef without mustard, I am quite convinced that there is a much more serious danger these days: the desire to eat mustard without the beef.
• Courage: An intense desire to live, taking the form of a willingness to die.
• A Christian is indeed worse than a pagan, a Spaniard is worse than an Indian, and even a Roman is worse than a Carthaginian, but only in one sense. He is worse because his direct business is to be better.
• The Christian ideal is not something that was strived for and not achieved; this is something that is never strived for and is extremely difficult to achieve.
• Christianity is always unfashionable, because it is always sane, and any fashion is at best a mild form of madness.
• Artistic temperament is a disease to which all amateurs are susceptible.
• Cynicism is akin to sentimentality in the sense that the cynical mind is as sensitive as it is sentimental.
• It often happens that bad people are guided by good motives, but even more often, on the contrary, good people are guided by bad motives.
• A person can claim intelligence, but he cannot claim wit.
• The human race to which so many of my readers belong...
• Humanity is not a herd of horses that we must feed, but a club that we must join.
• Honesty is not respectable - hypocrisy is respectable. Honesty always laughs, because everything around us is funny.
• An honest poor man can sometimes forget his poverty. An honest rich man never forgets his wealth.
• Eccentricities surprise only ordinary people, not eccentrics. That's why ordinary people have so many adventures, while weirdos always complain about being bored.
• A miracle is the freedom of God.
• Humor is difficult to define, because only the absence of humor can explain attempts to define it.
• I don’t believe the modern talk about domestic boredom and that a woman becomes dull if she only cooks puddings and bakes pies. Only does things! Nothing more can be said about God.
• I cannot prove the validity of my point of view precisely because its validity is obvious.
• I've never taken my books seriously, but I do take my opinions seriously.
• I have a soft spot for philistines. They are often right, although they cannot explain why.
• I came to the conclusion that an optimist considers everything good except a pessimist, and a pessimist considers everything bad except himself.
• I want to love my neighbor not because he is me, but precisely because he is not me. I want to love the world not as a mirror in which I like my reflection, but as a woman, because she is completely different.

Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and bankrupts.

Anarchy and creativity are one. These are synonyms. The one who threw the bomb is a poet and an artist, for the great moment is above all for him.

English radicalism has always been more a pose than a conviction - if it had been a conviction, it might have won.

Artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs.

Architecture is the alphabet of giants.

Life is too good to enjoy.

Journalism is telling people, “Lord John is dead,” to people who didn’t even know Lord John lived.

Engaging in politics is like blowing your nose or writing to your fiancée. You have to do it yourself, even if you don’t know how.

Evil creeps in like a disease. Dobro comes running out of breath, like a doctor.

Out of pure philanthropy, it doesn’t take long to hate.

By making fun of limitations, we ourselves are in serious danger of becoming limited.

Intellectuals are divided into two categories: some worship intelligence, others use it.

Art is always a limitation. The meaning of every picture is in its frame.

Every politician is an up-and-coming politician.

Everyone talks about public opinion and acts on behalf of public opinion, that is, on behalf of the opinions of everyone minus his own.

Everyone wants to be informed honestly, impartially, truthfully - and in full accordance with their views.

What's the point of fighting against a stupid tyrant in London if the same tyrant is all-powerful in the family?

Carlyle said that people are mostly fools; Christianity expressed itself more precisely and categorically: everyone is a fool.

We call a classic a writer who can be praised without reading.

When they say that you can’t criticize the Boer War until it’s over, you shouldn’t even answer; with the same success one can say that one should not block the mother’s path to the cliff before she falls.

When humanity no longer produces happy people, it begins to produce optimists.

Blasphemy dies with religion; if you doubt it, try blasphemy against Odin.

Critics ignore the wise advice not to throw stones if you live in a greenhouse.

Complete fools are drawn to intellect, like cats to fire.

The frivolity of our society is manifested in the fact that it has long forgotten how to laugh at itself.

It's easy to be crazy; it's easy to be a heretic.

Literature and fiction are completely different things. Literature is only a luxury, fiction is a necessity.

Any fashion is a form of madness. Christianity is unfashionable because it is healthy.

Love doesn't blind, no matter where it goes! - love binds, and the more tightly you are connected, the clearer you see.

