Chesterton on Hope
January 22, 2006 @ 11:10 am | Filed under: Chesterton & Dickens
“It is currently said that hope goes with youth, and lends to youth the wings of a butterfly; but I fancy that hope is the last gift given to man, and the only gift not given to youth. Youth is pre-eminently the period in which a man can be lyric, fanatical, poetic; but youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged: God has kept that good wine until now.”
—G. K. Chesterton,
Charles Dickens: The Last of the Great Men
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Kelly says:
Beautiful, Melissa.
As a middle-ager myself (almsot 39), who lost a father-in-law this weekend (a Russian genius who loved Chesterton), this quote means the world to me.
All the very, very best…
On January 22, 2006 at 10:26 pm
Joseph says:
“The end of every episode is the end of the world.”
For a short time perhaps. Then the young, who see the years ahead seeming to last forever, get on with the next eternal adventure.
As a young guy, I do not remember the clock ever moving fast.
On January 29, 2006 at 3:08 am