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Let no man deceive himself; if by vulgarity we mean coarseness of speech, rowdiness of behaviour, gossip, horseplay, and some heavy drinking, vulgarity there always was wherever there was joy, wherever there was faith in the gods. Wherever you have belief you will have hilarity, wherever you have hilarity you will have some dangers. And as creed and mythology produce this gross and vigorous life, so in its turn this gross and vigorous life will always produce creed and mythology. 

- G.K. Chesterton, ‘Christmas and the Aesthetes’ (1905) in Heretics [full text]

In the round of our rational and mournful year one festival remains out of all those ancient gaieties that once covered the whole earth. Christmas remains to remind us of those ages, whether Pagan or Christian, when the many acted poetry instead of the few writing it.

- G.K. Chesterton, ‘Christmas and the Aesthetes’ (1905) in Heretics [full text]

Mr E. F. Benson has been attacking the critics, and reviving against them the old accusation that they are merely men who have failed in the arts. There could scarcely be a more unsupported theory. As a matter of fact, to take Mr Benson’s own art, there are probably far more bad critics who end as novelists than bad novelists who end as critics.

- Robert Lynd, ‘A Defence of Critics’ in The Book of This and That (1915) [full text]

Being shocked is evidently still one of the favourite pastimes of the British people.

- Robert Lynd, ‘On Being Shocked’ in The Book of This and That (1915) [full text]

Whether Futurism is merely the growing pains of a rejuvenated Italy, or whether it is a genuine manifestation of the old passion for violence which first showed itself on the day on which Cain killed Abel, it is difficult at times to say. Probably it is a little of both. “We wish,” says Marinetti, praising violence like any Prussian, in a famous manifesto, “to glorify war—the only health-giver of the world—militarism, patriotism, the destructive aim of the Anarchist, the beautiful ideas that kill, the contempt for women.” And, again: “We shall extol aggressive movement, feverish insomnia, the double quickstep, the somersault, the box on the ear, the fisticuff.” It is very like Mr Kipling at the age of fourteen writing for a school magazine, if you could imagine a Kipling emancipated from religion and belief in British law and order.

- Robert Lynd, The Book of This and That (1915) [full text]

Critics of the better sort need not worry when their service is misconstrued as servitude. Those who attack them are usually men who are under the delusion that it is better to be a bad artist than a good critic.

- Robert Lynd, The Book of This and That (1915) [full text]

Every man has a right to be shocked so long as it is his own shock and not a mere imitation of somebody else’s. What one has no patience with is the case of those people who are always shocked in herds.

- Robert Lynd, The Book of This and That (1915) [full text]

It is a terrible thing to boast of stupidity, even in irony. It is a still more terrible thing to associate stupidity with honesty.

- Robert Lynd, The Book of This and That (1915) [full text]

It is not difficult to see why the preachers have usually been so doubtful about the dancers. It is simply that dancing is for the most part a rhythmical pantomime of sex. It is the most haremish of pastimes. One is not surprised to learn that Henry VIII was the most expert of royal dancers. He was an enthusiast for the kissing dances of his day, indeed, even before he had abandoned his youthful straitness for the moral code of a farmyard that had gone off its head.

- Robert Lynd, The Book of This and That (1915) [full text]

I do not like Them. It is no good asking me why, though I have plenty of reasons. I do not like Them. There would be no particular point in saying I do not like Them if it were not that so many people doted on Them, and when one hears Them praised, it goads one to expressing one’s hatred and fear of Them.

- Hilaire Belloc, ‘On Them’ from On Nothing and Kindred Subjects (1908) [full text]