Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 35

• Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Tragedy, Deuces, Comic

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.209, Simon and Schuster

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• When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Love, Beautiful, Two

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• In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture and criticism might very well be summed up as the men who smile criticizing the men who laugh.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Laughing, Criticism

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• Indeed the Book of Job avowedly only answers mystery with mystery. Job is comforted with riddles; but he is comforted. Herein is indeed a type, in the sense of a prophecy, of things speaking with authority. For when he who doubts can only say, ‘I do not understand,’ it is true that he who knows can only reply or repeat ‘You do not understand.’ And under that rebuke there is always a sudden hope in the heart; and the sense of something that would be worth understanding.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Jobs, Book, Heart

  "The Everlasting Man". Book by G. K. Chesterton, IV: God and Comparative Religion, 1925.

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• Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Brain, Anything Goes, Movement

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• Gluttony is a great fault; but we do not necessarily dislike a glutton. We only dislike the glutton when he becomes a gourmet-that is, we only dislike him when he not only wants the best for himself, but knows what is best for other people.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Food, People, Want

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• We cannot fling ourselves into the blank future; we can only call up images from the past. This being so, the important principle follows, that how many images we have largely depends on how much past we have.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Past, Important, Principles

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• Christianity, whatever else it is, is an explosion. Unless it is sensational there is simply no sense in it. Unless the Gospel sounds like a gun going off it has not been uttered at all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Gun, Sound, Christianity

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• It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Spiritual, Eye, Men

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

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• Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Life, Lying, Waiting

  "Orthodoxy". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Chapter VI : The Paradoxes of Christianity, 1908.

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• The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Devil, Saint

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

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• Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Progress Of Society, Progress, Cult

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.135, Simon and Schuster

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• I defy anybody to say what are the rights of a citizen, if they do not include the control of his own diet in relation to his own health.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Rights, Citizens, Relation

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• Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Love, Beautiful, Music Love

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• A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Angel, Turkeys

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• We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Mean, Common Sense

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

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• At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith has to all appearance, gone to the dogs? But, in each of these five cases, it was the dog that died.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Faith, Christian, Dog

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• Nobody notices postmen, yet they have passions like other men.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Passion, Men, Postman

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• What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, People, Literature

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• When you with velvets mantled o'er, Defy December's tempests frore, Oh! spare one garment from your store, To clothe the poor at Christmas.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christmas, Velvet, December

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• Saint George he was for England, And before he killed the dragon he drank a pint of English ale out of an English flagon.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Beer, Dragons, Saint George

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2012). “L'osteria volante”, p.116, Bompiani

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• Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Reason, Lost, Realism

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• somehow one must love the world without being worldly.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  World, Worldly

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

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• When the chord of monotony is stretched to its tightest, it breaks with the sound of a song.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Song, Sound, Break

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• There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical...It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry...the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sea, Sick, Foundation

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.146, Simon and Schuster

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