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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 35

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All good men are international. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan. If we are to be international we must be national.

All good men are international. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan. If we are to be international we must be national.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Good Man, Internationalism

The only people who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Education, Children, People

If our caricaturists do not hate their enemies, it is not because they are too big to hate them, but because their enemies are not big enough to hate.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Hate, Enemy, Enough

Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Editors, Giving, Safe
"The Ball and the Cross". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1909.

Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Ivory, White, Snow
"The Defendant". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1901.

I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Believe, Happy Times, Today

It is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Legends, Century, Chiefs

I despise Birth-Control first because it is ... an entirely meaningless word; and is used so as to curry favour even with those who would first recoil from its real meaning. The proceeding these quack doctors recommend does not control any birth.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, Science, Doctors

A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things, so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State is growing insane.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Taken, Long, Mad

Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Effort, Church, Heresy

All literary style, especially national style, is made up of such coincidences, which are a spiritual sort of puns. That is why style is untranslatable.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Spiritual, Style, Coincidence

Aristocracy: government by the badly educated.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Government, Aristocracy, Educated

The human race is always trying this dodge of making everything entirely easy; but the difficulty which it shifts off one thing it shifts to another.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Race, Always Trying, Dodge

Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Plato, Greek, Bernard Shaw

All my authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Bible, Heaven, Jesus Christ

What the world wants, what the world is waiting for, is not Modern Poetry or Classical Poetry or Neo-Classical Poetry - but Good Poetry. And the dreadful disreputable doubt, which stirs in my own skeptical mind, is doubt about whether it would really matter much what style a poet chose to write in, in any period, as long as he wrote Good poetry.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Writing, Long, Waiting

And pray where in earth or heaven are there prudent marriages-Might as well talk about prudent suicides.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Suicide, Heaven, Earth

Such professions as the soldier and the lawyer ... give ample opportunity for crimes but not much for mere illusions. ... If you have lost a battle you cannot believe you have won it; if your client is hanged you cannot pretend that you have gotten him off.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Believe, Opportunity, Giving

All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Birth, Tradition
Orthodoxy ch. 4 (1908)

An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Citizens, Institutions, Horrible
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.86, Simon and Schuster

Any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate. It is as true of democratic fraternity as a divine love; sham love ends in compromise and common philosophy; but real love has always ended in bloodshed.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Hate, Philosophy, Real
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.100, Simon and Schuster

Mr. Blatchford says that there was not a Fall but a gradual rise. But the very word "rise" implies that you know toward what you are rising. Unless there is a standard you cannot tell whether you are rising or falling. But the main point is that the Fall like every other large path of Christianity is embodied in the common language talked on the top of an omnibus. Anybody might say, "Very few men are really Manly." Nobody would say, "Very few whales are really whaley."

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fall, Men, Whales

We actually love ourselves more than we love joy.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Joy
Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

The great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Saint, Looks, May

I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Thinking
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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