G.K. Chesterton

100 years ago Gilbert Keith Chesterton published his book, "Orthodoxy" - a Christian apologetic that still stands the test of time. His work influenced such seminal authors as George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis.

G.K. Chesterton was a man of uncommon sense, belief, and wit. Christianity Today has a nice piece about him.

Enjoy.

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THE WIT AND WISDOM OF G.K. CHESTERTON

"Misers get up early in the morning; burglars, I am informed, get up the night before."

"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions."

"He is a sane man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head."

"Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision."

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."

"There cannot be a nation of millionaires, and there never has been a nation of Utopian comrades; but there have been any number of nations of tolerably contented peasants."

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

"It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them."

"The aim of good prose is for the words to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say."

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

[selected from chesterton.org]

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The Christmas season may now officially begin.

I'll see you on Monday.

Mark

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WEB SITE of the WEEK: Many times my daughter has been reading a book assigned by her English and Creative Writing teachers, only to wind up leaving it at school. That's especially troubling when it happens over a long holiday weekend. Well, now maybe she can find it at http://www.readprint.com/, a site that has loaded many, many classic works by too many authors to try and list in this space. I read a statistic just the other day that said while print publishers are years away from worry, eBooks are making more and more inroads into the publishing industry each year. Get ahead of the curve at this week's site.

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Mark's Musings is certified by the folks at Habeas to be spam-free. That means I'll never email you spam. Or any leftover turkey. To contact me and sooner or later get a reply, click here. My StepMom's birthday is this Sunday. She'll be 89. Somebody remind me to send a card today. You can forward or reprint "Mark's Musings" freely but please keep the credits attached. How many roads must the credits walk down before they stay attached to the post? Original material and commentary © 2008 by Mark Raymond. I update this blog with a copy of this post daily and occasionally toss in bonus material on the weekends. Look for the label that says "Weekend" and you can bring them all up with one click. My personal mission statement remains John 3:30. Our van is in the shop again. There goes the Christmas money. Dang.

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WORDS for YOUR WEEKEND: "I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder." (G.K. Chesterton)