Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that a light-hearted approach to life allows for greater freedom and joy.
Gilbert K. Chesterton's quote reflects the idea that taking oneself too seriously can weigh a person down, whereas a light-hearted attitude opens up possibilities for happiness and transcendence. By comparing human behavior to that of angels, he implies that those who embrace humor and a carefree spirit can navigate life's challenges with grace and ease.
In practice
Use this quote in a motivational speech about the importance of maintaining a positive attitude.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don't know how
The greatest remedy that is used against a plan of the enemy is to do voluntarily what he plans that you do by force.
Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings; when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.
Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.
Our scars are a witness to the world. They are apart of our story. Healed wounds that are symbols that God has restored us.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.