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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 44

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When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.

When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Writing, Character, Mean
"Charles Dickens: A Critical Study". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1906.

It may be a mere patriotic bias, though I do not think so, but it seems to me that the English aristocracy is not only the type, but is the crown and flower of all actual aristocracies; it has all the oligarchical virtues as well as all the defects. It is casual, it is kind, it is courageous in obvious matters; but it has one great merit that overlaps even these. The great and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take it seriously.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Flower, Patriotic, Thinking
"Orthodoxy". Book by G. K. Chesterton, Chapter VI. "The Paradoxes of Christianity", 1908.

I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Sea, Sky, Desire
'The Ballad of the White Horse' (1911) bk. 1, p. 18

It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
School, Mind, Movement
"The Victorian Age in Literature". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Ch. II: The Great Victorian Novelists, p. 73, 1913.

Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mean, Criticism, Boots
"Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1911.

It is only great men who take up a great space by not being there.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Space, Being There
Notes by Richard Baker, The Chesterton Review, Winter/Spring 1977.

The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong. Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indifference or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Children, Attitude, People
"The Defendant". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1901.

To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Romance, Earth, Born
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.200, Simon and Schuster

Comradeship is obvious and universal and open; but it is only one kind of affection; it has characteristics that would destroy any other kind. Anyone who has known true comradeship in a club or in a regiment, knows that it is impersonal.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Clubs, Kind, Affection
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.286, Simon and Schuster

Literary men are being employed to praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They not only find political reasons for the commercial schemes that they have done for some time past they also find moral defences for the commercial schemers... I do resent the whole age of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Kings, Taken, Past
"Utopia of Usurers". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, pp. 15-17, 1917.

When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we reverence the faults and follies of children. We should probably come considerably nearer to the true conception of things if we treated all grown-up persons, of all titles and types, with precisely that dark affection and dazed respect with which we treat the infantile limitations.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Children, Dark, Matter
"The Defendant". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1901.

The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together. Their top-heavy dignity is more touching than any humility; their solemnity gives us more hope for all things than a thousand carnivals of optimism; their large and lustrous eyes seem to hold all the stars in their astonishment; their fascinating absence of nose seems to give to us the most perfect hint of the humour that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Stars, Children, Humorous
"The Defendant". Book by G. K. Chesterton, A Defence of Baby-Worship, 1901.

Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Devil, Casting, Philosopher
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

Is there anyone... who will maintain that the Party System could have been created by people particularly fond of truth?

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Party, People, Could Have Been
"What's Wrong with the World". Book of by G. K. Chesterton, Part Three: Feminism, or The Mistake About Woman, Ch. 11: The School for Hypocrites, 1910.

It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Visionaries, Arms
"The Victorian Age in Literature". Book by G. K. Chesterton, Ch I: The Victorian Compromise and Its Enemies, p. 8, 1913.

I like the Americans for a great many reasons. I like them because even the modern thing called industrialism has not entirely destroyed in them the very ancient thing called democracy. I like them because they have a respect for work which really curbs the human tendency to snobbishness.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
America, Democracy, Ancient

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable one. The trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, World, Trouble
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.59, Simon and Schuster

I am myself so exceedingly Nordic, as far as physical constitution is concerned, that I can enjoy almost any weather except what is called glorious weather. At the end of a few days, I am left wondering how the men of the Mediterranean ever managed to do almost all the most active and astonishing things that have been done.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Weather, Done

To desire money is much nobler than to desire success. Desiring money may mean desiring to return to your country, or marry the woman you love, or ransom your father from brigands. But desiring success must mean that you take an abstract pleasure in the unbrotherly act of distancing and disgracing other men.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Country, Money, Father

We are always giving foreign names to very native things. If there is a thing that reeks of the glorious tradition of the old English tavern, it is toasted cheese. But for some wild reason we call it Welsh rarebit. I believe that what we call Irish stew might more properly be called English stew, and that it is not particularly familiar in Ireland.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Food, Believe, Names

Architecture is the alphabet of giants; it is the largest set of symbols ever made to meet the eyes of men. A tower stands up like a sort of simplified stature, of much more than heroic size.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Eye, Men, Alphabet
"What Skyscrapers Tell Us ... About Us" by Jonathan Merritt, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 22, 2011.

We all live in the past, because there is nothing else to live in. To live in the present is like proposing to sit on a pin. It is too minute, it is too slight a support, it is too uncomfortable a posture, and it is of necessity followed immediately by totally different experiences, analogous to those of jumping up with a yell.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Past, Different Experiences, Jumping

We have not made cricket and football [soccer] professional because of any astonishing avarice or new vulgarity. We have made them professional because we would have them perfect. We have dedicated men to them as to some god of inhuman excellence. We care more for football than for the fun of playing football.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Soccer, Sports, Football

Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there, something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; that imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Believe, Artist, Clouds
"The Everlasting Man". Book by G. K. Chesterton, V: Man and Mythologies, 1925.

There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fall, Orthodoxy, Infinity
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.75, Simon and Schuster

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