Great Throughts Treasury

"If a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkeness and gluttony, that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says that Christmas Day is only a conspiracy kept up by Poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives, then he says something which is not so much false as startling and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewelers who wanted to sell wedding rings."

"If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable. It is this achievement of my creed that I shall chiefly pursue in these pages."

"If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself… that a tiger is an optical illusion--well, he will find out he is wrong. The tiger will himself intervene in the discussion, in a manner which will be in every sense conclusive."

"If a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small."

"If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever."

"If a thing is worth doing it is worth doing badly."

"If an angel out of heaven brings you other things to drink, thank him for his kind attentions, go and pour them down the sink."

"If better conditions will make the poor more fit to govern themselves, why should not better conditions already make the rich more fit to govern them? On the ordinary environment argument the matter is fairly manifest. The comfortable class must be merely our vanguard in Utopia...Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides? Is there any answer to the argument that those who have breathed clean air had better decide for those who have breathed foul? Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment."

"If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God."

"If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so."

"If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride."

"If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit: but, obviously, we must argue."

"If it can be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a car, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat."

"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. (on not perfectionism to put things off) ."

"If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments."

"If our caricaturists do not hate their enemies, it is not because they are too big to hate them, but because their enemies are not big enough to hate."

"If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue."

"If the barricades went up in our streets and the poor became masters, I think the priests would escape, I fear the gentlemen would; but I believe the gutters would simply be running with the blood of philanthropists."

"If we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the best of all reasons for not being a progressive."

"If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse"

"If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty."

"If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence."

"If you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it."

"If you know what a man's doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he's doing keep behind him."

"If you look at a thing 999 times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it for the 1000th time, you are in danger of seeing it for the first time."

"If you'd take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But it might."

"'I'm afraid I'm a practical man,' said the doctor with gruff humor, 'and I don't bother much about religion and philosophy.' 'You'll never be a practical man till you do,' said Father Brown. 'Look here, doctor; you know me pretty well; I think you know I'm not a bigot. You know I know there are all sorts in all religions; good men in bad ones and bad men in good ones."

"Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination."

"Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance."

"In a time of skeptic moths and cynic rusts, and fattened lives that of their sweetness tire in a world of flying loves and fading lusts, it is something to be sure of a desire. Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard; yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen: let the thunder break on man and beast and bird and the lightning. It is something to have been."

"In every serious doctrine of the destiny of men, there is some trace of the doctrine of the equality of men. But the capitalist really depends on some religion of inequality. The capitalist must somehow distinguish himself from human kind; he must be obviously above it—or he would be obviously below it."

"In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it."

"In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation — it is a convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the primer of minor poetry."

"In the city set upon slime and loam, they cry in their Parliament, Who goes home? and there comes no answer in arch or dome, for none in the city of graves goes home. Yet these shall perish and understand, for God has pity on this great land."

"In the end it will not matter to us whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought."

"In the fairy tale, an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten and cities perish. A lamp is lit and love flies away. An apple is eaten and the hope of God is gone."

"In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away. To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion."

"In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn."

"In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it."

"Indeed the Book of Job avowedly only answers mystery with mystery. Job is comforted with riddles; but he is comforted. Herein is indeed a type, in the sense of a prophecy, of things speaking with authority. For when he who doubts can only say 'I do not understand,' it is true that he who knows can only reply or repeat 'You do not understand.' And under that rebuke there is always a sudden hope in the heart; and the sense of something that would be worth understanding."

"Is dishwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun."

"Is there anyone... who will maintain that the Party System could have been created by people particularly fond of truth?"

"It has been often said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary."

"It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on."

"It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms."

"It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed."

"It is all as of old, the empty clangor, the NOTHING scrawled on a five-foot page, the huckster who, mocking holy anger, painfully paints his face with rage... We that fight till the world is free, we have no comfort in victory; we have read each other as Cain his brother, we know each other, these slaves and we."

"It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect."

"It is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely."

"It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam."