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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 36

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The Christian pities men because they are dying, and the Buddhist pities them because they are living. The Christian is sorry for what damages the life of a man; but the Buddhist is sorry for him because he is alive.

The Christian pities men because they are dying, and the Buddhist pities them because they are living. The Christian is sorry for what damages the life of a man; but the Buddhist is sorry for him because he is alive.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christian, Buddhist, Sorry

There is only one reason an intelligent person doesn't believe in miracles. He or she believes in materialism.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Believe, Intelligent, Miracle

It is unpardonable conceit not to laugh at your own jokes. Joking is undignified; that is why it is so good for one's soul. Do not fancy you can be a detached wit and avoid being a buffoon; you cannot. If you are the Court Jester you must be the Court Fool.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Laughing, Soul, Fancy

Every true artist feels that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Artist, Touching, Shadow

Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christmas, Grateful, Thank You God

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Love, Funny, Life
"The Illustrated London News" Magazine, July 16, 1910.

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Family, Freedom, Men

There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Funny, Real, Humorous

No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Education, Teaching, Men

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Political, Politics, Poverty
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.236, Simon and Schuster

It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Religion, Tests, Childlike Faith
"All Things Considered". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1908.

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Sports, Golf, Guitar
Quoted in Colin Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Philosophy, Mean, Practice

A yawn is a silent shout.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Yawning, Boredom, Silence

Coincidences are spiritual puns.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Spiritual, Wisdom, Destiny

Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously! I don't often have the luck to have a dream like this. It is new to me for a nightmare to lead me to a lobster. It is commonly the other way.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Dream, Luck, Lobster

The classes that wash most are those that work least.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Class
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.362, Simon and Schuster

If a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkenness and gluttony, that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says the Christmas Day is only a conspiracy kept up by poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives, then he says something which is not so much false as startling and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewellers who wanted to sell wedding rings.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christmas, Sex, Wine

Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Sunset, Oscars, Pay
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

In the fairy tale, an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten and cities perish. A lamp is lit and love flies away. An apple is eaten and the hope of God is gone.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Apples, Cities, Evil
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.40, Simon and Schuster

But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mind, Addresses, Wanted
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.46, Simon and Schuster

Only poor men get hanged.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Poor, Poor Man

The ignorant pronounce it Frood To cavil or applaud The well-informed pronounce it Froyd But I pronounce it Fraud.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Ignorant, Fraud, Wells

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Vices, Today, Exhilaration
The Defendant "A Defence of Humility" (1901)

Free verse'? You may as well call sleeping in a ditch 'free architecture'.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Sleep, May, Architecture

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