Another Good Chesterton Quote

...not from Orthodoxy this time, although there's about half a chapter of that I'd like to put in here, if only I had the time and space...

I came across this, rather randomly, in a book by John Stott the other day, and liked it too much not to share it.

"You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
And grace before sketching, painting,
Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink."

Quoted in Dudley Barker, G. K. Chesterton, A Biography (Constable, 1973), p. 65, from unpublished notebook jottings.

Stott, J. (1996; 2007). The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus (115). Inter-Varsity Press.

Of course, Chesterton, a Catholic, said grace before meals too... just in case anybody wondered :-)