Every attempt to amplify that story has diminished it. Criticism is only words about words; and of what use are words about such words as these?
What is the use of word-painting about the dark garden filled suddenly with torchlight and furious faces? 'Are you come out with swords and staves as against a robber? All day I sat in your temple teaching, and you took me not!
Just before the murder he prayed for all the murderous race of men, saying, 'They know not what they do'; is there anything to say to that, except that we know as little what we say?
Is there any need to repeat and spin out the story of how in all that horror and howling wilderness of desertion one voice spoke in homage, a startling voice from the very last place where it was looked for, the gibbet of the criminal; and he said to that nameless ruffian, 'This night shalt thou be with me in Paradise'?
Is there anything to put after that but a full stop?
- G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
