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Alarms and Discursions

G. K. Chesterton

199 ratings
Alarms and Discursions | G. K. Chesterton

Alarms and Discursions

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Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an influential English writer of the early 20th century. His prolific and diverse output included journalism, philosophy, poetry, biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy, and detective fiction. Chesterton has been called the “prince of paradox.” He wrote in an off-hand, whimsical prose studded with startling formulations. Chesterton wrote about 4000 essays on various subjects, and “Ararms and Discursions is one of his collections.
; she is not in the least a contemptible nor entirely a comic figure. She has a powerful stoop and an ugly, attractive face, a little like that of Huxley—without the whiskers, of course. The courage with which she supports the most brutal bad luck has something quite creepy about it. Her irony is incessant and inventive; her practical charity very large; and she is wholly unaware of the philosophical use to which I put her.

But when I hear the modern generalization about her sex on all sides I simply substitute her name, and see how the thing sounds then. When on the one side the mere sentimentalist says, "Let woman be content to be dainty and exquisite, a protected piece of social art and domestic ornament," then I merely repeat it to myself in the "other form," "Let Mrs. Buttons be content to be dainty and exquisite, a protected piece of social art, etc." It is extraordinary what a difference the substitution seems to make. And on the other hand, when some of the Suffragettes say in their pamphlets and speeches, "Woman, leaping to life at the trumpet call of Ibsen and Shaw, drops her tawdry luxuries and demands to grasp the sceptre of empire and the firebrand of speculative thought"—in order to understand such a sentence I say it over again in the amended form: "Mrs. Buttons, leaping to life at the trumpet call of Ibsen and Shaw, drops her tawdry luxuries and demands to grasp the sceptre of empire and the firebrand of speculative thought." Somehow it sounds quite different. And yet when you say Woman I suppose you mean the average woman; and if most women are as capable and critical and morally sound as Mrs. Buttons, it is as much as we can expect, and a great deal more than we deserve.

But this study is not about Mrs. Buttons; she would require many studies. I will take a less impressive case of my principle, the principle of keeping in the mind an actual personality when we are talking about types or

Bryce 02/11/2022
While some of the book inevitably feels out of date, due only to the fact that the particular squabbles of today aren't the squabbles of yesterday, what's more incredible is just how on point the majority of it is.

"The Man And His Newspaper" could have been penned about Fox News, and The Flat Freak
Mark 05/10/2014
Fantastic. Some of my favorite Chesterton lines are found in here.
David 02/10/2013
Fascinating!
Titus 07/29/2011
At times Chesterton's prose was a bit too archaic for me, but this was a book worth reading anyway. If you're interested in the essay as a form (like I am), this should be part of your canon. And I just loved Chesterton's snarky comments about professors and academia in general!
Joshua 06/20/2010
Listened to it in snippets on drives as an audiobook, which I think its well suited for, being that it is primarily a collection of observations and considerations of what Chesterton sees in his life around him. This approach doesn't reduce his writing quality, and you'll get some interesting though

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