Gilbert Keith Chesterton

“ Nature would creep into them as she creeps into the colour of flowers and wine.
Of course I am for righteousness, and all that. But, as I say, I think this plan of talking about the way the thing is done is really a vast deal more righteous than the present habit of keeping up an enormous pomposity of veil and temple. A good many people who say they want journalism to be honest really want it to be solemn. But honesty is never solemn; it is only hypocrisy that can be that. Honesty always laughs, because things are so laughable. ”

“ But the difference is this: that the paper comes out so quickly that even its mistakes are important, while the encyclopaedia comes out so late that even its discoveries do not matter. The newspaper should be the best account of the daily impressions of an intelligent man on one side or the other. If it is anything else but this, it is, or tends to be, a fraud. Honest milk is milk that is milky; honest wine is wine that is wine, and nothing else; honest journalism is journalism that is journalistic. ”

“ And so you will always find in every age that very sincere men are accused of what is called `blasphemy' (it was Caiaphas's charge) --blasphemy, which means taking things too lightly. The people who can be consistently and entirely solemn are the people who have no convictions at all. Look at them, as they walk down Band Street, in their burnished hats. No belief on any earthly subject has ever broken into the perfection of that innocent and colossal gravity. ”