Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that humanity's uniqueness comes with both divine potential and inherent flaws.
Gilbert K. Chesterton's quote reflects on the dual nature of humanity, emphasizing that humans are exceptional beings with the potential for divinity. However, if this divine spark is absent, their existence may be viewed as a mere aberration in the natural order, likening them to a 'disease of the dust.' This perspective encourages a contemplation of the moral and spiritual responsibilities that accompany human existence.
In practice
A philosopher quoting this during a lecture on the nature of humanity.
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.
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be.
In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings.
We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves — and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it’s going to get worse and worse.
The Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God.
There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the divine.
The idea of redemption is always good news, even if it means sacrifice or some difficult times.
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