Love, by its nature, binds itself, and the institution of marriage only did the average person a service by taking him at his word.

People who are sentimental every day and hour are the most dangerous enemies of society. Dealing with them is like watching an endless series of poetic sunsets in the early morning.

Materialists and madmen have no doubts.

I am always deeply struck by the strange quality of my compatriots: unjustified arrogance combined with even more unjustified modesty.

Many detective stories fail precisely because the criminal owes nothing to the plot other than the need to commit the crime.

Many of those who are capable of composing an epic poem are unable to write an epigram.

The humble speak a lot; the proud take too much care of themselves.

Silence is an unbearable response.

Men are people, but a Man is a woman.

We are not so generous as to be ascetics.

We are so mired in morbid prejudices, we respect madness so much, that a sane person frightens us like a madman.

We joke about the deathbed, but not at the deathbed. Life is always serious, but you cannot always live seriously.

There are no words in the world that can express the difference between loneliness and friendship.

There is no such thing as an uninteresting topic. But there is such a thing as an indifferent person.

An arrogant apology is another insult.

Violence against a person is not violence, but rebellion, for every person is a king.

Absurdity is a sign of dignity.

It's not hard to see why legend deserves more respect than history. The whole village creates a legend - a book is written by a lonely madman.

Never break a fence without finding out why it was put up.

Nothing brings more despondency in our age than entertainment.

Anything can be said about a madman, except that his actions are causeless. On the contrary, a madman sees a reason in everything.

They don’t argue about tastes: they scold, argue and swear because of tastes.

The most intimate things are told only to complete strangers.

The usual view of madness is deceptive: it is not logic at all that a person loses; he loses everything except logic.

It's one thing to love people, it's another thing to be a philanthropist.

They (modern philosophers) subordinate goodness to expediency, although every good is an end, and every expediency is nothing more than a means to achieve this goal.

Orthodoxy is normality, health, and health is more interesting and more difficult than madness.

There is a road from the eyes to the heart that does not go through the intellect.

Putting aside vanity and false modesty (which healthy people always use as a joke), I must say with all frankness: my contribution to literature boils down to the fact that I distorted several very good ideas of my time.

The paradox is reminiscent of a forgotten truth.

The paradox of courage is that you should not care too much about your life even in order to save it.

Drink when you are happy, and never drink when you are unhappy.

The first of the most democratic doctrines is that all people are interesting.

We only truly remember what we have forgotten.

The only truly cowardly men are those who are not afraid of women.

To constantly be exposed to dangers that do not threaten us, to take oaths that bind us in no way, to challenge enemies that we are not afraid of - this is the false tyranny of decadence, which is called freedom.

The holiday, like liberalism, means human freedom. A miracle is the freedom of God.

In the past, “compromise” meant that half a loaf of bread was better than nothing. For today's politicians, "compromise" means that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.

Ordinary people will always be sentimental - he is sentimental who does not hide his innermost feelings, who does not try to invent a new way of expressing them,

Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.

A Puritan is a man who vents righteous indignation at the wrong things.

The Puritan seeks to understand the truth; the Catholic is content that it exists.

Travel develops the mind, if, of course, you have one.

Since a person learns to play for his own pleasure, why not learn to think for his own pleasure?

The growing need for a strong person is an irrefutable sign of weakness.

A novel in which there is no death seems to me a novel in which there is no life.

Serious doubts are most often caused by insignificant details.

The strength of every artist is the ability to control and tame one’s incontinence.

Speed, as you know, is known by comparison: when two trains move at the same speed, it seems that both are standing still. It’s the same with society: it stands still if all its members run around like clockwork.

Listening to music while eating is an insult to both the cook and the violinist.

The snob claims that only on his head is a real hat; reasoner insists that only under his hat is a real head.

The modern world is not destined to see the future unless we understand that instead of striving for everything extraordinary and exciting, it makes more sense to turn to what is considered boring.

The modern city is ugly not because it is a city, but because it is a jungle...

A modern critic goes something like this: “Of course I don’t like green cheese. But I really love beige sherry.”

Haste is bad because it takes a lot of time.

Suffering with its fear and hopelessness powerfully attracts a young and inexperienced artist, just as a schoolboy draws devils, skeletons and gallows in his notebooks.

