“Water is bewitched, so that it always goes downhill. Birds are bewitched, so that they fly. The sun is bewitched so that it shines.”
G.K. Chesterton, “A Fairy Tale,” in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton
“Water is bewitched, so that it always goes downhill. Birds are bewitched, so that they fly. The sun is bewitched so that it shines.”
G.K. Chesterton, “A Fairy Tale,” in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton
In the winter forest “There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness – a laughter that was as mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life.”
Jack London White Fang
“History presents many occasions for citing Charles Peguy’s aphorism that God writes straight with crooked lines.”
Richard John Neuhaus in First Things August/September 2000
“These old wild images [of centaurs and mermaids, noble in their human parts] included a crucial truth. Man is a monster. And he is all the more a monster because one part of him is perfect.”
G.K. Chesterton “Questions of Divorce,” in Alvaro De Silva, ed. Brave New Family Brave New Family: G.K. Chesterton on Men & Women, Children, Sex, Divorce, Marriage & the Family
In my latest National Post column I tell the Church of England that putting a miniputt in venerable Rochester cathedral means you’re not serious about religion.
“We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.”
Albert Einstein, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go
“In this pathetic and simple-minded view, humans are to be but life-support systems for free-wheeling genitalia.”
William Gairdner The Trouble with Democracy
“No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.”
Elizabeth Bowen, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go