Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 24

• We all live in the past, because there is nothing else to live in. To live in the present is like proposing to sit on a pin. It is too minute, it is too slight a support, it is too uncomfortable a posture, and it is of necessity followed immediately by totally different experiences, analogous to those of jumping up with a yell.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Past, Different Experiences, Jumping

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• The great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Saint, Looks, May

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• The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Fashion, Months, Bears

  "All Things Considered". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1908.

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• The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Political, Politics, Poverty

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.236, Simon and Schuster

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• Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Daylight, Normal

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• You have not wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  War, Men, World

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.231, Simon and Schuster

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• If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Beautiful, Hope, Stars

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• There are two kinds of people in the world, the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Two, People, World

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• It was not the house that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it. My wife was better than all women, and yet I could not feel it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wife, House, Dull

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.382, Simon and Schuster

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• I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Stories, Firsts, Felt

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.44, Simon and Schuster

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• Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sweet, Children, Grateful

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.39, Simon and Schuster

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• Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Powerful, Passion, Men

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• A man will not roll in the snow for a stream of tendency by which all things fulfill the law of their being. He will not go without food in the name of something, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness. He will do things like this, or pretty nearly like this, under quite a different impulse. He will do these things when he is in love.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Faith, Inspiration, Men

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• Men rush toward complexity; but yearn for simplicity.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Simplicity, Complexity

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• If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Crush, Men, Understanding

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• Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper than reality.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Reality, Things In Life, Romance

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• None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  People, Progress, Machines

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• A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Citizens, Economic, Fine

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• Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Fighting, Past, Asceticism

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• Circumstances break men's bones; it has never been shown that they break men's optimism.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Optimism, Bones

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• Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Son, Men, Boys

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• Christianity met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Philosophical, Romance, Stories

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• We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one's life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Adventure, Encounters, Flags

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• There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. Men do not quarrel about the meaning of sunsets; they never dispute that the hawthorn says the best and wittiest thing about the spring.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Spring, Sunset, Eye

  "The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

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• Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Reputation, Virtue

  "The Innocence of Father Brown". Book by G. K. Chesterton, The Sins of Prince Saradine, 1911.

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