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G K Chesterton

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   14 G K Chesterton

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1499 G K Chesterton

1:Marriage is an adventure, like going to war. ~ G K Chesterton,

2:Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly -- at first. ~ G K Chesterton,

3:Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. ~ G K Chesterton,

4:It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. ~ G K Chesterton,

5:Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance." ~ G K Chesterton,

6:The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ~ G K Chesterton, In Defense of Sanity,

7:As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. ~ G K Chesterton, Orthodoxy,

8:The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. ~ G K Chesterton,

9:Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak. ~ G K Chesterton, [T5],

10:Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision. ~ G K Chesterton, "The Eternal Revolution," Orthodoxy,

11: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

12:What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about. ~ G K Chesterton,

13:The truth is that Tolstoy, with his immense genius, with his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and vast knowledge of life, is deficient in one faculty and one faculty alone. He is not a mystic; and therefore he has a tendency to go mad. Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ...The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism - the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem. ~ G K Chesterton, Tolstoy,

14:Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. 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 necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got 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." ~ G K Chesterton, Orthodoxy,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Atheism is too theological. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

2:Coincidence is a spiritual pun. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

3:Fairy tales are more than true. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

4:The word good has many meanings. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

5:Nothing is certain by uncertainty. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

6:The test of happiness is gratitude. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

7:All government is an ugly necessity. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

8:Passion makes every detail important. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

9:Plato was right, but not quite right. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

10:The moderns do not realize modernity. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

11:The true object of human life is play. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

12:Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

13:Faith means believing the unbelievable. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

14:It is always the secure who are humble. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

15:Leisure is being allowed to do nothing. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

16:Marriage is a sort of poetical see-saw. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

17:Progress is the mother of all problems. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

18:Thanks are the highest form of thought. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

19:Tradition is the democracy of the dead. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

20:Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

21:No man can be merry unless he is serious. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

22:Materialists and madmen never have doubts. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

23:Poets do not go mad, but chess players do. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

24:London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

25:Marriage is an adventure, like going to war. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

26:The comedy of man survives the tragedy of man. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

27:The cross cannot be defeated for it is defeat. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

28:Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

29:The center of every man's existence is a dream. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

30:The present condition of fame is merely fashion. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

31:Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

32:If there were no God, there would be no atheists. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

33:The eagle has no liberty; he only has loneliness. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

34:We're all in the same boat, and we're all seasick. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

35:America has a genius for the encouragement of fame. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

36:Art is born when the temporary touches the eternal. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

37:Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

38:People generally quarrel because they cannot argue. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

39:The noble temptation to see too much in everything. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

40:Against a dark sky, all flowers look like fireworks. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

41:America is the only country ever founded on a creed. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

42:An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

43:It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

44:Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

45:The simplification of anything is always sensational. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

46:Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

47:Paradox - Truth standing on her head to get attention. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

48:Comradeship is quite a different thing from friendship. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

49:Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

50:We talk of wild animals, but the wildest animal is man. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

51:An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

52:I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

53:You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

54:Hope means expectancy when things are otherwise hopeless. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

55:I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

56:Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

57:We need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

58:Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

59:The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

60:There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

61:Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

62:Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

63:He who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

64:The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

65:Wherever there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

66:Agnostic is the Greek word, for the Latin word, for ignorant ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

67:There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

68:You'll never find the solution if you don't see the problem. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

69:It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

70:Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

71:The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

72:The real great man is the man who makes every man feel great. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

73:A good joke is the closest thing we have to divine revelation. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

74:Theology is simply that part of religion that requires brains. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

75:There is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

76:Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

77:You don't want to be so open minded that your brains fall out! ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

78:The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

79:The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

80:The things we see every day are the things we never see at all. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

81:If the apple hit Newton’s nose, Newton’s nose hit the apple. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

82:Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

83:The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

84:The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

85:Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

86:If man is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

87:The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

88:The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

89:Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

90:It is only great men who take up a great space by not being there. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

91:Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

92:Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

93:The books that influence the world are those that it has not read. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

94:Doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

95:The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

96:The reason that angels fly is that they take themselves so lightly. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

97:To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

98:A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been a boy. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

99:If a man only likes victory he must always come late for the battle. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

100:I should say that psycho-analysis was confession without absolution. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

101:Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

102:The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

103:All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those who know it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

104:A really great person is the person who makes every person feel great. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

105:A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

106:In Catholicism, the pint, the pipe and the Cross can all fit together. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

107:Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

108:The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing; the primary fact. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

109:Tolerance is a virtue of people who don't believe in anything anymore. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

110:A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

111:My brain and this world don't fit each other; and there's an end of it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

112:One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

113:One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

114:The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

115:Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

116:Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

117:There are no new lies, no new heresies. Man is simply not that creative. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

118:Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

119:A nation that has nothing but its amusements will not be amused for long. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

120:How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

121:It is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

122:The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

123:The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

124:One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

125:We are all ordinary people. And it's the extraordinary people Who know it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

126:A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

127:Honour is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-porters. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

128:I've been to every park in every city and not seen a statue to a committee. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

129:We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

130:A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

131:A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

132:A tragedy means always a mans struggle with that which is stronger than man. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

133:He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

134:Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

135:To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

136:Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

137:Youth is always too serious, and just now it is too serious about frivolity. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

138:A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

139:And we were angry and poor and happy, And proud of seeing our names in print. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

140:I represent the jolly mass of mankind. I am the happy and reckless Christian. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

141:Political Economy means that everybody except politicians must be economical. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

142:The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

143:A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

144:It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

145:The Universe is the most extraordinary masterpiece ever constructed by nobody. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

146:I believe your own accent is inimitable, though I shall practice it in my bath. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

147:I may not practice what I preach but God forbid I should preach what I practice ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

148:Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

149:Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

150:The more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

151:Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

152:Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

153:Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

154:History is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

155:There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

156:To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

157:To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

158:Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

159:We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

160:For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

161:humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

162:It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

163:Physical science is like simple addition: it is either infallible or it is false. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

164:There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

165:A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

166:Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

167:Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

168:I am a journalist and have no earthly motives except curiosity and personal vanity. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

169:I've searched all the parks in all the cities - and found no statues of Committees. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

170:The Mass is not only about God becoming man, it is about Man becoming more himself. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

171:Adventure is the champagne of life, but I prefer my champagne and my adventures dry. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

172:A good man's work is effected by doing what he does, a woman's by being what she is. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

173:All men matter. You matter. I matter. It's the hardest thing in theology to believe. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

174:Contemporary society has become dry, not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

175:Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

176:Modern man is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

177:Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

178:No man can break any of the Ten Commandments. He can only break himself against them. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

179:The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

180:The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

181:The strangest whim has seized me ... After all I think I will not hang myself today. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

182:Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

183:Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

184:Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

185:I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

186:Romance is the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

187:The telescope makes the world smaller; it is only the microscope that makes it larger. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

188:If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. (on not perfectionism to put things off) . ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

189:These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

190:We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

191:Dear Sir: Regarding your article &

192:Gratitude, being nearly the greatest of human duties, is also nearly the most difficult. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

193:Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

194:One elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

195:The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

196:Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

197:One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

198:The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

199:Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason... that is its reason for existing. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

200:Right is Right even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

201:The Church is a house with a hundred gates: and no two men enter at exactly the same angle ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

202:The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

203:I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

204:In real life the people who are most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

205:One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

206:God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

207:It's not the world that's got so much worse but the news coverage that's got so much better. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

208:The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

209:We are like the penny, because we have the image of the king stamped on us, the divine king. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

210:A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

211:Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

212:If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

213:Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

214:The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

215:The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

216:In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

217:All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

218:Forms of expression always appear turgid to those who do not share the emotions they represent. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

219:Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

220:The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

221:The prophet and the quack are alike admired for a generation, and admired for the wrong reasons. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

222:There must be some good in the life of battle, for so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

223:It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

224:A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

225:Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

226:Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

227:He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

228:There are a good many fools who call me a friend, and also a good many friends who call me a fool. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

229:For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

230:Tea, although an OrientalIs a gentleman at least;Cocoa is a cad and coward,Cocoa is a vulgar beast. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

231:The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

232:A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

233:Lord! what a strange world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad! ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

234:Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

235:The evolutionists seem to know everything about the missing link except the fact that it is missing. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

236:The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

237:... the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

238:There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

239:A man cannot have the energy to produce good art without having the energy to wish to pass beyond it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

240:There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

241:Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

242:Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory ... we are all kings in exile. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

243:... It's natural to believe in the supernatural. It never feels natural to accept only natural things. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

244:Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

245:A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

246:Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

247:Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

248:If an editor can only make people angry enough, they will write half his newspaper for him for nothing. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

249:It is assumed that the skeptic has no bias; whereas he has a very obvious bias in favour of skepticism. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

250:Whenever you remove any fence, always pause long enough to ask why it was put there in the first place. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

251:And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

252:Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

253:Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

254:The modern world... has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

255:To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

256:Whatever else we may say of our own age, for good or evil, nobody is likely to call it an Age of Reason. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

257:When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

258:Democracy is like blowing your nose. You may not do it well, but it's something you ought to do yourself. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

259:In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own? ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

260:I would never commit the positively anti-social action of robbing a bank, or worse still, working in one. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

261:The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

262:Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

263:Teach to the young, men's enduring truths, and let the learned amuse themselves with their passing errors. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

264:the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a new soul. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

265:When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven's name to what? ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

266:Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

267:If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

268:Thoughts on the Merits of Work The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

269:When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

270:When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

271:A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

272:A thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

273:We lose our bearings entirely by speaking of the &

274:But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

275:If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

276:If you know what a man's doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he's doing keep behind him. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

277:It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

278:There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

279:There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

280:The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

281:The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

282:[Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

283:I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

284:That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

285:Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

286:Mankind is not a tribe of animals to which we owe compassion. Mankind is a club to which we owe our subscription. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

287:The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

288:Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

289:&

290:But since he stood for England And knew what England means, Unless you give him bacon You must not give him beans. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

291: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

292:It is human to err; and the only final and deadly error, among all our errors, is denying that we have ever erred. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

293:The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

294:We can’t turn life into a pleasure. But we can choose such pleasures as are worthy of us and our immortal souls. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

295:An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

296:A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

297:Before the Roman came to Rye or out to severn strode, / The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

298:By all men bond to Nothing, Being slaves without a lord, By one blind idiot world obeyed, Too blind to be abhorred. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

299:English experience indicates that when the two great political parties agree about something it is generally wrong. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

300:You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

301:Journalism largely consists of saying &

302:Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

303:The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

304:The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

305:When a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

306:There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

307:Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

308:If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

309:The real pleasure-seeking is the combination of luxury and austerity in such a way that the luxury can really be felt. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

310:All good men are international. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan. If we are to be international we must be national. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

311:In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

312:The philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, but its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

313:When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

314:The big corporation is not in the least remarkable for efficiency; it is only too big to be blamed for its inefficiency. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

315:The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

316:If you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

317:Is there anyone... who will maintain that the Party System could have been created by people particularly fond of truth? ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

318:Saint George he was for England, And before he killed the dragon he drank a pint of English ale out of an English flagon. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

319:The danger of loss of faith in God is not that one will believe in nothing, but rather that one will believe in anything. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

320:Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

321:Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

322:Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

323:Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

324: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, @wisdomtrove

325:It is often a mistake to combine two pleasures, because pleasures, like pains, can act as counter-irri-tants to each other. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

326:One must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

327:You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

328:Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made an essential and godliness is regarded as an offence. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

329:I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

330:Jesus promised his disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

331:I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

332: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

333:It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

334:All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

335: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

336:Before the gods that made the gods Had seen their sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale Was cut out of the grass. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

337:Only friendliness produces friendship. And we must look far deeper into the soul of man for the thing that produces friendliness. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

338:Christianity met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

339: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

340:The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

341:When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

342:If a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

343:Pride juggles with her toppling towers, They strike the sun and cease, But the firm feet of humility They grip the ground like trees. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

344:If the common man in the past had a grave respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had some of his own. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

345:In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

346:The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

347: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 ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

348: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

349: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

350:For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value of any of them is that they bear the image of the king. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

351:I defy anybody to say what are the rights of a citizen, if they do not include the control of his own diet in relation to his own health. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

352:In truth the Church is too unique to prove herself unique. For most popular and easy proof is by parallel; and here there is no parallel. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

353:The power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

354:Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

355:Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

356:I do not believe that any human being is fundamentally happier for being finally lost in a crowd, even if it is called a crowd of comrades. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

357: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

358:The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon who is wasting fairyland. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

359:The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable one. The trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

360:When you with velvets mantled o'er, Defy December's tempests frore, Oh! spare one garment from your store, To clothe the poor at Christmas. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

361: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

362:Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

363:The determining bulk of Scotch people had heard of golf ever since they had heard of God and often considered the two as of equal importance. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

364:The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

365:When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

366: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

367:I never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

368: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

369:When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

370:Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

371:Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

372: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

373:A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying, &

374:Dipsomaniac and the abstainer are not only both mistaken, but they both make the same mistake. They both regard wine as a drug and not as a drink. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

375:Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

376:Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

377:Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two? ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

378:What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

379:It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

380:The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

381:The English are no nearer than they were a hundred years ago to knowing what Jefferson really meant when he said that God had created all men equal. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

382:There is nothing so weak, for working purposes, as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

383: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

384:People talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

385:It is a mathematical fact that if a line be not perfectly directed towards a point, it will actually go further away from it as it comes nearer to it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

386:There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

387:Human anger is a higher thing than what is called divine discontent. For you must be angry with something; but you can be discontented with everything. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

388:I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

389:I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

390: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

391: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

392:I will go forth as a real outlaw," he said, "and as men do robbery on the highway I will do right on the highway; and it will be counted a wilder crime. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

393:One pleasure attached to growing older is that many things seem to be growing younger; growing fresher and more lively than we once supposed them to be. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

394:The people has no definite disbelief in the temples of theology. The people has a very fiery and practical disbelief in the temples of physical science. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

395:The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that it's never been tried . . . not that it can't remake the world, but that it's difficult. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

396: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

397: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

398: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

399:It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

400:Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

401:The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

402:The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilised man is a free man, and is always talking about what he may do. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

403:Marxism: The theory that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive, that history is a science, a science of the search for food. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

404:Odd, isn't it, that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man? ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

405: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

406:&

407:Some of the most frantic lies on the face of life are told with modesty and restraint; for the simple reason that only modesty and restraint will save them. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

408:All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

409:Posting a letter and getting married [sic] are among the few things left that are entirely romantic; for to be entirely romantic, a thing must be irrevocable ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

410:Stick to the man who looks out of the window and tries to understand the world. Keep clear of the man who looks in at the window and tries to understand you. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

411: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

412: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? ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

413:It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

414:If the world grows to worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church; but if the Church grows to worldly, it cannot be adequately rebuked for worldlyness by the world. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

415:The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

416:&

417: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

418:They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words - &

419:Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem". ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

420:The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

421:Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

422:A child's instinct is almost perfect in the matter of fighting. The child's hero is always the man or boy who defends himself suddenly and splendidly against aggression. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

423:McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny and nothing else. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

424:The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

425:When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

426:I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

427:[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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

428:To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

429:From the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

430:The Darwinian movement has made no difference to mankind, except that, instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy, they now talk unscientifically about science. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

431: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

432:It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

433: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

434: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

435:Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

436:The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of nations. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

437: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

438: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

439:The scientific facts, which were supposed to contradict the faith in the nineteenth century, are nearly all of them regarded as unscientific fictions in the twentieth century. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

440:The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

441:Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape? ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

442:At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. . . . ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

443:Christian Science … is the direct denial both of science and of Christianity, for Science rests wholly on the recognition of truth and Christianity on the recognition of pain. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

444:All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

445:Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

446:It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

447:There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

448:Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

449:Men in England are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by brutes who refuse them bread, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern, and therefore wish to enslave. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

450: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

451:You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

452:The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

453: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

454:The world will very soon be divided, unless I am mistaken, into those who still go on explaining our success, and those somewhat more intelligent who are trying to explain our failure. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

455:The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

456:The word &

457:Architecture is the alphabet of giants; it is the largest set of symbols ever made to meet the eyes of men. A tower stands up like a sort of simplified stature, of much more than heroic size. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

458:There are a great many good people, and a great many sane people here this afternoon. Unfortunately, by a kind of coincidence, all the good people are mad, and all the sane people are wicked. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

459: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

460:There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first is the quack who cures you; the second is the highly qualified person who doesn't. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

461: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

462:Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

463:Any one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

464:Psychoanalysis is a science conducted by lunatics for lunatics. They are generally concerned with proving that people are irresponsible; and they certainly succeed in proving that some people are ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

465:Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

466:Individually, men may present a more or less rational appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming. But humanity a a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

467:And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

468:... it is not necessary to the child to awaken to the sense of the strange and humorous by giving a man a luminous nose... to the child it is sufficiently strange and humorous to have a nose at all. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

469: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

470:A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

471:children are simply human beings who are allowed to do what everyone else really desires to do, as for instance, to fly kites, or when seriously wronged to emit prolonged screams for several minutes. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

472: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

473:The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men no having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

474:There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

475:The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world... The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

476:Now there is any amount of this nonsense cropping up among American cranks. Anybody may propose to establish coercive Eugenics; or enforce psychoanalysis that is, enforce confession without absolution. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

477:The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

478:Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

479:For good or evil, a line has been passed in our political history; and something that we have known all our lives is dead. I will take only one example of it: our politicians can no longer be caricatured. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

480:The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

481:... there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reason on the unforeseen. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

482:A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

483:A man must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ready to toil and die for his convictions if he is not even ready to wear a wreathe around his head for them. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

484:In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture and criticism might very well be summed up as the men who smile criticizing the men who laugh. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

485:It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

486:I would give a woman not more rights, but more privileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in which she can be free. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

487:The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

488:We cannot fling ourselves into the blank future; we can only call up images from the past. This being so, the important principle follows, that how many images we have largely depends on how much past we have. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

489:Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

490: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

491:Laughter has something in it common with the ancient words of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes people forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

492: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

493:As an explanation of the world materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of a madman's arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

494:Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

495:The word &

496:We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

497:Life is serious all the time, but living cannot be. You may have all the solemnity you wish in your neckties, but in anything important (such as sex, death, and religion), you must have mirth or you will have madness. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

498: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. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

499:Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

500:We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part of it. The clouds and curtains of darkness, the confounding vapors, these are the daily weather of this world. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Self is the gorgon. ~ G K Chesterton,

2:The true soldier fights ~ G K Chesterton,

3:I know that it means very ~ G K Chesterton,

4:Only poor men get hanged. ~ G K Chesterton,

5:Ubi Petrus ibi Franciscus. ~ G K Chesterton,

6:Modesty is always beautiful ~ G K Chesterton,

7:Always be comic in a tragedy ~ G K Chesterton,

8:Art is the signature of man. ~ G K Chesterton,

9:The past is not what it was. ~ G K Chesterton,

10:Confetti, bonbons, artillery. ~ G K Chesterton,

11:Imagination demands an image. ~ G K Chesterton,

12:We become taller when we bow. ~ G K Chesterton,

13:Coincidences are spiritual puns. ~ G K Chesterton,

14:Horne Fisher stooped and touched ~ G K Chesterton,

15:Men are men, but Man is a woman. ~ G K Chesterton,

16:tradition is truer than fashion. ~ G K Chesterton,

17:little things please great minds. ~ G K Chesterton,

18:or even generally a disadvantage. ~ G K Chesterton,

19:A naked moon stood in a naked sky. ~ G K Chesterton,

20:the tear of the oyster is a pearl. ~ G K Chesterton,

21:Uncommon sense is common nonsense. ~ G K Chesterton,

22:Satan fell by the force of gravity. ~ G K Chesterton,

23:The clubhouse on the golf links was ~ G K Chesterton,

24:There is no bigot like the atheist. ~ G K Chesterton,

25:Everything is different in the dark, ~ G K Chesterton,

26:I am not a man at all. I am a cause. ~ G K Chesterton,

27:The flying ship of Professor Lucifer ~ G K Chesterton,

28:Fiction is a necessity. GK Chesterton ~ G K Chesterton,

29:Oh, bring me some lobster mayonnaise. ~ G K Chesterton,

30:Passion makes every detail important. ~ G K Chesterton,

31:We matter to God — God only knows why. ~ G K Chesterton,

32:It is always the secure who are humble. ~ G K Chesterton,

33:Leisure is being allowed to do nothing. ~ G K Chesterton,

34:and you cannot be equal all by yourself. ~ G K Chesterton,

35:Pokój bez książek to jak ciało bez duszy ~ G K Chesterton,

36:Thrift is poetic because it is creative. ~ G K Chesterton,

37:We have eternity to stretch our legs in. ~ G K Chesterton,

38:Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. ~ G K Chesterton,

39:It is easy to be heavy, hard to be light. ~ G K Chesterton,

40:It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. ~ G K Chesterton,

41:To him, even the momentary was momentous. ~ G K Chesterton,

42:Anything worth doing is worth doing badly. ~ G K Chesterton,

43:A universo regalado no le mires el diente. ~ G K Chesterton,

44:But the devil really kept his appointments ~ G K Chesterton,

45:...every man is dignified when he is dead. ~ G K Chesterton,

46:I had always felt life first as a story... ~ G K Chesterton,

47:Materialists and madmen never have doubts. ~ G K Chesterton,

48:Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. ~ G K Chesterton,

49:No man knows he is young while he is young. ~ G K Chesterton,

50:There nearly always is a method in madness. ~ G K Chesterton,

51:The test of all happiness is gratitude; and ~ G K Chesterton,

52:London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation. ~ G K Chesterton,

53:The only defensible war is a war of defense. ~ G K Chesterton,

54:two, he only repeated that it was one of his ~ G K Chesterton,

55:Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously! ~ G K Chesterton,

56:I have not faith enough to believe in matter. ~ G K Chesterton,

57:Marriage is an adventure, like going to war. ~ G K Chesterton,

58:Try to grow straight, and life will bend you. ~ G K Chesterton,

59:Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. ~ G K Chesterton,

60:Somehow one can never manage to be an atheist. ~ G K Chesterton,

61:The comedy of man survives the tragedy of man. ~ G K Chesterton,

62:the human intellect is free to destroy itself. ~ G K Chesterton,

63:God looked on God, as ghosts meet in the night. ~ G K Chesterton,

64:Hang it all! what is a man ashamed of nowadays? ~ G K Chesterton,

65:Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. ~ G K Chesterton,

66:The cross cannot be defeated. For it is Defeat. ~ G K Chesterton,

67:You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion. ~ G K Chesterton,

68:Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution. ~ G K Chesterton,

69:What we all dread most is a maze with no centre. ~ G K Chesterton,

70:Every revolution, like a repentance, is a return. ~ G K Chesterton,

71:For these disguises did not disguise, but reveal. ~ G K Chesterton,

72:If there were no God, there would be no atheists. ~ G K Chesterton,

73:It is better to ride a donkey than to be a donkey ~ G K Chesterton,

74:No man is such a legalist as the good Secularist. ~ G K Chesterton,

75:The secret of life lies in laughter and humility. ~ G K Chesterton,

76:a man cannot make statues without rejecting stone. ~ G K Chesterton,

77:Classics are books everyone knows but no has read. ~ G K Chesterton,

78:Different first principles make debate impossible. ~ G K Chesterton,

79:the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry ~ G K Chesterton,

80:tradition is only democracy extended through time. ~ G K Chesterton,

81:What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right. ~ G K Chesterton,

82:Cheerfulness without humour is a very trying thing. ~ G K Chesterton,

83:Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out. ~ G K Chesterton,

84:If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. ~ G K Chesterton,

85:People generally quarrel because they cannot argue. ~ G K Chesterton,

86:An artist is identical with an anarchist," he cried. ~ G K Chesterton,

87:Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel. ~ G K Chesterton,

88:Everywhere we see than men do not go mad by dreaming ~ G K Chesterton,

89:I prefer to call it reform. For reform implies form. ~ G K Chesterton,

90:The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. ~ G K Chesterton,

91:El signo de los tiempos es un signo de interrogación. ~ G K Chesterton,

92:In every society, the rich are the scum of the earth. ~ G K Chesterton,

93:I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles. ~ G K Chesterton,

94:I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin. ~ G K Chesterton,

95:The classes that wash most are those that work least. ~ G K Chesterton,

96:The paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings ~ G K Chesterton,

97:The simplification of anything is always sensational. ~ G K Chesterton,

98:Without the family, we are helpless before the State. ~ G K Chesterton,

99:Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet. ~ G K Chesterton,

100:Christianity is not a creed for good men, but for men. ~ G K Chesterton,

101:I am a man, and therefore have all devils in my heart. ~ G K Chesterton,

102:Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things. ~ G K Chesterton,

103:No one has any experience of the battle of Armageddon. ~ G K Chesterton,

104:Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified. ~ G K Chesterton,

105:Paradox - Truth standing on her head to get attention. ~ G K Chesterton,

106:somehow one must love the world without being worldly. ~ G K Chesterton,

107:The sceptics, like bees, give their one sting and die. ~ G K Chesterton,

108:Culture, like science, is no protection against demons. ~ G K Chesterton,

109:It is easy to be solemn, it is so hard to be frivolous. ~ G K Chesterton,

110:Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution. ~ G K Chesterton,

111:The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick. ~ G K Chesterton,

112:There are no boring subjects, only disinterested minds. ~ G K Chesterton,

113:Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. ~ G K Chesterton,

114:A head can be beaten small enough until it fits the hat. ~ G K Chesterton,

115:A man's brain must expand, if it breaks up the universe. ~ G K Chesterton,

116:A man with no sword can never be beaten in swordmanship. ~ G K Chesterton,

117:An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity. ~ G K Chesterton,

118:Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. ~ G K Chesterton,

119:Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly -- at first. ~ G K Chesterton,

120:I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean. ~ G K Chesterton,

121:Once abolish the God and the government becomes the God. ~ G K Chesterton,

122:Perfectly,” replied Syme; “always be comic in a tragedy. ~ G K Chesterton,

123:Sybarites bathe in wine, and Nonconformists drink water; ~ G K Chesterton,

124:The human race, to which so many of my readers belong... ~ G K Chesterton,

125:The Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God. ~ G K Chesterton,

126:Tolerance is the last virtue of a man without principle. ~ G K Chesterton,

127:I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward. ~ G K Chesterton,

128:Jestliže má něco smysl dělat, má smysl dělat to i špatně. ~ G K Chesterton,

129:Private lives are more important than public reputations. ~ G K Chesterton,

130:The dawn of history reveals a humanity already civilized. ~ G K Chesterton,

131:The trouble with mere pragmatism is that it doesn’t work. ~ G K Chesterton,

132:We need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed ~ G K Chesterton,

133:Your offer," he said, "is far too idiotic to be declined. ~ G K Chesterton,

134:He defended respectability with violence and exaggeration. ~ G K Chesterton,

135:Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government. ~ G K Chesterton,

136:The dragon without St. George would not even be grotesque. ~ G K Chesterton,

137:The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant. ~ G K Chesterton,

138:The most sacred thing is to be able to shut your own door. ~ G K Chesterton,

139:There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing. ~ G K Chesterton,

140:the way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost ~ G K Chesterton,

141:Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. ~ G K Chesterton,

142:Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded. ~ G K Chesterton,

143:When you choose anything, you reject everything else. That ~ G K Chesterton,

144:Wherever there is animal worship there is human sacrifice. ~ G K Chesterton,

145:Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. ~ G K Chesterton,

146:he who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men. ~ G K Chesterton,

147:. . . . metaphysics is the only thoroughly emotional thing. ~ G K Chesterton,

148:Our political vagueness divides men, it does not fuse them. ~ G K Chesterton,

149:riddles of God are more satisfying than the answers of man, ~ G K Chesterton,

150:The adventures may be mad, but the adventurer must be sane. ~ G K Chesterton,

151:The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark. ~ G K Chesterton,

152:The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost. ~ G K Chesterton,

153:Being a believer may be, if you like, as bad as being drunk; ~ G K Chesterton,

154:Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed. ~ G K Chesterton,

155:Even in an empire of atheists the dead man is always sacred. ~ G K Chesterton,

156:for the definition of a law is: something that can be broken ~ G K Chesterton,

157:Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. ~ G K Chesterton,

158:Nobody sees anything except in the dark," said the magician. ~ G K Chesterton,

159:There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people. ~ G K Chesterton,

160:Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. ~ G K Chesterton,

161:You attacked reason," said Father Brown. "It's bad theology. ~ G K Chesterton,

162:You attacked reason,” said Father Brown. “It’s bad theology. ~ G K Chesterton,

163:Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do? ~ G K Chesterton,

164:Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms. ~ G K Chesterton,

165:He had escaped a thunderbolt, but he was still under a cloud. ~ G K Chesterton,

166:It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. ~ G K Chesterton,

167:Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. ~ G K Chesterton,

168:The men signed with the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark. ~ G K Chesterton,

169:The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen. ~ G K Chesterton,

170:The real great man is the man who makes every man feel great. ~ G K Chesterton,

171:The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost. ~ G K Chesterton,

172:Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. ~ G K Chesterton,

173:unless a man is in part a humorist, he is only in part a man. ~ G K Chesterton,

174:We are perishing for lack of wonder, not for lack of wonders. ~ G K Chesterton,

175:We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders. ~ G K Chesterton,

176:Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified. ~ G K Chesterton,

177:He who weds the spirit of the times quickly becomes a widower. ~ G K Chesterton,

178:It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. ~ G K Chesterton,

179:[L]ife's always worth living while men feel that they may die. ~ G K Chesterton,

180:None of us can censor our feelings, Mr Digby, only our actions ~ G K Chesterton,

181:No wise man will wish to bring more long words into the world. ~ G K Chesterton,

182:patient" is in the passive mood; "sinner" is in the active. If ~ G K Chesterton,

183:Take away the supernatural, and what remains is the unnatural. ~ G K Chesterton,

184:There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. ~ G K Chesterton,

185:Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe anything. ~ G K Chesterton,

186:Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth. ~ G K Chesterton,

187:Very few of us ever see the history of our own time happening. ~ G K Chesterton,

188:All other societies die finally and with dignity. We die daily. ~ G K Chesterton,

189:But, good Lord, man," he said, "you oughtn't to be a policeman! ~ G K Chesterton,

190:I know he is really happy, and yet I can never catch him at it. ~ G K Chesterton,

191:I know too much," said Horne Fisher, "and all the wrong things. ~ G K Chesterton,

192:It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything—even pride. ~ G K Chesterton,

193:Nebunii sunt întotdeauna serioși; înnebunesc din lipsă de umor. ~ G K Chesterton,

194:The things we see every day are the things we never see at all. ~ G K Chesterton,

195:but for me all good things come to a point, swords for instance. ~ G K Chesterton,

196:however, that the controversies left Summers Minor comparatively ~ G K Chesterton,

197:How quickly revolutions grow old; and, worse still, respectable. ~ G K Chesterton,

198:It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it. ~ G K Chesterton,

199:Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. ~ G K Chesterton,

200:Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper than reality. ~ G K Chesterton,

201:The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason. ~ G K Chesterton,

202:The only simplicity that matters is the simplicity of the heart. ~ G K Chesterton,

203:Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. ~ G K Chesterton,

204:It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything - even pride. ~ G K Chesterton,

205:People who lose all their charity generally lose all their logic. ~ G K Chesterton,

206:The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang. – ~ G K Chesterton,

207:The quality of a miracle is mysterious, but its manner is simple. ~ G K Chesterton,

208:The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ~ G K Chesterton,

209:this thing that bewilders the intellect utterly quiets the heart: ~ G K Chesterton,

210:Creeds, it was said, divided men; but at least morals united them. ~ G K Chesterton,

211:El artista es uno con el anarquista; son términos intercambiables. ~ G K Chesterton,

212:Even the moon is only poetical because there is a man in the moon. ~ G K Chesterton,

213:He [man] has always lost his way; but now he has lost his address. ~ G K Chesterton,

214:It is only great men who take up a great space by not being there. ~ G K Chesterton,

215:Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist. ~ G K Chesterton,

216:Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes. ~ G K Chesterton,

217:No wise man will wish to bring more long words into the world. But ~ G K Chesterton,

218:The books that influence the world are those that it has not read. ~ G K Chesterton,

219:The world will never be safe for democracy—it is a dangerous trade ~ G K Chesterton,

220:Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, ~ G K Chesterton,

221:Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism. ~ G K Chesterton,

222:He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments. It ~ G K Chesterton,

223:I could forgive you even your cruelty if it were not for your calm. ~ G K Chesterton,

224:It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything—even pride. But ~ G K Chesterton,

225:No man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid. ~ G K Chesterton,

226:paradox simply means a certain defiant joy which belongs to belief. ~ G K Chesterton,

227:The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic, ~ G K Chesterton,

228:The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic. ~ G K Chesterton,

229:The lost causes are exactly those which might have saved the world. ~ G K Chesterton,

230:There is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset. ~ G K Chesterton,

231:All the exaggerations are right, if they exaggerate the right thing. ~ G K Chesterton,

232:Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. ~ G K Chesterton,

233:for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons. He ~ G K Chesterton,

234:He asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't ~ G K Chesterton,

235:It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote. ~ G K Chesterton,

236:The Christian is only worse because it is his business to be better. ~ G K Chesterton,

237:The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums. ~ G K Chesterton,

238:The very volutes of the capitals might have curled up with the cold. ~ G K Chesterton,

239:We are the enemies of society, for society is the enemy of humanity. ~ G K Chesterton,

240:what is the good of a man being honest in his worship of dishonesty? ~ G K Chesterton,

241:When duty and religion are really destroyed, it will be by the rich. ~ G K Chesterton,

242:blue paint among the ancients, or red paint among the modern Britons. ~ G K Chesterton,

243:Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up. ~ G K Chesterton,

244:He seemed like a walking blasphemy, a blend of the angel and the ape. ~ G K Chesterton,

245:In prosperity, our friends know us. In adversity, we know our friends ~ G K Chesterton,

246:There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. ~ G K Chesterton,

247:All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those who know it. ~ G K Chesterton,

248:Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. ~ G K Chesterton,

249:Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish. ~ G K Chesterton,

250:Dickens didn't write what people wanted. He wanted what people wanted. ~ G K Chesterton,

251:In Catholicism, the Pint, the Pipe and the Cross can all fit together. ~ G K Chesterton,

252:Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all. ~ G K Chesterton,

253:Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline. ~ G K Chesterton,

254:Svět nikdy nezajde na nedostatek divů. Svět zajde na nedostatek údivu. ~ G K Chesterton,

255:To hurry through one’s leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions. ~ G K Chesterton,

256:We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity. ~ G K Chesterton,

257:A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition. ~ G K Chesterton,

258:Even good government was not good enough to know God among the thieves. ~ G K Chesterton,

259:Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized. ~ G K Chesterton,

260:I am the fool in this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne. ~ G K Chesterton,

261:Marriage is a duel to the death, which no man of honour should decline. ~ G K Chesterton,

262:Men are moved most by their religion; especially when it is irreligion. ~ G K Chesterton,

263:My brain and this world don't fit each other; and there's an end of it. ~ G K Chesterton,

264:One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place. ~ G K Chesterton,

265:Perhaps you know that you are the King of England; but why do you care? ~ G K Chesterton,

266:The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact. ~ G K Chesterton,

267:A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs. ~ G K Chesterton,

268:Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions. ~ G K Chesterton,

269:Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song. ~ G K Chesterton,

270:o progresso significa sermos impelidos para a frente – mas pela polícia. ~ G K Chesterton,

271:The blank page is God's way of letting us know how hard it is to be God. ~ G K Chesterton,

272:There are no rationalists. We all believe fairy-tales, and live in them. ~ G K Chesterton,

273:The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see ~ G K Chesterton,

274:We can accept man as a fact, if we are content with an unexplained fact. ~ G K Chesterton,

275:You say grace before meals. I say grace before I dip the pen in the ink. ~ G K Chesterton,

276:A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice. ~ G K Chesterton,

277:Change is about the narrowest and hardest groove that a man can get into. ~ G K Chesterton,

278:Each thing that obeys law [has] the glory and isolation of the anarchist. ~ G K Chesterton,

279:How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win. ~ G K Chesterton,

280:Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles. ~ G K Chesterton,

281:The modern State has educated its citizens in a series of ephemeral fads. ~ G K Chesterton,

282:The objection to an aristocracy is that it is a priesthood without a god. ~ G K Chesterton,

283:The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see. ~ G K Chesterton,

284:The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see. ~ G K Chesterton,

285:The truths of religion are unprovable; the facts of science are unproved. ~ G K Chesterton,

286:He can reasonably accept man as a freak, because he accepts man as a fact. ~ G K Chesterton,

287:he’s got money simply because he collects money, as a boy collects stamps. ~ G K Chesterton,

288:if we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them. ~ G K Chesterton,

289:It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers. ~ G K Chesterton,

290:Madness and despair are innocent enough. There are worse things, Flambeau. ~ G K Chesterton,

291:O doido é, comumente, um lógico e, frequentemente, um lógico bem-sucedido. ~ G K Chesterton,

292:One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time. ~ G K Chesterton,

293:Pagans were wiser then paganism; that is why the pagans became Christians. ~ G K Chesterton,

294:The skeptic is too credulous; he believes in newspapers and encyclopedias. ~ G K Chesterton,

295:The thousand arms of the forest were grey, and its million fingers silver. ~ G K Chesterton,

296:The truth is people who worship health cannot remain healthy on the point. ~ G K Chesterton,

297:This cult of the future is not only a weakness but a cowardice of the age. ~ G K Chesterton,

298:We are all revenants; all living Christians are dead pagans walking about. ~ G K Chesterton,

299:Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions. It ~ G K Chesterton,

300:Can it be the old devil's house? I've heard he has a house in North London. ~ G K Chesterton,

301:For cleverness kills wisdom; that is one of the few sad and certain things. ~ G K Chesterton,

302:His eyes were alive with intellectual torture, as if pure thought was pain. ~ G K Chesterton,

303:Honour is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-porters. ~ G K Chesterton,

304:How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it. ~ G K Chesterton,

305:The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things. ~ G K Chesterton,

306:Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected. It ~ G K Chesterton,

307:To the delight of the poetic little gutter boys in the little grey streets. ~ G K Chesterton,

308:A blind man may be picturesque; but it requires two eyes to see the picture. ~ G K Chesterton,

309:All roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never get there. ~ G K Chesterton,

310:Francis, seest thou not that my house is in ruins? Go and restore it for me. ~ G K Chesterton,

311:He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head. ~ G K Chesterton,

312:if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. ~ G K Chesterton,

313:Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. ~ G K Chesterton,

314:—¡Queremos abolir a Dios! —declaró Gregory abriendo los ojos con fanatismo—. ~ G K Chesterton,

315:The duty of the artist lies in keeping alive a sense of wonder in the world. ~ G K Chesterton,

316:The man has not spoken for hours; and yet he has been speaking all the time. ~ G K Chesterton,

317:The real objection to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness. ~ G K Chesterton,

318:Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it. ~ G K Chesterton,

319:Until we realize that things might not be we cannot realize that things are. ~ G K Chesterton,

320:We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press. ~ G K Chesterton,

321:Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it. ~ G K Chesterton,

322:A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both. ~ G K Chesterton,

323:Estou absolutamente convencido de que este mundo não se explica a si próprio. ~ G K Chesterton,

324:Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of hte god within. ~ G K Chesterton,

325:Political Economy means that everybody except politicians must be economical. ~ G K Chesterton,

326:There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect. ~ G K Chesterton,

327:The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion. ~ G K Chesterton,

328:The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder. ~ G K Chesterton,

329:To become a Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think. ~ G K Chesterton,

330:We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable. ~ G K Chesterton,

331:A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. ~ G K Chesterton,

332:Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business. ~ G K Chesterton,

333:Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written. ~ G K Chesterton,

334:The glory of heaven deepened and darkened around the sublime vulgarity of man; ~ G K Chesterton,

335:When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. ~ G K Chesterton,

336:You cannot finish a sum how you like. But you can finish a story how you like. ~ G K Chesterton,

337:You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it. ~ G K Chesterton,

338:A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it. ~ G K Chesterton,

339:All roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never get there. In ~ G K Chesterton,

340:A man who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. ~ G K Chesterton,

341:Does a man commonly see another come up waving a scimitar and offer no remarks? ~ G K Chesterton,

342:I believe your own accent is inimitable, though I shall practice it in my bath. ~ G K Chesterton,

343:The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit in to the world. ~ G K Chesterton,

344:There is only one thing which is generally safe from plagiarism -- self-denial. ~ G K Chesterton,

345:Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste. ~ G K Chesterton,

346:Angus...had hitherto maintained hilarious ease from motives of mental hygiene... ~ G K Chesterton,

347:Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition. ~ G K Chesterton,

348:Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance. ~ G K Chesterton,

349:Flippancy is a flower whose roots are often underground in the subconsciousness. ~ G K Chesterton,

350:How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? ~ G K Chesterton,

351:Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. ~ G K Chesterton,

352:Man is the microcosm; man is the measure of all things; man is the image of God. ~ G K Chesterton,

353:My life is passed in making bad jokes and seeing them turn into true prophecies. ~ G K Chesterton,

354:There’d be a lot less scandal if people didn’t idealize sin and pose as sinners. ~ G K Chesterton,

355:There is one thing is needful - everything - The rest is vanity of vanities. ~ G K Chesterton,

356:To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it. ~ G K Chesterton,

357:To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it. ~ G K Chesterton,

358:We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour. ~ G K Chesterton,

359:Alone among the animals, he is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter; ~ G K Chesterton,

360:Believe me, you never know the best about men till you know the worst about them. ~ G K Chesterton,

361:Capitalism believes in collectivism for itself and individualism for its enemies. ~ G K Chesterton,

362:For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything. ~ G K Chesterton,

363:It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem. ~ G K Chesterton,

364:I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees. ~ G K Chesterton,

365:Láska znamená milovat i to, co milováníhodné vůbec není, jinak by nebyla ctností. ~ G K Chesterton,

366:that fairy tale was the nearest thing to the real truth that has been said today. ~ G K Chesterton,

367:The Catholic Church is like a thick steak, a glass of red wine, and a good cigar. ~ G K Chesterton,

368:the instinct of democracy is like the instinct of one woman, wild but quite right ~ G K Chesterton,

369:There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. ~ G K Chesterton,

370:A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true. ~ G K Chesterton,

371:Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. ~ G K Chesterton,

372:Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance." ~ G K Chesterton,

373:Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly, ~ G K Chesterton,

374:Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate. ~ G K Chesterton,

375:Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle. ~ G K Chesterton,

376:I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. ~ G K Chesterton,

377:I am the man who knows too much to know anything, or, at any rate, to do anything, ~ G K Chesterton,

378:Nijedan čovjek koji je zaljubljen, ne misli da je itko prije njega bio zaljubljen. ~ G K Chesterton,

379:Nonsense!' said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else attempted paradox. ~ G K Chesterton,

380:The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do. ~ G K Chesterton,

381:The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. ~ G K Chesterton,

382:The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it. ~ G K Chesterton,

383:The modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe. ~ G K Chesterton,

384:You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it. ~ G K Chesterton,

385:You irritate me sublimely. What can it be in me? Is it the relic of a moral sense? ~ G K Chesterton,

386:Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. ~ G K Chesterton,

387:...it ought to be the oldest things that are taught to the youngest people". GKC ~ G K Chesterton,

388:Progress is a metaphor from merely walking along a road—very likely the wrong road. ~ G K Chesterton,

389:The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times. ~ G K Chesterton,

390:The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do.  ~ G K Chesterton,

391:worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank. ~ G K Chesterton,

392:Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street. ~ G K Chesterton,

393:only when I came to look at the facts I always found they pointed to something else. ~ G K Chesterton,

394:The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before. ~ G K Chesterton,

395:The pessimist can be enraged at wrong; but only the optimist can be surprised at it. ~ G K Chesterton,

396:They do not destroy orthodoxy; they only destroy political courage and common sense. ~ G K Chesterton,

397:Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. ~ G K Chesterton,

398:Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think ~ G K Chesterton,

399:Moderation is not a compromise; moderation is a passion; the passion of great judges. ~ G K Chesterton,

400:My best friends are all either bottomless sceptics or quite uncontrollable believers, ~ G K Chesterton,

401:O determinista não acredita em apelos à vontade, mas acredita na mudança de ambiente. ~ G K Chesterton,

402:The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion. ~ G K Chesterton,

403:There is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell. ~ G K Chesterton,

404:Wherever men are still theological there is still some chance of their being logical. ~ G K Chesterton,

405:All we know of the Missing Link is that he is missing - and he won't be missed either. ~ G K Chesterton,

406:Circumstances break mens bones; it has never been shown that they break mens optimism. ~ G K Chesterton,

407:Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. ~ G K Chesterton,

408:In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd. ~ G K Chesterton,

409:It is one thing to believe in witches, and quite another to believe in witch-smellers. ~ G K Chesterton,

410:Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her. ~ G K Chesterton,

411:Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much. ~ G K Chesterton,

412:So strong is tradition that later generations will dream of what they have never seen. ~ G K Chesterton,

413:The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank. ~ G K Chesterton,

414:We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour. Hence ~ G K Chesterton,

415:What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism. ~ G K Chesterton,

416:His principle can be quite simply stated: he refuses to die while he is still alive. He ~ G K Chesterton,

417:Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference which is an elegant name for ignorance. ~ G K Chesterton,

418:Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress ~ G K Chesterton,

419:sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late ~ G K Chesterton,

420:These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own. ~ G K Chesterton,

421:We may fight for the cause of international peace because we are very fond of fighting. ~ G K Chesterton,

422:Every man is dangerous," said the old man without moving, "who cares only for one thing. ~ G K Chesterton,

423:Father Brown: ... one can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place ~ G K Chesterton,

424:I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller ~ G K Chesterton,

425:I had always vaguely felt facts to be miracles in the sense that they are wonderful: now ~ G K Chesterton,

426:The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. ~ G K Chesterton,

427:There is only one thing that that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism. ~ G K Chesterton,

428:The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ~ G K Chesterton, In Defense of Sanity,

429:Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. ~ G K Chesterton,

430:if Christianity is true, then the end of our exploring will be joy and goodness and life. ~ G K Chesterton,

431:If ever I murdered somebody," he added quite simply, "I dare say it might be an Optimist. ~ G K Chesterton,

432:I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller. ~ G K Chesterton,

433:It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. ~ G K Chesterton,

434:Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. ~ G K Chesterton,

435:Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. ~ G K Chesterton,

436:One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. ~ G K Chesterton,

437:Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing. ~ G K Chesterton,

438:Really, if this is being glaringly good I must confess that the glare does not dazzle me. ~ G K Chesterton,

439:There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. ~ G K Chesterton,

440:Uma nação que não tem nada além dos seus divertimentos, não se divertirá por muito tempo. ~ G K Chesterton,

441:When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar. ~ G K Chesterton,

442:A liberal is a noble and indispensable lunatic who tries to make a cosmos of his own head. ~ G K Chesterton,

443:Enquanto se tem um mistério se tem saúde; quando se destrói o mistério se cria a morbidez. ~ G K Chesterton,

444:I had always felt life first as a story - and if there is a story, there is a storyteller. ~ G K Chesterton,

445:Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed. ~ G K Chesterton,

446:Materialist history is the most madly incredible of all histories, or even of all romances ~ G K Chesterton,

447:Right is Right even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it. ~ G K Chesterton,

448:The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice. ~ G K Chesterton,

449:The Church is a house with a hundred gates: and no two men enter at exactly the same angle ~ G K Chesterton,

450:The worship of will is the negation of will. To admire mere choice is to refuse to choose. ~ G K Chesterton,

451:What is the good of begetting a man until we have settled what is the good of being a man? ~ G K Chesterton,

452:for a large lemon moon was only just setting in the forest of high grass above their heads, ~ G K Chesterton,

453:He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative. ~ G K Chesterton,

454:I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else. ~ G K Chesterton,

455:If you want to know what you are, you are a set of highly well-intentioned young jackasses. ~ G K Chesterton,

456:I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. ~ G K Chesterton,

457:I might point out that the rich do not so much buy honesty as curtains to cover dishonesty. ~ G K Chesterton,

458:Killed a policeman? How Vegetarian! Well, I suppose it was, so long as they didn't eat him. ~ G K Chesterton,

459:Man is more himself, more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing and grief superficial. ~ G K Chesterton,

460:One can hardly think too little of one’s self. One can hardly think too much of one’s soul. ~ G K Chesterton,

461:You can't be angry with bad men. But a good man in the wrong—why one thirsts for his blood. ~ G K Chesterton,

462:As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen. ~ G K Chesterton,

463:Every act is an act of self sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. ~ G K Chesterton,

464:Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain. ~ G K Chesterton,

465:Few except the poor preserve traditions. Aristocrats live not in traditions but in fashions. ~ G K Chesterton,

466:It is now certain that the public does know. It is not so certain that the public does care. ~ G K Chesterton,

467:it needed ten times more courage to look after a leper than to fight for the crown of Sicily ~ G K Chesterton,

468:La Religion les aurait tous rendus fous, si la théologie ne les avait gardés sains d'esprits ~ G K Chesterton,

469:Mr. H. G. Wells, who said, ‘It is not much good thinking of a thing unless you think it out. ~ G K Chesterton,

470:My best friends are all either bottomless skeptics or quite uncontrollable believers . . . . ~ G K Chesterton,

471:no life of faith can be lived privately. There must be an overflow into the lives of others. ~ G K Chesterton,

472:Right is right, even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong about it. ~ G K Chesterton,

473:Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say ~ G K Chesterton,

474:The criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all. ~ G K Chesterton,

475:[T]he most comic things of all are exactly the things most worth doing--such as making love. ~ G K Chesterton,

476:We ought not give ourselves the benefit of the doubt if we plan on doubting everything else. ~ G K Chesterton,

477:When the chord of monotony is stretched to its tightest, it breaks with the sound of a song. ~ G K Chesterton,

478:But as St. Francis did not love humanity but men, so he did not love Christianity but Christ. ~ G K Chesterton,

479:But it's my reading of human nature that a man will cheat in his trade, but not in his hobby. ~ G K Chesterton,

480:He fell to fighting again with a supernatural levity, like a Mohammedan panting for Paradise. ~ G K Chesterton,

481:I dare say that when I get out of this bed I shall do some deed of an almost terrible virtue. ~ G K Chesterton,

482:I need not pause to explain that crime is not a disease. It is criminology that is a disease. ~ G K Chesterton,

483:It is not seeing straight to see him as an animal. It is not sane. It sins against the light; ~ G K Chesterton,

484:Men represent the deliberative and democratic element in life. Woman represents the despotic. ~ G K Chesterton,

485:O louco não é um homem que perdeu a razão. O louco é um homem que perdeu tudo exceto a razão. ~ G K Chesterton,

486:Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say. ~ G K Chesterton,

487:The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. ~ G K Chesterton,

488:The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. ~ G K Chesterton,

489:When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in everything. ~ G K Chesterton,

490:And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely. ~ G K Chesterton,

491:Complaint always comes back in an echo from the ends of the world; but silence strengthens us. ~ G K Chesterton,

492:curiously enough, it is the man who likes things as they are who really makes them better. The ~ G K Chesterton,

493:It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man is not strong enough to be idle. ~ G K Chesterton,

494:La intolerancia puede ser definida como la indignación de los hombres que no tienen opiniones. ~ G K Chesterton,

495:Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite ~ G K Chesterton,

496:There is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity. You may see it in many modern religions ~ G K Chesterton,

497:The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice. ~ G K Chesterton,

498:We are too fond nowadays of committing the sin of fear and calling it the virtue of reverence. ~ G K Chesterton,

499:What a strange world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad. ~ G K Chesterton,

500:When there aren’t enough hats to go around the problem isn’t solved by lopping off some heads. ~ G K Chesterton,

501:Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously. ~ G K Chesterton,

502:All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ~ G K Chesterton,

503:Besides, if we want poor people to respect property we must give them some property to respect. ~ G K Chesterton,

504:Christianity is a superhuman paradox whereby two opposite passions may blaze beside each other. ~ G K Chesterton,

505:He has a fancy for always sitting in a pitch-dark room. He says it makes his thoughts brighter. ~ G K Chesterton,

506:It is the supreme proof of a man being prosaic that he always insists on poetry being poetical. ~ G K Chesterton,

507:Je velký omyl domnívat se, že když lidé ztratí víru, nebudou věřit v nic. Budou věřit v cokoli. ~ G K Chesterton,

508:... pero el caso es que dicen más de lo que piensan, a fuerza de pensar realmente lo que dicen. ~ G K Chesterton,

509:The Reformer is always right about what's wrong. However, he's often wrong about what is right. ~ G K Chesterton,

510:As if everyone did not know that while saints can afford to be dirty, seducers have to be clean. ~ G K Chesterton,

511:Is literature better, is politics better, for having discarded the moralist and the philosopher? ~ G K Chesterton,

512:La edad de oro retorna a los hombres cuando, aunque sólo sea momentáneamente, se olvidan del oro ~ G K Chesterton,

513:She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived. ~ G K Chesterton,

514:Then he realised (in some odd way) that the silence was rather a living silence than a dead one. ~ G K Chesterton,

515:The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. ~ G K Chesterton,

516:They had all that forgetfulness of history that goes everywhere with the extension of education. ~ G K Chesterton,

517:When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven’t got any. ~ G K Chesterton,

518:You are my only friend in the world, and I want to talk to you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you. ~ G K Chesterton,

519:Y ya se sabe: los humildes siempre hablan mucho; los orgullosos se vigilan siempre de muy cerca. ~ G K Chesterton,

520:Any one setting out to dispute anything ought always to begin by saying what he does not dispute. ~ G K Chesterton,

521:Every flirtation is a marriage; it is a marriage in this frightful sense; that it is irrevocable. ~ G K Chesterton,

522:Fairy tales are the only democratic institutions. All the classes have heard all the fairy tales. ~ G K Chesterton,

523:It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile. ~ G K Chesterton,

524:Just the other day in the Underground I enjoyed the pleasure of offering my seat to three ladies. ~ G K Chesterton,

525:Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. ~ G K Chesterton,

526:Občan těžko rozezná rozdíl mezí daní a pokutou, snad až na to, že pokuta je vždy podstatně nižší. ~ G K Chesterton,

527:Za mého mládí říkali dětem: dojez to! Teprve později jsem zjistil, že lidské tělo není popelnice. ~ G K Chesterton,

528:A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason ~ G K Chesterton,

529:A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy. ~ G K Chesterton,

530:Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. ~ G K Chesterton,

531:Heaven help me! I used to be fairly good at thinking. I could paraphrase any page in Aquinas once. ~ G K Chesterton,

532:In short, we do not get good laws to restrain bad people. We get good people to restrain bad laws. ~ G K Chesterton,

533:I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me. ~ G K Chesterton,

534:Men have not got tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of. ~ G K Chesterton,

535:The issue is now quite clear. It is between light and darkness and every one must choose his side. ~ G K Chesterton,

536:The poetic does not misrepresent the speech one half so much as the speech misrepresents the soul. ~ G K Chesterton,

537:To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. ~ G K Chesterton,

538:An optimist is a man who looks after your eyes, and a pessimist is a man who looks after your feet. ~ G K Chesterton,

539:Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity ~ G K Chesterton,

540:For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy. ~ G K Chesterton,

541:...Humanity as a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman. ~ G K Chesterton,

542:I think there is even something a trifle vulgar about this idea of trying to rebuke spirit by size. ~ G K Chesterton,

543:The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents. ~ G K Chesterton,

544:...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy. ~ G K Chesterton,

545:A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. ~ G K Chesterton,

546:But humanity as a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman. ~ G K Chesterton,

547:I am more than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do— I can die. ~ G K Chesterton,

548:If you'd take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But it might. ~ G K Chesterton,

549:Irishmen are best at the specially hard professions—the trades of iron, the lawyer, and the soldier. ~ G K Chesterton,

550:I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it. ~ G K Chesterton,

551:It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world. ~ G K Chesterton,

552:I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me. I ~ G K Chesterton,

553:Porque le tengo miedo. Y el hombre no debe consentir que en el universo subsista lo que le da temor. ~ G K Chesterton,

554:the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon ~ G K Chesterton,

555:The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it. ~ G K Chesterton,

556:There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions. ~ G K Chesterton,

557:We must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet much kinder to thieves than before. There ~ G K Chesterton,

558:As enunciated today, "progress" is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative. ~ G K Chesterton,

559:Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory ... we are all kings in exile. ~ G K Chesterton,

560:In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners. ~ G K Chesterton,

561:The crux and crisis is that man found it natural to worship, even natural to worship unnatural things ~ G K Chesterton,

562:There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner. ~ G K Chesterton,

563:There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable. ~ G K Chesterton,

564:To put it shortly, the moment we are really impartial about it, we know why people are partial to it. ~ G K Chesterton,

565:Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion. ~ G K Chesterton,

566:War in the wide modern sense, is possible, not because more men disagree, but because more men agree. ~ G K Chesterton,

567:We are learning to do a great many clever things…The next great task will be to learn not to do them. ~ G K Chesterton,

568:Here I end (thank God) the first and dullest business of this book—the rough review of recent thought. ~ G K Chesterton,

569:I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess. ~ G K Chesterton,

570:it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the ~ G K Chesterton,

571:Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority. ~ G K Chesterton,

572:Modern intelligence won’t accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority. ~ G K Chesterton,

573:The crux and crisis is that man found it natural to worship; even natural to worship unnatural things. ~ G K Chesterton,

574:There is the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. ~ G K Chesterton,

575:The sun has set," said Horne Fisher, in the same terrible tones, "and he will never see it rise again. ~ G K Chesterton,

576:As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. ~ G K Chesterton, Orthodoxy,

577:Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated. ~ G K Chesterton,

578:Father Brown: I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland, I only said it was always dangerous. ~ G K Chesterton,

579:For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one. ~ G K Chesterton,

580:For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers. ~ G K Chesterton,

581:It is assumed that the skeptic has no bias; whereas he has a very obvious bias in favour of skepticism. ~ G K Chesterton,

582:Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad—in various ways. I ~ G K Chesterton,

583:Solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. ~ G K Chesterton,

584:We lose our bearings entirely by speaking of the ‘lower classes’ when we mean humanity minus ourselves. ~ G K Chesterton,

585:And if great reasoners are often maniacal, it is equally true that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. ~ G K Chesterton,

586:As enunciated today, "progress" is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative. We ~ G K Chesterton,

587:A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality. ~ G K Chesterton,

588:Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not quite coward enough to admire it. ~ G K Chesterton,

589:The central idea of the great part of the Old Testament may be called the idea of the loneliness of God. ~ G K Chesterton,

590:The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. ~ G K Chesterton,

591:The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. ~ G K Chesterton,

592:To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance. ~ G K Chesterton,

593:Usted asegura que es un poeta de la ley, y yo le replico que es usted una contradicción en los términos. ~ G K Chesterton,

594:We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. ~ G K Chesterton,

595:And pray where in earth or heaven are there prudent marriages? Might as well talk about prudent suicides. ~ G K Chesterton,

596:But let the colours you lay on be violent, gorgeous, terrific colours, because my feelings are like that. ~ G K Chesterton,

597:He conceived himself and his like as perpetually conquering peoples who were perpetually being conquered. ~ G K Chesterton,

598:Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak. ~ G K Chesterton,

599:If a man is genuinely superior to his fellows the first thing that he believes in is the equality of man. ~ G K Chesterton,

600:If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, you probably will not. ~ G K Chesterton,

601:Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive. ~ G K Chesterton,

602:Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. ~ G K Chesterton,

603:Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves. ~ G K Chesterton,

604:Um homem prefere impressionar-se com a grandeza do mundo; por que não se impressionar com a sua pequenez? ~ G K Chesterton,

605:We do not merely love ourselves more than we love duty; we actually love ourselves more than we love joy. ~ G K Chesterton,

606:When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws. ~ G K Chesterton,

607:A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter. ~ G K Chesterton,

608:Fui un gran lector de novelas hasta que empecé a reseñarlas y, como es natural, tuve que dejar de leerlas. ~ G K Chesterton,

609:If the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die. ~ G K Chesterton,

610:Now it is very right to rebuke our own race or religion for falling short of our own standards and ideals. ~ G K Chesterton,

611:Teach to the young, men's enduring truths, and let the learned amuse themselves with their passing errors. ~ G K Chesterton,

612:We are rarely in danger of examining to excess, especially when the subject is the shape of our own lives. ~ G K Chesterton,

613:With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand. ~ G K Chesterton,

614:Being a nation means standing up to your equals, whereas being an empire only means kicking your inferiors. ~ G K Chesterton,

615:For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. ~ G K Chesterton,

616:I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since. ~ G K Chesterton,

617:Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. ~ G K Chesterton,

618:The determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does believe in changing the environment. ~ G K Chesterton,

619:Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks. ~ G K Chesterton,

620:For in the average human house there is one hole by which money comes in and a hundred by which it goes out. ~ G K Chesterton,

621:Gentlemen used to lie just as schoolboys lie, because they hung together and partly to help one another out. ~ G K Chesterton,

622:If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments ~ G K Chesterton,

623:Suppose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are the idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark? ~ G K Chesterton,

624:Under the eighteenth century fashion people did not so much all pretend to be young, as all agree to be old. ~ G K Chesterton,

625:What on earth is the current morality, except in its literal sense—the morality that is always running away? ~ G K Chesterton,

626:When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them. ~ G K Chesterton,

627:When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude. ~ G K Chesterton,

628:why, nobody’s ever survived it! Look at all the people married since Adam and Eve—and all as dead as mutton. ~ G K Chesterton,

629:A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. ~ G K Chesterton,

630:And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than look down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow. ~ G K Chesterton,

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

632:Carefully sure to include the voice of the vigilante; for the madman heard is half as mad as the one ignored. ~ G K Chesterton,

633:The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. ~ G K Chesterton,

634:There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less ~ G K Chesterton,

635:The silence fell again, and Syme, though he understood nothing, listened instinctively for something serious. ~ G K Chesterton,

636:Utterly devoid of fear in physical dangers, he was a great deal too sensitive to the smell of spiritual evil. ~ G K Chesterton,

637:We're all really dependent in nearly everything, and we all make a fuss about being independent in something. ~ G K Chesterton,

638:We’re all really dependent in nearly everything, and we all make a fuss about being independent in something. ~ G K Chesterton,

639:An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered. ~ G K Chesterton,

640:But is it so hard for you people to believe that spiritual powers are really more powerful than material ones. ~ G K Chesterton,

641:But we are engaged in a bitter and eternal war with small things; chiefly with microbes and with collar studs. ~ G K Chesterton,

642:Fairy tales make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. ~ G K Chesterton,

643:For the moral basis, it is obvious that man's ethical responsibility varies with his knowledge of consequences ~ G K Chesterton,

644:La mejor prueba de la cultura y la liberalidad de un hombre es su actitud ante las cosas que nunca sucedieron. ~ G K Chesterton,

645:Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them. ~ G K Chesterton,

646:Resulta fácil volverse en contra de lo que uno realmente es por ir tras una semejanza accidental con uno mismo ~ G K Chesterton,

647:Strike a glass and it will not endure an instant. Simply do not strike it and it will endure a thousand years. ~ G K Chesterton,

648:The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age ~ G K Chesterton,

649:The eternal and essential truth is that until we love a thing in all its ugliness we cannot make it beautiful. ~ G K Chesterton,

650:There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less. ~ G K Chesterton,

651:Therefore it is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most. ~ G K Chesterton,

652:The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. ~ G K Chesterton,

653:Truth is so terrible, even in fetters, that for a moment Syme’s slender and insane victory swayed like a reed. ~ G K Chesterton,

654:We are in the presence of a thousand lies all pointing with their fantastic fingers to one undiscovered truth. ~ G K Chesterton,

655:A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. ~ G K Chesterton,

656:Even those dry pedants who think that ethics depend on economics must admit that economics depend on existence. ~ G K Chesterton,

657:Family is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things that matter. ~ G K Chesterton,

658:For with the removal of all question of merit or payment, the soul is suddenly released for incredible voyages. ~ G K Chesterton,

659:Grass and garden trees seemed glittering with something at once good and unnatural, like a fire from fairyland. ~ G K Chesterton,

660:If you know what a man's doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he's doing, keep behind him. ~ G K Chesterton,

661:I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness double by wonder. ~ G K Chesterton,

662:Stories of magic alone can express my sense that life is not only a pleasure but a kind of eccentric privilege. ~ G K Chesterton,

663:That God should allow good people to be as bestially stupid as that--rose against me like a towering blasphemy. ~ G K Chesterton,

664:...the fundamental things in a man are not the things he explains, but rather the things he forgets to explain. ~ G K Chesterton,

665:The moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have the right to punish anybody else. ~ G K Chesterton,

666:The modern world is insane, not so much because it admits the abnormal as because it cannot recover the normal. ~ G K Chesterton,

667:The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children. ~ G K Chesterton,

668:the rivers of mythology and philosophy run parallel and do not mingle till they meet in the sea of Christendom. ~ G K Chesterton,

669:The things in this world which are thoroughly insignificant are precisely the things which are singularly rare. ~ G K Chesterton,

670:They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed. ~ G K Chesterton,

671:But always, it has been truly said, the savage is talkative about his mythology and taciturn about his religion. ~ G K Chesterton,

672:[Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. ~ G K Chesterton,

673:Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak. ~ G K Chesterton, [T5],

674:I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. ~ G K Chesterton,

675:O homem feliz é que faz coisas inúteis; o homem doente não dispõe de força suficiente para ficar sem fazer nada. ~ G K Chesterton,

676:Precisamos ver o mundo de tal modo que nele se combine uma ideia de deslumbramento com uma ideia de acolhimento. ~ G K Chesterton,

677:Šťastný je muž, který se ožení se svou milovanou, ale ještě Šťastnější je ten, jenž miluje ženu, kterou si vzal. ~ G K Chesterton,

678:That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child. ~ G K Chesterton,

679:There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle. ~ G K Chesterton,

680:There is nothing which is so weak for working purposes as the enormous importance attached to immediate victory. ~ G K Chesterton,

681:We can’t turn life into a pleasure. But we can choose such pleasures as are worthy of us and our immortal souls. ~ G K Chesterton,

682:We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws. ~ G K Chesterton,

683:And the second as an old man might say it about the weather; not without sincerity but certainly without fervour. ~ G K Chesterton,

684:But everywhere the religious dance came before the religious hymn, and man was a ritualist before he could speak. ~ G K Chesterton,

685:Every man is womanised, merely by being born. They talk of the masculine woman; but every man is a feminised man. ~ G K Chesterton,

686:Gospode! kakav je to neobičan svijet u kojemu čovjek ne može ostati jedinstven, čak ni ako si da truda da poludi! ~ G K Chesterton,

687:In a word, mythology is a search; it is something that combines a recurrent desire with a recurrent doubt, mixing ~ G K Chesterton,

688:Nobody has any business to use the word “progress” unless he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals. ~ G K Chesterton,

689:No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon. ~ G K Chesterton,

690:Stated baldly, charity certainly means one of two things–pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people. ~ G K Chesterton,

691:The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange. ~ G K Chesterton,

692:The men who made the joke saw something deep which they could not express except by something silly and emphatic. ~ G K Chesterton,

693:The more a man looks at a thing, the less he can see it, and the more a man learns a thing, the less he knows it. ~ G K Chesterton,

694:The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. ~ G K Chesterton,

695:We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty. ~ G K Chesterton,

696:God is God, as the Moslems say; but a great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it. ~ G K Chesterton,

697: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

698:I sincerely maintain that Nature-worship is more morally dangerous than the most vulgar man-worship of the cities; ~ G K Chesterton,

699:Somewhere embedded in every ordinary book are the five or six words for which really all the rest will be written. ~ G K Chesterton,

700:The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic. ~ G K Chesterton,

701:An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. ~ G K Chesterton,

702:Classical ornament here and there accentuated the contrast; caryatides and carved masks of comedy or tragedy looked ~ G K Chesterton,

703:Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. ~ G K Chesterton,

704:Do you know what that means?" he cried. "It means that God himself may hold a candle to show me your infernal face. ~ G K Chesterton,

705:...he sometimes felt himself to be a painfully prosaic person, but by the same token he knew he was incurably sane. ~ G K Chesterton,

706:I can imagine no more successful and productive form of manufacture than that of making mountains out of molehills. ~ G K Chesterton,

707:I cannot betray you, but I might betray myself. Come, come! wait and see me betray myself. I shall do it so nicely. ~ G K Chesterton,

708:Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind. ~ G K Chesterton,

709:The little sins are sometimes harder to confess than the big ones—but that's why it's so important to confess them. ~ G K Chesterton,

710:The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason. ~ G K Chesterton,

711:The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It ~ G K Chesterton,

712:...this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion. ~ G K Chesterton,

713:Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, So I my life conduct. Each morning see some task begun, Each evening see it chucked. ~ G K Chesterton,

714:What happens when everyone is asleep is called Evolution. What happens when everyone is awake is called Revolution. ~ G K Chesterton,

715:You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You ~ G K Chesterton,

716:Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest has failed. ~ G K Chesterton,

717:He liked as he liked; he seems to have liked everybody, but especially those whom everybody disliked him for liking. ~ G K Chesterton,

718:Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed when you and I were young. ~ G K Chesterton,

719:This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities. ~ G K Chesterton,

720:Weak things must boast of being new, like so many new German philosophies. But strong things can boast of being old. ~ G K Chesterton,

721:A joke is by its nature a protest against sense. It is no good attacking nonsense for being successfully nonsensical. ~ G K Chesterton,

722:God alone knows what the conscience can survive, or how a man who has lost his honor will still try to save his soul. ~ G K Chesterton,

723:Goo-goo goo-goo goo-goo goo Goo-goo goo-goo goo-goo Googly, googly, googly goo: That’s how we fill a column. ~ G K Chesterton,

724:I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches on it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy. ~ G K Chesterton,

725:I've known a good many magicians myself in India—mango plant and all. But the Indian ones are all frauds, I'll swear. ~ G K Chesterton,

726:Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. ~ G K Chesterton,

727:Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist. ~ G K Chesterton,

728:She was not in the least afraid of loneliness, because she was not afraid of devils. I think they were afraid of her. ~ G K Chesterton,

729:The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say. ~ G K Chesterton,

730:The devil takes us to the top of an exceeding high mountain and makes us dizzy; but God lets us look at the mountain. ~ G K Chesterton,

731:There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. ~ G K Chesterton,

732:The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. ~ G K Chesterton,

733:What the denouncer of dogma really means is not that dogma is bad; but rather that dogma is too good to be true. That ~ G K Chesterton,

734:Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. ~ G K Chesterton,

735:He had that combination of savoir-faire with a sort of well-groomed coarseness which is not uncommon in young doctors. ~ G K Chesterton,

736:If there is one thing worse that the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals. ~ G K Chesterton,

737:In short, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. ~ G K Chesterton,

738:of a sane man there is only one safe definition. He is a man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head. ~ G K Chesterton,

739:People always brag about their vices; it is when they begin to brag about their virtues that they become insufferable. ~ G K Chesterton,

740:The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's. ~ G K Chesterton,

741:the modern return to heathenism has been a return not even to the heathen youth but rather to the heathen old age. But ~ G K Chesterton,

742:There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great. ~ G K Chesterton,

743:There is only one good thing science ever discovered—a good thing, good tidings of great joy— that the world is round. ~ G K Chesterton,

744:We may find men wrong in what they thought they were, but we cannot find them wrong in what they thought they thought. ~ G K Chesterton,

745:Would you be so obliging as to tell me whose house this is?’ “`Mine,’ said the burglar, `May I present you to my wife? ~ G K Chesterton,

746:And though St. John saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. ~ G K Chesterton,

747:In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood. ~ G K Chesterton,

748:no man ought to write at all, or even to speak at all, unless he thinks that he is in truth and the other man in error. ~ G K Chesterton,

749:One of the actual and certain consequences of the idea that all men are equal is immediately to produce very great men. ~ G K Chesterton,

750:When will people understand that it is useless for a man to read his Bible unless he also reads everybody else's Bible? ~ G K Chesterton,

751:I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life. ~ G K Chesterton,

752:I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy. It ~ G K Chesterton,

753:It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation. ~ G K Chesterton,

754:Of a sane man there is only one safe definition. He is the man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head. ~ G K Chesterton,

755:Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision. ~ G K Chesterton,

756:The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad. ~ G K Chesterton,

757:The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand. ~ G K Chesterton,

758:Whenever he gives advice it is always something as startling as an epigram, and yet as practical as the Bank of England. ~ G K Chesterton,

759:All right,” said Father Brown. “I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous. ~ G K Chesterton,

760:Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. ~ G K Chesterton,

761:In the wild events which were to follow this girl had no part at all; he never saw her again until all his tale was over. ~ G K Chesterton,

762:It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. ~ G K Chesterton,

763:The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The ~ G K Chesterton,

764:They stoned the false prophets, it is said; but they could have stoned true prophets with a greater and juster enjoyment. ~ G K Chesterton,

765:Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. ~ G K Chesterton,

766:Unhappy! of course you'll be unhappy. Who the devil are you that you shouldn't be unhappy, like the mother that bore you? ~ G K Chesterton,

767:An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong. ~ G K Chesterton,

768:A saint is long past any desire for distinction; he is the only sort of superior man who has never been a superior person. ~ G K Chesterton,

769:A stone is helpless, because a stone is hard. The stone must by its own nature go downwards, because hardness is weakness. ~ G K Chesterton,

770:For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point and does not break. ~ G K Chesterton,

771:In most commercial ways we’re a pretty forward country. In these moral ways we’re content to be a pretty backward country. ~ G K Chesterton,

772:Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. ~ G K Chesterton,

773: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

774:There is a corollary to the conception of being too proud to fight. It is that the humble have to do most of the fighting. ~ G K Chesterton,

775:Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition ~ G K Chesterton,

776:We do wrong to seek peace in Nature; we should rather seek the nobler sort of war; and see all the trees as green banners. ~ G K Chesterton,

777:Abstinent i alkoholik se nejen mýlí, ale dělají dokonce stejnou chybu. Oba totiž považují víno za drogu, a nikoli za nápoj. ~ G K Chesterton,

778:Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right. ~ G K Chesterton,

779:I do not object to Socialism because it will revolutionize our commerce, but because it will leave it so horribly the same. ~ G K Chesterton,

780:Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. ~ G K Chesterton,

781:Inside I am really bursting with boyish merriment; but I acted the paralytic Professor so well, that now I can't leave off. ~ G K Chesterton,

782:It was his home now. But it could not be his home till he had gone from it and returned to it. Now he was the Prodigal Son. ~ G K Chesterton,

783:Lying in bed would be an altogether supreme experience if one only had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. ~ G K Chesterton,

784:The ignorant pronounce it Frood To cavil or applaud The well-informed pronounce it Froyd But I pronounce it Fraud. ~ G K Chesterton,

785:There are books showing men how to succeed in everything; they are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books. ~ G K Chesterton,

786:There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read. ~ G K Chesterton,

787:Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. ~ G K Chesterton,

788:For my part, I think brightness more important than cleanliness; since the first is of the soul, and the second of the body. ~ G K Chesterton,

789:German soldiers look as if they despised you, but French soldiers as if they despised you and themselves even more that you. ~ G K Chesterton,

790:Have you ever noticed this — that people never answer what you say? They answer what you mean — or what they think you mean. ~ G K Chesterton,

791:I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion. ~ G K Chesterton,

792:I did try to found a little heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy. ~ G K Chesterton,

793:It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree. ~ G K Chesterton,

794:Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich. ~ G K Chesterton,

795:That which is large enough for the rich to covet,” said Wayne, drawing up his head, “is large enough for the poor to defend. ~ G K Chesterton,

796:The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people. ~ G K Chesterton,

797:the central Christian theology (sufficiently summarized in the Apostles’ Creed) is the best root of energy and sound ethics. ~ G K Chesterton,

798:The mere machinery of voting is not democracy, though at present it is not easy to effect any simpler democratic method. But ~ G K Chesterton,

799:The more complicated the smash, the whiter-haired and more absent-minded will be the theorist who is needed to deal with it; ~ G K Chesterton,

800:There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book, and a tired man who wants a book to read. ~ G K Chesterton,

801:What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity. ~ G K Chesterton,

802:What we all dread most,” said the priest in a low voice, “is a maze with no centre. That is why atheism is only a nightmare. ~ G K Chesterton,

803:As regards moral courage, then, it is not so much that the public schools support it feebly, as that they suppress it firmly. ~ G K Chesterton,

804:Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good, that we feel certain that evil could be explained. ~ G K Chesterton,

805:But if you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it. ~ G K Chesterton,

806:Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad … mathematicians go mad. ~ G K Chesterton,

807:modern people think that any one who makes himself slightly uncomfortable in public will immediately be uproariously popular. ~ G K Chesterton,

808:Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. ~ G K Chesterton,

809:Ten thousand women marched through the streets shouting, 'We will not be dictated to,' and went off and became stenographers. ~ G K Chesterton,

810:The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people. ~ G K Chesterton,

811: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

812:Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction; for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it. ~ G K Chesterton,

813:Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest? He grows a forest to hide it in. ~ G K Chesterton,

814:But now a great thing in the street Seems any human nod, Where shift in strange democracy The million masks of God. ~ G K Chesterton,

815:[...] central Christian theology (sufficiently summarized in the Apostles' Creed) is the best root of energy and sound ethics. ~ G K Chesterton,

816:For the two things that a healthy person hates most between heaven and hell are a woman who is not dignified and a man who is. ~ G K Chesterton,

817:He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. ~ G K Chesterton,

818:It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong. ~ G K Chesterton,

819:No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerness in eating and drinking. ~ G K Chesterton,

820:The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt. ~ G K Chesterton,

821:Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus; When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us ~ G K Chesterton,

822:All other societies die finally and with dignity. We die daily. We are always being born again with almost indecent obstetrics. ~ G K Chesterton,

823:Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason. ~ G K Chesterton,

824:Always pay to a man the extravagant compliment which no ordinary woman ever pays to him, that of listening while he is talking. ~ G K Chesterton,

825:Art is born when the temporary touches the eternal; the shock of beauty is when the irresistible force hits the immovable post. ~ G K Chesterton,

826:Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home. ~ G K Chesterton,

827:He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican. ~ G K Chesterton,

828:I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. ~ G K Chesterton,

829:If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence. ~ G K Chesterton,

830:In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn. ~ G K Chesterton,

831:In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it. ~ G K Chesterton,

832:It is incomprehensible to me that any thinker can calmly call himself a modernist; he might as well call himself a Thursdayite. ~ G K Chesterton,

833:Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. ~ G K Chesterton,

834:The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive. ~ G K Chesterton,

835:We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong. ~ G K Chesterton,

836:A man reading the Dickens novel wished that it might never end. Men read a Dickens story six times because they knew it so well. ~ G K Chesterton,

837:And Right and Left,” said Syme with a simple eagerness, “I hope you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me. ~ G K Chesterton,

838:Before the gods that made the gods had seen their sunrise pass, the white horse of the white horse vale was cut out of the grass ~ G K Chesterton,

839:How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos. ~ G K Chesterton,

840:If Man is not a divinity, then Man is a disease. Either he is the image of God, or else he is the one animal which has gone mad. ~ G K Chesterton,

841:It was not the house that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it. My wife was better than all women, and yet I could not feel it. ~ G K Chesterton,

842:Many a man has owed the first white gleams of the dawn of Democracy in his soul to a desire to find a stick and beat the butler. ~ G K Chesterton,

843:Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable. ~ G K Chesterton,

844:None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them. ~ G K Chesterton,

845: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

846:The soldier must be calm in the thick of the battle," pursued the policeman. "The composure of an army is the anger of a nation. ~ G K Chesterton,

847:The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land. ~ G K Chesterton,

848:Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out. ~ G K Chesterton,

849:whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth. ~ G K Chesterton,

850:All men are tragic...All men are comic...Every man is important if he loses his life; and every man is funny if he loses his hat. ~ G K Chesterton,

851:And he set to rhyme his ale-measures, And he sang aloud his laws, Because of the joy of giants, The joy without a cause. ~ G K Chesterton,

852:But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind. ~ G K Chesterton,

853:For some extraordinary reason, there is a fixed notion that it is more liberal to disbelieve in miracles than to believe in them. ~ G K Chesterton,

854:It is vain for Mr. McCabe to say that a ballet is a part of him. He should be part of a ballet, or else he is only part of a man. ~ G K Chesterton,

855:That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face - that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem. ~ G K Chesterton,

856:There is something sinister about putting a leprechaun in a workhouse. The only solid comfort is that he certainly will not work. ~ G K Chesterton,

857:Until suffering comes upon us, the explorations that consume our hearts and our communities reflect the shallowness of our lives. ~ G K Chesterton,

858:When the wind came it split the sky and shouldered the cloud-band left and right; unbarring great clear furnaces of rolling gold. ~ G K Chesterton,

859:A breeze blew so clean and sweet, that one could not think that it blew from the sky; it blew rather through some hole in the sky. ~ G K Chesterton,

860:Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed: a passage which some have considered as a prophecy of modern journalism. ~ G K Chesterton,

861:But imaginative does not mean imaginary. It does not follow that it is all what the moderns call subjective, when they mean false. ~ G K Chesterton,

862:exactly the part he ought not to assert--himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt--the Divine Reason. ~ G K Chesterton,

863:Fiction means the common things as seen by the uncommon people. Fairy tales mean the uncommon things as seen by the common people. ~ G K Chesterton,

864:He spoke in that sweet and steely voice which he reserved for great occasions and practiced for hours together in his bedroom. ~ G K Chesterton,

865:there is a deeper fallacy besides this obvious fact; that men need not live for food merely because they cannot live without food. ~ G K Chesterton,

866:When you say you want all peoples to unite, you really mean that you want all peoples to unite to learn the tricks of your people. ~ G K Chesterton,

867:A man who believes something is ready and witty, because he has all his weapons about him. He can apply his test in an instant. The ~ G K Chesterton,

868:Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know. ~ G K Chesterton,

869:E se os grandes argumentadores muitas vezes são maníacos, é igualmente verdade que os maníacos são em geral grandes argumentadores. ~ G K Chesterton,

870:He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists. ~ G K Chesterton,

871:In a word, God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. ~ G K Chesterton,

872:Is it possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening "Do it again" to the moon." from Orthodoxy. ~ G K Chesterton,

873:Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree. ~ G K Chesterton,

874:My brain feels like a bomb, night and day. It must expand! It must expand! A man's brain must expand, if it breaks up the universe. ~ G K Chesterton,

875:[Reinhold] Niebuhr endorsed G.K.Chesterton’s observation that tolerance is the attitude of those who do not believe in anything. ~ Christopher Lasch,

876:The aim of the sculptor is to convince us that he is a sculptor; the aim of the orator, is to convince us that he is not an orator. ~ G K Chesterton,

877:The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge. Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel. ~ G K Chesterton,

878:Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad," replied Syme with perfect calm; "but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition. ~ G K Chesterton,

879:El único magno crimen del Gobierno esta en el hecho de que gobierne. El pecado imperdonable del poder supremo está en que es supremo ~ G K Chesterton,

880:Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game. ~ G K Chesterton,

881:I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification. ~ G K Chesterton,

882:I strongly object to wrong arguments on the right side. I think I object to them more than to the wrong arguments on the wrong side. ~ G K Chesterton,

883:Revolutionists amke a reform, Conservatives only conserve the reform. They never reform the reform, which is often very much wanted. ~ G K Chesterton,

884:Satire may be mad and anarchic, but it presupposes an admitted superiority in certain things over others; it presupposes a standard. ~ G K Chesterton,

885:Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a Conservative. ~ G K Chesterton,

886:The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous. ~ G K Chesterton,

887:Then I realized that for eighteen hundred years the Church Militant had not been a pageant, but a riot—and a suppressed riot. There, ~ G K Chesterton,

888:The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg. If ~ G K Chesterton,

889:There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived. ~ G K Chesterton,

890:When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything. ~ G K Chesterton,

891:All good writers express the state of their souls, even (as occurs in some cases of very good writers) if it is a state of damnation. ~ G K Chesterton,

892: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

893:Los cuentos de hadas superan la realidad no porque nos digan que los dragones existen, sino porque nos dicen que pueden ser vencidos. ~ G K Chesterton,

894:Lucifer sang through the skies like a silver arrow; the bleak white steel of it, gleaming in the bleak blue emptiness of the evening. ~ G K Chesterton,

895:The pale leaf falls in pallor, but the green leaf turns to gold; We that have found it good to be young shall find it good to be old; ~ G K Chesterton,

896:The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and left untried. ~ G K Chesterton,

897:There was something of relative freedom in that feudal gesture of the vow; for no man asks vows from slaves anymore than from spades. ~ G K Chesterton,

898:Americans... are the most idealistic people in the whole world. Their only danger is that the idealist can easily become the idolator. ~ G K Chesterton,

899:Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man. ~ G K Chesterton,

900:But if you cannot at once laugh at a thing or believe in it, you have no business in the Middle Ages. Or in the world for that matter. ~ G K Chesterton,

901:Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil? ~ G K Chesterton,

902:If one is talking about a vile thing it is better to talk of it in coarse language; one is less likely to be seduced into excusing it. ~ G K Chesterton,

903:Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid ~ G K Chesterton,

904:The first is the fact that original sin is really original. Not merely in theology but in history it is a thing rooted in the origins. ~ G K Chesterton,

905:The man who kills a man kills a man. The man who kills himself kills all men. As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world. ~ G K Chesterton,

906:But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If ~ G K Chesterton,

907:He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical. ~ G K Chesterton,

908:He would fetch a man a mile to ring a bell a yard off — if it would summon another man three miles to fetch a matchbox three yards off. ~ G K Chesterton,

909:I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment. ~ G K Chesterton,

910:It is very foolish of a man to be frightened of a skeleton, for Nature has put an insurmountable obstacle against running away from it. ~ G K Chesterton,

911:Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. ~ G K Chesterton,

912:The big commercial concerns of to-day are quite exceptionally incompetent. They will be even more incompetent when they are omnipotent. ~ G K Chesterton,

913:The dreadful joy Thy Son has sent Is heavier than any care; We find, as Cain his punishment, Our pardon more than we can bear. ~ G K Chesterton,

914: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 at evening. ~ G K Chesterton,

915:Well, I’m afraid you’ll think it so prosy. We always begin at the abstract end of things, and you can’t begin this story anywhere else. ~ G K Chesterton,

916:FLAMBEAU, once the most famous criminal in France and later a very private detective in England, had long retired from both professions. ~ G K Chesterton,

917:He did not know that the academic mind reflects infinity and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still. ~ G K Chesterton,

918:Her finger-nails were painted five different colours, looking like the paints in a child's paintbox; and she was as innocent as a child. ~ G K Chesterton,

919:Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back. ~ G K Chesterton,

920:{We} have not to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule; rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he can’t. ~ G K Chesterton,

921:When we consider the possibility that God will not be good to us, we stand on the precipice of despair and peer into the darkness below. ~ G K Chesterton,

922:A scientific government, with a really ethical responsibility to posterity, would be always looking for the line of promise and progress; ~ G K Chesterton,

923:But out of the mouth of the Mother of God I have seen the truth like fire, This---that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher. ~ G K Chesterton,

924:En suma, la vida posee cierto elemento de coincidencia fantástica, que la gente acostumbrada a contar sólo con lo prosaico nunca percibe. ~ G K Chesterton,

925:I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher. ~ G K Chesterton,

926:Mysticism conceives something transcending experience; religion seeks glimpses of a better good or a worse evil than experience can give. ~ G K Chesterton,

927:Of the last two friends of yours who had the modern mind; one thought it wrong to eat fishes and the other thought it right to eat men... ~ G K Chesterton,

928:..."vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a ditch is a new school of architecture. ~ G K Chesterton,

929:And in history I found that Christianity, so far from belonging to the Dark Ages, was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark. ~ G K Chesterton,

930:He had the notion that because I am a clergyman I should believe anything. Many people have little notions of that kind. - Father Brown ~ G K Chesterton,

931:How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them. ~ G K Chesterton,

932:I may, it is true, twist orthodoxy so as partly to justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely. ~ G K Chesterton,

933:In their doubt of miracles there was a faith in a fixed and godless fate; a deep and sincere faith in the incurable routine of the cosmos. ~ G K Chesterton,

934:No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete. ~ G K Chesterton,

935: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

936:The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind. ~ G K Chesterton,

937:Those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other. ~ G K Chesterton,

938: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

939:The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon who is wasting fairyland. ~ G K Chesterton,

940:We are in this fairyland on sufferance; it is not for us to quarrel with the conditions under which we enjoy this wild vision of the world. ~ G K Chesterton,

941:A imaginação não gera a insanidade. O que gera a insanidade é exatamente a razão. Os poetas não enlouquecem; mas os jogadores de xadrez sim. ~ G K Chesterton,

942:If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars? ~ G K Chesterton,

