Heretics

Heretics
by Gilbert K. Chesterton

"He has pleased all the bohemians by saying that women are equal to men; but he has infuriated them by suggesting that men are equal to women."

"Let me set about making the matter clear.  There is one broad fact about the relations of Christianity and Paganism which is so simple that many will smile at it, but which is so important that all moderns forget it.  The primary fact about Christianity and Paganism is that one came after the other.  Mr. Lowes Dickinson speaks of them as if they were parallel ideals--even speaks as if Paganism were the newer of the two, and the more fitted for a new age. He suggests that the Pagan ideal will be the ultimate good of man; but if that is so, we must at least ask with more curiosity than he allows for, why it was that man actually found his ultimate good on earth under the stars, and threw it away again. It is this extraordinary enigma to which I propose to attempt an answer."

"People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics.  The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are. Life may sometimes legitimately appear as a book of science. Life may sometimes appear, and with a much greater legitimacy, as a book of metaphysics.  But life is always a novel."
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