Гилберт Честертон: Актуальные цитаты (страница 6)

Часть I, Глава 7
The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It consists simply of confusing the necessary conditions of life with the normal preoccupations of life, that are quite a different thing. It is like saying that because a man can only walk about on two legs, therefore he never walks about except to buy shoes and stockings. Man cannot live without the two props of food and drink, which support him like two legs; but to suggest that they have been the motives of all his movements in history is like saying that the goal of all his military marches or religious pilgrimages must have been the Golden Leg of Miss Kilmansegg or the ideal and perfect leg of Sir Willoughby Patterne. But it is such movements that make up the story of mankind and without them there would practically be no story at all. Cows may be purely economic, in the sense that we cannot see that they do much beyond grazing and seeking better grazing grounds; and that is why a history of cows in twelve volumes would not be very lively reading.
Вечный Человек (1925)

Глава 4
And he stood for hours on the lawn, watching the smashing of bottles and the breaking up of casks and feeding on fanatical pleasure: the pleasure his strange, cold, courageous nature could not get from food or wine or woman.
Перелётный кабак (1914)

The moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to punish anybody else.
Человек, который был Четвергом (1908)

«За бойкое перо»
The real journalistic sin is not that the leading article should misrepresent history (for who will ever be certain what represents history?); the real sin is that the articles should misrepresent the journalist's own soul.

He had a great amount of intellectual capacity, of that peculiar kind which raises a man from throne to throne and lets him die loaded with honours without having either amused or enlightened the mind of a single man.
Наполеон Ноттингхилльский (1904)

Глава 15
There is a great deal of fallacy and folly about the ordinary talk of confidential conversation; to say nothing of the loathsome American notion of a heart to heart talk. People are often very misleading when they talk about themselves; even when they are perfectly honest, and even modest, in talking about themselves. But people tell a great deal so long as they talk about everything except themselves.
Возвращение Дон Кихота (1927)

Глава 15
But a sorrow is always a joy reversed.
Возвращение Дон Кихота (1927)

Глава 15
Many have imagined that feminine politics would be merely pacifist or humanitarian or sentimental. The real danger of feminine politics is too much love of a masculine policy.
Возвращение Дон Кихота (1927)

Глава 13
Social changes of this sort are made possible among considerable masses of people, by two ironies of human nature. The first is that almost everyman's life has been sufficiently patchy and full of possibilities for him to remember _some_ movement of his own mind towards what has become the movement of the time. The second is that he almost always makes a false picture of his past, and fosters a fictitious memory, whereby that detail seems in retrospect to dominate his career.
Возвращение Дон Кихота (1927)

Часть 1, Глава 3
It is the fashion to talk of institutions as cold and cramping things. The truth is that when people are in exceptionally high spirits, really wild with freedom and invention, they always must, and they always do, create institutions. When men are weary they fall into anarchy; but while they are gay and vigorous they invariably make rules.
Жив-человек (1912)

Глава 1
He felt the full warmth of that pleasure from which the proud shut themselves out; the pleasure which not only goes with humiliation, but which almost is humiliation. Men who have escaped death by a hair have it, and men whose love is returned by a woman unexpectedly, and men whose sins are forgiven them.
Шар и крест (1909)

Adam Wayne, as a boy, had for his dull streets in Notting Hill the ultimate and ancient sentiment that went out to Athens or Jerusalem. He knew the secret of the passion, those secrets which make real old national songs sound so strange to our civilization. He knew that real patriotism tends to sing about sorrows and forlorn hopes much more than about victory. He knew that in proper names themselves is half the poetry of all national poems. Above all, he knew the supreme psychological fact about patriotism, as certain in connection with it as that a fine shame comes to all lovers, the fact that the patriot never under any circumstances boasts of the largeness of his country, but always, and of necessity, boasts of the smallness of it.
Наполеон Ноттингхилльский (1904)

[//wikilivres.ru/Наполеон_Ноттингхилльский_(Честертон)/Книга_2/Глава_3 Книга 2, Глава 3]
If, as your rich friends say, there are no gods, and the skies are dark above us, what should a man fight for, but the place where he had the Eden of childhood and the short heaven of first love? If no temples and no scriptures are sacred, what is sacred if a man's own youth is not sacred?
Наполеон Ноттингхилльский (1904)

You appear to think that it would be amusing to be dignified in the banquet hall and in the street, and at my own fireside (I could procure a fireside) to keep the company in a roar. But that is what every one does. Every one is grave in public, and funny in private. My sense of humour suggests the reversal of this; it suggests that one should be funny in public, and solemn in private.
Наполеон Ноттингхилльский (1904)

Глава 5
I have never taken my books seriously; but I take my opinions quite seriously.
Автобиография

эссе «Об извращении истины»
I think it was a great medieval philosopher who said that all evil comes from enjoying what we ought to use and using what we ought to enjoy. A great many modern philosophers never do anything else. Thus they will sacrifice what they admit to be happiness to what they claim to be progress; though it could have no rational meaning except progress to greater happiness.

It is precisely because an ideal is necessary to man that the man without ideals is in permanent danger of fanaticism.
«Еретик» (глава 20)