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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 22

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The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still.

The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Simple, Light, Mind
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.354, Simon and Schuster

Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance... thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste... if a man could undertake to make use of all the things in his dustbin, he would be a broader genius than Shakespeare.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Creative, Extravagance

One pleasure attached to growing older is that many things seem to be growing younger; growing fresher and more lively than we once supposed them to be.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Growing, Aging, Pleasure

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.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Effort, Truth Is
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.149, Simon and Schuster

Ingratitude is surely the chief of the intellectual sins of man. He takes his political benefits for granted, just as he takes the skies and the seasons for granted.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Sky, Political

Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mean, Thinking, Connected
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.24, Simon and Schuster

Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Heart, Men, Brain
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.30, Simon and Schuster

The fact is that purification and austerity are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than for anything else. To let no bird fly past unnoticed, to spell the stones and weeds, to have the mind a storehouse of sunset, requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Weed, Gratitude, Appreciation

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
People, Knows

But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing toward a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it particularly nasty.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Nice, People, Progress
"Alarms and Discursions". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1910.

if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, World, Ifs
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

St Thomas (Aqinas) loved books and lived on books... When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, ‘I have understood every page I ever read’.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Book, Pages, St Thomas

I would rather a boy learnt in the roughest school the courage to hit a politician, or gained in the hardest school the learning to refute him - rather than that he should gain in the most enlightened school the cunning to copy him.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Courage, School, Boys

But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Book, Division, Earth
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Mad, May
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.77, Simon and Schuster

I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Philosophy, Humanity, Made
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Truth, Honesty, Men

One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Flower, Ignorance, Knowledge
"Robert Browning". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1903.

For the mass of men the idea of artistic creation can only be expressed by an idea unpopular in present discussions - the idea of property... Property is merely the art of the democracy... One would think, to hear people talk, that the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers were on the side of property. But obviously they are the enemies of property; because they are enemies of their own limitations.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Men, Thinking

If the common man in the past had a grave respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had some of his own.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Wisdom, Men, Past
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.336, Simon and Schuster

If an editor can only make people angry enough, they will write half his newspaper for him for nothing.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Writing, Editors, People
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.169, Simon and Schuster

The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
May, Recurrence, Repetition
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.44, Simon and Schuster

There is nothing so weak, for working purposes, as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Victory, Purpose, Failing
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.129, Simon and Schuster

We are all ordinary people. And it's the extraordinary people Who know it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
People, Ordinary, Knows

One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Thinking, Self, Soul
"Orthodoxy". Book by G. K. Chesterton, Chapter VI. "The Paradoxes of Christianity", 1908.

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