“Work while you work,/ Play while you play;/ One thing each time,/ That is the way. All that you do,/ Do with your might;/ Things done by halves/ Are not done right.”
Complete text of “Work while you work” from McGuffey’s Primer, in William Bennett The Book of Virtues
“There are two kinds of ascetics in the world… The first ascetic surrenders things because he could enjoy them; he is the Catholic monk. The second ascetic surrenders things because he could not enjoy them; he is the Puritan. The first is in the tradition of the Pagan sacrifices; he sacrifices the best beast to his gods. The second slaughters only black beetles upon the altar. Briefly, the first offers to give up his goods, the second offers to give up his bads, to heaven.”
G.K. Chesterton in Independent Review January 1906, quoted in “Joy” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #2 (Nov./Dec. 2024)
“Great Hide & Seek players are hard to find”
Emailed by a friend without attribution
“John, you deserve an exclusive vacation”
Subject line on email from Marriott Vacation Club June 11, 2024 [making no effort to establish that I in fact deserved such a thing]
“one fact which sticks out like a spike as huge as the Matterhorn is the fact that the Christianity which created Christendom did definitely declare that its religious founder, unlike other religious founders, had risen from the dead…. Nobody ever said that Confucius rose from the dead; and nobody would have been more legitimately annoyed at the notion than Confucius.”
G.K. Chesterton “Resurrection” in G.K.’s Weekly April 9, 1936 reprinted in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025) [said after ridiculing the idea that only those without religion can compare the merits of all religions, which he notes wouldn’t work well in music or science]
“Real primary creation (such as the sun or the birth of a child) calls forth not criticism, not appreciation, but a kind of incoherent gratitude. This is why most hymns about God are bad.”
G.K. Chesterton in “The Great Dickens Characters” in Charles Dickens, quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025) [he says Chesterton’s own “O God of Earth and Altar” (GKC only wrote the words) is good].
“Caution is the most valuable asset in fishing, especially if you are the fish.”
“Unknown” quoted in “Other Suspects – II Quotes not by GKC” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)
“Experience is what you get when you are looking for something else.”
“Pathfinder” quoted in “Other Suspects – II Quotes not by GKC” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)