Quote

Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Gilbert K. Chesterton
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: May 29
Died: 1936
Died: June 14
Autobiographer
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Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton
G. K. C.
Idea
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Clear
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Intimately
Children
Known
Defeat
Dragon

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Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?
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The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
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What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.
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All government is an ugly necessity.
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The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever afterwards and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other.
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The great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
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Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
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Faith is always at a disadvantage it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors.
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When everyone knows that something is so, it is always more interesting and often illuminating to assumeexactly the opposite, and to see where that leads.
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Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion.
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The Church is a house with a hundred gates: and no two men enter at exactly the same angle
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Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.
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The Mass is not only about God becoming man, it is about Man becoming more himself.
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White... is not a mere absence of colour it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
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Life is not an illogicality yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden its wildness lies in wait.
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