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MATERIAL_WORLD


                                             July 1, 2008


        "He is a bad man. For heaven's sake don't
        fancy I say that because he and I are of
        opposite schools or traditions.  I have a
        crowd of scientific friends; and most of them
        are heroically disinterested.  Even of the
        most sceptical, I would only say they are
        rather irrationally disinterested.  But now
        and then you do get a man who is a
        materialist, in the sense of a beast."

                Father Brown, in
                "The Crime of the Communist"
                by G.K. Chesterton                     CALUMNY





        "The worldly man, who really lives only for
        this world and believes in no other, whose
        worldly success and pleasure are all he can
        ever snatch out of nothingness-- that is
        the man who will really do anything, when he
        is in danger of losing the whole world and
        saving nothing."

                Father Brown, in
                "The Secret of Flambeau"
                by G.K. Chesterton



         "High and mighty humbugs, who deal in big ideas, don't
         do those obvious things.  ...  For them, a jewel is a
         piece of glass: and they can see through the glass.
         But the little, literal people take it at its market
         value."

         "It takes you quite a long time to feel so crudely as
         that, though.  It's quite a wild effort of imagination
         to be so conventional.  To want one potty little
         object as seriously as all that.  But you can do
         it... You can get nearer to it.  Begin by thinking of
         being a greedy child; of how you might have stolen a
         sweet in a shop; of how there was one particular sweet
         you wanted... then you must subtract the childish
         poetry; shut off the fairy light that shone on the
         sweet-stuff shop; imagine you really think you know
         the world and the market value of sweets... you
         contract you mind like the camera focus.. . the thing
         shapes and then sharpens... and then, suddenly, it
         comes!"


                Father Brown, in
                "The Secret of Flambeau"
                by G.K. Chesterton


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