Words Worth Noting - February 11, 2024

“I RECEIVED A LITTLE WHILE AGO a letter to which no name or address was attached, which touched me beyond expression. A great deal of it was too personal to treat of here, and for this reason especially I regret the concealment of its origin. But the more generally discussable part concerned itself chiefly with a query as to my meaning when I said in this paper something to this effect: ‘No one can be miserable who has known anything worth being miserable about.’ The remark was written as remarks in daily papers ought, in my opinion, to be written, in a wild moment; but it happens, nevertheless, to be more or less true. What I meant was that our attitude towards existence, if we have suffered deprivation, must always be conditioned by the fact that deprivation implies that existence has given us something of immense value. To say that we have lost in the lottery of existence is to say that we have gained: for existence gives us our money beforehand. It is quite impossible to imagine ourselves as really calling, as Huxley expressed it, the Cosmos to the bar.”

G.K. Chesterton “The Philosophy of Gratitude” reprinted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023) p. 5 [including start].