Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 25

• Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Winning, Evil, Age

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• I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Perspective, Pessimist, Optimist

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.48, Simon and Schuster

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• By all men bond to Nothing, Being slaves without a lord, By one blind idiot world obeyed, Too blind to be abhorred.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, World, Idiot

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• The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of love in following the single woman; the poetry of religion in worshipping the single star.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Stars, Tree

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• Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Voice, Christ, Weak

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.31, Simon and Schuster

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• A great classic means a man whom one can praise without having read.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Men, Classic

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• ...I will praise the English climate till I die—even if I die of the English climate. There is no weather so good as English weather. Nay, in a real sense there is no weather at all anywhere but in England. In France you have much sun and some rain; in Italy you have hot winds and cold winds; in Scotland and Ireland you have rain, either thick or thin; in America you have hells of heat and cold, and in the Tropics you have sunstrokes varied by thunderbolts. But all these you have on a broad and brutal scale, and you settle down into contentment or despair.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Rain, America

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• Leisure is being allowed to do nothing.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Leisure

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• Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Keys, Bangs, Enough

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• The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Light, Looks, One Thing

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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• Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Bed, Dawn, Nuisance

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• The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Plato, Believe, Men

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.117, Simon and Schuster

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• Science is the study of the admitted laws of existence, which cannot prove a universal negative about whether those laws could ever be suspended by something admittedly above them. It is as if we were to say that a lawyer was so deeply learned in the American Constitution that he knew there could never be a revolution in America.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Science, Law, America

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• Against a dark sky, all flowers look like fireworks.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Flower, Dark, Sky

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• The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Imagination, Quality

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• There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Truth, Honesty, Men

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• We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, World, Opera

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• I would rather a boy learnt in the roughest school the courage to hit a politician, or gained in the hardest school the learning to refute him - rather than that he should gain in the most enlightened school the cunning to copy him.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Courage, School, Boys

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• It is not greedy to enjoy a good dinner, any more than it is to enjoy a good concert. But I do think there is something greedy about trying to enjoy the dinner and the concert at the same time.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Thinking, Greed, Trying

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• It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke - that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Faith, Stars, Real

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

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• The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Italian, Men

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• When people impute special vices to the Christian Church, they seem entirely to forget that the world (which is the only other thing there is) has these vices much more. The Church has been cruel; but the world has been much more cruel. The Church has plotted; but the world has plotted much more. The Church has been superstitious; but it has never been so superstitious as the world is when left to itself.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, People, Special

  "The Illustrated London News" Magazine, December 14, 1907.

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• To be simple is the best thing in the world; to be modest is the next best thing. I am not sure about being quiet.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Simple, Simplicity, World

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• Nine times out of ten it is the coarse word that condemns an evil, and the refined word that excuses it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Evil, Nine, Excuse

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• A good civilisation spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilisation stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella-artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Civilization, Tree, Alive

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