Humility in the Wrong Place

The ever quotable G.K. Chesterton:

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place.  Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition . . . [and] settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be.  A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.  We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.

--G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Difficult and Untried

"The Christian faith has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."

--G.K. Chesterton

Strong Enough to Exult in Monotony, or the Eternal Appetite of Infancy

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, 'Do it again'; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE."

--G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy