Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes:

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

Topics: Love, Inspirational, Success, Hope And Faith, Hopeless Situations

It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle.

Topics: Real, Profound, Laziness, Epoch

Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

Topics: Mean, Anticipation, Hopeless

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

Topics: Fun, Inspirational Life, Garden

We talk of wild animals but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type.

Topics: Animal, Men, Broken, Wild Animal, Rugged

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

Topics: Nature, Adversity, Vision, Mountain Peaks, Mountains And Valleys

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

Topics: Inspirational, Thanksgiving, Thankful, Inspirational Gratitude, Inspirational Thanksgiving

Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.

Topics: Army, Men, Soldier, Military Man

Are you a devil?" "I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart.

Topics: Father, Heart, Men

The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It consists simply of confusing the necessary conditions of life with the normal preoccupations of life, that are quite a different thing. It is like saying that because a man can only walk about on two legs, therefore he never walks about except to buy shoes and stockings.

Topics: Simple, Men, Expression

Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It IS education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching. There are no uneducated people; only most people are educated wrong. The true task of culture today is not a task of expansion, but of selection-and-rejection. The educationist must find a creed and teach it.

Topics: Teacher, Educational, Teaching, Dogmatic

I don't need a church to tell me I'm wrong where I already know I'm wrong; I need a Church to tell me I'm wrong where I think I'm right

Topics: Thinking, Church, Needs

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

source: - "Points of friction". Book by Agnes Repplier, "Consolations of the Conservative", 1920.

Topics: Wisdom, Fear, Religion, Christian Discipleship, Christian Education

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

Topics: Inspirational, Funny, Travel, Solo Travel, Inspirational Vacation

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.

Topics: Funny, Statistics, Problem, Solved Problems, Math Problems

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

Topics: Love, Mean, Humility, Love Means, Unlovable

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

Topics: Stars, Knowledge, Acceptance, Self Discovery, Self-examination

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.

Topics: Drinking, Alcohol, Literature, Gin, Drinkers

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

Topics: Encouragement, Clever, Failure, Salespeople, Great Sales

There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.

Topics: I Hate You, Ignorance, People, Being Bored, Funny Boredom

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.

Topics: Motivational, Sunset, Men, Rosy, Beautiful Sunset

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Topics: Hero, Book, Reading, Novel Writing, Writing Advice

The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.

Topics: Hate, Argument, I Hate, Things I Hate

Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance.

Topics: Bed, Nuisance, Glory, Daybreak, Early Morning

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

Topics: Respect, Wish, Thieves, Private Property

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Topics: Beauty, Beautiful, Art, True Artists, Beautiful Art

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

Topics: Puritan, Righteous, Righteous Indignation, Indignation, Puritanism

A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.

Topics: Teacher, Retirement, Teaching

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

Topics: Inspirational, Funny, Travel, Inspirational Adventure, Inspirational Adventure Time

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

Topics: Mind, Literature, Mouths, Keep An Open Mind, Mind Opening

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

Topics: Fiction, Literature, World, World And Life, Newspapers Journalism

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

Topics: Inspirational, Education, Reading, Inspiring Book, Inspiring Reading

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

Topics: Freedom, Order, Historical

All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.

Topics: Art, Sunset, Bad Ass, Modern Architecture, Nocturnal

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

Topics: Courage, Men, Order, Careless

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.

Topics: Funny, Friendship, God, Neighbors And Friends, Good Neighbor

Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented.

Topics: Summer, Beer, Men, Craft Beer, Hot Summer

It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.

Topics: Healthy, Jam, Sentimental

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

Topics: Broken Heart, Cheating, Cancer, Through My Eyes, Wittiest

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

Topics: Inspirational, Reading, Book

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

Topics: Fashion, Literature, Fame

To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

Topics: Funny, Money, Clever

Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.

Topics: Funny, Business, People

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

Topics: Music, Food, Literature, Violinist

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

Topics: Artist, Men, Bombs

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

Topics: Men, Class, Desire, Vulgarity Is

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

Topics: God, Wine, Mean, Throwing Away

The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

Topics: Literature, Innocence, Ultimate, Gullibility

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.

Topics: Acting, Literature, Next, Filled Up

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

Topics: Birthday, Book, Writing

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

Topics: Health, Men, Hygiene, Personal Hygiene

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.

Topics: Funny, Believe, Evil, Chance And Risk, Hot Water

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.

source: - "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

Topics: Miracle, Incredibles

Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself.

