"WE read a good novel not in order to know more people, but in order to know fewer. Instead of the humming swarm of human beings, relatives, customers, servants, postmen, afternoon callers, tradesmen, strangers who tell us the time, strangers who remark on the weather, beggars, waiters, and telegraph-boys--instead of this bewildering human swarm which passes us every day, fiction asks us to follow one figure (say the postman) consistently through his ecstasies and agonies. That is what makes one impatient with that type of pessimistic rebel who is always complaining of the narrowness of his life and demanding a larger sphere. Life is too large for us as it is: we have all too many things to attend to. All true romance is an attempt to simplify it, to cut it down to plainer and more pictorial proportions. What dullness there is in our life arises mostly from its rapidity; people pass us too quickly to show us their interesting side. By the end of the week we have talked to a hundred bores; whereas, if we had stuck to one of them, we might have found ourselves talking to a new friend, or a humorist, or a murderer, or a man who had seen a ghost."~G.K. Chesterton: 'The Inside of Life.'
4 comments:
Very good. First time I have seen that quote.
it's a nice quote, and similar to a few others along that smaller/simpler line; Chesterton is certainly consistent in knowing how to find the poetic in things. rino
Imagine how good his blog would have been!
I love his writing, the warmth and wit of it, on just about any topic you can imagine.
And I shall strive not to be the type of pessimistic rebel he describes....
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