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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 52

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If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Dance, Work, Advice
What's Wrong with theWorld pt. 4, ch. 14 (1910)

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Poverty, Honest, Never Forget

With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Get Well, Recovery, Healthy
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.198, Simon and Schuster

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Happiness, Literature, Mystery
Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Literature, Metaphor, Slang
Defendant (1901) "Defence of Slang"

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Historical, Literature

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Cells, Differences, Inches

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Freedom, Inspirational Life, Responsibility
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Annoyed, Literature, Want
"The Sleep of Trees". Book by Jane Yolen, 1980.

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Literature, Young

Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Science, Errors, Long
1905 Heretics, ch.13.

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Peace, War, Defense

When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Obscurity, Literature, Invisibility

True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Happiness, Power, Agriculture

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Animal, Kind

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
England, Graves, Mets
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “Elegy In A Country Churchyard”

Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Organization, Would Be, Literature

Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Daylight, Normal

To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Complaining, Married, Born
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.41, Simon and Schuster

In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Misunderstood, Modern, Used

Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Free Love, Contradiction, Term

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fashion, Atheist, Catholic
"The Illustrated London News" Magazine, April 19, 1930.

Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Responsibility, Roots, Modern
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.328, Simon and Schuster

It has been often said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Important, Ordinary
Charles Dickens: The Last of the Great Men ch. 1 (1906)

They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Believe, Fundamentals, Politician
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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