"The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from this is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being."
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News October 21, 1905, quoted in Dale Ahlquist and Peter Floriani, Chesterton University Student Handbook
In my latest National Post column I say, from hearing a series of outstanding talks at Moses Znaimer's ideacity conference, that the future is here now.
In my latest National Post column I say controversies over things like high school dress codes show that we modern sophisticates can't even figure out why we're wandering about half-dressed.
"The king [Hrolf, to Bodvar] said, 'I knew when you came here that few would be your equal, but it seems to me that your finest achievement is that you have made Hott into another champion. He was previously thought to be a man in whom there was little probability of much luck.'"
The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki
"Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful."
Aldous Huxley, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail July 8, 2004
"I have always felt myself to be a stranger here on earth, aware that our home is elsewhere."
Malcolm Muggeridge in 1988, quoted in Joseph Pearce Literary Converts
"the one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God’s paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle – and not lose it."
G.K. Chesterton "Time’s Abstract and Brief Chronicle" according to Dale Ahlquist. It was paraphrased by Kara Kelley in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #5 (March-April 2005) as "The most romantic thing in the world is to fight a losing battle, and not lose." Which is almost the only case I know of where somebody rephrased Chesterton and may have improved him.