Words Worth Noting - October 5, 2022

“We are in the strict sense conservatives; because we hold that the old creed and culture of Christendom realized for men, relatively to all that is reasonable and possible, the great art of life which we call liberty. The truth has made us free; The tradition has given to men the sort of liberty they really like; Local customs, individual craftsmanship, variety of self expression, the presence of personality in production, the dignity of the human will. These are expressed in a thousand things, from hospitality to adventure, from parents instructing their own children to children inventing their own games, from the village commune to the vin du pays, from practical jokes to pilgrimages an from patron saints to public-house signs. The mark of all these things is variety and spontaneity, the direct action of the individual soul on the material environment of mankind. The result is a rich complexity of common things, a wealth of work and worship, a treasure which we refuse to abandon at our resolute to defend.”

G.K. Chesterton in the 3rd edition of G.K.’s Weekly March-September 1926 quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #2 (Nov.-Dec. 2021)