Digital Logos Edition
This compact volume provides a basic and readable introduction to the philosophy of marriage and the purpose of the family. In it, Chesterton expands and develops his arguments in Divorce versus Democracy, showing that divorce does not solve the problems of individuals; rather, it corrupts society as a whole.
G. K. Chesterton was born in London in 1874. He worked at the Redway and T. Fisher Unwin publishing house until 1902, when he began writing regularly—his weekly columns appeared for decades in the Daily News and The Illustrated London News. In all, he wrote more than 80 books, hundreds of poems, 200 short stories, 4,000 essays. Among his writings are his famous apologetic work Orthodoxy, a biography of St. Aquinas, his Father Brown detective stories, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, and The Man Who Was Thursday. He died on June 14, 1936 in Buckinghamshire.
“The shortest way of putting the problem is to ask whether being free includes being free to bind oneself. For the vow is a tryst with oneself.” (Page 14)
“It is often said by the critics of Christian origins that certain ritual feasts, processions or dances are really of pagan origin. They might as well say that our legs are of pagan origin. Nobody ever disputed that humanity was human before it was Christian; and no Church manufactured the legs with which men walked or danced, either in a pilgrimage or a ballet.” (Pages 85–86)
“Such people say they want divorce, without asking themselves whether they want marriage. Even in order to be divorced it has generally been found necessary to go through the preliminary formality of being married; and unless the nature of this initial act be considered, we might as well be discussing haircutting for the bald or spectacles for the blind. To be divorced is to be in the literal sense unmarried; and there is no sense in a thing being undone when we do not know if it is done.” (Pages 4–5)
“This triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilisations which disregard it.” (Page 63)
“the fundamental things in a man are not the things he explains, but rather the things he forgets to explain” (Pages 35–36)