Gilbert Keith Chesterton

“ As a nation we receive his flaming visitations with something more insulting than defiance--absentmindedness. Such absence of mind can co-exist with considerable presence of mind at particular moments. ”

“ And today also we are largely saved by the people whom we have failed to educate, failed to rule, failed to provide with land or religion, and very nearly failed to save from starvation. It is these people who in the travail and agony of the hour, provide the note which is most needed and most unexpected ”

“ Like the other animal, he can be at his best an irritant and at his worst a parasite. The Englishman is not simply calm and wise and strong; but he is English. I do not set my country above human temptations, like an allegory on a ceiling ”

“ It is a refusal to accept as final the facts immediately in front of us-- a strong belief in the other side of the world, or even the other side of the moon. It was rather pompously expressed by the phrase about the sun never setting on the British Empire. ”

“ His sudden lunge at the curtain was very like the sudden rush our mob sometimes makes at the alien. But, on the whole, it is the other attitude that is our ultimate strength. Not anything we have done against the Zeppelins, but all that we have not done against them, is our monument aere perennius. ”