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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes about Children - Page 2

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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

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 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 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.

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.

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.

The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Children, Humorous, Together
"The Defendant". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1901.

The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong.

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

Education is implication. It is not the things you say which children respect; when you say things, they very commonly laugh and do the opposite. It is the things you assume which really sink into them. It is the things you forget even to teach that they learn.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Children, Opposites, Laughing

Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Sweet, Children, Grateful
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.39, Simon and Schuster

No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Children, Tired, Hot

Playing as children means playing is the most serious thing in the world.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Baby, Children, Mean

...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

There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Baby, Stars, Children
"The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Inspirational, Children, Growing Up
'The Napoleon of Notting Hill' (1904) bk. 1, ch. 1

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