Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 16

• Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Book, Reading

  Defendant (1901) "Defence of Penny Dreadfuls"

  11 Copy quote

• Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Education, Teaching, School

  10 Copy quote

• [Consider] a fence or gate erected across a road] The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Intelligent, Thinking, Going Away

  6 Copy quote

• How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Motherhood, Careers

  "What's Wrong with the World". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton (Part Three: Feminism, or The Mistake About Woman, Chapter 3: The Emancipation of Domesticity), 1910.

  7 Copy quote

• Journalism only tells us what men are doing; it is fiction that tells us what they are thinking, and still more what they are feeling. If a new scientific theory finds the soul of a man in his dreams, at least it ought not to leave out his day-dreams. And all fiction is only a diary of day-dreams instead of days. And this profound preoccupation of men's minds with certain things always eventually has an effect even on the external expression of the age.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dream, Men, Thinking

  14 Copy quote

• The real argument against aristocracy is that it always means the rule of the ignorant. For the most dangerous of all forms of ignorance is ignorance of work.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Ignorance, Mean

  4 Copy quote

• Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It IS education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching. There are no uneducated people; only most people are educated wrong. The true task of culture today is not a task of expansion, but of selection-and-rejection. The educationist must find a creed and teach it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Teacher, Educational, Teaching

  "What's Wrong With The World". Part Four: Education: Or the Mistake About the Child. Ch. 4: The Truth About Education. Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1910.

  9 Copy quote

• A modern vegetarian is also a teetotaler, yet there is no obvious connection between consuming vegetables and not consuming fermented vegetables. A drunkard, when lifted laboriously out of the gutter, might well be heard huskily to plead that he had fallen there through excessive devotion to a vegetable diet.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Vegetables, Connections, Gutters

  15 Copy quote

• The people has no definite disbelief in the temples of theology. The people has a very fiery and practical disbelief in the temples of physical science.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  People, Temples, Theology

  13 Copy quote

• Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Song, Air, Literature

  9 Copy quote

• I represent the jolly mass of mankind. I am the happy and reckless Christian.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Reckless, Mass

  8 Copy quote

• Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Military, Army, Men

  10 Copy quote

• Whatever else may be said of man, this one thing is clear: He is not what he is capable of being.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, May, Said

  6 Copy quote

• Dipsomaniac and the abstainer are not only both mistaken, but they both make the same mistake. They both regard wine as a drug and not as a drink.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mistake, Wine, Alcohol

  14 Copy quote

• Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Writing, Literature, Disease

  8 Copy quote

• The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Block, Car, Racing

  9 Copy quote

• The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sunset, Eye, Heart

  8 Copy quote

• We lose our bearings entirely by speaking of the 'lower classes' when we mean humanity minus ourselves.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Class, Humanity

  7 Copy quote

• For good or evil, a line has been passed in our political history; and something that we have known all our lives is dead. I will take only one example of it: our politicians can no longer be caricatured.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Humor, Evil, Political

  8 Copy quote

• White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Flower, Color White, Shining

  85 Copy quote

• Human anger is a higher thing than what is called divine discontent. For you must be angry with something; but you can be discontented with everything.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Anger, Divine, Discontent

  7 Copy quote

• When it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Law, Wish

  Tremendous Trifles "The Twelve Men" (1909)

  4 Copy quote

• Jokes are generally honest. Complete solemnity is always dishonest.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Honesty, Honest, Solemnity

  4 Copy quote

• The world will very soon be divided, unless I am mistaken, into those who still go on explaining our success, and those somewhat more intelligent who are trying to explain our failure.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Intelligent, Trying, Goes On

  5 Copy quote

• The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Literature, Innocence, Gullibility

  14 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

C. S. Lewis

Hilaire Belloc

Arthur Conan Doyle

Charles Dickens

Agatha Christie

Dale Ahlquist

George MacDonald

J. R. R. Tolkien