Quotes & Sayings About Chesterton
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Top Chesterton Quotes
What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
What are blue-stockings?' asked Tommy.
Naturally you don't know,' replied the other. 'If you did, you would sympathize more with Bluebeard. They were ladies who were always reading books. They even read them aloud. — G.K. Chesterton
Aristotle had described the magnanimous man, who is great and knows that he is great. But Aristotle would never have recovered his own greatness, but for the miracle that created the more magnanimous man; who is great and knows that he is small. — G.K. Chesterton
People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air. — G.K. Chesterton
One definition occurred to both of them - that he had come out into the light of that lucid and radiant ignorance in which all beliefs had begun. The sky above them was full of mythology. Heaven seemed deep enough to hold all the gods. — G.K. Chesterton
The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that it's never been tried ... not that it can't remake the world, but that it's difficult. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Go on," said the priest very gently. "We are only trying to find the truth. What are you afraid of?" "I am afraid of finding it," said Flambeau. — G.K. Chesterton
The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose; and the text of Scripture which he now most commonly quotes is, "The Kingdom of heaven is within you." That text has been the stay and support of more Pharisees and prigs and self-righteous spiritual bullies than all the dogmas in creation; it has served to identify self-satisfaction with the peace that passes all understanding. And the text to be quoted in answer to it is that which declares that no man can receive the kingdom except as a little child. What we are to have inside is a childlike spirit; but the childlike spirit is not entirely concerned about what is inside. It is the first mark of possessing it that one is interested in what is outside. The most childlike thing about a child is his curiosity and his appetite and his power of wonder at the world. We might almost say that the whole advantage of having the kingdom within is that we look for it somewhere else. — G.K. Chesterton
Men spoke much in my boyhood about restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it's a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully interferes. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all." There — G.K. Chesterton
Strike a glass and it will not endure an instant. Simply do not strike it and it will endure a thousand years. — G.K. Chesterton
You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. — G.K. Chesterton
A tragedy means always a mans struggle with that which is stronger than man. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep. — G.K. Chesterton
Modern man is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. — G.K. Chesterton
Your offer," he said, "is far too idiotic to be declined. — G.K. Chesterton
Unless we are all mad, there is at the back of the most bewildering business a story: and if we are all mad, there is no such thing as madness. If I set a house on fire, it is quite true that I may illuminate many other people's weaknesses as well as my own. It may be that the master of the house was burned because he was drunk; it may be that the mistress of the house was burned because she was stingy, and perished arguing about the expense of the fire-escape. It is, nevertheless, broadly true that they both were burned because I set fire to their house. — G.K. Chesterton
Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories - first carefully turning them inside out. — G.K. Chesterton
We are all revenants; all living Christians are dead pagans walking about. — G.K. Chesterton
The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That is, it was founded on a faith that was not merely summed up after it had exited, but was defined before it existed. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Father, you know us in secret, and you know all our secret places.
What we do to benefit your kingdom will not be lost if it is not seen by others,
for you see and you reward according to your grace and mercy.
Strengthen us to do good works, visibly or invisibly, always in your name. — G.K. Chesterton
Syme felt moved to spring up and leap over the balcony. When the President's eyes were on him he felt as if he were made of glass. He had hardly the shred of a doubt that in some silent and extraordinary way Sunday had found out that he was a spy. He looked over the edge of the balcony, and saw a policeman, standing abstractedly just beneath, staring at the bright railings and the sunlit trees. — G.K. Chesterton
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong. — G.K. Chesterton
If you want to know what you are, you are a set of highly well-intentioned young jackasses. — G.K. Chesterton
The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons, but children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed. — G.K. Chesterton
The great intellectual tradition that comes down to us from the past was never interrupted or lost through such trifles as the sack of Rome, the triumph of Attila, or all the barbarian invasions of the Dark Ages. It was lost after the introduction of printing, the discovery of America, the founding of the Royal Society, and all the enlightenment of the Renaissance and the modern world. It was there, if anywhere, that there was lost or impatiently snapped the long thin delicate thread that had descended from distant antiquity; the thread of that unusual human hobby: the habit of thinking. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
We are too fond nowadays of committing the sin of fear and calling it the virtue of reverence. — G.K. Chesterton
Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The danger of loss of faith in God is not that one will believe in nothing, but rather that one will believe in anything. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why. — G.K. Chesterton
One of my heroes, G.K. Chesterton, said, "The old fairy tales endure forever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal." Discovering that the modern world can still contain the wonder and strangeness of a fairy tale is part of what my novels are about. — Regina Doman
It is ludicrous to suppose that the more sceptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything. — G.K. Chesterton
The whole point of the Eugenic pseudo-scientific theories is that they are to be applied wholesale, by some more sweeping and generalizing money power than the individual husband or wife or household. Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's. — G.K. Chesterton
The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents. — G.K. Chesterton
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. — G.K. Chesterton
Art is the signature of man. — G.K. Chesterton
That which is large enough for the rich to covet," said Wayne, drawing up his head, "is large enough for the poor to defend. — G.K. Chesterton
"vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a ditch is a new school of architecture. — G.K. Chesterton
There is nothing which is so weak for working purposes as the enormous importance attached to immediate victory. — G.K. Chesterton
If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God. — G.K. Chesterton
The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. it is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. — G.K. Chesterton
The modern city is ugly not because it is a city but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfish and materialistic energies. — G.K. Chesterton
When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character. — G.K. Chesterton
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