Topics: Night, Oysters, Joy, Joy Ride, Free Advice

One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.

Topics: Life, Time, Hate

The real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

Topics: Real, Greatness, Men, Greatness Of Man

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

Topics: Knowledge, Men, Doe

There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners.

Topics: People, Scandal, Morality

You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it.

Topics: Fighting, Worth Fighting For, Fighting For Love, Fighting On, Things Worth Fighting For

The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.

Topics: Eye, Heart, Sunset, Head And Heart, Not Voting

Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.

Topics: Teaching, Wine, Beer

Thanks are the highest form of thought.

Topics: Thanks, Form, Being Blessed, Social Good, Joy And Gratitude

A thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

Topics: Creative Thought, Creativity In Business, Related To Creativity

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

Topics: Love, Inspirational, Friendship, Long Relationship, Soulmate Love

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.

Topics: Forgiveness, Hurt, Sorry, Wronged, I Am Sorry

When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

Topics: Christmas, Gratitude, Children, Christmas Time, Inspirational Holiday

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

Topics: Support, Intelligence, Intuition, Military Intelligence

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

Topics: Leadership, Teacher, Gratitude, Being Blessed, Joy And Gratitude

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

Topics: Gratitude, Grateful, Live Life, Joy And Gratitude, Inspirational Gratitude

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

Topics: Men, Tolerance, Virtue

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

Topics: Love, Faith, Inspiration, Organized Religion, Religion Christian

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

Topics: Art, Lying, Perfect, Crayon, Pencil Sharpeners

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

Topics: Funny Inspirational, Food, Poetry, Delicious Food, Great Poet

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

Topics: Cute, Marriage, Funny Love, Marriage Humor, Marriage Jokes

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Topics: Art, Funny Friend, Drawing, Creative Artists, Drawing The Line

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

Topics: Inspirational, Inspiring, Graduation, Inspirational Learning, Inspiring Education

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

Topics: Inspirational, Motivational, Success, Spiritual Advice, Saying And Doing

The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.

Topics: Funny, Travel, Missing

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.

Topics: Time, Inspiration, Live Life, Middle Aged

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

Topics: Graduation, Hope, Carpe Diem, Breaking Rules, Organic Architecture

I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.

Topics: Inspirational, Cities, Parks

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

Topics: Inspirational, New Year, Eye, Indian Happy New Year, January 1st

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

Topics: Inspirational, Happiness, Rain, Inspirational Rain, Chasing Rainbows

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

Topics: Inspirational, Earth, Persons, Solemn, Dullness

It is always the secure who are humble.

Topics: Humble, Kids, Humility, Stay Humble, Humility And Modesty

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

Topics: Buddhism, Doubt, Literature

Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.

Topics: Truth, Dogma, Minutes

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

Topics: Atheist, Believe, Doctors

Jesus promised his disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.

Topics: Jesus, Fearless, Church

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

source: - "The Illustrated London News" Magazine, 1924.

Topics: Business, Mistake, Political, Government And Politics

Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.

Topics: Fall, Brain, Open Minded, Open Mindedness, Being Open Minded

Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything.

Topics: Believe, People, Tolerance

You'll never find the solution if you don't see the problem.

Topics: Problem, Solutions, Ifs

God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else.

Topics: Inspirational, Looks, Sun

The problem of disbelieving in God is not that a man ends up believing nothing. Alas, it is much worse. He ends up believing anything.

Topics: Believe, Men, Problem

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.

Topics: Hope, Children, Dragons, Essayists

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.

Topics: Life, Hate, Passion, Soldiers At War, Inspirational Military

A really great person is the person who makes every person feel great.

Topics: Life And Love, Great Person, Really Great

A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.

Topics: Faith, Inspiration, Common Sense

It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.

source: - "The Cleveland Press" Newspaper, March 1, 1921.

Topics: Political, Politician, Terrible

The Universe is the most extraordinary masterpiece ever constructed by nobody.

Topics: Atheism, Masterpiece, Extraordinary

It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.

source: - "St. Thomas Aquinas". Book by G.K. Chesterton, 1933.

Topics: Knowledge, Complaining, Absurd, Thinkable

The coming peril is the intellectual, educational, psychological and artistic overproduction, which, equally with economic overproduction, threatens the well-being of contemporary civilisation. People are inundated, blinded, deafened, and mentally paralysed by a flood of vulgar and tasteless externals, leaving them no time for leisure, thought, or creation from within themselves.

