ill more,
when they are fools, by what they think they are; and when they are
wise, by what they wish to be.

There are truths that have almost become untrue by becoming untruthful.
There are statements so often stale and insincere that one hesitates to
use them, even when they stand for something more subtle. This point
about curiosity is not the conventional complaint against the American
interviewer. It is not the ordinary joke against the American child. And
in the same way I feel the danger of it being identified with the cant
about 'a young nation' if I say that it has some of the attractions, not
of American childhood, but of real childhood. There is some truth in the
tradition that the children of wealthy Americans tend to be too
precocious and luxurious. But there is a sense in which we can really
say that if the children are like adults, the adults are like children.
And that sense is in the very best sense of childhood. It is something
which the modern world does not understand. It is something that modern
Americans do not understand, even when they possess it; but I think they
do possess it.

The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose; and the text of Scripture
which he now most commonly quotes is, 'The kingdom of heaven is within
you.' That text has been the stay and support of more Pharisees and
prigs and self-righteous spiritual bullies than all the dogmas in
creation; it has served to identify self-satisfaction with the peace
that passes all understanding. And the text to be quoted in answer to it
is that which declares that no man can receive the kingdom except as a
little child. What we are to have inside is the childlike spirit; but
the childlike spirit is not entirely concerned about what is inside. It
is the first mark of possessing it that one is interested in what is
outside. The most childlike thing about a child is his curiosity and his
appetite and his power of wonder at the world. We might almost say that
the whole advantage of having the kingdom within is that we look for it
somewhere else.

_The Spirit of England_

Nine times out of ten a man's broad-mindedness is necessarily the
narrowest thing about him. This is not particularly paradoxical; it is,
when we come to think of it, quite inevitable. His vision of his own
village may really be full of varieties; and even his vision of his own
nation may have a rough resemblance to the reality. But his vision of
the world is proba