I recently finished The Man Who
was Thursday. It was my first real exposure to Chesterton, and while it
wasn’t what I expected (though I’m not sure what that was), I loved it.
Edwardian political anarchy and eternal divine creation combined into a funny
detective novel. I’m looking forward to getting into The Everlasting Man
and Orthodoxy in the near future.
Since I’ve been slacking on the Quick
Takes lately, I’m just going to list my favorite quotes from the ending of The
Man Who was Thursday. I can tell how much I love a book when I start
writing down quotes as I read. I would just underline them in the book, but
from a very early age I was taught that writing in books was a VERY BAD THING,
so now I’m incapable of doing so even when it’s justified.
1. “So you talk about
mobs and the working classes as if they were the question. You’ve got that
eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why
should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they
have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The
poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away
to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed
badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.”
2. “When duty
and religion are really destroyed, it will be by the rich.”
3. “‘After all,’ he
said to himself. ‘I am more than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing
which Satan himself cannot do—I can die.’”
4. “No, I may be mad, but humanity
isn’t.’”
5. “Vulgar people are never mad. I’m vulgar myself, and I know.”
6. “Do
you see this lantern? Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside?
You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could
believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of
fire…You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you
will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian
lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never
have the wit to find it.”
7. “‘Have you,’ he cried in a dreadful voice. ‘Have
you ever suffered?’”
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