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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 51

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The miser is the man who starves himself and everybody else, in order to worship wealth in its dead form, as distinct from its living form.

The miser is the man who starves himself and everybody else, in order to worship wealth in its dead form, as distinct from its living form.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Order, Greed
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2012). “The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton”, p.112, Ignatius Press

[There is] one distinctly human thing - the story. There can be as good science about a turnip as about a man. ... [Or philosophy, or theology] ...There can be, without any question at all, as good higher mathematics about a turnip as about a man. But I do not think, though I speak in a manner somewhat tentative, that there could be as good a novel written about a turnip as a man.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Philosophy, Science, Men

Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments. A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not with a handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and falling together into new combinations. A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fall, Men, Work Out
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.180, Simon and Schuster

There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mistake, Errors, Important
"The Illustrated London News" Magazine, April 25, 1931.

...it is not necessary to the child to awaken to the sense of the strange and humorous by giving a man a luminous nose...to the child it is sufficiently strange and humorous to have a nose at all.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Children, Humorous, Men

We must be clear about what we want to paint. This adds a further principle to our previous list of principles. We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Order, Society, World
"The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton".

You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Book, Writing, World
"Dictionary of Quotations in Communications" by Lilless McPherson Shilling, p. xvi, 1997.

A man will not roll in the snow for a stream of tendency by which all things fulfill the law of their being. He will not go without food in the name of something, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness. He will do things like this, or pretty nearly like this, under quite a different impulse. He will do these things when he is in love.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Faith, Inspiration, Men

If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Inspirational, Nature, Stars
"The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Writing, Good Times, Easier
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.91, Simon and Schuster

Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or in German.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Long, Problem
Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

Every man is important if he loses his life;and every man is funny if he loses his hat and has to run after it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Running, Men, Important

The full value of this life can only be got by fighting; the violent take it by storm. And if we have accepted everything we have missed something - war. This life of ours is a very enjoyable fight, but a very miserable truce.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
War, Fighting, Storm

Half a truth is better than no politics.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Half, Politics, Truth Is

People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Pain, People, Want

A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Philosophy, Moon, Men

The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know they are dogmas.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Believe, Men, World
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.244, Simon and Schuster

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Relationship, Uncles, Men

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Dog, Drinking, Men

Thoughts on the Merits of Work The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Retirement, People, Merit

A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Clouds, Sky, People

Lord! what a strange world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad!

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Unique, Men, Mad
"The Napoleon of Notting Hill". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1904.

Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Alternatives, Incapacity, Propositions

One can no more have a private religion than one can have a private sun or a private moon.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Moon, Religion, Sun

The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Laughter, Humor, Ideas

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