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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 18

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I believe your own accent is inimitable, though I shall practice it in my bath.

I believe your own accent is inimitable, though I shall practice it in my bath.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Believe, Practice, Baths

Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Blessed, Expectations
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

The real pleasure-seeking is the combination of luxury and austerity in such a way that the luxury can really be felt.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Happiness, Real, Pleasure Seeking

Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny and nothing else.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Thinking, Opposites, Serious
Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

Any one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christmas, Summer, Children

Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sight seers.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Sight, Bored, Quality
"Alarms and Discursions". Chapter: "A Romance of the Marshes". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1910.

It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Morality, States, Forbidden

the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a new soul.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Inspiring, New Year, Inspiration

In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own?

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Failure, Civilization, World

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Funny, Respect, Humor
The Man WhoWas Thursday ch. 4 (1908)

I would give a woman not more rights, but more privileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in which she can be free.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Rights, Giving, House

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Happiness, Men, Two

For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Love, Children, Justice
"The Coloured Lands". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1938.

We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Drinking, Beer, Thank God
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.47, Simon and Schuster

It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men - so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two agnostics. "I say God is One," and "I say God is One but also Three," that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Friendship, Men, Two
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.256, Simon and Schuster

"Are you a devil?" "I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart."

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Father, Heart, Men
"The Innocence of Father Brown". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1911.

I never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Suffering, Our Society, Culture

A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mother, Peace, War
"The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton". Vol.I: Non-Fiction,

For good or evil, a line has been passed in our political history; and something that we have known all our lives is dead. I will take only one example of it: our politicians can no longer be caricatured.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Humor, Evil, Political

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Filled Up, Acting, Literature

The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism - the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Night, Men, Race
"Tolstoy". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1903.

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.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Doubt, Enlightenment, Arrogant

'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mother, Country, Patriotic

People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing away the veils from private life; but it seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men and men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after one has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete shock and reversal to meet him in real life.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, Men, Yellow

I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, Thinking, Talking

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