The Wit and Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton

Nearly everyone who has achieved anything of significance will be quick to acknowledge their gratitude to those influential thinkers, writers, artists, people who came before them. One writer who made an impact on C.S. Lewis was G.K. Chesterton, a prolific British writer whose diverse output covered a multitude of genres from philosophy, ontology, poetry, play writing and journalism to public lecturing, debating, art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics and fiction, including both fantasy and detective stories (cf. The Father Brown Mysteries).

I'm currently reading his pointed book Eugenics and Other Evils and have picked up a volume or two of his Father Brown Mysteries featuring a Roman Catholic priest who is an amateur sleuth on the order of Jessica Lansbury in Murder She Wrote. The latter stories are good fun; his book on eugenics is a serious issues oriented volume intended to bring a moral conscience to a then-pervasive bad idea that had swept the Western world. By this I mean the "ideal" of improving the future of the human race by eliminating bad genes from the gene pool via sterilization. 

Believe it or not, 33 states passed legislation approving this practice which had been promulgated by the liberal elite, including men like J.B.S. Haldane, H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell. It was while researching and writing about eugenics that I came to understand why the London Times was praising Hitler on its editorial pages as late as 1936. It was because he had the courage to follow through on this Darwinian clean-up job to make a more perfect humanity. 

Chesterton's writings in opposition to eugenics inspired Lewis to later put pen to paper and take a critical stance in opposition to cruelty to animals in general and vivisection specifically. 

Alas, I've gone far afield of my intent here. I simply wished to write a preface to some thought provoking quotes by G.K. Chesterton. Note how many are totally relevant a hundred years later.

* * * 

Journalism possesses in itself the potentiality of becoming one of the most frightful monstrosities and delusions that have ever cursed mankind. This horrible transformation will occur at the exact instant at which journalists realize that they can become an aristocracy.
--The New Priests

* * * 

Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of "touching" a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.
--Twelve Types

* * * 

Briefly, you can only find  truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
--Daily News

* * *

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
--Introduction to the Book of Job

* * *

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.
-- Illustrated London News

* * *

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
--A Short History of England

* * *

It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged
--Cleveland Press

* * *

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
--Illustrated London News

* * * 

I've searched all the parks in all the cities — and found no statues of Committees.
--As quoted in Trust or Consequences

* * *

The poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all.
--As quoted in Grace at the Table

* * *

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
--Heretics

* * *

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.
--The Dickens Period

* * * 

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
--Alarms and Discursion

* * * 

Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.

--The Victorian Compromise and Its Enemies

* * * 

The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.
--The Flying Inn

* * *

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.
--The Father Brown Mysteries

* * *

Hopefully you found something here worth pondering. Chesterton has served us plenty to chew on and digest. 

To Write with a Broken Pencil is Pointless

Throwback Thursday

Over the course of a lifetime I've found it handy to keep a handful of pithy sayings in the back pocket of one's mind. You never know when they might come in handy.

Here are a few that I've found myself repeating over the years, primarily because they are a little less common than "it is what it is" which I also use a bit too frequently.

"Everything is easy for the one who doesn't have to do it."

This one is readily available for any number of situations, especially in the world of work. People often give advice to others and wonder why it isn't immediately jumped on and appreciated. Well, that's because everything is easy for the one who doesn't have to do it. Whether it's meeting deadlines, managing multiple projects, overcoming addictions, or saving for retirement, everything's easy for the one who doesn't have to do it.

This doesn't mean we can't ever give advice, but we ought be sensitive when we're dishing it out. As Eleanor Roosevelt put it, “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”

"The butler who folds his hands spills no tea." 

This one is fun because it takes a moment to process. Bosses generally do not like mistakes, though generally they readily admit that mistakes come with the territory when you're attempting to accomplish things. A batter who fails to get on base six of ten times is considered great. Strikeouts are part of going up and taking your swings. 

"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." 

My mom frequently recited this and I know why. She's from Scots heritage and this statement's origin is Sir Walter Scott from one of his novels. With a handful of words it says plenty.

Life is complicated enough without trying to cover our tracks and be deceptive. Sooner or later, it's going to get you. How many times we read stories about people caught embezzling or evading paying taxes.

If you need to arm yourself with some new quip material, there are plenty of websites devoted to collecting these kinds of pearls. Here are a few from a website called Quips, Quotes & Pithy Sayings, which apparently no longer exists.

Experience enables you to recognize a mistake every time you repeat it.

To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

Profanity is the effort of a feeble mind to express itself forcefully.

America is one of the few places you can say what you speak without thinking.

Unless you have never been tempted, don't pass judgment on someone who has yielded.

Don't mistake activity for achievement.

Or you can simply quote lines from Dylan, like I do. I used to rely on this one:

"Meantime life goes on all around you."

 But for 2020 my new go to is:

"People are crazy, times are strange."

