Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 6

• I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Character, People

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• I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, Found, Preaching

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• Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Love, Mean, Humility

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• Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Player, Mad, Imagination

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.10, Simon and Schuster

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• One must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Love, World, Way

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

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• It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Funny, Math, Statistics

  Scandal of Father Brown (1935) "Point of a Pin"

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• Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wisdom, Fun, Ignorance

  "The Speaker", December 15, 1900.

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• To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Funny, Money, Clever

  Wisdom of Father Brown (1914) "Paradise of Thieves"

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• [No society can survive the socialist] fallacy that there is an absolutely unlimited number of inspired officials and an absolutely unlimited amount of money to pay them.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Numbers, Political, Pay

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• At the back of our brains is a blaze of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Spiritual, Art, Brain

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• It is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Arguing, Apologetic

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• I never said a word against eminent men of science. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly nasty one. When people talked about the fall of man, they knew they were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn't understand. Now they talk about the survival of the fittest: they think they do understand it, whereas they have not merely no notion, they have an elaborately false notion of what the words mean.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Philosophy, Fall, Mean

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• Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Government, Political

  New York Times 1 Feb. 1931, pt. 5, p. 1

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• The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Humanity, Truth Is

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• The Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Long, God Love, One Love

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• When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, Men, Believe In God

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• As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War—they might as well say that the Ark was discredited by the Flood. When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right. The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, War, Views

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• Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Summer, Beer, Men

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• A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Great Men, Knows

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• The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God's paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle - and not lose it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Fighting, Battle, Glimpse

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• Stick to the man who looks out of the window and tries to understand the world. Keep clear of the man who looks in at the window and tries to understand you.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Trying, Looks

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.416, Simon and Schuster

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• Gratitude produced the most purely joyful moments that have been known to man.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Gratitude, Men, Joyful

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• Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Silence, Modern, Tyranny

  Illustrated London News, 10 Oct. 1908

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• The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Catholic, Reason, Explaining

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• The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Rights, Independence

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