Quotable Quotes

I discovered G.K. Chesterton yesterday, and now I really want to read a biography or something of it. He's the one with such gems as:

"My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober."

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."

My favorite, "You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."

I'm really glad I found the Chesterton quotes. Without going into too many tedious details, I became very, very, very angry at the worship of mooshy-headed thinking and the need to "validate" others, no matter what crap they're spewing, on my local Pagan mailing list yesterday.

I simply do not understand, since we have been given hearts and minds and spirits, how some people can be so content to sleepwalk through life and why they reject intellectual or emotional rigor.

If you don't care about facts or honesty or genuine seeking after knowledge, how can you live with yourself? What sort of excuse for a human being are you?