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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 17

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As an explanation of the world materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of a madman's arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.

As an explanation of the world materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of a madman's arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Simplicity, Leaving, Insane
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Military, Believe, Army
Orthodoxy (1908) ch. 2

Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front--

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Clouds, Tree, Secret
"The Man Who Was Thursday". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Ch. XIV : The Six Philosophers, 1908.

A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Wise, Wisdom, Artist
Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

Only men to whom the family is sacred will ever have a standard or a status by which to criticize the State. They alone can appeal to something more holy than the gods of the city.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Family, Men, Cities

But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Independent, Men, Convince Us
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.316, Simon and Schuster

No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Hurt, Pain, Cities

The scientific facts, which were supposed to contradict the faith in the nineteenth century, are nearly all of them regarded as unscientific fictions in the twentieth century.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fiction, Facts, Century

No sane person, I hope, would accuse me of saying that every Distributist must drink beer; especially if he could brew his own cider or found claret better for his health. But I do most emphatically scorn and scout the vulgar refinement that regards beer as something unseemly and humiliating. And I would shout the name of beer a hundred times a day, to shock all the snobs who have so shameful a sense of shame.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Beer, Names, Cider

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
Dream, Men, People

A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Lost Everything, Reason, Lost

The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Baby, Children, Lying
"The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

People talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Beautiful, People, May
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.287, Simon and Schuster

I will go forth as a real outlaw," he said, "and as men do robbery on the highway I will do right on the highway; and it will be counted a wilder crime.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, Men, Crime

The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Faith, Inspiration, Simple

Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Truth, Fiction, Suits
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.145, Simon and Schuster

Teach to the young, men's enduring truths, and let the learned amuse themselves with their passing errors.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Errors, Passing

Pride juggles with her toppling towers, They strike the sun and cease, But the firm feet of humility They grip the ground like trees.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Humility, Pride, Feet
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “The Ballad Of The White Horse”

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Buddhism, Doubt, Literature

Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry god — and always like a god.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Book, Hair, Hands
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.110, Simon and Schuster

A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art. ... The first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Triumph, Lines
"Utopia of Usurers". p. 6. Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1917.

And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Judging, Mind, Might
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.64, Simon and Schuster

London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Paris, London, Riddle

Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Benefits, Morality, Rich

The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Ordinary, Normal
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.120, Simon and Schuster

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