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

> "What!" cried the Secretary bitterly. "Do you believe all that tale about his being our man in the dark room? Sunday would say he was anybody."
>
> "I don't know whether I believe it or not," said Dr. Bull. "But it isn't that that I mean. I can't wish old Sunday's balloon to burst because —"
>
> "Well," said Syme impatiently, "because?"
>
> "Well, because he's so jolly like a balloon himself," said Dr. Bull desperately. "I don't understand a word of all that idea of his being the same man who gave us all our blue cards. It seems to make everything nonsense. But I don't care who knows it, I always had a sympathy for old Sunday himself, wicked as he was. Just as if he was a great bouncing baby. How can I explain what my queer sympathy was? It didn't prevent my fighting him like hell! Shall I make it clear if I say that I liked him because he was so fat?"
>
> "You will not," said the Secretary.
>
> "I've got it now," cried Bull, "it was because he was so fat and so light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as heavy, but he could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. It was like the old speculations — what would happen if an elephant could leap up in the sky like a grasshopper?"
>
> "Our elephant," said Syme, looking upwards, "has leapt into the sky like a grasshopper."
>
> "And somehow," concluded Bull, "that's why I can't help liking old Sunday. No, it's not an admiration of force, or any silly thing like that. There is a kind of gaiety in the thing, as if he were bursting with some good news. Haven't you sometimes felt it on a spring day? You know Nature plays tricks, but somehow that day proves they are good-natured tricks. I never read the Bible myself, but that part they laugh at is literal truth, 'Why leap ye, ye high hills?' The hills do leap — at least, they try to.... Why do I like Sunday?... how can I tell you?... because he's such a Bounder."

- 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._XIV_:_The_Six_Philosophers) ([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/what-cried-the

## 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)