There have been household gods and household saints and household fairies. I am not sure that there have yet been any factory gods or factory saints or factory fairies. I may be wrong, as I am no commericial expert, but I have not heard of them as yet.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the lack of reverence and myth-making in the industrial and commercial sectors compared to domestic and personal spheres.
Gilbert K. Chesterton contrasts the existence of deities and mythical figures associated with home life, such as household gods and saints, with the absence of similar figures in the industrial world. He suggests that while domestic life is often imbued with spirituality and meaning, the factory environment remains devoid of such reverence, highlighting a disconnect between humanity and the commercial aspects of society. This observation prompts reflection on the human experience in the modern age and the need for deeper connections to our labor and surroundings.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of spirituality in modern life, this quote could highlight the lack of meaning in industrial work.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.
The life of a sannyasin should be a life of no expectations. And then every moment is such a bliss, such a benediction, because whatsoever God gives is so much. Then you always feel grateful. But your desires are so much that whatsoever God gives always looks so little; and you feel frustrated, and you feel complaints, and you cannot feel grateful. And without gratitude, there is no possibility of prayer arising in your heart. Gratitude is prayer.
It is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others.
Every right is married to a duty, every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility.
Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.
Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings.
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