long read

orthodoxy. gh chesteron.

this took me a year. perhaps longer; i've lost track of time.

but i finished.....and it was a struggle. it tested my mental faculties, my ability to pay attention for much longer than was comfortable.....but every couple of pages, i was struck with lucidity for which i am richer.

this one chapter made the struggle of the entirety worth it.... completely: "the paradoxes of christianity."

if you have time to read over these quotes, do so..... they are brilliant. he is brilliant, cheeky, and way over my head.

"there was never anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. it was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad."

"and then in a quiet hour a strange thought struck me like a still thunderbolt. . . suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short . . . . he might be the right shape. outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. very short men might feel him to be tall. . . . perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre. perhaps, after all, it is christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad -- in various ways."

"christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. . . . in so far as i am Man i am the chief of creatures. in so far as i am a man i am the chief of sinners. . . . one can hardly think too little of one's self. one can hardly think too much of one's soul."

"charity is a paradox, like modesty and courage. . . . it divided the crime from the criminal. the criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. the crime we must not forgive at all. it was not enough that slaves who stole wine inspired partly anger and partly kindness. we must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet much kinder to thieves than before. there was room for wrath and love to run wild. and the more i considered christianity, the more i found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild."