A Great Man

He was the one great man of the old world whom I have met who was not a mere statue over his own grave. He was deaf and he talked like a torrent. He did not talk about the books he had written; he was far too much alive for that. He talked about the books he had not written. He unrolled a purple bundle of romances which he had never had time to tell. He asked me to write one of the stories for him, as he would have asked the milkman, if he had been talking to the milkman.

—G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles, A Great Man, writing of George Meredith.

Juries

[Those summed for jury duty] can see the court and the crowd, and coarse faces of the policeman and the professional criminals, the wasted faces of the wastrels, the unreal faces of the gesticulating counsel, and see it all as one sees a new picture or a play hitherto unvisited. Our civilisation has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

—G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles, The Twelve Men.

Paradoxes

The four or five things that it is most practically essential that a man should know, are all of them what people call paradoxes. That is to say, that though we all find them in life to be mere plain truths, yet we cannot easily state them in words without being guilty of seeming verbal contradictions. One of them, for instance, is the unimpeachable platitude that the man who finds most pleasure for himself is often the man who least hunts for it. Another is the paradox of courage; the fact that the way to avoid death is not to have too much aversion to it.

—G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles, The Twelve Men.

Lunacy

In that moment the universe and the stars swung just a hair's breadth from their balance, and the foundations of the earth were moved. But for the same reason that I believe in Democracy, for the same reason that I believe in free will, for the same reason that I believe in fixed character of virtue, the reason that could only be expressed by saying that I do not choose to be a lunatic, I continued to believe that this honest cabman was wrong, [and that my memory had some correspondence with reality,] and I repeated to him that I had really taken him at the corner of Leicester-square.

—G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles, The Extraordinary Cabman.

Love

...

I have seen a love demanding
    Time and hope and tears,
Chaining all the past, exacting
    Bonds from future years;
Mind and heart, and joy and sorrow,
    Claiming as its fee:
That was Love of Self, and never,
    Never Love of me!

I have seen a love forgetting
    All above, beyond,
Linking every dream and fancy
    In a sweeter bond;
Counting every hour worthless,
    Which was cold or free:—
That, perhaps, was—Love of Pleasure,
    But not Love of me!

I have seen a love whose patience
    Never turned aside,
Full of tender, fond devices;
    Constant, even when tried;
Smallest boons were held as victories,
    Drops that swelled the sea:
That I think was—Love of Power,
    But not Love of me!

I have seen a love disdaining
    Ease and pride and fame,
Burning even its own white pinions
    Just to feed its flame;
Reigning thus, supreme, triumphant,
    By the soul's decree;
That was—Love of Love, I fancy,
    But not Love of me!

I have heard—or dreamt, it may be—
    What Love is when true;
How to test and how to try it,
    Is the gift of few:

...

—Adelaide Anne Procter, Legends and Lyrics.

Comfort

Art thou alone, and does thy soul complain
    It lives in vain?
Not vainly does he live who can endure
    Oh be thou sure,
That he who hopes and suffers here, can earn
    A sure return.

Hast thou found nought within thy troubled life
    Save inward strife?
Hast thou found all she promised thee, Deceit,
    And Hope a cheat?
Endure, and there shall dawn within thy breast
    Eternal rest!

—Adelaide Anne Procter, Legends and Lyrics.

Thankfulness

My God, I thank Thee who hast made
   The Earth so bright;
So full of splendour and of joy,
   Beauty and light;
So many glorious things are here,
   Noble and right!

I thank Thee, too, that Thou hast made
   Joy to abound;
So many gentle thoughts and deeds
   Circling us round,
That in the darkest spot of Earth
   Some love is found.

I thank Thee more that all our joy
Is touched with pain;
That shadows fall on brightest hours;
That thorns remain;
So that Earth’s bliss may be our guide,
And not our chain.

For Thou who knowest, Lord, how soon
   Our weak heart clings,
Hast given us joys, tender and true,
   Yet all with wings,
So that we see, gleaming on high,
   Diviner things!

I thank Thee, Lord, that Thou hast kept
   The best in store;
We have enough, yet not too much
   To long for more:
A yearning for a deeper peace,
   Not known before.

I thank Thee, Lord, that here our souls,
   Though amply blest,
Can never find, although they seek,
   A perfect rest—
Nor ever shall, until they lean
   On Jesus’ breast!

—Adelaide Anne Procter, Legends and Lyrics.

The Tangled Trinity

As we passed out of the city I heard simultaneously the three sounds which are the trinity of France. They make what some poet calls "a tangled trinity," and I am not going to disentangle it. Whatever those three things mean, how or why they co-exist; whether they can be reconciled or perhaps are reconciled already; the three sounds I heard then by an accident all at once make up the French mystery. For the brass band in the Casino gardens behind me was playing with a sort of passionate levity some ramping tune from a Parisian comic opera, and while this was going on I heard also the bugles on the hills above, that told of terrible loyalties and men always arming in the gate of France; and I heard also, fainter than these sounds and through them all, the Angelus.


—G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles.