"There is at the back of all our lives an abyss of light, more blinding and unfathomable than any abyss of darkness; and it is the abyss of actuality, of existence, of the fact that things truly are, and that we ourselves are incredibly and sometimes most incredulously real. It is the fundamental fact of being, as against not being; it is the unthinkable, yet we cannot unthink it, though we may be sometimes unthinking about it; unthinking, and especially unthanking. For he who has realised this reality knows that it does outweigh, literally to infinity, all lesser regrets and arguments for negation, and that under all our grumblings there is a subconscious substance of gratitude . . . there is something much more mystical and absolute than any other modern thing that is called optimism; for it is only rarely that we realize, like a vision of the heavens filled with a chorus of giants, the primeval duty of Praise."
G.K. Chesterton, as quoted in
Wisdom & Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton
by Joseph Pearce.
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