Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Pride Quotes , Would Be Quotes

The great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Beauty Quotes , Beautiful Quotes

We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men - so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two agnostics. "I say God is One," and "I say God is One but also Three," that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

There is nothing so weak, for working purposes, as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Victory Quotes , Purpose Quotes

Science only means knowledge; and for [Greek] ancients it did only mean knowledge. Thus the favorite science of the Greeks was Astronomy, because it was as abstract as Algebra. ... We may say that the great Greek ideal was to have no use for useful things. The Slave was he who learned useful things; the Freeman was he who learned useless things. This still remains the ideal of many noble men of science, in the sense they do desire truth as the great Greeks desired it; and their attitude is an external protest against vulgarity of utilitarianism.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Attitude Quotes , Learning Quotes

Spring never is spring unless it comes too soon.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Nature Quotes , Spring Quotes

...a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Cracks Quotes , Speech Quotes

Every time a man knocks on a brothel door, he is really knocking for God

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Faith Quotes , Inspiration Quotes

We talk of wild animals, but the wildest animal is man.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Two Quotes , Allies Quotes

Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

A yawn is a silent shout.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Yawning Quotes , Boredom Quotes

It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Education Quotes , Saint Quotes

By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Confusion Quotes , May 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