Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 37

• 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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• An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one. The Greek witch may have turned sailors to swine with a stroke of the wand. But to see a naval gentleman of our acquaintance looking a little more like a pig every day, till he ended with four trotters and a curly tail, would not be any more soothing. It might be rather more creepy and uncanny.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, Moving, Men

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• If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Thinking, Devil, Looks

  "The Purple Wig". Book by G. K. Chesterton, November 26, 2012.

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• The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sick, World, Being Sick

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.143, Simon and Schuster

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• of being strong and brave. The strong can not be brave. Only the weak can be brave; and yet again, in practice, only those who can be brave can be trusted, in time of doubt, to be strong.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Strong, Practice

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.156, Simon and Schuster

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• I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Use, Pistols

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• She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Said, Survived

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• Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Opposites, Balance, Christianity

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.70, Simon and Schuster

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• Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Thinking, Talking

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• People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  People, Mad, Religion

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.75, Simon and Schuster

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• He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Suicide, Waiting, Coward

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.69, Simon and Schuster

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• A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Adventure, Men, Dragons

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.149, Simon and Schuster

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• Ten thousand women marched through the streets shouting, 'We will not be dictated to,' and went off and became stenographers.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sex, Shouting, Thousand

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• If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Opposites, Silence, Answers

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.257, Simon and Schuster

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• A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So long as he does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a shape.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Giving Up, Wine, Intelligent

  "The Victorian Age in Literature" by Gilbert K. Chesterton, University of Notre Dame Press, (p. 20), 1963.

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• The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Courage, Community, Soldier

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.139, Simon and Schuster

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• There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Courage, Men, Tablets

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• These are the things which might conceivably and truly make men forgive their enemies. We can only turn hate to love by understanding what are the things that men have loved; nor is it necessary to ask men to hate their loves in order to love one another. Just as two grocers are most likely to be reconciled when they remember for a moment that they are two fathers, so two nationals are most likely to be reconciled when they remember (if only for a moment) that they are two patriots.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Friendship, Father, Hate

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• Because our expression is imperfect we need friendship to fill up the imperfections.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Friendship, Expression, Imperfection

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• The only object of liberty is life.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Liberty, Objects

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• Liberty is the very last idea that seems to occur to anybody, in considering any political or social proposal. It is only necessary for anybody for any reason to allege any evidence of any evil in any human practice, for people instantly to suggest that the practice should be suppressed by the police.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Practice, Ideas, People

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• Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Kings, Men, Ideas

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• Religious unity can look like a carnival and religious liberty can look like a funeral.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Religious, Funeral, Unity

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