# Quote — G. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

> This particular evening, if it is remembered for nothing else, will be remembered in that place for its strange sunset. It looked like the end of the world. All the heaven seemed covered with a quite vivid and palpable plumage; you could only say that the sky was full of feathers, and of feathers that almost brushed the face. Across the great part of the dome they were grey, with the strangest tints of violet and mauve and an unnatural pink or pale green; but towards the west the whole grew past description, transparent and passionate, and the last red-hot plumes of it covered up the sun like something too good to be seen. The whole was so close about the earth, as to express nothing but a violent secrecy. The very empyrean seemed to be a secret. It expressed that splendid smallness which is the soul of local patriotism. The very sky seemed small.
>
> I say that there are some inhabitants who may remember the evening if only by that oppressive sky.

- Author: [G. Chesterton](https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton.md)
- Book: [The Man Who Was Thursday](https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/the-man-who-was-thursday.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Was_Thursday#Ch._I_:_The_Two_Poets_of_Saffron_Park) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/the-man-who-was-thursday/this-particular-evening

## More from this book

> "A man's brain is a bomb," he cried out, loosening suddenly his strange passion and striking his own skull with violence. "My brain feels like a bomb, night and day. It must expand! It must expand! A man's brain must expand, if it breaks up the universe."
>
> "I don't want the universe broken up just yet," drawled the Marquis. "I want to do a lot of beastly things before I die. I thought of one yesterday in bed."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/the-man-who-was-thursday/a-mans-brain.md)

> "First of all, what is it really all about? What is it you object to? You want to abolish Government?"
>
> "To abolish God!" said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. "We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong."
>
> "And Right and Left," said Syme with a simple eagerness, "I hope you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/the-man-who-was-thursday/first-of-all.md)

> It seemed a symbol of human faith and valour that while the skies were darkening that high place of the earth was bright. The devils might have captured heaven, but they had not yet captured the cross. He had a new impulse to tear out the secret of this dancing, jumping and pursuing paralytic; and at the entrance of the court as it opened upon the Circus he turned, stick in hand, to face his pursuer.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/the-man-who-was-thursday/it-seemed-a-symbol.md)