Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 11

• Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Balance, Pieces

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• Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Night, Oysters, Joy

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• A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Satire, Libel

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• Progress is the mother of all problems.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mother, Progress, Problem

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• For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point and does not break.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Point Break, Soul

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.104, Simon and Schuster

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• Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Birthday, Book, Writing

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• The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Funny, Travel, Missing

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• Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Lying, Tired, Blessing

  "The Everlasting Man". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, VIII: The End of the World, 1925.

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• Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Faith, Believe, Inspiration

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.185, Simon and Schuster

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• In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  World, Ridiculous, Mask

  "The Comic Spirit of G.K. Chesterton: A Study of the Humor, Wit, and Satire in His Work". Book by Aileen Dorothy Lorberg, 1938.

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• If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. (on not perfectionism to put things off) .

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Perfectionism, Not Perfect

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• The poor complain that they are governed badly. The rich complain that they are governed at all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Complaining, Rich, Poor

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• Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem".

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Spiritual, Women, Long

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• The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Different, Culture, Heritage

  "Holding on to Romanticism". "The Illustrated London News" Magazine, May 2, 1931.

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• Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  New York, Mean, Years

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• It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Order, Roots

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• The Reformer is always right about what's wrong. However, he's often wrong about what is right.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Reformers

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• There are no boring subjects, only disinterested minds.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mind, Boring, Subjects

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• Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory ... we are all kings in exile.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Kings, Memories, Strange

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• There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Educational, Two, People

  "Child Psychology and Nonsense" by Gilbert K. Chesterton, October 15, 1921.

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• ...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Mercy, Paradox

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• Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dirty, Self, Circles

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• I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Funny, Spiritual, Dog

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• It isn't that they can't see the solution. It's that they can't see the problem. They can't see the problem if they are looking in the wrong place. They can't see the problem if they have blinders on - for 'none are so blind as those that will not see'.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Healing, Problem, Blind

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• There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Two, Allies, Four

  "The Man Who Was Thursday". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Ch. VIII : The Professor Explains, 1908.

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