Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

I entertain a private suspicion that physical sports were much more really effective and beneficent when they were not taken quite so seriously. One of the first essentials of sport being healthy is that it should be delightful; it is rapidly becoming a false religion with austerities and prostrations.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Sports Quotes , Taken Quotes

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Children Quotes , Dark Quotes

The center of every man's existence is a dream.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

There is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Stars Quotes , Sunset Quotes

Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, "I will not hit you if you do not hit me"; there is no trace of such a transaction. There IS a trace of both men having said, "We must not hit each other in the holy place.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Men Quotes , Holy Places Quotes

Gratitude, being nearly the greatest of human duties, is also nearly the most difficult.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Gratitude Quotes , Duty Quotes

For us who live in cities Nature is not natural. Nature is supernatural. Just as monks watched and strove to get a glimpse of heaven, so we watch and strive to get a glimpse of earth. It is as if men had cake and wine every day but were sometimes allowed common bread.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Mother Quotes , Essence Quotes

A great curse has fallen upon modern life with the discovery of the vastness of the word Education.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Discovery Quotes , Modern Life Quotes

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when Joy is the fundamental thing in him, and Grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive state of mind; Praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; Joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live? Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Happiness Quotes , Light Quotes

A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a new soul.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Inspiring Quotes , New Year Quotes

Half a truth is better than no politics.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Half Quotes , Politics Quotes

The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

When a man ceases to believe in god, he does not believe in nothing. He believes in everything.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

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