* * * *

Photo at top of page is Lena, my 5 month old granddaughter.

Throwback Thursday: The Epigram King Oscar Wilde, Revsited

THIS IS A REPRINT OF MY SEPTEMBER 2, 2010 POST ON OSCAR WILDE

Yesterday I began listening to Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, one of Wilde's several plays written to critique British society at the end of the nineteenth century. The story is immensely relevant today, and his pointed observations equally timeless.

With Wilde, naturally, it can be sometimes challenging to determine when and where he is serious and what is just playfulness. He had a clever wit, occasionally indecent and frequently insightful, as you can see from these excerpts from his writings. The situations he creates and banter between characters is much like the best of Monty Python.

A key to Wilde's effectiveness is his use of the epigram. Sparknotes explains the epigram in this manner.

Wilde's plays are often read for their witty epigrams; indeed, these epigrams are what make his plays "subversive." "Wit" is defined here as the quality of speech that consists in apt associations that surprise and delight or the utterance of brilliant things in an amusing fashion; the epigram is a brief, pointed, and often antithetical saying that contains an unexpected change of thought or biting comment.

Delivered in a social intercourse that consists of rapid-fire repartee, the tone of Wilde's epigrams are often "half-serious," playing on the potential for the listener's misunderstanding—for example, taking a phrase literally, too seriously, or not seriously enough. Rhetorically, they tend to involve a combination of devices: the reversal of conventionally paired terms, irony, sarcasm, hyperbole, and paradox. Take then, for example, Lord Goring's rejoinder to his father, Lord Caversham, when the latter accuses him of talking about nothing: "I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about." At one level, Goring's epigram is clearly sarcastic; at another, it is paradoxical, as in a sense one cannot know anything about nothing. The epigram also shifts between conventionally valorized terms: whereas most people would hope to have something substantive to talk about, Goring loves to talk about nothing.

As one might imagine, the "threat" in these games of rhetoric is the concomitant shift in the values—aesthetic, ethical, philosophical, or otherwise—taken up in conversation. Consequently, the apparently frivolous epigram becomes the primary vehicle by which the play mocks the values and mores of the contemporary popular stage.
More examples of his use of this style of speech here follow, some from his plays and the latter from his life.

"I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself."
An Ideal Husband

"Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong."
The Critic as Artist

"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances."
The Picture of Dorian Gray

"The General was essentially a man of peace, except in his domestic life."
The Importance of Being Earnest

"All that I desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life."
Intentions

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."
An Ideal Husband

"Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess."
A Woman of No Importance

"It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one's back, that are absolutely and entirely true."

"Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much."

"Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in its infinite mercy, sends them a fat missionary."

"It is very easy to endure the difficulties of one's enemies. It is the successes of one's friends that are hard to bear."

"I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed."

And finally, his last words...  "One of us must go."
Oscar Wilde

* * * *
WITH THAT, MAY I BID ADIEU?

Everything Is Easy

Sometimes it's handy to keep a handful of pithy sayings in the billfold of your mind. You never know when they might come in handy.

Here are a couple that I've used more than a few times over the years, primarily because they are a little less common than "it is what it is" (which I do use a bit frequently, because it is what it is.)

Everything is easy for the one who doesn't have to do it.

This one is readily available for any number of situations, especially in the world of work. People often give advice to others and wonder why it isn't immediately jumped on and appreciated. Well, that's because everything is easy for the one who doesn't have to do it. Whether it's meeting deadlines, managing multiple projects, overcoming addictions, or saving for retirement, everything's easy for the one who doesn't have to do it.

This doesn't mean we can't ever give advice, but we ought be sensitive when we're dishing it out. As Eleanor Roosevelt put it, “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”

The butler who folds his hands spills no tea. 

This one is fun because it takes a moment to process. Bosses generally do not like mistakes, though generally they readily admit that mistakes come with the territory when you're attempting to accomplish things. A batter who fails to get on base six of ten times is considered great. Strikeouts are part of going up and taking your swings. 

"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." 

My mom frequently recited this and I know why. She's from Scots heritage and this statement's origin is Sir Walter Scott from one of his novels. With a handful of words it says plenty.

Life is complicated enough without trying to cover our tracks and be deceptive. Sooner or later, it's going to get you. How many times we read stories about people caught embezzling or evading paying taxes.


If you need to arm yourself with some new quip material, there are plenty of websites devoted to collecting these kinds of pearls. Here are a few from a website called Quips, Quotes and Pithy Sayings.

Experience enables you to recognize a mistake every time you repeat it.

To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

Profanity is the effort of a feeble mind to express itself forcefully.

America is one of the few places you can say what you speak without thinking.

Unless you have never been tempted, don't pass judgment on someone who has yielded.

Don't mistake activity for achievement.

Or you can simply quote lines from Dylan, like I do.

"Meantime life goes on all around you."

Have a great one. Maybe I'll see you on the street.