Orthodoxy

The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.
- G.K. Chesterton

Ahhh, Chesterton. He is the bright and sharp intellect that perfectly awakens one's mind on a chilly, grey morning. His words are the solutions to any drowsiness of the day.

He has a way of stating concisely, the beauty of Christian paradoxes that may confuse you at first (as you wonder where he is going in his tale) but leaves you spellbound by his wit and intellect and deep understanding of the human mind. He most certainly had the gift of writing, and writing toward anyone to is willing to read. That includes those who may be agnostic or one like me, who is still astounded by the wisdom even though I am a Christian. He doesn't have to convince me, and yet I am convinced. He shreds reason to bits and inserts the only real answer that everything point to in the end.

The danger was not in man's environment, but in man. (Orthodoxy)

I have listened to scientific men...saying that if we give the poor healthier conditions vice and wrong will disappear. I have listened to them with a horrible attention, with a hideous fascination. For it was like watching a man energetically sawing from the tree the branch he is sitting on. (Orthodoxy)

He makes it so blatant that it is not the circumstances of man, whether it be poverty or wealth (also known as the way that the world puts value on each of us), or jobs, or family, or friends but it is the heart of the man that is the issue. You cannot solve the world's problem by placing a band-aid over it. If you ignore the heart of it, you are headed for disaster. It will only open a new host of problems. Instead, it is a matter of the heart of each man. If you don't address that, you are missing the target. And the answer, says Chesterton, is Christianity. It is the only answer to everything, and skirting around that (as in everything besides Christianity) by trying to insert some earthly solution is like sitting out on a limb hastily sawing away, not realizing that you are about to plunge yourself down by your own methods.