Chesterton Heresy Quotes & Sayings

A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy. — G.K. Chesterton

Now this is the attitude which I attack. It is the huge heresy of Precedent. It is the view that because we have got into a mess we must grow messier to suit it; that because we have taken a wrong turn some time ago we must go forward and not backwards; that because we have lost our way we must lose our map also; and because we have missed our ideal, we must forget it. — G.K. Chesterton

Kodan: "I had the good sense to win the hand of a woman as smart and kind as she is beautiful. If not more so."
Tava: "You mean you had the wit to blackmail me into following you home, where you promptly stole my heart," she teased.
Kodan: "That, too," he agreed. "But I didn't steal your heart. I merely exchanged it for mine. — Jean Johnson

The moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have the right to punish anybody else. — G.K. Chesterton

The breath of wind that moved them was still chilly on this day in May; the flowers gently resisted, curling up with a kind of trembling grace and turning their pale stamens towards the ground. The sun shone through them, revealing a pattern of interlacing, delicate blue veins, visible through the opaque petals; this added something alive to the flower's fragility, to it's ethereal quality, something almost human ,in the way that human can mean frailty and endurance both at the same time. The wind could ruffle these ravishing creations but it couldn't destroy them, or even crush them; they swayed there, dreamily; they seemed ready to fall but held fast to their slim strong branches- ... — Irene Nemirovsky

Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. — Thomas B. Macaulay

The huge modern heresy is to alter the human soul to fit modern social conditions, instead of altering modern social conditions to fit the human soul. — G.K. Chesterton

Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity. — G.K. Chesterton

It stated that Rome tolerates, in her relation with the Russian Uniats, "strange heresies and even bearded and wedded clergy."
In that one extraordinary phrase, what formless monster begins to take form in their visions? In those eight words it is not too much to say that every term is startling in its inconsequence. As somebody tumbling down the stairs bumps upon every step, the writer comes a crash upon every word. The word "strange" is strange enough. The word "heresy" is stranger. Perhaps at first sight the word "bearded," with its joyous reminiscences of the game of Beaver, may appear the most funny. "Wedded" is also funny. Even the "and" between bearded and wedded is funny. But by far the funniest and most fantastic thing in all that fantastic sentence is the word "even. — G.K. Chesterton

He (the Emperor) once said of ancient Earth that there were torches, who were the teachers, but also extinguishers, who were the priests. — Graham McNeill

Islam was something like a Christian heresy. The early heresies had been full of mad reversals and evasions of the Incarnation, rescuing their Jesus from the reality of his body even at the expense of the sincerity of his soul. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

From the moment I bought my ticket, I had a premonition I wasn't returning to New York anytime soon.
You Know, this happens a lot to Russians. The Soviet Union is gone, and the borders are as free and passable as they've ever been. And yet, when a Russian moves between the two universes, this feeling of finality persists, the logical impossibility of a place like Russia existing alongside the civilized world, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, sharing the same atmosphere with, say, Vladivostok. It was like those mathematical concepts I could never understand in high school: if, then. If Russia exists, then the West is a mirage; conversely, if Russia does not exist, then and only then is the West real and tangible. No wonder young people talk about "going beyond the cordon" when they talk of emigrating, as if Russia were ringed by a vast cordon sanitaire. Either you stay in the leper colony or you get out into the wider world and maybe try to spread your disease to others. — Gary Shteyngart

To do Mohammed justice, his main attack was against the idolatries of Asia. Only he thought, just as the Arians did and just as the Unitarians do, that he could attack them better with a greater approximation to plain theism. What distinguishes his heresy from anything like an Arian or Albigensian heresy is that, as it sprang up on the borders of Christendom, it could spread outwards to a barbaric world. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I just got my signals crossed. First thing, I have to untangle the connections. Otherwise, I come away empty-handed. Or with someone else's hands. Or even with a missing hand. — Haruki Murakami

Foul-ups in testing are not uncommon, especially when the test setup is being tried for the first time. — Henry Spencer

The day Metallica's over, i'm not going to put an ad looking for another band. I'll put my drumsticks on the shelf and there's 14 other things I wanna try. Metallica's the only band I've ever been and it's the only I ever wanna be in. — Lars Ulrich

I did try to found a little heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy. — G.K. Chesterton

Nothing can save us from a perpetual headlong fall into a bottomless abyss but a solid footing of dogma; and we no sooner agree to that than we find that the only trustworthy dogma is that there is no dogma. — George Bernard Shaw

The word 'heresy' not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word 'orthodoxy' not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong. — G.K. Chesterton

I love only one girl, one in every town. — Elvis Presley

A fad or heresy is the exaltation of something which even if true, is secondary or temporary in its nature against those things which are essential and eternal, those things which always prove themselves true in the long run. In short, it is the setting up of the mood against the mind. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship. — E. M. Forster

I stabbed him," Lizzy said bluntly. "That's how he got that scar."
"Why? I'm sorry. That's personal. I shouldn't ask that." She blushed.
"It's okay." Lizzy laid a hand on the woman's arm. "I was mad at a woman for flirting with him and he tried to take the knife away from me. It was an accident."
"I'll be right back with your drinks and appetizer." She turned so fast that she ran into a bus boy with a tray of dirty glasses and he had to do some fancy footwork to keep it all from hitting the floor.
"Lying on Sunday?" Toby chuckled. "The preacher will make you deliver the benediction next week as penance."
-Lizzy, a waitress and Toby — Carolyn Brown

For they (capitalists) hold as their chief heresy, in a coarser form, the fundamental falsehood that things are not made to be used but made to be sold. All the collapse of their commercial system in their own time has been due to that fallacy of forcing things on a market where there was no market; of continually increasing the power of supply without increasing the power of demand; of briefly, of always considering the man who sells the potato and never considering the man who eats it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The real difference between Francis and Dominic, which is no discredit to either of them, is that Dominic did happen to be confronted with a huge campaign for the conversion of heretics, while Francis had only the more subtle task of the conversion of human beings. — G.K. Chesterton

The day before yesterday always has been a glamour day. The present is sordid and prosaic. Time colors history as it does a meerschaum pipe. — Vincent Starrett

I checked out the wine. Screw cap. The greatest invention since fire. — Janet Evanovich

Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church. — Gilbert K. Chesterton