But it's my reading of human nature that a man will cheat in his trade, but not in his hobby. — G.K. Chesterton
Cosmopolitanism gives us one country, and it is good; nationalism gives us a hundred countries, and every one of them is the best. Cosmopolitanism offers a positive, patriotism a chorus of superlatives. Patriotism begins the praise of the world at the nearest thing, instead of beginning it at the most distant, and thus it insures what is, perhaps, the most essential of all earthly considerations, that nothing upon earth shall go without its due appreciation. Wherever there is a strangely-shaped mountain upon some lonely island, wherever there is a nameless kind of fruit growing in some obscure forest, patriotism insures that this shall not go into darkness without being remembered in a song. — G.K. Chesterton
It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God has never got tired of making them ... The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. — G.K. Chesterton
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or 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. — G.K. Chesterton
It is the fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind. There have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seems to us at once sublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our forefathers. — G.K. Chesterton
In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting , to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself. — G.K. Chesterton
Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street. — G.K. Chesterton
When there aren't enough hats to go around the problem isn't solved by lopping off some heads. — G.K. Chesterton
There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: "the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach." It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach. — G.K. Chesterton
Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
America has a new delicacy, a coarse, rank refinement. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote. — G.K. Chesterton
Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. — G.K. Chesterton
His principle can be quite simply stated: he refuses to die while he is still alive. He seeks to remind himself, by every electric shock to the intellect, that he is still a man alive, walking on two legs about the world. For this reason he fires bullets at his best friends; for this reason he arranges ladders and collapsible chimneys to steal his own property; for this reason he goes plodding around a whole planet to get back to his own home; and for this reason he has been in the habit of taking the woman whom he loved with a permanent loyalty, and leaving her about (so to speak) at schools, boarding-houses, and places of business, so that he might recover her again and again with a raid and a romantic elopement. He seriously sought by a perpetual recapture of his bride to keep alive the sense of her perpetual value, and the perils that should be run for her sake. — G.K. Chesterton
It is human to err; and the only final and deadly error, among all our errors, is denying that we have ever erred. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
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
Reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of all things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is really the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God Himself is bound by reason. — G.K. Chesterton
Unless a man is in part a humorist, he is only in part a man. — G.K. Chesterton
Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist. — G.K. Chesterton
The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Students of popular science ... are always insisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism. This is generally believed, and I believed it myself until I read a book giving the reasons for it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
There was one special thing you promised me at the beginning of the affair, and which you have certainly given me by the end of it."
"What do you mean?" cried the chaotic Gregory. "What did I promise you?"
"A very entertaining evening," said Syme, and he made a military salute with his sword-stick as the steamboart slid away. — G.K. Chesterton
Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority. — G.K. Chesterton
The devil takes us to the top of an exceeding high mountain and makes us dizzy; but God lets us look at the mountain. — G.K. Chesterton
A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always sane; and all fashions are mild insanities. When Italy is mad on art the Church seems too Puritanical; when England is mad on Puritanism the Church seems too artistic. When you quarrel with us now you class us with kingship and despotism; but when you quarrelled with us first it was because we would not accept the divine despotism of Henry VIII. The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer. It keeps the key of a permanent virtue. — G.K. Chesterton
Before the gods that made the gods had seen their sunrise pass, the white horse of the white horse vale was cut out of the grass — G.K. Chesterton
I mean,' he said with increasing vehemence, 'that if there be a house for me in heaven it will either have a green lamp-post and a hedge, or something quite as positive and personal as a green lamp-post and a hedge. I mean that God bade me love one spot and serve it, and do all things however wild in praise of it, so that this one spot might be a witness against all the infinities and the sophistries, that Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything. And I would not be so very much surprised if the house in heaven had a real green lamp-post after all. — G.K. Chesterton
The most valuable book we can read, about countries we have visited, is that which recalls to us something that we did notice, but did not notice that we noticed. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything. — G.K. Chesterton
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. — G.K. Chesterton
The modern instinct is that if the heart of man is evil, there is nothing that remains good. But the older feeling was that if the heart of man was ever so evil, there was something that remained good
goodness remained good. — G.K. Chesterton
We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders. — G.K. Chesterton
The Fear of the Lord, that is the beginning of wisdom, and therefore belongs to the beginnings, and is felt in the first cold hours before the dawn of civilisation; the power that comes out of the wilderness and rides on the whirlwind and breaks the gods of stone; the power before which the eastern nations are prostrate like a pavement; the power before which the primitive prophets run naked and shouting, at once proclaiming and escaping from their god; the fear that is rightly rooted in the beginnings of every religion, true or false: the fear of the Lord, that is the beginning of wisdom; but not the end. — G.K. Chesterton
All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
it reminded me that there was in the world of to-day that utterly idiotic thing, a worship of success; a thing that only means surpassing anybody in anything; a thing that may mean being the most successful person in running away from a battle; a thing that may mean being the most successfully sleepy of the whole row of sleeping men. — G.K. Chesterton
Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts. — G.K. Chesterton
It was his home now. But it could not be his home till he had gone from it and returned to it. Now he was the Prodigal Son. — G.K. Chesterton
Even in an empire of atheists the dead man is always sacred. — G.K. Chesterton
Cheerfulness without humour is a very trying thing. — G.K. Chesterton
Somehow one must love the world without being worldly. — G.K. Chesterton