943:It would be wrong to say that she commanded; for her own efficiency was so impatient that she obeyed herself before any one else obeyed her. ~ G K Chesterton,

944:Jūs man patīkat. No tā izriet sekojošais: es justos apbēdināts apmēram divarpus minūtes, ja man nāktos dzirdēt, ka esat miris mokpilnā nāvē. ~ G K Chesterton,

945:men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back. Now ~ G K Chesterton,

946:One of his uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. ~ G K Chesterton,

947:The gentlemen are up there, sare," he said. "They do talk and they do laugh at what they talk. They do say they will throw bombs at ze king. ~ G K Chesterton,

948:The hospital, by necessity, may send a man home with one leg less: but it will not (in a creative rapture) send him home with one leg extra. ~ G K Chesterton,

949:The Puritans are always denouncing books that inflame lust; what shall we say of books that inflame the viler passions of avarice and pride? ~ G K Chesterton,

950:You have not wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy. ~ G K Chesterton,

951:He has pleased all the bohemians by saying that women are equal to men; but he has infuriated them by suggesting that men are equal to women. ~ G K Chesterton,

952:It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. ~ G K Chesterton,

953:Life (according to the faith) is very like a serial story in a magazine: life ends with the promise (or menace) "to be continued in our next. ~ G K Chesterton,

954:Men fight hardest when they feel that the foe is at once an old enemy and an eternal stranger, that his atmosphere is alien and antagonistic; ~ G K Chesterton,

955:there may be doubt about the way in which the body broke down, there is no doubt at all about the shape in which it should be built up again. ~ G K Chesterton,

956:The society had a vast number of ceremonies and observances, but it had no history and no object; that was where it was so very aristocratic. ~ G K Chesterton,

957:The trouble when people stop believing in God is not that they thereafter believe in nothing; it is that they thereafter believe in anything. ~ G K Chesterton,

958:This sense of sin has made it impossible to be natural and have no clothes, just as it has made it impossible to be natural and have no laws. ~ G K Chesterton,

959:When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it. ~ G K Chesterton,

960:But the new rebel is a sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And ~ G K Chesterton,

961:Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. ~ G K Chesterton,

962:The hardest thing to remember about our time, of course, is simply that it is a time- we all instinctively think of it as the Day of Judgment. ~ G K Chesterton,

963:The Iliad is only great because all life is a battle, The Odyssey because all life is a journey, The Book of Job because all life is a riddle. ~ G K Chesterton,

964:The men of the East may spell the stars, And times and triumphs mark, But the men signed of the cross of Christ Go gaily in the dark. ~ G K Chesterton,

965:To each man one soul only is given; to each soul only is given a little power - the power at some moments to outgrow and swallow up the stars. ~ G K Chesterton,

966:What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world. ~ G K Chesterton,

967:And an intellectual formula is the only thing that can create a communication that does not depend on mere blood, class, or capricious sympathy ~ G K Chesterton,

968:But our modern educationists are trying to bring about a religious liberty without attempting to settle what is religion or what is liberty. If ~ G K Chesterton,

969:If the three brothers all ride horses, there are six animals and eighteen legs involved: that is true rationalism, and fairyland is full of it. ~ G K Chesterton,

970:one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. ~ G K Chesterton,

971:Sempre fui mais inclinado a acreditar na massa anônima do povo trabalhador do que nessa particular e irritante classe literária a que pertenço. ~ G K Chesterton,

972:Statements are made so plainly and positively that men have hardly the moral courage to pause upon them and find that they are without support. ~ G K Chesterton,

973:The men of the east may search the scrolls, For sure fates and fame, But the men that drink the blood of God go singing to their shame. ~ G K Chesterton,

974:When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character. ~ G K Chesterton,

975:You prosecute the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common, But leave the larger felon loose Who steals the common from the goose. ~ G K Chesterton,

976:Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided. ~ G K Chesterton,

977:Go on,” said the priest very gently. “We are only trying to find the truth. What are you afraid of?” “I am afraid of finding it,” said Flambeau. ~ G K Chesterton,

978:Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed. ~ G K Chesterton,

979:o cristão malformado que gradativamente se transforma no agnóstico mal-humorado, preso no meio de uma briga da qual ele nunca entendeu o começo, ~ G K Chesterton,

980:Of course sane people always thought the aim of marriage was the procreation of children to the glory of God or according to the plan of Nature; ~ G K Chesterton,

981:Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. ~ G K Chesterton,

982:The obvious truth is that the moment any matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever spoilt for all purposes of science. ~ G K Chesterton,

983:Un singur suflet i s-a dat fiecărui om, iar fiecărui suflet un dram de putere - puterea ca în unele momente să se înalțe și să cuprindă stelele. ~ G K Chesterton,

984:Adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones. When the chord of monotony is stretched most tight, then it breaks with a sound like song. ~ G K Chesterton,

985:A maneira como se encara, vulgarmente, a loucura é errônea: o louco não é o homem que perdeu a razão, mas o homem que perdeu tudo, menos a razão. ~ G K Chesterton,

986:He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all. ~ G K Chesterton,

987:If we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the best of all reasons for not being a progressive. ~ G K Chesterton,

988:I have a suspicion that you are all mad,’ said Dr. Renard, smiling sociably; ‘but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt friendship. ~ G K Chesterton,

989:I merely claim my choice of all the tools in the universe; and I shall not admit that any of them are blunted merely because they have been used. ~ G K Chesterton,

990:It is still bad taste to be an avowed atheist. But their agony has achieved just this—that now it is equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian. ~ G K Chesterton,

991:Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of ~ G K Chesterton,

992:There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth. ~ G K Chesterton,

993:To say that religion came from reverencing a chief or sacrificing at a harvest is to put a highly elaborate cart before a really primitive horse. ~ G K Chesterton,

994:To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea. ~ G K Chesterton,

995: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

996:All women dress to be noticed: gross and vulgar women to be grossly and vulgarly noticed, wise and modest women to be wisely and modestly noticed. ~ G K Chesterton,

997:Cooking is an art; it has in it personality, and even perversity, for the definition of an art is that which must be personal and may be perverse. ~ G K Chesterton,

998:Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. ~ G K Chesterton,

999:He also knew a great deal about art, letters, philosophy, and general culture; about almost everything, indeed, except the world he was living in. ~ G K Chesterton,

1000:Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two? ~ G K Chesterton,

1001:it might be questioned whether hammering is more of a strain on the attention because it may go on for ever, or because it may stop at any minute. ~ G K Chesterton,

1002:nothing which is so weak for working purposes as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success. ~ G K Chesterton,

1003:The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good ~ G K Chesterton,

1004:The romantic seeks only to get his head into the heavens. The rationalist seeks to get the heavens into his head – and it is his head that splits. ~ G K Chesterton,

1005:A puddle repeats infinity, and is full of light; nevertheless, if analyzed objectively, a puddle is a piece of dirty water spread very thin on mud. ~ G K Chesterton,

1006:But one of the strange marks of the strength of Christianity is that, since it came, no pagan in our civilisation has been able to be really human. ~ G K Chesterton,

1007:Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. ~ G K Chesterton,

1008:For even the most dehumanized modern fantasies depend on some older and simpler figure; the adventures may be mad, but the adventurer must be sane. ~ G K Chesterton,

1009:It may be said then that primitive government, like primitive art and religion and everything else, is very imperfectly known or rather guessed at; ~ G K Chesterton,

1010:Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church. ~ G K Chesterton,

1011:The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits. ~ G K Chesterton,

1012:He put the old cant of the lawlessness of art and the art of lawlessness with a certain impudent freshness which gave at least a momentary pleasure. ~ G K Chesterton,

1013:He who wills to reject nothing, wills the destruction of will; for will is not only the choice of something, but the rejection of almost everything. ~ G K Chesterton,

1014:I do not know by what extraordinary mental accident modern writers so constantly connect the idea of progress with the idea of independent thinking. ~ G K Chesterton,

1015:Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. ~ G K Chesterton,

1016:We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. ~ G K Chesterton,

1017:A hunger for civilization is an appetite not easily appreciated now, when people are so overcivilized that they can only have a hunger for barbarism. ~ G K Chesterton,

1018:People talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood. ~ G K Chesterton,

1019:Physical nature must not be made the direct object of obedience; it must be enjoyed, not worshipped. Stars and mountains must not be taken seriously. ~ G K Chesterton,

1020:There was a man who had a fly in his eye when he looked through the telescope, and he discovered that there was a most incredible dragon in the moon. ~ G K Chesterton,

1021:Babylon also we first hear of when it is already civilised; for the simple reason that we cannot hear of anything until it is educated enough to talk. ~ G K Chesterton,

1022:despair, even when their practical fortunes were hopeful. How could they understand that the Romans could hope even when their fortunes were hopeless? ~ G K Chesterton,

1023:It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air. ~ G K Chesterton,

1024:sin -- a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. ~ G K Chesterton,

1025:The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. ~ G K Chesterton,

1026:The huge modern heresy is to alter the human soul to fit modern social conditions, instead of altering modern social conditions to fit the human soul. ~ G K Chesterton,

1027:The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits. It ~ G K Chesterton,

1028:There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous. ~ G K Chesterton,

1029:What is now called free thought is valued, not because it is free thought, but because it is freedom from thought; because it is free thoughtlessness. ~ G K Chesterton,

1030:A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but even practices it with any hope of doing it well. ~ G K Chesterton,

1031:I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts. ~ G K Chesterton,

1032:Posting a letter and getting married are among the few things left that are entirely romantic; for to be entirely romantic a thing must be irrevocable. ~ G K Chesterton,

1033:Really," said Gregory superciliously, "the examples you choose–" "I beg your pardon," said Syme grimly, "I thought we had abolished all conventions. ~ G K Chesterton,

1034:The child must depend on the most imperfect mother; the mother may be devoted to the most unworthy children; in such relations legal revenges are vain. ~ G K Chesterton,

1035:If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. ~ G K Chesterton,

1036:I will go forth as a real outlaw," he said, "and as men do robbery on the highway I will do right on the highway; and it will be counted a wilder crime. ~ G K Chesterton,

1037:Let us then, by all means, be proud of the virtues that we have not got; but let us not be too arrogant about the virtues that we cannot help having. It ~ G K Chesterton,

1038:Los cuentos de hadas no le dicen a los niños que los dragones existen. Ellos ya saben que existen. Los cuentos de hadas les enseñan que pueden vencerlos ~ G K Chesterton,

1039:My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober. ~ G K Chesterton,

1040:Progress, properly understood, has, indeed, a most dignified and legitimate meaning. But as used in opposition to precise moral ideals, it is ludicrous. ~ G K Chesterton,

1041:The boldest plans for the future invoke the authority of the past; and that even a revolutionary seeks to satisfy himself that he is also a reactionary. ~ G K Chesterton,

1042:There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place ... ~ G K Chesterton,

1043:What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves? ~ G K Chesterton,

1044:When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right. The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do. ~ G K Chesterton,

1045:A seriedade emana dos homens naturalmente, enquanto o riso é como um salto. É fácil ser pesado, é difícil ser leve. Satanás caiu pela força da gravidade. ~ G K Chesterton,

1046:Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor. ~ G K Chesterton,

1047:Christian marriage is the great example of a real and irrevocable result; and that is why it is the chief subject and centre of all our romantic writing. ~ G K Chesterton,

1048:Men of science offer us health, an obvious benefit; it is only afterwards that we discover that by health, they mean bodily slavery and spiritual tedium. ~ G K Chesterton,

1049:Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past ~ G K Chesterton,

1050:—¿Qué? Desempeño el oficio de policía filósofo —dijo el del uniforme azul—. El oficio es a la vez más atrevido y más sutil que el de un detective vulgar. ~ G K Chesterton,

1051:The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him whether he is the surplus population ; or if he is not, how he knows he is not. ~ G K Chesterton,

1052: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1053:The Saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. ~ G K Chesterton,

1054:Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain. ~ G K Chesterton,

1055:Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction," said Basil placidly. "For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1056:Yet these new women would always pay to a man the extravagant compliment which no ordinary woman ever pays to him, that of listening while he is talking. ~ G K Chesterton,

1057:You cannot make Italians really progressive; they are too intelligent. Men who see the short cut to good living will never go by the new elaborate roads. ~ G K Chesterton,

1058:Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left—sanity. ~ G K Chesterton,

1059:I don't want the universe broken up just yet," drawled the Marquis. "I want to do a lot of beastly things before I die. I thought of one yesterday in bed. ~ G K Chesterton,

1060:People like frequent laughter," answered Father Brown, "but I don't think they like a permanent smile. Cheerfulness without humour is a very trying thing. ~ G K Chesterton,

1061:Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1062:He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe. ~ G K Chesterton,

1063:In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment. ~ G K Chesterton,

1064:I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet. ~ G K Chesterton,

1065:Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities. ~ G K Chesterton,

1066:Our age is obviously the Nonsense Age; the wiser sort of nonsense being provided for the children and the sillier sort of nonsense for the grown-up people. ~ G K Chesterton,

1067:Samozřejmým důsledkem lehkomyslných rozvodů budou lehkomyslná manželství. Jestliže mohou být lidé nerozumně rozváděni, budou uzavírat nerozumná manželství. ~ G K Chesterton,

1068:Something lay in the shadow at the foot of the ridge, as stiff as the stick of the fallen rocket; and the man who knew too much knew what is worth knowing. ~ G K Chesterton,

1069:The people who wrote the mediaeval ballads,” answered the priest, “knew more about fairies than you do. It isn’t only nice things that happen in fairyland. ~ G K Chesterton,

1070:There is nothing which is so weak for working purposes as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success. ~ G K Chesterton,

1071: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1072:Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left-- sanity. ~ G K Chesterton,

1073:Decide to make a remark or not to make a remark. But don’t fancy that you have somehow softened the saying of a thing by having just promised not to say it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1074:Here Christ was indeed human; but more human than a human being was then likely to be. Peter Pan does not belong to the world of Pan but the world of Peter. ~ G K Chesterton,

1075:The author challenges how much sanctity has to do with sameness, as he says saints are as different from each other as those in any group -- even murderers. ~ G K Chesterton,

1076:Through all this modern muddle there runs the curious principle of sacrificing the ancient uses of things because they do not fit in with the modern abuses. ~ G K Chesterton,

1077:We ought to be interested in that darkest and most real part of a man in which dwell not the vices that he does not display, but the virtues that he cannot. ~ G K Chesterton,

1078:What are we going to do?" asked the Professor. "At this moment," said Syme, with a scientific detachment, "I think we are going to smash into a lamppost. ~ G K Chesterton,

1079:All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive. ~ G K Chesterton,

1080:It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money. ~ G K Chesterton,

1081:Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things; but to decorate things already adorable. ~ G K Chesterton,

1082:Se a servidão é melhor que a liberdade, isso é uma questão a ser discutida. Mas que a servidão dos antigos fez mais que a nossa liberdade será difícil negar. ~ G K Chesterton,

1083:St Thomas (Aqinas) loved books and lived on books... When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, ‘I have understood every page I ever read’. ~ G K Chesterton,

1084:The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. ~ G K Chesterton,

1085:There is a certain solid use in fools. It is not so much that they rush in where angels fear to tread, but rather that they let out what devils intend to do. ~ G K Chesterton,

1086:Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men. ~ G K Chesterton,

1087:Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. ~ G K Chesterton,

1088:Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin. ~ G K Chesterton,

1089:For those in whom a mere reaction has thus become an obsession, I do seriously recommend the imaginative effort of conceiving the Twelve Apostles as Chinamen. ~ G K Chesterton,

1090:In the end it will not matter to us whether we wrote well or ill; whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought. ~ G K Chesterton,

1091:Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision. ~ G K Chesterton, "The Eternal Revolution," Orthodoxy,

1092:We now have a strong desire for living combined with a strange carelessness about dying. We desire life like water and yet are ready to drink death like wine. ~ G K Chesterton,

1093:What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people. ~ G K Chesterton,

1094:I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet. The ~ G K Chesterton,

1095: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1096:The things said most confidently by advanced persons to crowded audiences are generally those opposite to the fact; it is actually our truisms that are untrue. ~ G K Chesterton,

1097: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? ~ G K Chesterton,

1098:But the world's made like that; it's all survival. Some people are made to get on...and some people are made to stick quiet.... You can't help your temperament. ~ G K Chesterton,

1099:In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment. Much ~ G K Chesterton,

1100:Oh, most unhappy man,' he cried, 'try to be happy! You have red hair like your sister.' My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world,' said Gregory. ~ G K Chesterton,

1101:But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. ~ G K Chesterton,

1102:But there are some people, nevertheless—and I am one of them—who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. ~ G K Chesterton,

1103:Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father. ~ G K Chesterton,

1104:a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1105:But this larger and more adventurous Christian universe has one final mark difficult to express; yet as a conclusion of the whole matter I will attempt to express ~ G K Chesterton,

1106:Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. ~ G K Chesterton,

1107:He might have heard the first whisper of that wild blessing that afterwards took the form of a blasphemy; "He listens to those to whom God himself will not listen ~ G K Chesterton,

1108:I say decisively that nothing is so marked in modern writing as the prediction of such ideals in the future combined with the ignoring of them in the past. Anyone ~ G K Chesterton,

1109:Londoners had no particular objection to the King making a fool of himself, but they became indignant when it became evident that he wished to make fools of them. ~ G K Chesterton,

1110:The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them. ~ G K Chesterton,

1111:The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. ~ G K Chesterton,

1112:The moment we begin to give a nation the unity and simplicity of an animal, we begin to think wildly. Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a centipede. ~ G K Chesterton,

1113: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1114:When he thought of a joke he made it, and was called brilliant. When he could not think of a joke he said that this was no time for trifling, and was called able. ~ G K Chesterton,

1115:[A] finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more essential and more strange. ~ G K Chesterton,

1116:every great thing grows from a seed, or something smaller than itself. They seem to forget that every seed comes from a tree, or from something larger than itself. ~ G K Chesterton,

1117:Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments. A ~ G K Chesterton,

