Literary Quote #3--Orthodoxy

. . . even nursery tales only echo an almost prenatal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.

(At last, quotes from one of my favorite books, G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy! It's a defense of Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, but even if you're not Catholic you absolutely must read the chapter titled 'The Ethics of Elfland', which to me was a spiritual re-awakening and a simply beautiful piece of writing. It reminds me of how Lewis said Christianity was the perfect myth; well Chesterton was the man who influenced Lewis' Christianity, and he says Christianity is the perfect fairy tale, something which completely enthralled my imagination. And then it also includes this beautiful passage:)

The sun rises every morning. . . His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want thigns repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. it is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy seperately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the infinite appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. . .