The desire for free love is tantamount to the desire to become a married bachelor or a white Negro.

A madman is a person who has lost everything except his mind.

There is a big difference between a person who wants to read a book and a person who needs a book to read.

Tolerance is a virtue of people without convictions.

What we call "progress" is only a comparative degree of something from which there is no superior.

The only good religion is the one you can make fun of.

He who wants everything wants nothing.

A murderer kills a person, a suicide kills humanity.

The ability to fight in circumstances that inspire nothing but utter despair.

It is all the easier to establish an immutable truth in a dispute because it does not exist in nature.

Fact is what man owes to the world, while fantasy, fiction is what the world owes to man.

A fanatic is someone who takes his own opinions seriously.

A good novel tells the truth about its hero, a bad one - about its author.

While I don't necessarily think we should eat beef without mustard, I am quite convinced that there is a much more serious danger these days: the desire to eat mustard without the beef.

Courage: An intense desire to live, taking the form of a willingness to die.

The Christian ideal is not something that was strived for and not achieved; this is something that is never strived for and is extremely difficult to achieve.

Cynicism is akin to sentimentality in the sense that the cynical mind is as sensitive as it is sentimental.

It often happens that bad people are guided by good motives, but even more often, on the contrary, good people are guided by bad motives.

A person can claim intelligence, but he cannot claim wit.

The human race to which so many of my readers belong...

Honesty is not respectable - hypocrisy is respectable. Honesty always laughs, because everything around us is funny.

Humanity is not a herd of horses that we must feed, but a club that we must join.

An honest poor man can sometimes forget his poverty. An honest rich man never forgets his wealth.

Eccentricities surprise only ordinary people, not eccentrics. That's why ordinary people have so many adventures, while weirdos always complain about being bored.

Humor is difficult to define, because only the lack of a sense of humor can explain attempts to define it.

I have a soft spot for philistines. They are often right, although they cannot explain why.

I came to the conclusion that an optimist considers everything good except a pessimist, and a pessimist considers everything bad except himself.

I want to love my neighbor not because he is me, but precisely because he is not me. I want to love the world not as a mirror in which I like my reflection, but as a woman, because she is completely different.

The poor sometimes rebelled only against bad authorities; the rich are always and against anyone.

Adventures can be crazy; the hero must be reasonable.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors and also our enemies; probably because for the most part they are the same people.
Charity is the ability to protect what is undefendable.

In great battles, the vanquished often win. Those who were defeated at the end of the battle were triumphant at the end of the matter.

A great work always contains the simplest truth for the simplest reading.

Nine times out of ten, the woman's lover is hated most by the wife herself.

A woman has more immediate, momentary strength, which is called enterprise; a man has more latent stored strength, which is called laziness...

In love, the lender shares the joy of the debtor.

In the rapture of victory, mistakes are forgotten and extremes arise.

There is only one biography possible - autobiography; the list of other people's actions and emotions is not a biography, but zoology, a description of the habits of a strange beast.

A thief honors property. He wants to appropriate it to honor even more.

Raising children depends entirely on the attitude of adults towards them, and not on the attitude of adults to the problems of education.

All people who really believe in themselves are in a madhouse.

The whole difference between creation and creation boils down to this: a creature can only be loved by something that has already been created, and a creation can be loved by something that has not yet been created.

All conservatism is based on the fact that if everything is left as it is, everything will remain in its place. But that's not true. If just one thing is left in its place, it will undergo the most incredible changes.

The newspaper, published extremely quickly, is interesting even for its miscalculations; the encyclopedia, coming out extremely slowly, is not interesting even for its discoveries.

The main sin of journalism is that in his articles the newspaperman misrepresents himself.

The person who mechanically eats caviar behaves much more naturally than the person who does not eat grapes on principle.

It's not that the world has become a much worse place, but that the coverage has become much better.

It's not that they are unable to see the solution. The point is that they cannot see the problem.

Democracy means the rule of the uneducated, aristocracy means the rule of the poorly educated.

Democrats advocate for birth equity. The tradition advocates equality after death.

For the childish nature of a pessimist, every change in fashion is the end of the world.

