Гилберт Честертон цитаты
The old idealistic republicans used to found democracy on the idea that all men were equally intelligent. Believe me, the sane and enduring democracy is founded on the fact that all men are equally idiotic.
Наполеон Ноттингхилльский (1904)
„Вор почитает собственность. Он просто хочет ее присвоить, чтобы еще сильнее почитать.“
Глава 4
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
Человек, который был Четвергом (1908)
«Лицо на мишени»
Harold March was the sort of man who knows everything about politics, and nothing about politicians. He also knew a great deal about art, letters, philosophy, and general culture; about almost everything, indeed, except the world he was living in.
Человек, который знал слишком много (1922)
Глава 5
LORD IVYWOOD shared the mental weakness of most men who have fed on books; he ignored, not the value but the very existence of other forms of information.
Перелётный кабак (1914)
[//wikilivres.ru/Наполеон_Ноттингхилльский_(Честертон)/Книга_1/Глава_1 Книга 1, Глава 1]
THE human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.
Наполеон Ноттингхилльский (1904)
„Надежда — это способность надеяться в безнадежном положении.“
эссе «Язычество и г-н Лоус Дикинсон» (сборник «Еретики»)
Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all.
[//wikilivres.ru/Наполеон_Ноттингхилльский_(Честертон)/Книга_1/Глава_2 Книга 1, Глава 2]
For it stands to common sense that you cannot upset all existing things, customs, and compromises, unless you believe in something outside them, something positive and divine.
Наполеон Ноттингхилльский (1904)
„Газеты не просто сообщают новости, но и всё подают в виде новостей.“
«Франциск Ассизский»
Newspapers not only deal with news, but they deal with everything as if it were entirely new.
"Every man is dangerous," said the old man, without moving, "who cares only for one thing. I was once dangerous myself."
Наполеон Ноттингхилльский (1904)
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 1
Father Michael in spite of his years, and in spite of his asceticism (or because of it, for all I know), was a very healthy and happy old gentleman. And as he swung on a bar above the sickening emptiness of air, he realized, with that sort of dead detachment which belongs to the brains of those in peril, the deathless and hopeless contradiction which is involved in the mere idea of courage. He was a happy and healthy old gentleman and therefore he was quite careless about it. And he felt as every man feels in the taut moment of such terror that his chief danger was terror itself; his only possible strength would be a coolness amounting to carelessness, a carelessness amounting almost to a suicidal swagger. His one wild chance of coming out safely would be in not too desperately desiring to be safe.
Шар и крест (1909)
Предисловие к книге Шарля Саролеа «Письма о польских делах» (Introduction to Charles Sarolea’s Letters on Polish affairs)
I judged the Poles by their enemies. And I found it was an almost unfailing truth that their enemies were the enemies of magnanimity and manhood. If a man loved slavery, if he loved usury, if he loved terrorism and all the trampled mire of materialistic politics, I have always found that he added to these affections the passion of a hatred of Poland. She could be judged in the light of that hatred; and the judgment has proved to be right.
зверинец, звери
Источник: Романы. Рассказы
„Как натуралист узнает улитку по скользкому следу, так я узнаю человека по его кривой дорожке.“
улитка
Источник: Неверный контур
Источник: Шар и крест
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)
„Печаль — оборотная сторона радости.“
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)
„Я никогда не принимал всерьез свои книги, но принимаю всерьез свои мнения.“
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)
