The ideal of discipline is not the whole of life, but it is spread over the whole of the world.
 G. K. Chesterton, Heretics (1905). copy citation

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Author G. K. Chesterton
Source Heretics
Topic discipline life
Date 1905
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/470/470-h/470-h.htm

Context

“He happens to find his examples in the British Empire, but almost any other empire would do as well, or, indeed, any other highly civilized country. That which he admires in the British army he would find even more apparent in the German army; that which he desires in the British police he would find flourishing, in the French police. The ideal of discipline is not the whole of life, but it is spread over the whole of the world. And the worship of it tends to confirm in Mr. Kipling a certain note of worldly wisdom, of the experience of the wanderer, which is one of the genuine charms of his best work. The great gap in his mind is what may be roughly called the lack of patriotism—that is to say, he lacks altogether the faculty of attaching himself to any cause or community finally and tragically;” source