All Things Considered by G. K. Chesterton (adapted excerpt)
Anybody reading these words, and anybody who heard them, will certainly feel that there is in them a great c
of geniality. But along with that truth and with that geniality there is a streak of that erroneous type of optim
of which I have spoken above. Before we congratulate ourselves upon the absence of certain faults from our
ourselves why it is that these faults are absent. Are we without the fault because we have tropposite virtue
because we have the opposite fault? It is a good thing assuredly, to be innocent of any excess; but let us be su
excess merely by being guilty of defect. Is it really true that our English political satire is so moderate because
so saintly?
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But this, but you – small, pitiful and twiggy – you put me down with wine, you blinded me. come back, odysseus, and i'll treat you well, praying the god of earthquake to befriend you – his son i am, for he by his avowal fathered me, and, if he will, he may heal me of this black wound – he and no other of all the happy gods or mortal men.' few words i shouted in reply to him: 'if i could take your life i would and take your time away, and hurl you down to hell! the god of earthquake could not heal you there! ' at this he stretched his hands out in his darkness toward the sky of stars, and prayed poseidon: 'o hear me, lord, blue girdler of the islands, if i am thine indeed, and thou art father: grant that odysseus, raider of cities, never see his home -the odyssey, homer what motivates cyclops to ask poseidon to interfere with odysseus's journey home?