Chesterton Catholic Quotes & Sayings

Those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. — G.K. Chesterton

I will have the children read Hamlet as soon as it is practical. There are some useful cautions against eavesdropping to be gleaned from that. — Maryrose Wood

I have played some very kind and loving character. I don't know why I'm so good at playing bad. I really don't. — Taryn Manning

But pure wit is akin to Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very briefly, the man who sees the consistency in things is a wit - and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist - and a Catholic. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

When a newspaper posed the question, "What's Wrong with the World?" the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response: "Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton." That is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of Jesus. — Timothy Keller

Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I'm glad you're quitting the bar."
"You are?"
"Yeah. I've never liked you working there, and I miss you at the weekend."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"Because you seemed happy. It's sort of my life mission to make sure you stay that way," he teased. — Samantha Young

Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes. The Catholic Church has for one of her chief duties that of preventing people from making those old mistakes; from making them over and over again forever, as people always do if they are left to themselves. — G.K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton once said that the family is a cell of resistance to oppression. Unfortunately, this was one point of Catholic theology that the communists agreed with. To undermine Polish culture, communists struck at its heart - the family. Work and school schedules were organized so that parents had minimal contact with each other and with their children. Birth control and abortion were encouraged, state-sponsored sex education was implemented in schools, and apartments were built to accommodate only small families. — Jason Evert

I know I have sex appeal, but I've never felt like an actual sex symbol. Fans sometimes think I am. The majority of them are sweet about it, but occasionally somebody weird becomes totally fixated upon me. — Teena Marie

You have no business to be an unbeliever. You ought to stand for all the things these stupid people call superstitions. Come now, don't you think there's a lot in those old wives' tales about luck and charms and so on, silver bullets included? What do you say about them as a Catholic?'
'I say I'm an agnostic,' replied Father Brown, smiling.
'Nonsense,' said Aylmer impatiently. 'It's your business to believe things.'
'Well, I do believe some things, of course,' conceded Father Brown; 'and therefore, of course, I don't believe other things. — G.K. Chesterton

To become a Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think. — G.K. Chesterton

Now nobody will begin to understand Thomas philosophy, or indeed Catholic philosophy, who does not realize that the primary and fundamental part of it is entirely the praise of Life, the praise of Being, the praise of God as the creator of the world. — G.K. Chesterton

You start reading C.S. Lewis, then you're reading G.K. Chesterton, then you're a Catholic. — Ross Douthat

A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The modern mind will accept nothing on authority, but will accept anything on no authority. Say that the Bible or the Pope says so and it will be dismissed without further examination. But preface your remark with "I think I heard somewhere," or, try but fail to remember the name of some professor who might have said "such-and-such," and it will be immediately accepted as an unshakable fact. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

But the truth is that there is no more conscious inconsistency between the humility of a Christian and the rapacity of a Christian than there is between the humility of a lover and the rapacity of a lover. The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy. There never was a man in love who did not declare that, if he strained every nerve to breaking, he was going to have his desire. And there never was a man in love who did not declare also that he ought not to have it. — G.K. Chesterton

It's a feeling, followed by a choice made in the face of chaos and uncertainty: I don't know where this road will take me, but I want you by my side on the journey. — Melanie Harlow

That is, I fancy, the true doctrine on the subject of Tales of Terror and such things, which unless a man of letters do well and truly believe, without doubt he will end by blowing his brains out or by writing badly. Man, the central pillar of the world must be upright and straight; around him all the trees and beasts and elements and devils may crook and curl like smoke if they choose. All really imaginative literature is only the contrast between the weird curves of Nature and the straightness of the soul. — G.K. Chesterton

Plato in some sense anticipated the Catholic realism, as attacked by the heretical nominalism, by insisting on the equally fundamental fact that ideas are realities; that ideas exist just as men exist. Plato however seemed sometimes almost to fancy that ideas exist as men do not exist; or that the men need hardly be considered where they conflict with the ideas. — G.K. Chesterton

The Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God. — G.K. Chesterton

The Catholic Church is like a thick steak, a glass of red wine, and a good cigar. — G.K. Chesterton

The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age — G.K. Chesterton

The moment we care for anything deeply, the world - that is, all the other miscellaneous interests - becomes our enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one's self "unspotted from the world;" but lovers talk of it just as much when they talk of the "world well lost." Astronomically speaking, I understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I suppose that the Church was a part of the world, and even the lovers inhabitants of that orb. But they all felt a certain truth - the truth that the moment you love anything the world becomes your foe. — G.K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (that fabulously large Catholic writer) overheard someone making fun of Milton (it didn't matter that the insults were all true). — N.D. Wilson

The Roman Catholic Church has the unique power of keeping remote control over human souls which have once been part of her. G.K. Chesterton has compared this to the fisherman's line, which allows the fish the illusion of free play in the water and yet has him by the hook; in his own time the fisherman by a 'twitch upon the thread' draws the fish to land. — Evelyn Waugh

Have they [the agnostics] produced in their universality anything grander or more beautiful than the things uttered by the fierce Ghibbeline Catholic, by the rigid Puritan schoolmaster? We know that they have produced only a few roundels. Milton does not merely beat them at his piety, he beats them at their own irreverence. In all their little books of verse you will not find a finer defiance of God than Satan's. Nor will you find the grandeur of paganism felt as that fiery Christian felt it who described Faranata lifting his head as in disdain of hell. — G.K. Chesterton

An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong. — G.K. Chesterton

Such a pity that he [GK Chesterton] became a Catholic. — Jorge Luis Borges

You can always have the life you want, dare to create it. — Lailah Gifty Akita

There were two Irishmen eating sandwiches in a pub and the landlord said: "You can't eat your own food in here." So they swapped sandwiches. — Frank Carson

We are not apart from nature, we are a part of nature. And to betray nature is to betray us, to save nature, is to save us. — Prince Ea

Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will not worship it; but there are some so weak that they will worship a thing only because it is ugly. These must be chained to the beautiful. It is not always wrong even to go, like Dante, to the brink of the lowest promontory and look down at hell. It is when you look up at hell that a serious miscalculation has probably been made. — G.K. Chesterton

I love healthy stuff and junk an equal amount. Whatever I'm craving, I go for it. I'm never trying to lose weight - or gain it. I'm just being. — Kelly Clarkson

The day I arrived in Yakutsk with my colleague Peter Osnos of The Washington Post, it was 46 below. When our plane landed, the door was frozen solidly shut, and it took about half an hour for a powerful hot-air blower- standard equipment at Siberian airports- to break the icy seal. Stepping outside was like stepping onto another planet, for at those low temperatures nothing seems quite normal. The air burns. Sounds are brittle. Every breath hovers in a strangle slow-motion cloud, adding to the mist of ice that pervades the city and blurs the sun. When the breath freezes into ice dust and falls almost silently to the ground, Siberians call it the whisper of stars. — David K. Shipler

I'm a great fan of Chesterton, you know. He once said that he became a Catholic because we're the only religion that sees no contradiction between a pint, a pipe, and a cross. — Michael D. O'Brien

Cathode-ray tubes are the most important items in a television receiver. — John Logie Baird