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To: BlackElk
Actually, you are eloquent proof that Chesterton knew exactly what he was talking about.

You mean here?

The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get on; he believes in himself." . . . . I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? . . . . The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums." He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I retorted, "and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. . . . . If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. . . . Believing utterly in one's self is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote: the man who has it has 'Hanwell' written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus."

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.
132 posted on 05/05/2002 2:56:27 AM PDT by maryz
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To: maryz
Yes, exactly!
138 posted on 05/05/2002 3:17:38 AM PDT by BlackElk
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