Topics: Educational, People, Leaving

A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

Topics: Faith, Moral, Sanity

The word 'good' has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

Topics: Grandmother, Men, Good Man, Grand Mother

But the truth is that it is only by believing in God that we can ever criticise the Government. Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God.

source: - "Christendom in Dublin". Book by G. K. Chesterton, Ch. III: Very Christian Democracy., 1932.

Topics: Believe, Russia, Government, Human History

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

source: - "Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton : The Illustrated London News, 1905-1907". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1986.

Topics: Inspirational, Education, School, Educated Person, Compulsory Education

Moral issues are always terribly complex for someone without principles.

Topics: Issues, Principles, Moral

There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

Topics: Life, Happiness, Smart

We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press... It is not we who silence the press. It is the press who silences us.

Topics: Silence, Needs, Censorship

If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments

Topics: Men, Religion, Thousand, Ten Commandments, Commandments

It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.

Topics: Husband, Ideas, Feminism

Being a success at work is not worth it if it means being a failure at home.

Topics: Home, Mean, Not Worth It

When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights.

Topics: Rights, Long, People, Human Dignity

The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

source: - Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.71, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Christian, Running, Order, Biographers

I may not practice what I preach but God forbid I should preach what I practice

Topics: Practice, Religion, May

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn.

Topics: Night, Garden, Heaven, Daybreak

Whenever you remove any fence, always pause long enough to ask why it was put there in the first place.

Topics: Long, Firsts, Enough

Right is Right even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it.

Topics: Doe, Moral, Sanity

Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth.

Topics: Errors

If there were no God, there would be no atheists.

source: - "Where All Roads Lead" by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1922.

Topics: God, Atheist, Christian Inspirational, God Is There, Agnosticism

Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.

Topics: Philosophy, Telephones

Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace.

Topics: Christmas, Gratitude, Taken, Taken For Granted

The modern habit of saying "This is my opinion, but I may be wrong" is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong, I say that is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying "Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me" – the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.

Topics: Philosophy, Moon, Men

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. Never forget that the devil fell by force of gravity. He who has the faith has the fun.

Topics: Fun, Angel, Devil, Humor Laughter, My Angel

O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry, Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide, Take not thy thunder from us, But take away our pride.

source: - Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “A Hymn”

Topics: Wall, Pride, People

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

Topics: Obvious Things, Civilization, Decay

There is less difference than many suppose between the ideal Socialist system, in which the big businesses are run by the State, and the present Capitalist system, in which the State is run by the big businesses.

Topics: Running, Differences, States

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.

source: - "The Book of Job". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1907.

Topics: Men, Catholic, Riddle

The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.

Topics: Inspiring, Christian, Moving

The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.

Topics: Family, Christian, Prayer, Ordinary Man

There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing.

Topics: Differences, Listening, Listening And Hearing

We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.

Topics: Fear, Blessing, Men, Wrath Of God, Chastisement

The test of happiness is gratitude.

Topics: Christian, Gratitude, Tests

CIVILISATION is not to be judged by the rapidity of communication, but by the value of what is communicated.

Topics: Communication, Civilisation, Judged

If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.

source: - Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Moving, Christian Inspirational, Mind, Good Judgment, Delayed

These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.

source: - "The Illustrated London News" Magazine, August 11, 1928.

Topics: Christian, Religion, Morality

I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.

source: - "The Illustrated London News" Magazine, June 3, 1922.

Topics: Stupid, Believe, Men

Feminists are those who cannot stand female characteristics.

Topics: Feminist, Female, Characteristics

For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.

Topics: Atheist, Religion, Atheism, Proof That God Exists

Original sin is the only doctrine that's been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.

Topics: Years, Doctrine, Sin, Original Sin

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

source: - Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.69, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Courage, Veterans Day, Strong, Strong Desire, Be Courageous

When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven's name to what?

Topics: Names, Heaven, Belief, Belief In God

Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.

Topics: Spiritual, War, Men, False Gods

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.

Topics: Integrity, Apology, Men

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

source: - 1908 Orthodoxy, ch.3.

Topics: Art, Philosophy, Reality

Those who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion.

Topics: Fashion, Tradition

Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion.

Topics: Men, Evil, Champion

The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. it is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists.

Topics: Hurt, Men, People

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

source: - "A short history of England". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1917.

Topics: Orthodoxy, Morality, Action

Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.