1118:Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories…cheerfulness would creep in. Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful. ~ G K Chesterton,

1119:My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday. ~ G K Chesterton,

1120:The strong cannot be brave. Only the weak can be brave; and yet again, in practice, only those who can be brave can be trusted, in time of doubt, to be strong. The ~ G K Chesterton,

1121:...his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. ~ G K Chesterton,

1122:The chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist. ~ G K Chesterton,

1123:The mere pursuit of health always leads to something unhealthy. Physical nature must not be made the direct object of obedience; it must be enjoyed, not worshipped. ~ G K Chesterton,

1124:the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything. ~ G K Chesterton,

1125:The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. ~ G K Chesterton,

1126:The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed. ~ G K Chesterton,

1127:Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or German. Whether ~ G K Chesterton,

1128:You say you are a poet of law; I saw you are a contradiction in terms. I only wonder there were not comets and earthquakes on the night you appeared in this garden. ~ G K Chesterton,

1129:Afirmamos que el criminal peligroso es el criminal culto; que hoy por hoy, el más peligroso de los criminales es el filósofo moderno que ha roto con todas las leyes. ~ G K Chesterton,

1130:But the reason we fly from the city is not in reality that it is not poetical; it is that its poetry is too fierce, too fascinating and too practical in its demands. ~ G K Chesterton,

1131:Durante toda esta ordalía su horror esencial era el aislamiento, y no hay palabras para expresar el abismo existente entre el aislamiento y la posesión de un aliado. ~ G K Chesterton,

1132:I am not good at deception,' said Tuesday gloomily, flushing. Right, my boy, right,' said the President with a ponderous heartiness, 'You aren't good at anything. ~ G K Chesterton,

1133:I do not think that under modern Western materialism we should have anarchy. I doubt whether we should have enough individual valour and spirit even to have liberty. ~ G K Chesterton,

1134:No ideal will remain long enough to be realised, or even partly realised. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind. ~ G K Chesterton,

1135:One rationalist had hardly done calling Christianity a nightmare before another began to call it a fool's paradise. This puzzled me; the charges seemed inconsistent. ~ G K Chesterton,

1136:Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem". ~ G K Chesterton,

1137:An egoist,” said Father Brown. “She was the sort of person who had looked in the mirror before looking out of the window, and it is the worst calamity of mortal life. ~ G K Chesterton,

1138:La sua logica è straordinariamente lucida e fredda e invariabilmente lo porta fuori strada. Ma all'improvviso interviene la poesia in lui a riportarlo in carreggiata. ~ G K Chesterton,

1139:Odd, isn't it," he said, "that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man? ~ G K Chesterton,

1140:One would think it would be most unwise in a man to be afraid of a skeleton, since Nature has set curious and quite insuperable obstacles to his running away from it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1141:Real democrats always insist that England is an aristocratic country. Real aristocrats always insist (for some mysterious reason) that it is a democratic country. But ~ G K Chesterton,

1142: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1143:The sense that everything is poetical is a thing solid and absolute; it is not a mere matter of phraseology or persuasion. It is not merely true, it is ascertainable. ~ G K Chesterton,

1144:Where would a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. If there were no forest, he would make a forest. And if he wished to hide a dead leaf, he would make a dead forest. ~ G K Chesterton,

1145:Bad government, like good government, is a spiritual thing. Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairy tales. And so it is with the modern tyrant, ~ G K Chesterton,

1146:...to be breakable is not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. ~ G K Chesterton,

1147:We want the will of the people, not the votes of the people; and to give a man a vote against his will is to make voting more important than the democracy it declares. ~ G K Chesterton,

1148:An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered." - On Running After Ones Hat, All Things Considered, 1908 ~ G K Chesterton,

1149:I have called this book "What Is Wrong with the World?" and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right. ~ G K Chesterton,

1150:I have called this book “What Is Wrong with the World?” and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right. ~ G K Chesterton,

1151:Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed principles ~ G K Chesterton,

1152:This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments. ~ G K Chesterton,

1153:All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But... if you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. ~ G K Chesterton,

1154:Job is an optimist. He shakes the pillars of the world and strikes insanely at the heavens; he lashes the stars, but it is not to silence them; it is to make them speak. ~ G K Chesterton,

1155:Perhaps I might put up my notice of warning, and warn the reader not to read the second chapter. Now I come to think of it, I might warn him not to read the book at all. ~ G K Chesterton,

1156:The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason. ~ G K Chesterton,

1157:There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical. And he never goes on sitting there after sunset, with the whole place getting dark. ~ G K Chesterton,

1158:We are talking about an artist; 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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1159:When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress. ~ G K Chesterton,

1160:But even the machinery of voting is profoundly Christian in this practical sense—that it is an attempt to get at the opinion of those who would be too modest to offer it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1161:Dnes se říká, že myslitelé nemohou najít odpověď na záhadu náboženství. Nesnáz však není v tom, že by nemohli najít odpověď, nesnáz je v tom, že nemohou najít onu záhadu. ~ G K Chesterton,

1162:In anything that does cover the whole of your life - in your philosophy and your religion - you must have mirth. If you do not have mirth you will certainly have madness. ~ G K Chesterton,

1163:I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is. ~ G K Chesterton,

1164:[The materialist] thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism. I think [the materialist] a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies. ~ G K Chesterton,

1165:The moment we have snapped the spell of conventional beauty, there are a million beautiful faces waiting for us everywhere, just as there are a million beautiful spirits. ~ G K Chesterton,

1166:To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless. ~ G K Chesterton,

1167:If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1168:I know that I cannot turn everything I touch to gold; but then I also know that I have never tried, having a preference for other substances, such as grass, and good wine. ~ G K Chesterton,

1169:The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. ~ G K Chesterton,

1170: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1171:We may repeat here that these pages propose mainly to show one thing: that progress ought to be based on principle, while our modern progress is mostly based on precedent. ~ G K Chesterton,

1172:En tiempos de decadencia, los hombres emplean a profesionales para que peleen por ellos, a profesionales para que bailen por ellos, y entregan el gobierno a un profesional. ~ G K Chesterton,

1173:It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can. ~ G K Chesterton,

1174:Modern art has to be what is called ‘intense.’ it is not easy to define being intense; but, roughly speaking, it means saying only one thing at a time, and saying it wrong. ~ G K Chesterton,

1175:...the function of imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange; not so much to make wonders facts as to make facts wonders. ~ G K Chesterton,

1176:There must be something to wake up to! All we do is preparations.... We're always preparing for something---something that never comes off...but what is going to happen...? ~ G K Chesterton,

1177:The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. ~ G K Chesterton,

1178:All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden. ~ G K Chesterton,

1179:But Maurice was clean-shaven, and, by the portraits shown to me, certainly quite beautiful; though he looked a little more like a tenor than a gentleman ought to look. James ~ G K Chesterton,

1180: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 ~ G K Chesterton,

1181:la Misa negra tiene que ocultarse ante la presencia de la Misa verdadera. En otras palabras, los demonios han permanecido en lo oculto desde la venida de Cristo a la tierra. ~ G K Chesterton,

1182:Many great religions, Pagan and Christian, have insisted on wine. Only one, I think, has insisted on Soap. You will find it in the New Testament attributed to the Pharisees. ~ G K Chesterton,

1183:The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head. ~ G K Chesterton,

1184:When Nietszche says, "A new commandment I give to you, be hard" he is really saying, "A new commandment I give to you, be dead." Sensibility is the definition of life. ~ G K Chesterton,

1185:For our law has in it a turn of humour or touch of fancy which Nero and Herod never happened to think of; that of actually punishing homeless people for not sleeping at home. ~ G K Chesterton,

1186:I find it said, if only of Atys or Adonis, "There was a conception that the god sacrificed himself to himself." The man who can read those words without a thrill is dead. The ~ G K Chesterton,

1187:If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. ~ G K Chesterton,

1188: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1189:it will be generally found that the popular joke is not true to the letter, but is true to the spirit. The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact. ~ G K Chesterton,

1190: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1191:Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything. ~ G K Chesterton,

1192:The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. ~ G K Chesterton,

1193:To give up one's love for one's country is very great. But to give up one's hate for one's country, this may also have in it something of pride and something of purification. ~ G K Chesterton,

1194:If [things] seem to have a relative unreality ... it is because they are potential and not actual; they are unfulfilled ... They have it in them to be more real than they are. ~ G K Chesterton,

1195:If you consulted your business experiences instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. ~ G K Chesterton,

1196:In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. ~ G K Chesterton,

1197:Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first principles. ~ G K Chesterton,

1198:The moon was so strong and full that (by a paradox often to be noticed) it seemed like a weaker sun. It gave, not the sense of bright moonshine, but rather of a dead daylight. ~ G K Chesterton,

1199:The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the finite. For him the great moment is not the creation of light, but the creation of the sun and moon. ~ G K Chesterton,

1200:They began with the fact of sin—a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. ~ G K Chesterton,

1201:Prevention is not only not better than cure; prevention is even worse than disease. Prevention means being an invalid for life, with the extra exasperation of being quite well. ~ G K Chesterton,

1202:All habits are bad habits. (...) Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed. ~ G K Chesterton,

1203:I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry,' answered Father Brown. 'The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. ~ G K Chesterton,

1204:Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life. ~ G K Chesterton,

1205:I am told that the Japanese method of wrestling consists not of suddenly pressing, but of suddenly giving way. This is one of my many reasons for disliking Japanese civilization. ~ G K Chesterton,

1206:We cannot pretend to be abandoning the morality of the past for one more suited to the present. It is certainly not the morality of another age, but it might be of another world. ~ G K Chesterton,

1207:He was, to the last agonies of asceticism, a Troubadour. He was a Lover. He was a lover of God and he was really and truly a lover of men; possibly a much rarer mystical vocation. ~ G K Chesterton,

1208:I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread. ~ G K Chesterton,

1209:I merely declare my independence. I merely claim my choice of all the tools in the universe; and I shall not admit that any of them are blunted merely because they have been used. ~ G K Chesterton,

1210:Religious authority has often, doubtless, been oppressive or unreasonable; just as every legal system (and especially our present one) has been callous and full of a cruel apathy. ~ G K Chesterton,

1211:This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period. General ~ G K Chesterton,

1212:To these things do writers sink; and then the critics tell them that they “talk for effect”; and then the writers answer: “What the devil else should we talk for? Ineffectualness? ~ G K Chesterton,

1213:Unfortunately he was one of those who always tend to take their own fancies seriously; and in whose otherwise legitimate extravagance there is too little of the juice of the jest. ~ G K Chesterton,

1214:We are Christians and Catholics not because we worship a key, but because we have passed a door; and felt the wind that is the trumpet of liberty blow over the land of the living. ~ G K Chesterton,

1215:what can be more solemn and absurd, considered in the abstract, than, symbolizing the existence of the other sex by taking off a portion of your clothing and waving it in the air? ~ G K Chesterton,

1216:you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time. ~ G K Chesterton,

1217:In truth there are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it. – The Mercy of Mr. Arnold Bennett, Fancies vs. Fads ~ G K Chesterton,

1218:I suppose you can guess the whole story now? After all, it's a primitive story. A man had two enemies. He was a wise man. And so he discovered that two enemies are better than one. ~ G K Chesterton,

1219:Men have not got tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of. Men have never wearied of political justice; they have wearied of waiting for it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1220:No gleam of reason, no momentary return to first principles, no abstract asking of any obvious question, can interrupt this mad and monotonous gallop of mere progress by precedent. ~ G K Chesterton,

1221:Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde. ~ G K Chesterton,

1222:And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of of that order was to give room for good things to run wild. ~ G K Chesterton,

1223:As to the doubt of the soul I discover it to be false: a mood not a conclusion. My conclusion is the Faith. Corporate, organized, a personality, teaching. A thing, not a theory. It. ~ G K Chesterton,

1224:É sempre muito custoso para alguém defender algo do qual esteja absolutamente convencido, ao passo que é comparavelmente fácil fazê-lo quando se está apenas parcialmente convencido. ~ G K Chesterton,

1225:Men in England are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by brutes who refuse them bread, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern, and therefore wish to enslave. ~ G K Chesterton,

1226:The beginning of questioning well is to seek to question well, which may mean laying down our questions and allowing them to be reshaped and reformed by the answers given us by God. ~ G K Chesterton,

1227: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1228:It seems to me,' said the other, 'That you are simply seeking a pretext to insult the Marquis.' By George!' said Syme facing round and looking at him, 'What a clever chap you are! ~ G K Chesterton,

1229:Let beliefs fade fast and frequently, if you wish institutions to remain the same. The more the life of the mind is unhinged, the more the machinery of matter will be left to itself. ~ G K Chesterton,

1230:Los estúpidos sentimentales de la Revolución Francesa hablaban de los derechos del Hombre. Pero nosotros odiamos tanto los derechos como los tuertos, y a unos y a otros los abolimos. ~ G K Chesterton,

1231:Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. ~ G K Chesterton,

1232:Oh, I don't know...there's only two things generally true of [men]. At certain curious times they're just fitted to take care of us, and they're never fit to take care of themselves. ~ G K Chesterton,

1233:The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons, but children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed. ~ G K Chesterton,

1234:Every healthy person at some period must feed on fiction as well as fact; because fact is a thing which the world gives to him, whereas fiction is a thing which he gives to the world. ~ G K Chesterton,

1235:la función policiaca: saquea al pobre, y vigila cautelosamente al infortunado. En cambio, ha abandonado lo más noble de la función: el castigo de los traidores poderosos en el Estado; ~ G K Chesterton,

1236:Their religion was a religion of despair, even when their practical fortunes were hopeful. How could they understand that the Romans could hope even when their fortunes were hopeless? ~ G K Chesterton,

1237: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1238:They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is--well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads. ~ G K Chesterton,

1239:But if he has lost the sane vision, he can only get it back by something very like a mad vision; that is, by seeing a man as a strange animal and realising how strange an animal he is. ~ G K Chesterton,

1240:It is as if a man were asked, “What is the use of a hammer?” and answered, “To make hammers”; and when asked, “And of those hammers, what is the use?” answered, “To make hammers again. ~ G K Chesterton,

1241:The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see throughout history. ~ G K Chesterton,

1242:We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it. We now add that we must be fond of another world (real or imaginary) in order to have something to change it to. ~ G K Chesterton,

1243:When I had a look at the lights of Broadway by night, I said to my American friends : "What a glorious garden of wonders this would be, to any who was lucky enough to be unable to read ~ G K Chesterton,

1244:I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him—only to bring him to life. I begin to see a new meaning in being the skeleton at the feast. ~ G K Chesterton,

1245:I do not believe in dwelling upon the distances that are supposed to dwarf the world; I think there is even something a trifle vulgar about this idea of trying to rebuke spirit by size. ~ G K Chesterton,

1246:I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. ~ G K Chesterton,

1247:the sixteenth-century schism was really a belated revolt of the thirteenth-century pessimists.  It was a back-wash of the old Augustinian Puritanism against the Aristotelian liberality. ~ G K Chesterton,

1248:Those nearest to our nearest may not happen to be the people who would have been our chief chosen friends, but they must be our friends; or memories are wounded and life made very ugly. ~ G K Chesterton,

1249:But it is clear that no political activity can be encouraged by saying that progress is natural and inevitable; that is not a reason for being active, but rather a reason for being lazy. ~ G K Chesterton,

1250:His face frightened me, as it did everyone; but not because it was brutal, not because it was evil. On the contrary, it frightened me because it was so beautiful, because it was so good. ~ G K Chesterton,

1251:If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever. ~ G K Chesterton,

1252:I have never been to St. John's Wood. I dare not. I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir trees, afraid to come upon a blood red cup and the beating of the wings of the Eagle. ~ G K Chesterton,

1253:Most people either say that they agree with Bernard Shaw or that they do not understand him. I am the only person who understands him, and I do not agree with him.               G. K. C. ~ G K Chesterton,

1254:The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. ~ G K Chesterton,

1255:To train a citizen is to train a critic. The whole point of education is that it should give a man abstract and eternal standards, by which he can judge material and fugitive conditions. ~ G K Chesterton,

1256:Christianity was beauty created by controlling a million monsters of ugliness . . . modern art and science practically mean having the million monsters and being unable to control them... ~ G K Chesterton,

1257:Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously! I don't often have the luck to have a dream like this. It is new to me for a nightmare to lead me to a lobster. It is commonly the other way. ~ G K Chesterton,

1258:It is a sign of the frailty of contemporary Christianity, rather than its strength, that we often do not begin to question until the megaphone of suffering has awakened us from our sleep. ~ G K Chesterton,

1259:of being strong and brave. The strong can not be brave. Only the weak can be brave; and yet again, in practice, only those who can be brave can be trusted, in time of doubt, to be strong. ~ G K Chesterton,

1260:I regret that I cannot do my duty as a true modern, by cursing everybody who made me whatever I am. I am not clear about what that is; but I am pretty sure that most of it is my own fault. ~ G K Chesterton,

1261:Joan of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy or by accepting them all like Nietzsche. She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. ~ G K Chesterton,

1262:But I say that we are the enemies of society, and so much the worse for society. We are the enemies of society, for society is the enemy of humanity, its oldest and its most pitiless enemy. ~ G K Chesterton,

1263:Todo o segredo do misticismo é este: que o homem pode compreender tudo com a ajuda daquilo que não compreende. O lógico mórbido procura tornar tudo lúcido e consegue tornar tudo misterioso. ~ G K Chesterton,

1264:Yet who knows if in that infinite universe—?” “Only infinite physically,” said the little priest, turning sharply in his seat, “not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth. ~ G K Chesterton,

1265:And the weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. ~ G K Chesterton,

1266:In one sense at any rate it is more valuable to read bad literature than good literature. Good literature may tell us the mind of one man but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men. ~ G K Chesterton,

1267:It is ludicrous to suppose that the more sceptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything. ~ G K Chesterton,

1268:Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lie the hopes of the race, but in education.” This, clearly expressed, means, “We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it to our children. ~ G K Chesterton,

