G. K. Chesterton quotes - page 10

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are. (G. K. Chesterton)
The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Materialists and madmen never have doubts. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. (G. K. Chesterton)
When we look upon lives so human and yet so small, we feel as if we ourselves were enlarged to an embarrassing bigness of stature. We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel if he had created something that he could not understand. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Every politician is emphatically a promising politician. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
A yawn is a silent shout. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men. (G. K. Chesterton)
Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them. View quote
G. K. Chesterton