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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 27

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The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.

The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Heaven, Atheism, Nihilism
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.106, Simon and Schuster

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.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Selfish, Confused, Cities

Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Love, Hate, Men

There is only one thing that stands in our midst, attenuated and threatened, but enthroned in some power like a ghost of the Middle Ages: the Trade Unions.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Age, Unions, Ghost

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when Joy is the fundamental thing in him, and Grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive state of mind; Praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; Joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live? Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christian, Grief, Holiday
"Orthodoxy". Book by G. K. Chesterton, Chapter VIII. "The Romances of Orthodoxy", 1908.

The grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel story is like the power of mill-stones, and those who can read them simply enough will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Rocks, Stories, Stones

Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these?

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Criticism, Use

Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Country, Nature, Men

A tragedy means always a mans struggle with that which is stronger than man.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Struggle, Mean, Men

Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Funny, Humorous, Men
Tremendous Trifles "The Twelve Men" (1909)

What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Law, People, Community
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.146, Simon and Schuster

The highest and noblest thing that history can be is a good story.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Stories, Good Story, Highest

If the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Alive, World

I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Way, Facts, Fairy Tale
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.35, Simon and Schuster

All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Tired, Men, Water

We are like the penny, because we have the image of the king stamped on us, the divine king.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Kings, Pennies, Divine

The Church is a house with a hundred gates: and no two men enter at exactly the same angle

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Two, House

A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Sorry, Apology, Men

Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Absurd, Absurdity
"All Things Considered". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1908.

. . . For friendship implies individuality; whereas comradeship really implies the temporary subordination, if not the temporary swamping of individuality. Friends are the better for being two; but comrades are the better for being two million.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Friendship, Two, Individuality

A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man - the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Views, Ignorant
"The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fashion, Literature, Fame

There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Courage, Morning, Flower
"What's Wrong With the World". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1910.

Very few people in the world would care to listen to the real defense of their own characters. The real defense, the defense which belongs to the Day of Judgment, would make such damaging admissions, would clear away so many artificial virtues, would tell such tragedies of weakness and failure, that a man would sooner be misunderstood and censured by the world than exposed to that awful and merciless eulogy.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, Character, Men

Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
House, Bed, Void

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