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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 40

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I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess.

I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Love, Princess, Dragons

Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Love, Men, Pits

Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Love, Men, Decline
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.402, Simon and Schuster

Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad," replied Syme with perfect calm; "but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Drunk, Mad, Perfect
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.152, Simon and Schuster

The Frenchman works until he can play. The American works until he can’t play; and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he never worked at all.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Play, Devil, Thanks

The modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Believe, Doubt, Modern
"G.K. Chesterton: Philosopher Without Portfolio". Book by Quentin Lauer (p. 32), 1988.

The more we are proud that the Bethlehem story is plain enough to be understood by the shepherds, and almost by the sheep, the more do we let ourselves go, in dark and gorgeous imaginative frescoes or pageants about the mystery and majesty of the Three Magian Kings.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christmas, Kings, Dark

It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Catholic, Good Man

The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Catholic, Half, Vices

Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Believe, Sacred, Morality
In the Illustrated London News, 24 February 1906.

I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Simple, Men, Suffering

To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Humble, Men, Sea
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.188, Simon and Schuster

These are the things which might conceivably and truly make men forgive their enemies. We can only turn hate to love by understanding what are the things that men have loved; nor is it necessary to ask men to hate their loves in order to love one another. Just as two grocers are most likely to be reconciled when they remember for a moment that they are two fathers, so two nationals are most likely to be reconciled when they remember (if only for a moment) that they are two patriots.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Friendship, Father, Hate

Because our expression is imperfect we need friendship to fill up the imperfections.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Friendship, Expression, Imperfection

Any one of the strange laws we suffer is a compromise between a fad and a vested interest.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Law, Suffering, Fads

This is the perpetual and pitiful tragedy of the practical man in practical affairs. He always begins with a flourish of contempt for what he calls theorizing and what people who can do it call thinking. He will not wait for logic-that is, in the most exact sense, he will not listen to reason. It will therefore appear to him an idle and ineffectual proceeding to say that there is a reason for his present failure. Nevertheless, it may be well to say it, and to try and make it clear even to him.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Wisdom, Men, Thinking

What is education? Properly speaking, there is no such thing as education. Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. Whatever the soul is like, it will have to be passed on somehow, consciously or unconsciously, and that transition may be called education. ... What we need is to have a culture before we hand it down. In other words, it is a truth, however sad and strange, that we cannot give what we have not got, and cannot teach to other people what we do not know ourselves.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Wisdom, Hands, People

But those dealing in the actual manufacture of mind are dealing in a very explosive material. The material is not merely the clay of which man is master, but the truths or semblances of truth which have a certain mastery over man. The material is explosive because it must be taken seriously. The men writing books really are throwing bombs.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Book, Taken, Writing

Even in a minute instance, it is best to look first to the main tendencies of Nature. A particular flower may not be dead in early winter, but the flowers are dying; a particular pebble may never be wetted with the tide, but the tide is coming in. To the scientific eye all human history is a series of collective movements, destructions or migrations, like the massacre of flies in winter or the return of birds in spring.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Spring, Flower, Eye

He walked by instinct along one white road, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found himself outside a fenced garden. There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great unconscious gravity of a girl.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Girl, Cutting, Garden
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.283, Simon and Schuster

Just the other day in the Underground I enjoyed the pleasure of offering my seat to three ladies.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Food, Offering, Three

Adventure is the champagne of life.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Inspirational, Inspirational Life, Adventure

ONCE remove the old arena of theological quarrels, and you will throw open the whole world to the most horrible, the most hopeless, the most endless, the most truly interminable quarrels; the untheological quarrels.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
World, Arena, Hopeless

We are Christians and Catholics not because we worship a key, but because we have passed a door; and felt the wind that is the trumpet of liberty blow over the land of the living.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christian, Blow, Keys

Every time a man knocks on a brothel door, he is really knocking for God

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Doors, Knocking

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