The False Refuge of a Weary Collapse

Of all things let us avoid the false refuge of a weary collapse, a hopeless yielding to things as they are. It is the life in us that is discontented; we need more of what is discontented, not more of the cause of its discontent. Discontent, I repeat, is the life in us that has …

The Process of Living

The process of living seems to consist in coming to realise truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, the sound like barren platitudes. They cannot sound otherwise to those who have not had the relevant experience: that is why there is no real teaching of such truths possible and every generation starts from scratch. …

Be Strong, Live Happy, and Love!

“…I can now no more; the parting sunBeyond the Earth's green Cape and verdant IslesHesperian sets, my signal to depart.Be strong, live happy, and love! But, first of all,Him, whom to love is to obey, and keepHis great command; take heed lest passion swayThy judgement to do aught, which else free willWould not admit: thine, …

A Golden Key, With George

“Many a young fellow who has entered life with the one ambition of being a poet, has failed because he did not perceive that it is better to be a man than to be a poet, that it is his first duty to get an honest living by doing some honest work that he can …

The Last Hero

The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day, There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away, And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide, Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride. The heavens are bowed about my …

On Trouble, with George MacDonald

“In life troubles will come which look as if they would never pass away; the night and the storm look as if they would last for ever; but the calm and the morning cannot be stayed; the storm in its very nature is transient. The effort of Nature, as that of the human heart, ever …

Hang On

In the struggle for existence, it is only those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn.— GK Chesterton -

Golden Moments

“On every area of our lives—in our religious experience, in our gastronomic, erotic, aesthetic, and social experience—we are always harking back to some occasion which seemed to us to reach perfection, setting that up as a norm, and depreciating all other occasions by comparison. But these other occasions are often full of their own new …

On Unfruitful Plants

But He answered and said, “Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch.” — Matthew 15:13, 14 This struck me in relation to ideas and philosophies that are …

One Vast Need

"But in the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing--for it ought to be growing--awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are …