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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 24

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Circumstances break men's bones; it has never been shown that they break men's optimism.

Circumstances break men's bones; it has never been shown that they break men's optimism.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Optimism, Bones

Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Player, Mad, Chess
Orthodoxy ch. 2 (1908)

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Crush, Men, Understanding

Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Savages, Literature

We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one's life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Adventure, Encounters, Flags

Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Son, Men, Boys

Christianity met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Philosophical, Romance, Stories

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Puritan, Righteous, Persons
The New York Times, November 21, 1930.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Freedom, Democracies Have, Order
"Tremendous Trifles" by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Ch. 12, (p. 63), 1955.

It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Healthy, Jam, Sentimental

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
God, Wine, Mean
"Tremendous Trifles. Secret of a Train". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1909.

Life is serious all the time, but living cannot be. You may have all the solemnity you wish in your neckties, but in anything important (such as sex, death, and religion), you must have mirth or you will have madness.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Sex, Wish, Important

There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. Men do not quarrel about the meaning of sunsets; they never dispute that the hawthorn says the best and wittiest thing about the spring.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Spring, Sunset, Eye
"The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Reputation, Virtue
"The Innocence of Father Brown". Book by G. K. Chesterton, The Sins of Prince Saradine, 1911.

Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Winning, Evil, Age

By all men bond to Nothing, Being slaves without a lord, By one blind idiot world obeyed, Too blind to be abhorred.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, World, Idiot

A great classic means a man whom one can praise without having read.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mean, Men, Classic

The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of love in following the single woman; the poetry of religion in worshipping the single star.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Stars, Tree

...I will praise the English climate till I die—even if I die of the English climate. There is no weather so good as English weather. Nay, in a real sense there is no weather at all anywhere but in England. In France you have much sun and some rain; in Italy you have hot winds and cold winds; in Scotland and Ireland you have rain, either thick or thin; in America you have hells of heat and cold, and in the Tropics you have sunstrokes varied by thunderbolts. But all these you have on a broad and brutal scale, and you settle down into contentment or despair.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, Rain, America

Leisure is being allowed to do nothing.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Leisure

Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Voice, Christ, Weak
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.31, Simon and Schuster

One of the chief uses of religion is that it makes us remember our coming from darkness, the simple fact that we are created.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Simple, Darkness, Facts

The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Light, Looks, One Thing
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Bed, Dawn, Nuisance

The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Plato, Believe, Men
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.117, Simon and Schuster

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