Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 14

• Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all... As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Hope, Mean, Long

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• Paradox - Truth standing on her head to get attention.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Attention, Paradox, Standing

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• The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Literature, World

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• The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sea, Voice, Special

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• Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Graduation

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• Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Half, Literature

  1910 What's Wrong with the World, ch.3.

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• The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Sorry, Mad

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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• The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mother, Children, Father

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• If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other--the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Running, Ideas, Nurse

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• Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  World, Dear, Articles

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• You may think a crime horrible because you could never commit it. I think it is horrible because I could commit it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Thinking, May, Crime

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• Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Doe, Dogma

  "The Victorian Age in Literature". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, p.43, 1913.

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• Your next-door neighbor is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a piano; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Funny, Dog, Wall

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• The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Rocks, Moss, Rolling

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.142, Simon and Schuster

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• The Sentimentalist, roughly speaking, is the man who wants to eat his cake and have it. He has no sense of honor about ideas; he will not see that one must pay for an idea as well as for anything else. He will have them all at once in one wild intellectual harem, no matter how much they quarrel and contradict each other.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Cake, Ideas

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• The past is not what it was.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Past, Progress, Cult

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• All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  True Friend, Rain, Fire

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.284, Simon and Schuster

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• Modern man is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Language, Modern

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• No man can be merry unless he is serious.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Serious, Merry

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• There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Earth, Artistic Temperament

  Heretics (1905) ch. 3

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• The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men…In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Men, Community

  "Heretics". Chapter XIV: "On Certain Modern Writers and the Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Institution of the Family", 1905.

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• It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Power, Criticism, Speech

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• Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Cute, Marriage, Funny Love

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• I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism; and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Lasts, Found, Scoundrels

  "The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. 11: Collected Plays and Chesterton on Shaw". Book edited by Denis J. Conlon, 1989.

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• I am at one with my duality.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Duality

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