Monday, April 14, 2008

I'll See Your Quote and Raise You One

A friend of mine sent me this good quote from Chesterton this weekend:
"The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air." 
~G.K. Chesterton~

I forwarded the email off to my husband who sent me this email in response:
Good Quote – Thank You Now here is a good one from Harry Blamires: "If Christians cannot communicate as thinking beings, they are reduced to encountering one another only at the shallow level of gossip and small talk. Hence the perhaps peculiarly modern problem – the loneliness of the thinking Christian."
These quotes serve as good descriptors of my thoughts and concerns over the past few days, and they are both too good to go unnoticed. I offer them here as encouragement for those others who resist tyranny before it exists -- all those lonely, thinking Christians out there who dare to dig below the shallow levels of our peculiarly modern problems.