Topics: Way, Revolution, Christianity, Christendom

We're all in the same boat, and we're all seasick.

Topics: Boat

When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it; but certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded.

Topics: Civilization, People, Islam, Crusades, Christendom

I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.

source: - Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.271, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Fighting, Men, Happy Marriage, Incompatibility

No man can break any of the Ten Commandments. He can only break himself against them.

Topics: Men, Break, Ten, Ten Commandments

It's not the world that's got so much worse but the news coverage that's got so much better.

Topics: Media, World, News, News Coverage

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun.; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic monotony that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

source: - "Orthodoxy". Book by G. K. Chesterton (chapter IV), 1908.

Topics: Strong, Morning, Father, Monotony

humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle

Topics: Doors, Seriousness, Handle

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

Topics: Education, School, People, Compulsory, Compulsory Education

God is not a symbol of goodness; goodness is a symbol of God

Topics: Goodness, Symbols

Coincidence is a spiritual pun.

Topics: Spiritual, Definitions, Coincidence

Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

source: - Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.186, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Giving Up, Don't Give Up, Instant

A nation that has nothing but its amusements will not be amused for long.

Topics: Long, Amusement, Amused

I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.

Topics: Funny, Life, Presence Of Mind, Absent Minded

It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.

source: - "The Oracle of the Dog". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1923.

Topics: Believe, Common Sense, Firsts

Wherever there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice.

Topics: Sacrifice, Animal, Worship

An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Travel

Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.

Topics: Reality, Choices, Dignity

The things we see every day are the things we never see at all.

What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism.

source: - "Sidelights on New London and Newer New York : And Other Essays". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1932.

Topics: Self, Criticism, Excess, Self Criticism

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

Topics: Grief, Inspiration, Joy

Agnostic is the Greek word, for the Latin word, for ignorant

Topics: Latin, Greek, Ignorant

It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.

source: - Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.91, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Happiness, Light, Easy

A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it.

Topics: Men, Great Men, Knows

The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.

Topics: Love, Pleasure, Crisis

We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.

source: - "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

Topics: Inspirational, Inspiring, Loyalty, Stormy Seas, Interdependence

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

Topics: Men, Ordinary, Knows

All men matter. You matter. I matter. It's the hardest thing in theology to believe.

Topics: Believe, Men, Matter

We need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed

Topics: Needs

It is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer.

Topics: Men, Arguing, Apologetic, Sneer

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

source: - Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.10, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Player, Mad, Imagination, Cashiers

A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.

Topics: Ideas, Catholic, May

The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.

Topics: School, Men, Doe

Tolerance is the virtue of those who don't believe anything.

Topics: Believe, Tolerance, Virtue

They hate kings, they hate priests, they hate soldiers, they hate sailors. They distrust men of science, they denounce the middle classes, they despair of working men, but they adore humanity. Only they always speak of humanity as if it were a curious foreign nation. They are dividing themselves more and more from men to exalt the strange race of mankind. They are ceasing to be human in the effort to be humane.

Topics: Kings, Hate, Men, Working Man

One must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly.

source: - Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Love, World, Way, Without Trust, Worldly

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.

Topics: Christian, Moving, Church

We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws.

Topics: Law, People, Needs, Bad People, Bad Laws

The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

Topics: Christian, Humanity, Truth Is, Ten Commandments

I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.

Topics: Believe, Found, Preaching

At the back of our brains is a blaze of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder.

Topics: Spiritual, Art, Brain

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

source: - New York Times 1 Feb. 1931, pt. 5, p. 1

Topics: Mean, Government, Political, Educated And Uneducated, Uneducated

There is only one thing certain and that is that nothing is certain

Topics: Certain, One Thing

When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.

Topics: Believe, Men, Believe In God

[No society can survive the socialist] fallacy that there is an absolutely unlimited number of inspired officials and an absolutely unlimited amount of money to pay them.

Topics: Numbers, Political, Pay, Economic Theory

Gratitude produced the most purely joyful moments that have been known to man.

Topics: Gratitude, Men, Joyful, Joyful Moments

The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God's paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle - and not lose it.

Topics: Fighting, Battle, Glimpse

I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.

Topics: Real, Character, People, Sometimes Love

Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.

source: - "The Speaker", December 15, 1900.

Topics: Wisdom, Fun, Ignorance, Pompous, Impartiality

The Darwinian movement has made no difference to mankind, except that, instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy, they now talk unscientifically about science.

Topics: Philosophy, Science, Talking