["The Man Who Was Thursday"]

[fiefoe]

Gilbert Keith Chesterton's strange creation falls into (political) speculative fiction category. The library sent me a rather poor reading copy, so I only managed five chapters.

• That venerable humbug was not really a philosopher; but at least he was the cause of philosophy in others.
• (sunset:) The whole was so close about the earth, as to express nothing but a violent secrecy. The very empyrean seemed to be a secret. It expressed that splendid smallness which is the soul of local patriotism. The very sky seemed small.
• “Nonsense!” said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else attempted paradox.
• “It is things going right,” he cried, “that is poetical I Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more poetical than the flowers, more poetical than the stars—the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.” {My mom would be nodding her head here.}
• And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely.
• “... To the priest who says these men are the enemies of religion, to the judge who says these men are the enemies of law, to the fat parliamentarian who says these men are the enemies of order and public decency, to all these I will reply, ‘You are false kings, but you are true prophets. I am come to destroy you, and to fulfill your prophecies.’”
• He regarded them as a huge and pitiless peril, like a Chinese invasion.
• Indeed, he always felt that Government stood alone and desperate, with its back to the wall. He was too quixotic to have cared for it otherwise.
•  “Well, really,” said Syme, “I don’t know any profession of which mere willingness is the final test.”     “I do,” said the other—“martyrs. I am condemning you to death. Good day.”
• Syme fell easily into his first thought, that he was actually on some other and emptier planet, which circled round some sadder star.