Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Self Quotes

We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return to at evening.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Christian Quotes , Moving Quotes

Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Government Quotes

I entertain a private suspicion that physical sports were much more really effective and beneficent when they were not taken quite so seriously. One of the first essentials of sport being healthy is that it should be delightful; it is rapidly becoming a false religion with austerities and prostrations.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Sports Quotes , Taken Quotes

. . . For friendship implies individuality; whereas comradeship really implies the temporary subordination, if not the temporary swamping of individuality. Friends are the better for being two; but comrades are the better for being two million.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Friendship Quotes , Two Quotes

One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Flower Quotes , Ignorance Quotes

Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Marriage halves our griefs, doubles our joys, and quadruples our expenses

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The Christian pities men because they are dying, and the Buddhist pities them because they are living. The Christian is sorry for what damages the life of a man; but the Buddhist is sorry for him because he is alive.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Christian Quotes , Buddhist Quotes

Mr. Blatchford says that there was not a Fall but a gradual rise. But the very word "rise" implies that you know toward what you are rising. Unless there is a standard you cannot tell whether you are rising or falling. But the main point is that the Fall like every other large path of Christianity is embodied in the common language talked on the top of an omnibus. Anybody might say, "Very few men are really Manly." Nobody would say, "Very few whales are really whaley."

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

To be simple is the best thing in the world; to be modest is the next best thing. I am not sure about being quiet.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Simple Quotes , Simplicity Quotes

There is no better test of a man's ultimate chivalry and integrity than how he behaves when he is wrong... A stiff apology is a second insult.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Integrity Quotes , Apology Quotes

We must be clear about what we want to paint. This adds a further principle to our previous list of principles. We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Order Quotes , Society Quotes

But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully intervenes.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Party Quotes , Anger Quotes

The fact is that purification and austerity are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than for anything else. To let no bird fly past unnoticed, to spell the stones and weeds, to have the mind a storehouse of sunset, requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Weed Quotes , Gratitude Quotes

There cannot be a nation of millionaires, and there never has been a nation of Utopian comrades; but there have been any number of nations of tolerably contented peasants.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Numbers Quotes , Peasants Quotes

Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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