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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 34

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In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture and criticism might very well be summed up as the men who smile criticizing the men who laugh.

In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture and criticism might very well be summed up as the men who smile criticizing the men who laugh.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Laughing, Criticism

Indeed the Book of Job avowedly only answers mystery with mystery. Job is comforted with riddles; but he is comforted. Herein is indeed a type, in the sense of a prophecy, of things speaking with authority. For when he who doubts can only say, ‘I do not understand,’ it is true that he who knows can only reply or repeat ‘You do not understand.’ And under that rebuke there is always a sudden hope in the heart; and the sense of something that would be worth understanding.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Jobs, Book, Heart
"The Everlasting Man". Book by G. K. Chesterton, IV: God and Comparative Religion, 1925.

Gluttony is a great fault; but we do not necessarily dislike a glutton. We only dislike the glutton when he becomes a gourmet-that is, we only dislike him when he not only wants the best for himself, but knows what is best for other people.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Food, People, Want

We cannot fling ourselves into the blank future; we can only call up images from the past. This being so, the important principle follows, that how many images we have largely depends on how much past we have.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Past, Important, Principles

Now there is any amount of this nonsense cropping up among American cranks. Anybody may propose to establish coercive Eugenics; or enforce psychoanalysis that is, enforce confession without absolution.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Eugenics, May, Nonsense
"What I Saw in America". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1922.

Christianity, whatever else it is, is an explosion. Unless it is sensational there is simply no sense in it. Unless the Gospel sounds like a gun going off it has not been uttered at all.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gun, Sound, Christianity

Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Brain, Anything Goes, Movement
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Spiritual, Eye, Men
"The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Devil, Saint
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Progress Of Society, Progress, Cult
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.135, Simon and Schuster

What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Childhood, Miracle, World
"Autobiography". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1936.

Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Love, Beautiful, Music Love

I defy anybody to say what are the rights of a citizen, if they do not include the control of his own diet in relation to his own health.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Rights, Citizens, Relation

A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mean, Angel, Turkeys

We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Mean, Common Sense
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith has to all appearance, gone to the dogs? But, in each of these five cases, it was the dog that died.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Faith, Christian, Dog

Nobody notices postmen, yet they have passions like other men.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Passion, Men, Postman

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mean, People, Literature

When you with velvets mantled o'er, Defy December's tempests frore, Oh! spare one garment from your store, To clothe the poor at Christmas.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christmas, Velvet, December

Saint George he was for England, And before he killed the dragon he drank a pint of English ale out of an English flagon.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Beer, Dragons, Saint George
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2012). “L'osteria volante”, p.116, Bompiani

Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Reason, Lost, Realism

A third-class carriage is a community, while a first-class carriage is a place of wild hermits.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Class, Community, Firsts
Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

The great intellectual tradition that comes down to us from the past was never interrupted or lost through such trifles as the sack of Rome, the triumph of Attila, or all the barbarian invasions of the Dark Ages. It was lost after the introduction of printing, the discovery of America, the founding of the Royal Society, and all the enlightenment of the Renaissance and the modern world. It was there, if anywhere, that there was lost or impatiently snapped the long thin delicate thread that had descended from distant antiquity; the thread of that unusual human hobby: the habit of thinking.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Dark, Thinking, Past

The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Long, Metaphysical, Damn
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

...a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Cracks, Speech, Definitions
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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