Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 27

• The Church is a house with a hundred gates: and no two men enter at exactly the same angle

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Two, House

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• The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Philosophical, Men, Criminals

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.171, Simon and Schuster

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• The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Country, Travel, Adventure

  "Does Travel Really Matter Anyway?" by Kim Mance, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 11, 2008.

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• People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  People, Knows

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• The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Cosmos, Literature

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

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• A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Flower, Men, Roots

  "The Evolution of Words and Meanings", The Illustrated London News, July 3, 1920.

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• Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Love, God, Believe

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• Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Uncles, Men, Perfect

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• It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down... Why do we laugh? Because it is a grave religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Funny, Religious, Fall

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

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• The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Aquariums, Literature

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• What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Familiar, Findings

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• But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Division, Earth

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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• But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing toward a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it particularly nasty.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Nice, People, Progress

  "Alarms and Discursions". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1910.

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• if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, World, Ifs

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

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• I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Philosophy, Humanity, Made

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Savages, Literature

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• The wine they drink in Paradise
  They make in Haute Lorraine.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wine, Paradise, Drink

  Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “A Cider Song”

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• The big corporation is not in the least remarkable for efficiency; it is only too big to be blamed for its inefficiency.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Corporations, Efficiency, Bigs

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• A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sorry, Apology, Men

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• Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Absurd, Absurdity

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

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• . . . For friendship implies individuality; whereas comradeship really implies the temporary subordination, if not the temporary swamping of individuality. Friends are the better for being two; but comrades are the better for being two million.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Friendship, Two, Individuality

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• Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Teaching, Wine, Beer

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• There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Courage, Morning, Flower

  "What's Wrong With the World". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1910.

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• Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Health, Men, Views

  "All I Survey". Book by G. K. Chesterton, www.theguardian.com. 1933.

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• The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, New Year, Eye

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