Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

While once it was the rank and file that cheered with all the partisan passions at their heights, today it is the party leaders who are cheering themselves; and all by themselves. The mob that is their audience is in one vast universal trance, thinking about something else.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Leadership Quotes , Cheer Quotes

There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Lessons Quotes , Fairytale Quotes

I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Way Quotes , Facts Quotes

It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Surprise is the secret of joy.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Joy Quotes , Secret Quotes

A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

We talk of wild animals but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Suppose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are the idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark?

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Every politician is emphatically a promising politician.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

One must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Funny Quotes , Life Quotes

There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. Men do not quarrel about the meaning of sunsets; they never dispute that the hawthorn says the best and wittiest thing about the spring.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men…In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The first fact about the celebration of a birthday is that it is a way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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