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Orthodoxy by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
page 148 of 195 (75%)
the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare. If I bet
I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting. If I challenge
I must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging.
If I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful,
or there is no fun in vowing. You could not even make a fairy tale
from the experiences of a man who, when he was swallowed by a whale,
might find himself at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or when he
was turned into a frog might begin to behave like a flamingo.
For the purpose even of the wildest romance results must be real;
results must be irrevocable. Christian marriage is the great
example of a real and irrevocable result; and that is why it
is the chief subject and centre of all our romantic writing.
And this is my last instance of the things that I should ask,
and ask imperatively, of any social paradise; I should ask to be kept
to my bargain, to have my oaths and engagements taken seriously;
I should ask Utopia to avenge my honour on myself.

All my modern Utopian friends look at each other rather doubtfully,
for their ultimate hope is the dissolution of all special ties.
But again I seem to hear, like a kind of echo, an answer from beyond
the world. "You will have real obligations, and therefore real
adventures when you get to my Utopia. But the hardest obligation
and the steepest adventure is to get there."



VIII THE ROMANCE OF ORTHODOXY


It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness
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