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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 42

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When men cease to believe in God, they will believe in anything

When men cease to believe in God, they will believe in anything

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Believe, Men, Believe In God

It is very foolish of a man to be frightened of a skeleton, for Nature has put an insurmountable obstacle against running away from it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Running, Men, Skeletons

Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Believe, Giving, World

There are many ways to fall down, but there's only one way to stand up straight.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fall, Way, Falling Down

The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Church, States, Church And State

The man who says, 'my country right or wrong' is like the man who says, 'my mother drunk or sober'

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mother, Country, Men

Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a Conservative.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Differences, Phrases, Conservative

But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
People, Pay, England
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “The Secret People”

Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Strange, Assumption

The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Stars, Hands, Literature

The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Wild Places, Mind, Way
"What's Wrong with the World". Book by G. K. Chesterton, Part Three: Feminism, or The Mistake About Woman, Ch. 3: The Emancipation of Domesticity, 1910.

The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Children, Philosophy, Drinking
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.119, Simon and Schuster

The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christian, Believe, Order
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

And we were angry and poor and happy, And proud of seeing our names in print.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Names, Proud, Poor
'A Song of Defeat' (1915)

The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Children, Dragons, Fairy Stories

The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Orthodoxy, Lost Everything
1908 Orthodoxy, ch.2.

The word good has many meanings.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Grandmother, Yards, Grand Mother

Leaving the complications of the human breakfast-table out of account, in an elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken. But the chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable in himself.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Animal, Order, Eggs
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.252, Simon and Schuster

We talk of wild animals, but the wildest animal is man.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Animal, Men, Wild Animal

For they (capitalists) hold as their chief heresy, in a coarser form, the fundamental falsehood that things are not made to be used but made to be sold. All the collapse of their commercial system in their own time has been due to that fallacy of forcing things on a market where there was no market; of continually increasing the power of supply without increasing the power of demand; of briefly, of always considering the man who sells the potato and never considering the man who eats it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Demand, Potatoes

Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Sacrifice, Self, Desire
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Anger, Men, May
'Heretics' (1905) ch. 20

There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Education, People, Painting

Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Games, Dignity

It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness would do the work of unselfishness.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Passion, Selfishness, Doctrine

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