For a poet, the joy of life is the reason for faith; for a saint, it is its fruit.

The worst days for the oppressed are those nine days out of ten when they are not oppressed.

For a person of passion, love and peace are a mystery, for a sensitive person they are a truth as old as the world.

Friends love you for who you are; your wife loves you and wants to make you a different person.

The only true good is unpaid debt.

The only disadvantage of our democracy is that it does not tolerate equality.

The only chance to stay alive is not to hold on to life.

If we called cabbage a cactus, we would immediately notice a lot of interesting things about it.

If you are told that an object is too small or too big, too red or too green, too bad in one sense and just as bad in the opposite sense, know that there is nothing better than this object!

If you do not feel the desire to break at least one of the Ten Commandments, then something is wrong with you.

If a woman becomes a comrade, it is quite possible that she will be given a comradely knee in the ass.

If something is truly worth doing, it is worth doing it poorly.

There are only three things in the world that women do not understand: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton- born 29 May 1874 in the London area Kensington, English Christian thinker, journalist and writer. Knight Commander with star of the Vatican Order of St. Gregory the Great.

You can laugh at anything, but not anywhere. We joke about the deathbed, but not at the deathbed. Life is always serious, but you cannot always live seriously.

A good person is easy to recognize: he has sadness in his heart and a smile on his face.

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.

If the current world does not acquire a clear moral law that can resist the charms of beauty and humor, it will simply become the prey of anyone who commits a sin in an amusing or beautiful way. If you manage to kill in a funny way, kill. If you manage to steal funny, steal to your health.

The most unfortunate person in the world is an atheist, he sees a sea sunset, and he has no one to thank for this beauty.

Blessed are those who, in darkness, believe in the light.

Every normal person has a period when he prefers fiction to fact, because fact is what he owes to the world, while fantasy is what the world owes to him.

In morality, as in painting, the main thing is to draw the line in the right place.

The most secret things are told only to strangers.

Materialists and madmen have no doubts.

Silence is the most unbearable response.

An urgent matter must be done slowly, otherwise it will turn out badly.

Marriage is a duel for life and death, from which more than one
A self-respecting person has no right to refuse.

He who wants everything wants nothing.

When sex ceases to be a servant,
he instantly becomes a despot.

There is no such thing in the world as an uninteresting topic... but there is such a thing - an indifferent person...

Everyone born into the world experienced a terrible adventure - he might not have been born. In my childhood they talked a lot about untapped talents, and the phrase was in fashion: “He is so great, but he might not have existed!” In my opinion, it is much more important that everyone you meet is great and everyone might not have existed.

An arrogant apology is another insult.

It's not hard to see why legend deserves more respect than history. The whole village creates a legend - a book is written by a lonely madman.

If you do not feel the desire to break at least one of the commandments, then something is wrong with you.

In a new section we will publish aphorisms famous people who have made a unique contribution to world culture - about Christianity, history, love, freedom, work, faith, culture and much more. Open a project "Thoughts of the Great" aphorisms Gilbert Keith Chesterton, English thinker and writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

God, personality:

It is not enough to find gods - they are obvious. We must find God, the true head of all gods.

The world has a goal, and if there is a goal, there is a personality. The world has always seemed like a fairy tale to me, and where there is a fairy tale, there is a storyteller.

Space is infinite, but in the most bizarre constellation there is nothing interesting, like mercy or free will.

Pantheism does not awaken to moral choice, because for it all things are the same, and for choice it is necessary to prefer one thing to another.

If God is contained in man, man is contained in himself. If God is higher than man, man is higher than himself.

G. K. Chesterton at work. 1920s

Christ:

...in the freest, deepest sense there is only one Person in the Old Testament - a Person; and the servant of Yahweh is anticipated by the plagues of Job.

One day the heavens came down to earth, bestowing the power or seal of the image of God, by which man became the master of Nature; and again (when in all empires men were weighed and found very light), to save mankind, heaven came down to earth in the stunning form of Man.

Human:

The trouble is not that there are more and more cars, but that people have become machines.

Faith and ideals, atheism and freethinking:

This is the property of materialism and skepticism, for if the mind is mechanical, there is no interest in thinking, and if the world is unreal, there is nothing to think about.

The determinist creates a clear theory of causation and cannot say “please” to the maid.

The doubts of an agnostic are merely the dogmas of a materialist.

Materialistic philosophy (whether it is true or not) is undoubtedly more restrictive than any religion.

A Christian has the right to believe that there is enough order and directed development in the world; The materialist has no right to add to his impeccable mechanism a single grain of spirit or miracle...

A Christian recognizes that the world is diverse and even confusing, just as a healthy person knows that he himself is complex... But the world of a materialist is monolithic and simple... Faith does not limit the mind as much as materialistic denials.

Secularists failed to crush the heavenly, but they perfectly succeeded in crushing everything earthly... Supporters of evolution will not convince us that there is no God - God can act gradually. But they convinced themselves that there was no man.

In vain do eloquent atheists talk about the great truths that will be revealed to us when we see the beginning of free thought - we have seen its end. She had no doubt left, and she doubted herself.

Miracle and Spirituality:

Life is beautiful because it is an adventure; life is an adventure because it is a chance.

The more clearly we see how similar life is to a fairy tale, the clearer it is that this fairy tale is about a battle with a dragon that is devastating a fairy tale kingdom.

Their disbelief in miracles was a belief in an immobile, godless fate, a deep, sincere belief that the world is incurably boring...

A miracle is the instant power of spirit over matter.

Miracle - the freedom of God...

A man more wonderful and amazing than all people. The miracle of man must be more striking than all the miracles of reason, power, art and civilization.

For law it is not enough, as Huxley imagined, that we rely on the ordinary order of things. We don't count on it, we rely on it. We risk facing a miracle...

We do not take into account a miracle because it is excluded, but because it is an exception.

It is not mysticism that we lack, but healthy mysticism; not miracles, but miracles of healing.

We, western people, “let’s go where reason leads us,” and he led us to things that the champions of reason would never believe.

Faith and truth:

What will I answer if there is no standard that stands outside of time?

Faith depends on views, and not on the century and the hour.

The easiest thing is to go on about the century, the hardest thing is to go as you went ... It's easy to fall; fall at many angles, stand at only one.

Some scientists care about the truth, and their truth is ruthless; and many humanists care only about pity. And their pity (I hate to say this) is often false.

How can I describe such mountains of truth? It is difficult to defend what you fully believe in... it is not the one for whom something confirms his belief that is convinced. He is convinced for whom everything confirms it, and it is difficult to list everything in the world.

Religions are not very different in rituals, they are terribly different in teaching.

Apology of Christianity:

In the history of Christianity there is some kind of unnatural life - we can consider that life is supernatural.

...the Christian Church is a living, and not a dead, mentor of my soul. She not only taught me yesterday, but will almost certainly teach me tomorrow...

The same people denounced the meek non-resistance of the monks and the bloody violence of the crusaders...

People who begin to fight against the Church in the name of freedom and humanity destroy freedom and humanity just to fight the Church... Secularists did not destroy divine values, but (if this can console them) they shook earthly values. The Titans didn't destroy the heavens - they ravaged the earth.

Joy and simplicity:

God is as insatiable as a child, for we have sinned and become old, and our Father is younger than us.

A person is more like himself, a person is more humane, when joy in him is the main thing, sorrow is secondary... Joy is the great work by which we live.

People are capable of joy as long as they perceive something other than themselves, and are surprised and grateful... But as soon as they decide that they themselves are above everything that life can offer them, all-corroding boredom will take possession of them, disappointment will consume them, and all the tantalum torments await them.

Altruism and egoism:

Happiness is tested by gratitude...

Here best rule life and the best medical advice. Health - like strength, beauty, and grace - is given to those who think about others.

Nietzsche denies egoism by preaching it: to preach a doctrine means to share it. The egoist calls life a war without mercy and spares no effort to persuade his enemies to fight. The preacher of egoism acts very altruistically.

Anyone who does not want to soften his heart will end up softening his brain.

Pride and humility:

Snobs are simple souls, like savages.

Of all the terrible faiths, the worst is the worship of a god sitting inside you.

Unconditional self-confidence is a hysterical and superstitious feeling.

The worst evil in the world is embodied not in a glass, but in a mirror, not in a tavern, but in that secluded room where a person examines himself.

