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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 31

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Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Health, Men, Views
"All I Survey". Book by G. K. Chesterton, www.theguardian.com. 1933.

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Truth, Mind, Fiction
The Club of Queer Trades "The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent" (1905)

A feminist is someone who loathes being a woman and who dislikes the chief feminine characteristics.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Feminist, Modesty, Being A Woman

The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness of a sick room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy, because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christian, Laughter, Angel

We are talking about an artist; and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Soul, Faces
"The Dagger with Wings". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1926.

We all know that the 'divine glory of the ego' is socially a great nuisance; we all do actually value our friends for modesty, freshness, and simplicity of heart. Whatever may be the reason, we all do warmly respect humility - in other people.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Heart, Humility, People
"The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

Most Americans ... have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Invisible, Champagne, Intoxication

If Christianity should happen to be true - that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe - then defending it may mean talking about anything and everything.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, Mean, Talking

And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, "I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Wine, Water, Wife
Flying Inn (1914) ch. 5 "Wine and Water"

Theology is only thought applied to religion.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Theology

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Reality, Facts, Spirit

Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Looks, Paper, Faces

Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Clever, Men, Rome
"The Napoleon of Notting Hill". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1904.

Stated baldly, charity certainly means one of two things–pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mean, Two, People
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.71, Simon and Schuster

The old assumption of the approximate impossibility of war really rested on a similar assumption about the impossibility of evil-and especially of evil in high places.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
War, Evil, Assumption

La mejor prueba de la cultura y la liberalidad de un hombre es su actitud ante las cosas que nunca sucedieron.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Names, People, Finals
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.235, Simon and Schuster

He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Charity, Pelicans, Admire
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.264, Simon and Schuster

Silence is the unbearable repartee.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Silence, Unbearable, Silence Is

Modern science is necessarily a double-edged tool, a tool that cuts both ways. ... There is no doubt that a Zeppelin is a wonderful thing; but that did not prevent it from becoming a horrible thing.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Cutting, Science, Doubt

Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Sex, Animal, Men

A fad or heresy is the exaltation of something which even if true, is secondary or temporary in its nature against those things which are essential and eternal, those things which always prove themselves true in the long run. In short, it is the setting up of the mood against the mind.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Running, Long, Mind

There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Wise, Essentials, Aristocracy
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.189, Simon and Schuster

All good writers express the state of their souls, even (as occurs in some cases of very good writers) if it is a state of damnation.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Soul, Damnation, States

I do not believe that any human being is fundamentally happier for being finally lost in a crowd, even if it is called a crowd of comrades.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Believe, Crowds, Lost
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2012). “The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton”, p.123, Ignatius Press

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