Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those who know it.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Pain Quotes , Smell Quotes

A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

A faith is that which is able to survive a mood.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Able Quotes

When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

It is often a mistake to combine two pleasures, because pleasures, like pains, can act as counter-irri-tants to each other.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Pain Quotes , Mistake Quotes

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Fashion Quotes , Literature Quotes

A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Science Quotes , Interesting Quotes

How quickly revolutions grow old; and, worse still, respectable.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , War Quotes , Revolution Quotes

The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Laughter Quotes , Humor 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

The Catholic Church is the only thing that saves man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment; they express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Art Quotes , Visionaries Quotes

I did try to found a little heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Trying Quotes , Littles Quotes

The modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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