... “I myself” is a very small measure and extremely random. This is how pettiness, typical of our time, arises, especially characteristic of those who boast of broad-mindedness.

A person who does not trust his feelings and a person who trusts only them are equally insane...

The one who feels that he cannot rule must rule. Carlyle's hero says: "I will be king"; Christian saint - "Nolo episcopari". If the great paradox of Christianity means anything at all, it means this: take the crown and search the whole earth until you find a man who says he is not worthy of it.

By performing the ritual, people acquired moral value. They did not cultivate courage - they fought for the shrine and suddenly noticed that they were brave. They did not cultivate cleanliness - they washed for the altar and noticed that they were clean.

It doesn't matter who is stronger, what matters is who is right.

The proud person tries everything in the world towards himself, and not towards the truth.

Sin, repentance, forgiveness:

Where is the pure horror of untruth that is so beautiful in children? Where is the pure pity for a person, which is so beautiful in the kind? Christianity found a way out here too. It waved its sword and cut off the crime from the criminal. A criminal must be forgiven until seven times seventy. There is no need to forgive the crime.

Our time has undermined not Christian demonology, not Christian theology, but under that very Christian ethics, which to the great agnostic seemed as unshakable as the stars.

Love and loyalty that give strength:

Loyalty to one woman is an inexpensive price to pay for seeing at least one woman... Polygamy is a lack of love, as if you are absentmindedly sorting through a dozen priceless pearls.

I accept the world not as an optimist, but as a patriot. The world is not a boarding house in Brighton where we can leave if we don't like it. It is our family fortress with a flag on the tower, and the worse things are going on there, the less right we have to leave...

Rome was not loved for its greatness - Rome became great because it was loved.

Eternal fidelity to existence is necessary.

We must love the world without relying on it; enjoy the world without merging with it.

Ideals and freedom:

We did not change reality for the sake of the ideal. We change the ideal; it's easier...

If you want everything to remain as it is, change your faith and fashion more often...

The revolt of the modern rebel has become meaningless: by rebelling against everything, he has lost the right to rebel against anything.

My ideal is stable - it stood up with this world. You can't change my utopia, because its name is paradise. You can change your destination, but not the place you left.

Anyone who believes always has a reason to rebel: after all, God is in the hearts of men under the heel of Satan. In the invisible world, hell rebelled against heaven. Here, in the visible world, heaven rebels against hell. The believer is always ready to rebel; for rebellion is restoration.

A modern young man will not change the world - he is busy changing beliefs... the ideal must be stable... Not only the ruler, but also the rebel needs a firm rule. Every rebellion needs a stable ideal.

Freethinking - the best remedy against freedom. Free the mind of the slave in the very modern style, and he will remain a slave. Teach him to doubt whether he wants freedom, and he won't want it...

Changes:

Nietzsche expressed the nonsensical idea that people once saw good in what we now call evil. If this were so, we could not say that we have surpassed our ancestors or even lagged behind them.

Change is almost the narrowest and toughest rut that a person can find himself in.

Fanaticism as madness:

The uniformity of his thinking makes him boring, it also makes him crazy.

If a madman could become carefree for a second, he would recover... Neither a sense of humor, nor mercy, nor the modest authenticity of experience interferes with him.

The madman is imprisoned in a clean, well-lit prison of one idea; he has no healthy doubt, no healthy complexity.

Democracy:

The first principle of democracy: the main thing in people is what is inherent in all of them, and not in someone individually.

Newspapermen have no reason to fight against the censors. Gone are those days. Now the newspaper itself is the censor.

Work:

I have always trusted the mass of hard-working people more than the restless breed of writers to which I belong. I prefer even the fantasies and prejudices of those who see life from the inside to the clearest arguments of those who see life from the outside.

Creation:

A picture or a book is a success if, having encountered a cloud, a tree, a character after it, we say: “I have seen this hundreds of times and have never seen it.”

A revolution in art is one thing, in morality another...

...only the image becomes boring; feelings remain feelings, people remain people...

Those who care about truth and not fashion will not be confused by the nonsense that now shrouds every manifestation of irritability or licentiousness. Those who see not truth and lies, but fashionable and unfashionable, are unfortunate victims of words and empty form.