G. K. Chesterton quotes - page 11

With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation. (G. K. Chesterton)
Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
The only defensible war is a war of defense. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place. (G. K. Chesterton)
Being "contented" ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he's realized exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about ‘criminals,' as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he's got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skulls; till he's squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
'You do believe it,' he said. 'You do believe everything. We all believe everything, even when we deny everything. The denyers believe. The unbelievers believe. Don't you feel in your heart that these contradictions do not really contradict: that there is a cosmos that contains them all? The soul goes round upon a wheel of stars and all things return; perhaps Strake and I have striven in many shapes, beast against beast and bird against bird, and perhaps we shall strive for ever. But since we seek and need each other, even that eternal hatred is an eternal love. Good and evil go round in a wheel that is one thing and not many. Do you not realize in your heart, do you not believe behind all your beliefs, that there is but one reality and we are its shadows; and that all things are but aspects of one thing: a centre where men melt into Man and Man into God?' 'No,' said Father Brown. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
'I'm afraid I'm a practical man,' said the doctor with gruff humour, 'and I don't bother much about religion and philosophy.' 'You'll never be a practical man till you do,' said Father Brown. 'Look here, doctor; you know me pretty well; I think you know I'm not a bigot. You know I know there are all sorts in all religions; good men in bad ones and bad men in good ones. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization. (G. K. Chesterton)
The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners. View quote
G. K. Chesterton