Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Name: The Apostle and the Wild Ducks — Part I. In General, A Case of Comrades
Author: Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The Apostle and the Wild Ducks… (1975)

Summary

“The Apostle and the Wild Ducks — Part I. In General, A Case of Comrades”, published in 1975, is a work by Gilbert Keith Chesterton. It explores elements such as comradeship, lady and friend.

Quotes from The Apostle and the Wild Ducks… (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Apostle and the Wild Ducks… (1975)

“ To forget a male friend is only to behave like a comrade. But to forget a woman friend is only to behave like a cad. She is herself; he is the club.
But if either that lady or any other lady really wants to know whether she and her sex should share masculine camaraderie; whether they would really be stronger and happier by doing so; whether, in short, we are in such a matter keeping them out of something they would naturally enjoy, I am just now in a position to enlighten them, by giving them an instance, realistically exact and universally typical, of what our masculine comradeship really is. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Apostle and the Wild Ducks… (1975)

“ They feel, perhaps, that the question of whether one luncheon-car two years ago was of a particular shape was not an urgent question. They feel that when argued by eighteen youths for two hours it might even have become a tiring question. O mightiest of all things, O mothers of the gods, they are only little things that you do not understand, only a few sports and follies of the stags of the herd. Be you content as you are secure: you understand everything except comradeship. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Apostle and the Wild Ducks… (1975)

“ In any case, what I had to say about comradeship to this particular lady was tolerably clear. I merely pointed out that comradeship is a particular sort of human association; and the essential paradox of it is this; that it is at once violent and cool. People talking in twos talk gently, because they feel emphatically: people talking in tens or twenties talk emphatically because they do not care a dump about anything. Friendship becomes comradeship when you have forgotten the presence of your friend. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Apostle and the Wild Ducks… (1975)

“ Our sex is not strong or bold enough to endure that agony of directly personal conversation in which women are supreme. We must have a topic-- an impersonal one. And as I told my admirable lady friend, a male friend becomes a comrade when one has forgotten him. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Apostle and the Wild Ducks… (1975)

“ My concern here is that comradeship is essentially plural. Now, women are not plural. The very word `women' has about it, I think, a sort of bad taste: it smacks of polygamous Turks or tired and cynical men-about-town. There are no such things as women. There is only the woman you are at this particular moment afraid of or in love with, or inclined to reverence or inclined to assassinate. I think a real crowd of women would be like fifty suns or half a hundred moons--it would be weaker for its numbers. The sun would not have room to shine. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Apostle and the Wild Ducks… (1975)

“ It is true; men do speak to a motion, not about it; they talk to a topic. Women talk to each other; that is why their conversations are frightfully fascinating, but too terrible for us to listen to for long without running away. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Apostle and the Wild Ducks… (1975)

“ Some held that the nature of the luncheon should be taken into account in all evidence of the shape of the luncheon-car. We made maps of the car with forks and spoons on the table, and little lumps of sugar to show where the people sat. The whole discussion took nearly two hours.
But, indeed, temporal measurements cannot express the length, for we talked as if we were the immortal Gods and had all eternity before us: for to be outside time is one of the strange elements of fraternity. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Apostle and the Wild Ducks… (1975)

“ You are addressing the abstract thing, the club, which, when two or three are gathered together (of the male sort at least) is always in the midst of them. Men's debating clubs have a pedantic phrase which exactly expresses this truth: they talk of `speaking to the motion'. ”

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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Quotes from The Apostle and the Wild Ducks… (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)

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