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About this quote

What does it mean?
In a corrupt city where politicians ask who goes home, no one answers because everyone is dead. Yet there is divine pity for this land.
In plain terms
In a corrupt city, politicians ask who remains, but everyone is dead, though God pities the land.
What can you take from it?
Political corruption leads to moral death, but compassion remains.

Where it applies

  • political critique
  • urban decline
  • theological reflection

Putting it to work

  • critique empty politics
  • seek divine perspective
  • mourn societal loss

Questions to consider

  • Can a city be redeemed if it is already dead?
  • What role does divine pity play in justice?

Another view

Attributing pity to God offers little practical help for corruption.

More from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

  1. To have seen you and your unforgotten face, Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray, Pure as white lilies in a watery space, It were something, though you we…

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  2. Men that are men again: Who goes home? Tocsin and trumpeter! Who goes home? For there's blood on the grass and blood on the foam, And blood on the body, when M…

    Permalink to quote #183
  3. It is something to have wept as we have wept, It is something to have done as we have done, It is something to have watched when all men slept, And seen the st…

    Permalink to quote #180

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