A Chesterton Calendar: Compiled from the writings of 'G.K.C.' both in verse and in prose. With a section apart for the moveable feasts. — John Shaqi
A Chesterton Calendar: Compiled from the writings of 'G.K.C.' both in verse and in prose. With a section apart for the moveable feasts.Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
A Chesterton Calendar: Compiled from the writings of 'G.K.C.' both in verse and in prose. With a section apart for the moveable feasts.
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936 -- Calendars
For those who study the great art of lying in bed there is one emphatic
caution to be added. Even for those who cannot do their work in bed
(as, for example, the professional harpooners of whales), it is obvious
that the indulgence must be very occasional. But that is not the
caution I mean. The caution is this: if you do lie in bed, be sure
you do it without any reason or justification at all. I do not speak,
of course, of the seriously sick. But if a healthy man lies in bed,
let him do it without a rag of excuse; then he will get up a healthy
man. If he does it for some secondary hygienic reason, if he has some
scientific explanation, he may get up a hypochondriac.
'_Tremendous Trifles._'
APRIL 29th
The creed of our cruel cities is not so sane and just as the creed
of the old country-side; but the people are just as clever in giving
names to their sins in the city as in giving names to their joys in the
wilderness. One could not better sum up Christianity than by calling
a small white insignificant flower 'The Star of Bethlehem.' But then
again one could not better sum up the philosophy deduced from Darwinism
than in the one verbal picture of 'having your monkey up.'
'_Daily News._'
APRIL 30th _ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA'S DAY_
Historic Christianity rose into a high and strange _coup de théâtre_
of morality--things that are to virtue what the crimes of Nero are
to vice. The spirits of indignation and of charity took terrible and
attractive forms, ranging from that monkish fierceness that scourged
like a dog the first and greatest of the Plantagenets, to the sublime
pity of St. Catherine, who, in the official shambles, kissed the
bloody head of the criminal. Our ethical teachers write reasonably
for prison reform; but we are not likely to see Mr. Cadbury, or any
eminent philanthropist, go into Reading Jail to embrace the strangled
corpse before it is cast into the quicklime. Our ethical teachers write
wildly against the power of millionaires, but we are not likely to see
Mr. Rockefeller, or any modern tyrant, publicly whipped in Westminster
Abbey.
'_Orthodoxy._'
MAY
MAY 1st _LABOUR DAY_
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first;
Our wrath come after Russia's, and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are set to mark by our riot and our rest
God's scorn of all man's governance: it may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England, and we never have spoken yet.
Mock at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget.
'_The Silent People._'
MAY 2nd
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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