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Chesterton on Following Advice and Being Different

I think I owe my success to having listened respectfully and rather bashfully to the very best advice, given by all the best journalists who had achieved the best sort of success in journalism; and then going away and doing the exact opposite. . .

I have a notion that the real advice I could give to a young journalist is simply this: to write an article for the Sporting Times and one for the Church Times and put them in the wrong envelopes…What is really the matter with almost every paper, is that it is much too full of things suitable to the paper.

– G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

This quote now hangs on my office wall.

 

Want of Wonder

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

-G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles

A couple of Shakespeare quotes come to mind; let’s rip them out of context and use them:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

In Every Pang that Rends the Heart, the Man of Sorrows Had a Part

Our fellow sufferer yet retains
A fellow feeling of our pains:
And still remembers in the skies
His tears, His agonies, and cries.

In every pang that rends the heart,
The Man of Sorrows had a part,
He sympathizes with our grief,
And to the sufferer sends relief.

With boldness, therefore, at the throne,
Let us make all our sorrows known;
And ask the aids of heavenly power
To help us in the evil hour.

-from Michael Bruce (1764), Where High the Heavenly Temple Stands