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7/22/2025, 6:32:05 AM
>>24571599
love this one been a while since I read it need to read it again.
The ending to me is just very much.. as I said I don't think people would be comfortable, the sort of people who really like Chesterton, if they really understood what the novel is really getting at.
It very much and rather obviously a guess an explanation of that sort of existential patriotism he talks about in orthodoxy.
>My acceptance of the universe is not optimism,
it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty.
>For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of
mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.
and tying it to napoleon the end conversation between adam and quin is one of my favorite sections from anything Chesterton has written, i tried to quote it but I just love that entire final chapter
>"Suppose I am God," said the voice, "and suppose I made the world in idleness. Suppose the stars, that you think eternal, are only the idiot fireworks of an everlasting schoolboy. Suppose the sun and the moon, to which you sing alternately, are only the two eyes of one vast and sneering giant, opened alternately in a never-ending wink. Suppose the trees, in my eyes, are as foolish as enormous toad-stools. Suppose Socrates and Charlemagne are to me only beasts, made funnier by walking on their hind legs. Suppose I am God, and having made things, laugh at them."
>"And suppose I am man," answered the other. "And suppose that I give the answer that shatters even a laugh. Suppose I do not laugh back at you, do not blaspheme you, do not curse you. But suppose, standing up straight under the sky, with every power of my being, I thank you for the fools' paradise you have made.
I think the connection between these two is kind of clear. Our attachment to things is at some level fairly arbitrary but we are attached
>We are mad, because we are not two men, but one man.
There's something of having this playfulness to form attachments the having the fanaticism of that fundamental attachment. That paradoxical theme of Chesterton is kind of shown in the two separate characters the looseness of taking up the playful joker and of the fanatic at once.
love this one been a while since I read it need to read it again.
The ending to me is just very much.. as I said I don't think people would be comfortable, the sort of people who really like Chesterton, if they really understood what the novel is really getting at.
It very much and rather obviously a guess an explanation of that sort of existential patriotism he talks about in orthodoxy.
>My acceptance of the universe is not optimism,
it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty.
>For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of
mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.
and tying it to napoleon the end conversation between adam and quin is one of my favorite sections from anything Chesterton has written, i tried to quote it but I just love that entire final chapter
>"Suppose I am God," said the voice, "and suppose I made the world in idleness. Suppose the stars, that you think eternal, are only the idiot fireworks of an everlasting schoolboy. Suppose the sun and the moon, to which you sing alternately, are only the two eyes of one vast and sneering giant, opened alternately in a never-ending wink. Suppose the trees, in my eyes, are as foolish as enormous toad-stools. Suppose Socrates and Charlemagne are to me only beasts, made funnier by walking on their hind legs. Suppose I am God, and having made things, laugh at them."
>"And suppose I am man," answered the other. "And suppose that I give the answer that shatters even a laugh. Suppose I do not laugh back at you, do not blaspheme you, do not curse you. But suppose, standing up straight under the sky, with every power of my being, I thank you for the fools' paradise you have made.
I think the connection between these two is kind of clear. Our attachment to things is at some level fairly arbitrary but we are attached
>We are mad, because we are not two men, but one man.
There's something of having this playfulness to form attachments the having the fanaticism of that fundamental attachment. That paradoxical theme of Chesterton is kind of shown in the two separate characters the looseness of taking up the playful joker and of the fanatic at once.
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