My friend Lauren Greenspan may just have improved on Chesterton. She quoted to me, earlier tonight, a line from his essay “A Piece of Chalk” inTremendous Trifles, which, when I looked it up, ran like this:
“Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.”
But when Lauren quoted it, she said, “Chastity is not something tepid; is something burning, like Joan of Arc.” I think I’d keep “flaming.” But other than that I think Lauren’s version is not only an improvement, but an improvement precisely in the spirit of what G. K. meant.