Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Islam was something like a Christian heresy. The early heresies had been full of mad reversals and evasions of the Incarnation, rescuing their Jesus from the reality of his body even at the expense of the sincerity of his soul.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Christian Quotes , Jesus Quotes

The Frenchman works until he can play. The American works until he can’t play; and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he never worked at all.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Play Quotes , Devil Quotes

The moderns do not realize modernity.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Realizing Quotes

The philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, but its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Running Quotes , Spiritual Quotes

If the world grows to worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church; but if the Church grows to worldly, it cannot be adequately rebuked for worldlyness by the world.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Church Quotes , World Quotes

Without authority there is no liberty. Freedom is doomed to destruction at every turn, unless there is a recognized right to freedom. And if there are rights, there is an authority to which we appeal for them.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Rights Quotes , Liberty Quotes

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Motivational Quotes , Encouraging Quotes

The most valuable book we can read, about countries we have visited, is that which recalls to us something that we did notice, but did not notice that we noticed.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Country Quotes , Book Quotes

Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made an essential and godliness is regarded as an offence.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Essentials Quotes , Next Quotes

When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Men Quotes

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Encouragement Quotes , Clever Quotes

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Fun Quotes , Inspirational Life Quotes

Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Christmas Quotes , Grateful Quotes

You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Law Quotes , Stripes Quotes

Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Opposites Quotes , Balance Quotes

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Vices Quotes , Today Quotes

But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Independent Quotes , Men Quotes

Were Patrick Henry to return to earth and look around on the vast economic order of the day, he might revise his observation and merely say ‘Give me death’-the alternative being manifestly impossible under modern conditions.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Order Quotes , Giving Quotes

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Christian Quotes , Religious Quotes

They hate kings, they hate priests, they hate soldiers, they hate sailors. They distrust men of science, they denounce the middle classes, they despair of working men, but they adore humanity. Only they always speak of humanity as if it were a curious foreign nation. They are dividing themselves more and more from men to exalt the strange race of mankind. They are ceasing to be human in the effort to be humane.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Kings Quotes , Hate Quotes