It has taken me a long time to warm up to Chesterton. For me his writing flaws often got in the way of some of the really superb things he had to say. However, I am now going through Heretics for the umpteenth time, this time with some thought that I might actually make it through. In the course of reading I happened upon this wonderful little quote from Chapter 1.
The man who is perpetually thinking of whether this race or that race is strong, of whether this cause or that cause is promising, is the man who will never believe in anything long enough to make it succeed. The opportunist politician is like a man who should abandon billiards because he was beaten at billiards, and abandon golf because he was beaten at golf. There is nothing which is so weak for working purposes as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.
