Greek Deism

We cannot say anything but 'God' in a sentence like that of Socrates bidding farewell to his judges: 'I go to die and you remain to live; and God alone knows which of us goes the better way.' [Plato, Dialogues, Apology.] We can use no other word even for the best moments of Marcus Aurelius: 'Can they say dear city of Cecrops, and canst thou not say dear city of God?' [The Meditations Bk. 4.] We can use no other word in that mighty line in which Virgil spoke to all who suffer with the veritable cry of a Christian before Christ: 'O you that have borne things more terrible, to this also God shall give an end.' [Aeneid Bk. 1 line 198.]

—G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man.

Removal

The sky ought to be nearer to us than it is; perhaps it was once nearer than it is; it is not a thing merely alien and abysmal but in some fashion it is sundered from us and saying farewell.


—G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man.

Life

There is something that is nearer to man than livelihood, and that is life. For when he remembers exactly what work produces his wages and exactly what wages produce his meals, he reflects ten times that it is a fine day or it is a queer world, or wonders whether life is worth living, or wonders whether marriage is a failure, or is pleased and puzzled with his own children, or remembers his own youth, or in any such fashion vaguely reviews the mysterious lot of man. This is true of the majority even of the wage-slaves of our morbid modern industrialism.

—G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man.

Forgotten

Those who have fallen may remember the fall, even when they forget the height. Some such tantalising blank or break in memory is at the back of all pagan sentiment. There is such a thing as the momentary power to remember that we forget. And the most ignorant of humanity know by the very look of earth that they have forgotten heaven.

—G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man.

Brahma

Gods as well as men are only the dreams of Brahma; and will perish when Brahma wakes.

—Quoted in G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man.

The Stone

If our social relations and records retain their continuity, if men really learn to apply reason to the accumulating facts of so crushing a story, it would seem that sooner or later even its enemies will learn from their incessant and interminable disappointments not to look for anything so simple as [Christianity's] death. They may continue to war with it, but it will be as they war with nature, as they war with the landscape, as they war with the skies. 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.' They will watch for it to stumble; they will watch for it to err; they will no longer watch for it to end. Insensibly, even unconsciously, they will in their own silent anticipations fulfil the relative terms of that astounding prophecy; they will forget to watch for the mere extinction of what has so often been vainly extinguished; and will learn instinctively to look first for the coming of the comet or the freezing of the star.

—G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man.

Spontaneous Generation

Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth' even if you only mean 'In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.' For God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how the world was created any more than he could create one.

—G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man.

Logic

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

—Frank Herbert, Dune.

Prayer

His prayers were the most eloquent ever addressed to a Boston audience.

—A Harvard professor, speaking of a Rev. Dr. Huntington, according to 'The Christian at Work', as quoted in The Chautauquan: a weekly newsmagazine, Volume 5, ©1885.

(The minister referred to was likely William R. Huntington, a curate of Emmanuel Church, Boston until c.1884 and then Episcopal Bishop of Central New York until his death in 1909. He was a leading actor in the preparation of the Standard Prayer Book of 1892 and a friend of J. Pierpont Morgan.)

Man

Lowborn men are but a breath, the highborn are but a lie.

—Psalm 62:9.