Joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live

John Piper celebrates G.K. Chesterton's birthday (tomorrow, he was born on May 29, 1874) by recommending GKC's book Orthodoxy, from which Piper extracts several quotations, and from which I have chosen these:

“Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.”

“The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens in to his head. And it is his head that splits.”

“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything but his reason.”

“The ordinary man... has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradictions along with them.”

“Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live.”

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” [Piper's article]

Just as I have little interest in arguments about the end times (I am content with knowing that my life on earth will end), I am also largely uninterested in the Calvinist/Arminian dispute that Piper injects into his appreciation of Chesterton — I'm just glad he and others of us who are not Catholic can appreciate what GKC has to offer.

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