Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 46

• Honour is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-porters.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Luxury, Honor, Halls

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.190, Simon and Schuster

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• I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dust, Sea, Humanity

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

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• He who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Mythology, Myth

  "The Everlasting Man". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Part I: On the Creature Called Man, 1925.

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• Marriage is a sort of poetical see-saw.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Saws

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.285, Simon and Schuster

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• The philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, but its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Running, Spiritual, Philosophy

  "The Club of Queer Trades". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1905.

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• Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Broken, Done

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

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• If a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Jesus, Men, World

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

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• Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Political, Speech, Political Speeches

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

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• Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Religious, Philosophy, Philosophical

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.242, Simon and Schuster

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• You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Law, Stripes, May

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

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• There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Baby, Stars, Children

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

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• The new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Independent, Community, Tolerate

  "Utopia of Usurers". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, pp. 33-34, 1917.

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• Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is: what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problems of the modern novel is: what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Hero, Book, Mean

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• The reason that angels fly is that they take themselves so lightly.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Angel, Reason

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• Physical science is like simple addition: it is either infallible or it is false.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Simple, Infallible, Physical Science

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• If the apple hit Newton’s nose, Newton’s nose hit the apple.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Apples, Noses, Newton

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.36, Simon and Schuster

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• Christian Science … is the direct denial both of science and of Christianity, for Science rests wholly on the recognition of truth and Christianity on the recognition of pain.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Truth, Pain

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• The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men no having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Men, Expression

  1905 Heretics, ch.17.

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• It is a mathematical fact that if a line be not perfectly directed towards a point, it will actually go further away from it as it comes nearer to it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Lines, Facts, Mathematical

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• The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, People, House

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

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• Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are - of immeasurable stature.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Humility, Size

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

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• Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Games, Dignity

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• It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness would do the work of unselfishness.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Passion, Selfishness, Doctrine

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• Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  News, Enough

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• The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate modern thinkers, and the second in which he desires to watch them exterminating each other. ... Suppose, for instance, there is an old story and a new skeptic who is skeptical of the story. We have only to wait a little while for a yet newer skeptic who is skeptical of the skeptic. He will probably find the old notion actually a help in his new notion. This process is an abstract truth applying to anything, apart from agreement or disagreement.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Truth, Men, Thinking

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