“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.”
—G.K. Chesterton in the Illustrated London News, June 18, 1932 (via gkchestertonquote)
August 2011
6 posts
“Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.”
—G.K. Chesterton in All Things Considered (via gkchestertonquote)
A magnificent article by D.B. Hart →
abc.net.au
Sit down before reading.
“Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another. Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word that both imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and sadness. No more loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face, which threaten to become incomprehensible to man. We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance.”
—
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Volume 1, Seeing the Form (via Bob Robinson)
I need to read Balthasar.
(via settledthingsstrange)
“To sentimentalize something is to savor rather than to suffer the sadness of it, is to sigh over the prettiness of it rather than to tremble at the beauty of it, which may make fearsome demands of us or pose fearsome threats.”
—Frederick Buechner Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale, (via carrieanncartwright)
