Our good friend Neil Gaiman recently pointed out, “Behind every Chesterton sentence there is someone painting with words, and it seems to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you can hear the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight.”
Neil’s observation prompted me to explore anew some of Gilbert’s epigrams, and here are a few of my faves…
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”
“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”
“There is the great lesson of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.”
“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.”
“There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”
“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”
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