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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 28

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Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire

Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Teaching, Wine, Beer

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Inspirational, New Year, Eye

It has been left to the last Christians, or rather to the first Christians fully committed to blaspheming and denying Christianity, to invent a new kind of worship of Sex, which is not even a worship of Life. It has been left to the very latest Modernists to proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility . . . The new priests abolish the fatherhood and keep the feast - to themselves.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christian, Sex, Erotic

The Catholic Church is like a thick steak, a glass of red wine, and a good cigar.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Wine, Glasses, Catholic

A great man is not a man so strong that he feels less than other men; he is a man so strong that he feels more.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Strong, Men, Great Men
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.157, Simon and Schuster

Of all modern notions, the worst is this: that domesticity is dull. Inside the home, they say, is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and variety. But the truth is that the home is the only place of liberty, the only spot on earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly, make an experiment or indulge in a whim. The home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure; it is the one wild place in a world of rules and set tasks.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Home, Adventure, Men

Comradeship is quite a different thing from friendship. . .

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Friendship, Different, Different Things

Marxism: The theory that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive, that history is a science, a science of the search for food.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Food, Science, Important

If the barricades went up in our streets and the poor became masters, I think the priests would escape, I fear the gentlemen would; but I believe the gutters would simply be running with the blood of philanthropists.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Running, Fear, Believe

It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the long Vision we call life... "It is good for us to be here - it is good for us to be here", repeating itself eternally.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Faith, Inspiration, Long

Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Book, Written

The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever afterwards; and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Wise, Silly, Princess

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christian, Joy, Secret
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.121, Simon and Schuster

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Book, Reading, Hero
1905 Heretics, ch.15.

The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Miracle, Doctrine, Accepting
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.113, Simon and Schuster

If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fall, Tired, Sleep
"The Everlasting Man". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1925.

Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christmas, Beautiful, Home

...but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, Healing, Evil
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.103, Simon and Schuster

There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only instinct I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as the sin of avarice.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
People, Doe, Honest

It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fashion, Culture, Exile

Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Civilization, Medicine

Contemporary society has become dry, not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Integrity, Dry, Wonder

History is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced

Gilbert K. Chesterton
History, Slides

We are learning to do a great many clever things. The next great task will be to learn not to do them.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Clever, Tasks, Next

[A pacifist is] the last and least excusable on the list of the enemies of society.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Enemy, Lasts, Lists

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