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Unconventional Thanksgiving Quote

Unconventional Thanksgiving Quote

From G.K. Chesterton’s Autobiography, Chapter XVI:

“The God With The Golden Key”

I can scarcely think of a better–albeit unconventional–note for Thanksgiving than this one, from the salty rhetorical cleverness of G.K. Chesterton:
 
“… A whole generation has been taught to talk nonsense at the top of its voice about having ‘a right to life’ and ‘a right to experience’ and ‘a right to happiness.’ The lucid thinkers who talk like this generally wind up their assertion of all these extraordinary rights, by saying that there is no such thing as right and wrong.
It is a little difficult, in that case, to speculate on where their rights came from; but I, at least, leaned more and more to the old philosophy which said that their real rights came from where the dandelion came from; and that they will never value either [the rights or the flower] without recognising its source…
[But] the first thing the casual critic will say is ‘What nonsense all this is; do you mean that a poet cannot be thankful for grass and wild flowers without connecting it with theology; let alone your theology?’ To which I answer, ‘Yes; I mean he cannot do it without connecting it with theology, unless he can do it without connecting it with thought. If he can manage to be thankful when there is nobody to be thankful to, and no good intentions to be thankful for, then he is simply taking refuge in being thoughtless in order to avoid being thankless.’ But indeed the argument goes beyond conscious gratitude, and applies to any sort of peace or confidence or repose, even unconscious confidence or repose…”

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