G. K. Chesterton quotes - page 5

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite. (G. K. Chesterton)
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
We are talking about an artist; and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. (G. K. Chesterton)
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? View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Silence is the unbearable repartee. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
In every serious doctrine of the destiny of men, there is some trace of the doctrine of the equality of men. But the capitalist really depends on some religion of inequality. The capitalist must somehow distinguish himself from human kind; he must be obviously above it or he would be obviously below it. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
Silver is sometimes more valuable than gold, that is, in large quantities. (G. K. Chesterton)
There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
The new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
America has a new delicacy, a coarse, rank refinement. View quote
G. K. Chesterton