Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Hilarious and Brilliant Opening Paragraph to G.K. Chesterton's Autobiography

"Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment of private judgment, I am firmly of opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge. I do not allege any significance in the relation of the two buildings; and I indignantly deny that the church was chosen because it needed the whole water-power of West London to turn me into a Christian."

--G.K. Chesterton, Autobiography (Thirsk, North Yorkshire: House of Stratus, 2001), 1

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