Authors:

Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 43

All Quotes Adventure Age Aging Alcohol Anarchy Anger Apology Appearance Appreciation Architecture Arguing Army Art Assumption Atheism Atheist Attitude Authority Balance Beer Belief Birth Boat Boredom Buddhism Business Character Charity Chess Children Choices Christ Christianity Christmas Church Coincidence Common Sense Community Confession Contentment Country Courage Crime Criticism Culture Darkness Democracy Desire Destiny Devil Dignity Discipline Dogma Doubt Drinking Duty Earth Education Effort Encouragement Environment Equality Evil Failure Faith Family Fashion Fear Feelings Fighting Food Free Love Freedom Friendship Fun Funny Genius Giving God Gold Gratitude Greek Grief Happiness Hate Hatred Heart Heaven History Holiday Home Hope House Human Nature Humanity Humility Hurt Ignorance Imagination Independence Innocence Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Islam Jesus Journey Joy Justice Knowledge Language Laughter Leadership Learning Leaving Liberalism Liberty Life Literature Logic Losing Love Lying Madness Materialism Memories Military Modesty Moon Morality Morning Motivational Nature Optimism Pain Painting Passion Past Peace Personality Pessimism Philosophy Plato Pleasure Politics Poverty Power Pride Progress Purpose Quality Rage Rain Reading Reality Religion Revolution Romance Running Sacrifice Sadness Sanity School Science Silence Simplicity Sin Sleep Socialism Son Soul Spirituality Sports Spring Style Suffering Tea Teaching Thankful Thanksgiving Theology Time Today Tolerance Tradition Tragedy Travel Truth Tyranny Understanding Virtue Vision Voting Waiting Wall War Water Wealth Wife Wine Wisdom Wit Worship Writing Youth
The Party System was founded on one national notion of fair play. It was the notion that folly and futility should be fairly divided between both sides.

The Party System was founded on one national notion of fair play. It was the notion that folly and futility should be fairly divided between both sides.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Party, Humor, Play

Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
News, Enough

The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate modern thinkers, and the second in which he desires to watch them exterminating each other. ... Suppose, for instance, there is an old story and a new skeptic who is skeptical of the story. We have only to wait a little while for a yet newer skeptic who is skeptical of the skeptic. He will probably find the old notion actually a help in his new notion. This process is an abstract truth applying to anything, apart from agreement or disagreement.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Truth, Men, Thinking

Correctitude implies nowadays a formal or fastidious use of words; and what is wanted is not so much the correct as the living use of words. It is the memory of the meaning of a word which is the life of the word.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Truth, Memories, Use

The last few decades have been marked by a special cultivation of the romance of the future. We seem to have made up our minds to misunderstand what has happened; and we turn, with a sort of relief, to stating what will happen-which is apparently much easier...The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror, with which it regards the past.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Learning, Past, Romance

The Byzantines hammered away at their hard and orthodox symbols, because they could not be in a mood to believe that men could take a hint. The moderns drag out into lengths and reels of extravagance their new orthodoxy of being unorthodox, because they also cannot give a hint -- or take a hint. Yet all perfect and well-poised art is really a hint.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Believe, Men

All architecture is great architecture after sunset.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Sunset, Nocturnal, Architecture

Facts by themselves can often feed the flame of madness, because sanity is a spirit.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Flames, Facts, Spirit

We ought to be interested in that darkest and most real part of a man in which dwell not the vices that he does not display, but the virtues that he cannot.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, Men, Vices
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.148, Simon and Schuster

We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Age, Littles
"George Bernard Shaw". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1909.

I am not fighting a hopeless fight. People who have fought in real fights don't, as a rule.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, Fighting, People
"The Flying Inn". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1914.

The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Kindness, Character, Doe
Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

Whatever the word "great" means, Dickens was what it means.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mean, Dickens
"Charles Dickens". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1906.

The mind moves by instincts, associations and premonitions and not by fixed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will occur simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: notions will be first defined long after they are dead.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Moving, Errors, Long
"The Victorian Age in Literature" by Gilbert K. Chesterton, (p. 17), 1963.

In every serious doctrine of the destiny of men, there is some trace of the doctrine of the equality of men. But the capitalist really depends on some religion of inequality. The capitalist must somehow distinguish himself from human kind; he must be obviously above it or he would be obviously below it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Destiny, Men, Doctrine
"Utopia of Usurers". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, p. 34, 1917.

A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Reform, Doe
"The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1990.

America has a new delicacy, a coarse, rank refinement.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
America, Delicacy, Coarse
"Charles Dickens". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1906.

Men spoke much in my boyhood about restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it's a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Genius, Might
"Orthodoxy" by Gilbert K. Chesterton, (Ch. IV), 1908.

If you know what a man's doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he's doing keep behind him.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Want, Behinds
"The Blue Cross: A Father Brown Mystery". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1911.

If you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Done, Danger, Ought
Gilbert K. Chesterton (1927). “The Secret of Father Brown”

Before the gods that made the gods Had seen their sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale Was cut out of the grass.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Horse, Cutting, White
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “The Ballad Of The White Horse”

The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Children, Ideas, Guessing
"The Victorian Age in Literature". Book by G. K. Chesterton, Ch I: The Victorian Compromise and Its Enemies, p. 24, 1913.

It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Intelligent, Unique
"The Everlasting Man". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Part I: On the Creature Called Man, 1925.

Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
War, Past, Ideas
"Daily News", February 18, 1905.

And I will add this point of merely personal experience of humanity: when men have a real explanation they explain it, eagerly and copiously and in common speech, as Huxley freely gave it when he thought he had it. When they have no explanation to offer, they give short dignified replies, disdainful of the ignorance of the multitude.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, Ignorance, Men
"Doubts About Darwinism". The Illustrated London News, July 17, 1920.

You May Also Like: