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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 32

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It is often a mistake to combine two pleasures, because pleasures, like pains, can act as counter-irri-tants to each other.

It is often a mistake to combine two pleasures, because pleasures, like pains, can act as counter-irri-tants to each other.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Pain, Mistake, Two

The determining bulk of Scotch people had heard of golf ever since they had heard of God and often considered the two as of equal importance.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Golf, Scotch, Two

The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Slang, Streams
"The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil's walking parody On all four-footed things.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Moon, Blood, Wings
1900 'The Donkey'.

Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of the opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Book, Opposites, Church

Youth is always too serious, and just now it is too serious about frivolity.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Serious, Youth, Frivolity

A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mistake, Men, Inferiority
"Charles Dickens: A Critical Study". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1906.

People that insist upon drinking and driving, are putting the quart before the hearse.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Drinking, People, Driving

Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Morning, Night, Up Early
"Tremendous trifles". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1909.

Being 'contented' ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Moving, Mean, Appreciate

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Heaven, Splits, Orthodoxy
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

The men of the East may spell the stars, And times and triumphs mark, But the men signed of the cross of Christ Go gaily in the dark.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Stars, Dark, Men
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “The Ballad Of The White Horse”

It never occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great personality. . . . But this was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not coward enough to admire it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Personality, Enemy
"The Man Who Was Thursday". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Ch. VI : The Exposure, 1908.

The comedy of man survives the tragedy of man.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Catholic, Tragedy

Nothing is certain by uncertainty.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Certain, Uncertainty

We talk of wild animals but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Animal, Men, Broken
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.109, Simon and Schuster

Only friendliness produces friendship. And we must look far deeper into the soul of man for the thing that produces friendliness.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Friendship, Men, Soul

The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not); it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
People, Losing, Modern
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.175, Simon and Schuster

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Funny, Men, Feels

It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
People, Done, Experts

It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Business, Home, Imagination

The theory of free speech, that truth is so much larger and stranger and more many-sided than we know of, that it is very much better at all costs to hear everyone's account of it, is a theory which has been justified on the whole by experiment, but which remains a very daring and even a very surprising theory. It is really one of the great discoveries of the modern time.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Equality, Discovery, Cost
"Robert Browning". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1903.

Surprise is the secret of joy.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Joy, Secret, Surprise

I have myself a poetical enthusiasm for pigs, and the paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings. But it is only men, especially wise men, who discuss whether pigs can fly; we have no particular proof that pigs ever discuss it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Wise, Men, Pigs

Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Pain, Smell, Vices

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