Quotation from: The Appetite of Tyranny

Written by: G.K. Chesterton


Here is the sort of instance that made me think of you. What would you feel
first, let us say, if I mentioned Michael Angelo? For the first moment,
perhaps, boredom: such as I feel when Americans ask me about
Stratford-on-Avon. But, supposing that just fear quieted, you would feel
what I and every one else can feel. It might be the sense of the majestic
hands of Man upon the locks of the last doors of life; large and terrible
hands, like those of that youth who poises the stone above Florence, and
looks out upon the circle of the hills. It might be that huge heave of
flank and chest and throat in "The Slave," which is like an earthquake
lifting a whole landscape; it might be that tremendous Madonna, whose
charity is more strong than death. Anyhow, your thoughts would be something
worthy of the man's terrible paganism and his more terrible Christianity.
Who but God could have graven Michael Angelo; who came so near to graving
the Mother of God?

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