Sublime

It accounts also for the return of the virtue of politeness, for that also is a nameless thing ignored by logical codes.

It had that deeply conservative belief in the most ancient of institutions, the average man, which goes by the name of democracy.

the truth that, while it is very rare indeed in the world to find a thoroughly good man, it is rarer still, rare to the point of monstrosity, to find a man who does not either desire to be one, or imagine that he is one already.

And it is utterly unreal to argue that these images in the mind, admired entirely in the abstract, were even in the same world with a living man and a living polity that were worshipped because they were concrete.

We make a picture of the things we do not know out of the things we know;

Common sense is a fairy thread, thin and faint, and as easily lost as gossamer.

When a newspaper posed the question, “What’s Wrong with the World?” the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response: “Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton.” That is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of Jesus.

To say that everybody is responsible means that nobody is responsible.

The second is to remember that very plain literal fact always seems fantastic.