“The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant.”
G.K. Chesterton’s quote explores the delicate balance of human desires, particularly focusing on sexuality. By describing sex as a "servant," Chesterton suggests that sexual desire, when controlled and kept in its proper place, serves a beneficial and manageable role in human life. However, once sex "ceases to be a servant," it implies that it has gained control over the individual, becoming a "tyrant" — a dominating force that can enslave one's actions and decisions.
This metaphor highlights the potential dangers of allowing natural impulses to become overwhelming or unchecked. Chesterton warns that when sexual desire dominates a person's life, it can lead to destructive behavior, loss of freedom, and moral decay. The quote encourages self-discipline and awareness, promoting the idea that desires should serve the greater good of the individual rather than ruling them.
In summary, Chesterton’s words caution against the loss of mastery over one's passions and emphasize the importance of balance and control in order to keep desires, including sexual ones, as positive influences rather than destructive ones.
“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
“For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.”
“There is only one thing that can never go past a certain point in its alliance with oppression--and that is orthodoxy. I may, it is true, twist orthodoxy so as partly to justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely.”
“Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.”
“A man cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and round his logical circle.”
“The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous.”