1269:The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind. ~ G K Chesterton,

1270:There are two kinds of people in the world, the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic. ~ G K Chesterton,

1271:Walking up a road at night, I have seen a lamp and a lighted window and a cloud make together a most complete and unmistakable face. If anyone in heaven has that face I shall know him again. ~ G K Chesterton,

1272:What is the modern mind?" asked Grant. "Oh, it's enlightened, you know, and progressive --and faces the facts of life seriously." At this moment another roar of laughter came from within. ~ G K Chesterton,

1273:For he was a sincere man, and in spite of his superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely. ~ G K Chesterton,

1274:He was only one of those young men who cannot support the burden of consciousness unless they are doing something, and whose conceptions of doing something are limited to a game of some kind. ~ G K Chesterton,

1275:Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sight seers. ~ G K Chesterton,

1276:The proper name for the thing is modesty; but as we live in an age of prejudice and must not call things by their right names, we will yield to a more modern nomenclature and call it dignity. ~ G K Chesterton,

1277:There are a great many good people, and a great many sane people here this afternoon. Unfortunately, by a kind of coincidence, all the good people are mad, and all the sane people are wicked. ~ G K Chesterton,

1278:What had happened to the human imagination, as a whole, was that the whole world was coloured by dangerous and rapidly deteriorating passions; by natural passions becoming unnatural passions. ~ G K Chesterton,

1279: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1280:El filósofo ama, a veces, lo infinito; el poeta ama siempre lo finito. Para éste, el gran día del Universo no lo es tanto el de la creación de la luz, como el de la creación del sol y la luna. ~ G K Chesterton,

1281:The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past. He cares as little for what will be as for what has been; he cares only for what ought to be. ~ G K Chesterton,

1282:The only true free–thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past. He cares as little for what will be as for what has been; he cares only for what ought to be. ~ G K Chesterton,

1283:The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world. ~ G K Chesterton,

1284:We are passing into a social phase in which unless a heroic effort is made for human dignity and freedom, gold will be the sole method of government and therefore the sole standard of manners. ~ G K Chesterton,

1285:By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece. ~ G K Chesterton,

1286:Dog doesn’t eat dog, and doctors don’t bite doctors, not even when they are mad doctors. I shouldn’t care to cast any reflection on my eminent predecessor in Potter’s Pond, if I could avoid it; ~ G K Chesterton,

1287:In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves—the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. ~ G K Chesterton,

1288:We have never even begun to understand a people until we have found something that we do not understand. So long as we find the character easy to read, we are reading into it our own character. ~ G K Chesterton,

1289:And the greatest of the poets, when he defined the poet, did not say that he gave us the universe or the absolute or the infinite; but, in his own larger language, a local habitation and a name. ~ G K Chesterton,

1290:But, as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren’t a priest.” “What?” asked the thief, almost gaping. “You attacked reason,” said Father Brown. “It’s bad theology. ~ G K Chesterton,

1291:I confess that I should feel a bit afraid of asking Sunday who he really is.” “Why,” asked the Secretary, “for fear of bombs?” “No,” said the Professor, “for fear he might tell me. ~ G K Chesterton,

1292:I know too much," he said. "That's what's the matter with me. That's what's the matter with all of us, and the whole show; we know too much. Too much about one another; too much about ourselves. ~ G K Chesterton,

1293:Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. ~ G K Chesterton,

1294:I offer it to you because there exists not only comradeship, but a very different thing, called friendship; an agreement under all the arguments and a thread which, please God, will never break. ~ G K Chesterton,

1295:it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other. ~ G K Chesterton,

1296:Job was comfortless before the speech of Jehovah and is comforted after it. He has been told nothing, but he feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too good to be told. ~ G K Chesterton,

1297:We must not hate humanity, or despise humanity, or refuse to help humanity; but we must not trust humanity; in the sense of trusting a trend in human nature which cannot turn back to bad things. ~ G K Chesterton,

1298:A man cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. ~ G K Chesterton,

1299:Any one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate. ~ G K Chesterton,

1300:As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. Indigenous humans have always been sane because they have always been mystic. They permit the twilight. ~ G K Chesterton,

1301:I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree. ~ G K Chesterton,

1302:me an explanation, first, of the towering eccentricity of man among the brutes; second, of the vast human tradition of some ancient happiness; third, of the partial perpetuation of such pagan joy ~ G K Chesterton,

1303:Psychoanalysis is a science conducted by lunatics for lunatics. They are generally concerned with proving that people are irresponsible; and they certainly succeed in proving that some people are ~ G K Chesterton,

1304:Any one setting out to dispute anything ought always to begin by saying what he does not dispute. Beyond stating what he proposes to prove he should always state what he does not propose to prove. ~ G K Chesterton,

1305:But of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have before us: the habit of exhaustively describing a social sickness, and then propounding a social drug. ~ G K Chesterton,

1306:Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man's environment, but in man. ~ G K Chesterton,

1307:The modern man says, "Let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace liberty." This is, logically rendered, "Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1308:The modern man says, “Let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace liberty.” This is, logically rendered, “Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1309:All things are from God; and above all, reason and imagination and the great gifts of the mind. They are good in themselves; and we must not altogether forget their origin even in their perversion. ~ G K Chesterton,

1310:Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. ~ G K Chesterton,

1311:He discovered the fact that all romantics know—that adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones. When the chord of monotony is stretched most tight, then it breaks with a sound like song. ~ G K Chesterton,

1312:Individually, men may present a more or less rational appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming. But humanity a a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman. ~ G K Chesterton,

1313:The only thrill, even of a common thriller, is concerned somehow with the conscience and the will; it involves finding out that men are worse or better than they seem, and that by their own choice. ~ G K Chesterton,

1314:The real trouble with this world of ours in not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. ~ G K Chesterton,

1315:The word “signal-box” is unpoetical. But the thing signal-box is not unpoetical; it is a place where men, in an agony of vigilance, light blood-red and sea-green fires to keep other men from death. ~ G K Chesterton,

1316:And I offer this book with the heartiest sentiments to all the jolly people who hate what I write, and regard it (very justly, for all I know), as a piece of poor clowning or a single tiresome joke. ~ G K Chesterton,

1317:Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed. ~ G K Chesterton,

1318:Individually, men may present a more or less rational appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming. But humanity as a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman. ~ G K Chesterton,

1319:It has been proved a hundred times over that if you really wish to enrage people and make them angry, even unto death, the right way to do it is to tell them that they are all the sons of God. Jesus ~ G K Chesterton,

1320:La difficoltà nello spiegare “perché sono cattolico” consiste nel fatto che vi sono diecimila ragioni, tutte riconducibili ad un’unica ragione: che il cattolicesimo è vero (Chesterton, scritti vari) ~ G K Chesterton,

1321:The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. ~ G K Chesterton,

1322:The Man-God of old answers from his awful hill, “Was ever sorrow like unto my sorrow?” A great man is not a man so strong that he feels less than other men; he is a man so strong that he feels more. ~ G K Chesterton,

1323:The transition from the good man to the saint is a sort of revolution; by which one for whom all things illustrate and illuminate God becomes one for whom God illustrates and illuminates all things. ~ G K Chesterton,

1324:Um graveto pode adaptar-se a um orifício, ou uma pedra, a um buraco, por mero acaso. Mas uma chave e uma fechadura são ambas complexas, e, se a chave se ajusta à fechadura, é porque é a chave certa. ~ G K Chesterton,

1325: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1326:A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive. ~ G K Chesterton,

1327: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1328:O amor perdoa o imperdoável, senão deixa de ser virtude. A esperança não desiste, mesmo em face do desespero, senão deixa de ser virtude. E a fé acredita no inacreditável, senão deixa de ser virtude. ~ G K Chesterton,

1329:Our existence may not be an intelligible justice, or even a recognizable wrong. But our existence is still a story. In the fiery alphabet of every sunset is written, “to be continued in our next.” If ~ G K Chesterton,

1330:The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic, it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true. ~ G K Chesterton,

1331:There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. ~ G K Chesterton,

1332:Whatever we may think of the merits of torturing children for pleasure, and no doubt there is much to be said on both sides, I am sure we all agree that it should be done with sterilized instruments. ~ G K Chesterton,

1333:And it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. ~ G K Chesterton,

1334:Eugenics, as discussed, evidently means the control of some men over the marriage and unmarriage of others; and probably means the control of the few over the marriage and unmarriage of the many ~ G K Chesterton,

1335:He says, "Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lie the hopes of the race, but in education." This, clearly expressed, means, "We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it to our children. ~ G K Chesterton,

1336:I believe firmly in the value of all vulgar notions, especially of vulgar jokes. When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea. ~ G K Chesterton,

1337:The optimist's pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything in the light of the supernatural. ~ G K Chesterton,

1338:Desde el punto de vista ético, el capitalismo y el comunismo se hallan tan cerca el uno del otro que no sería nada de extraño que sus jefes y caudillos procedan también de los mismos círculos raciales. ~ G K Chesterton,

1339:In the lower classes the school master does not work for the parent, but against the parent. Modern education meanshanding down the customs of the minority, and rooting out the customs of the majority. ~ G K Chesterton,

1340:Plato in some sense anticipated the Catholic realism, as attacked by the heretical nominalism, by insisting on the equally fundamental fact that ideas are realities; that ideas exist just as men exist. ~ G K Chesterton,

1341:that he had dug very deep and found the place where a man had drawn the picture of a reindeer. But he would dig a good deal deeper before he found a place where a reindeer had drawn a picture of a man. ~ G K Chesterton,

1342:The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. ~ G K Chesterton,

1343:there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen. ~ G K Chesterton,

1344:It is to be feared that about a hundred detective stories have begun with the discovery that an American millionaire has been murdered; an event which is, for some reason, treated as a sort of calamity. ~ G K Chesterton,

1345:People, if you have any prayers, Say prayers for me: And lay me under a Christian stone In that lost land I thought my own, To wait till the holy horn is blown, And all poor men are free. ~ G K Chesterton,

1346:The modern city is ugly not because it is a city but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfish and materialistic energies. ~ G K Chesterton,

1347:There is no harm in our criticizing foreigners, if only we would also criticize ourselves. In other words, the world might need even less of its new charity, if it had a little more of the old humility. ~ G K Chesterton,

1348:Whatever else there was, there was never any such thing as the Evolution of the Idea of God. The idea was concealed, was avoided, was almost forgotten, was even explained away; but it was never evolved. ~ G K Chesterton,

1349:Words must have been more wonderful than wireless telegraphy; and experiments with common things a series of electric shocks. We are still waiting for somebody to write a lively story of primitive life. ~ G K Chesterton,

1350:If you wish to find the past preserved, follow the million feet of the crowd. At the worst the uneducated only wear down old things by sheer walking. But the educated kick them down out of sheer culture. ~ G K Chesterton,

1351:Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. ~ G K Chesterton,

1352:People will tell you that theories don’t matter and that logic and philosophy aren’t practical. Don’t you believe them. Reason is from God, and when things are unreasonable there is something the matter. ~ G K Chesterton,

1353:That wild word, "Moor Eeffoc," is the motto of all effective realism; it is the masterpiece of the good realistic principle - the principle that the most fantastic thing of all is often the precise fact. ~ G K Chesterton,

1354:The Protestant theology of Martin Luther was a thing that no modern Protestant would be seen dead in a field with; or if the phrase be too flippant, would be specially anxious to touch with a barge-pole. ~ G K Chesterton,

1355:We hate Rights and we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong." "And Right and Left," said Syme with a simple eagerness. "I hope you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me. ~ G K Chesterton,

1356:We have looked for questions in the darkest corners and on the wildest peaks. We have found all the questions that can be found. It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers. ~ G K Chesterton,

1357:Svobodný člověk vlastní především sebe. Když si ubližuje - jídlem, pitím, kouřením, hazardem - je to hlupák, jenž ničí sebe a možná i svou duši. Když mu to však zakážete, nebude o nic svobodnější než pes. ~ G K Chesterton,

1358:The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts. ~ G K Chesterton,

1359:The way to build a church is not to pay for it, certainly not with somebody else's money. The way to build a church is not even to pay for it with your own money. The way to build a church is to build it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1360:The way to build a church is not to pay for it, certainly not with somebody else's money. The way to build a church is not to pay for it even with your own money. The way to build a church is to build it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1361:The word 'heresy' not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word 'orthodoxy' not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong. ~ G K Chesterton,

1362:The word “heresy” not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word “orthodoxy” not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong. ~ G K Chesterton,

1363:Music is mere beauty; it is beauty in the abstract, beauty in isolation. It is a shapeless and liquid element of beauty, in which a man may really float, not indeed affirming the truth, but not denying it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1364:Se você discutir com um louco, é extremamente provável que leve a pior; pois sob muitos aspectos a mente dele se move muito mais rápido por não se atrapalhar com coisas que costumam acompanhar o bom juízo. ~ G K Chesterton,

1365:The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more. ~ G K Chesterton,

1366:why cannot you simply take what is good in Christianity, what you can define as valuable, what you can comprehend, and leave all the rest, all the absolute dogmas that are in their nature incomprehensible? ~ G K Chesterton,

1367:All government is representative government until it begins to decay. Unfortunately (as is also evident) all government begins to decay the instant it begins to actually govern. (From "A Miscellany of Men") ~ G K Chesterton,

1368:Another is the paradox of charity or chivalry that the weaker a thing is the more it should be respected, that the more indefensible a thing is the more it should appeal to us for a certain kind of defence. ~ G K Chesterton,

1369:In other words, we may, by fixing our attention almost fiercely on the facts actually before us, force them to turn into adventures; force them to give up their meaning and fulfill their mysterious purpose. ~ G K Chesterton,

1370:Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written. It is only too probable that I shall never write it, so I will use it symbolically here; for it was a symbol of the same truth. ~ G K Chesterton,

1371:The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen. …there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people on the prosaic may perpetually miss. …wisdom should not reckon on the unforeseen. ~ G K Chesterton,

1372:The old idealistic republicans used to found democracy on the idea that all men were equally intelligent. Believe me, the sane and enduring democracy is founded on the fact that all men are equally idiotic. ~ G K Chesterton,

1373:The wise men know what wicked things are written on the sky; They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings, hearing the heavy purple wings, Where the forgotten Seraph kings still plot how God shall die. ~ G K Chesterton,

1374:A religion is not the church a man goes to but the cosmos he lives in; and if any sceptic forgets it, the maddest fanatic beating an Orange drum about the Battle of the Boyne is a better philosopher than he. ~ G K Chesterton,

1375:A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish. ~ G K Chesterton,

1376:But as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren't a priest." "What?" asked the thief, almost gaping. "You attacked reason," said Father Brown. "It's bad theology. ~ G K Chesterton,

1377:Quebrantaría yo veinte juramentos, con tal de darle a usted en la cabeza. Ese modo que tiene usted de encender el cigarro, por ejemplo, basta para hacer que un sacerdote quebrante el secreto de la confesión. ~ G K Chesterton,

1378:The adoration of Christ had been a part of the man's passionate nature for a long time past. But the imitation of Christ, as a sort of plan or ordered scheme of life, in that sense may be said to begin here. ~ G K Chesterton,

1379:The common conception among the dregs of Darwinian culture is that men have slowly worked their way out of inequality into a state of comparative equality. The truth is, I fancy, almost exactly the opposite. ~ G K Chesterton,

1380:Thus, all sane moralists admit that one may sometimes tell a lie; but no sane moralist would approve of telling a little boy to practise telling lies, in case he might one day have to tell a justifiable one. ~ G K Chesterton,

1381:Whether the human mind can advance or not, is a question too little discussed, for nothing can be more dangerous than to found our social philosophy on any theory which is debatable but has not been debated. ~ G K Chesterton,

1382:A man is perfectly entitled to laugh at a thing because he happens to find it incomprehensible. What he has no right to do is to laugh at it as incomprehensible, and then criticize it as if he comprehended it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1383:A man must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ready to toil and die for his convictions if he is not even ready to wear a wreathe around his head for them. ~ G K Chesterton,

1384:A man who is perpetually thinking of whether this race or that race is strong, of whether this cause or that cause is promising, is the man who will never believe in anything long enough to make it succeed. ~ G K Chesterton,

1385:An artist is identical with an anarchist,” he cried. “You might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. ~ G K Chesterton,

1386:At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder. ~ G K Chesterton,

1387:It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed. ~ G K Chesterton,

1388:It is not true that everything changes; the things that change are all the manifest and material things. There is something that does not change; and that is precisely the abstract quality, the invisible idea. ~ G K Chesterton,

1389:I would give a woman not more rights, but more privileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in which she can be free. ~ G K Chesterton,

1390:The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother. ~ G K Chesterton,

1391:The people who wrote the mediaeval ballads knew more about fairies than you do. It isn't only nice things that happen in fairyland. .…I never said it was wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was dangerous. ~ G K Chesterton,

1392:Bigotry consists in a man being convinced that another man must be wrong in everything, because he is wrong in a particular belief; that he must be wrong, even in thinking that he honestly believes he is right. ~ G K Chesterton,

1393:Can it cure the one spiritual disease?” asked Father Brown, with a serious curiosity. “And what is the one spiritual disease?” asked Flambeau, smiling. “Oh, thinking one is quite well,” said his friend. ~ G K Chesterton,

1394:There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place; and I tried to trace such a journey in a story I once wrote. ~ G K Chesterton,

1395:the schoolboy had something of the stolid air of a young duke doing the grand tour, while his elderly relative was reduced to the position of a courier, who nevertheless had to pay for everything like a patron. ~ G K Chesterton,

1396:We must have in us enough reverence for all things outside us to make us tread fearfully on the grass. We must also have enough disdain for all things outside us, to make us, on due occasion, spit at the stars. ~ G K Chesterton,

1397:Conjurer: Oh, I don't mind anyone knowing everything, Miss Carleon. There is something that is much more important than knowing how a thing is done. Morris: And what's that? Conjurer: Knowing how to do it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1398:In short, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen. ~ G K Chesterton,

1399:One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is that, white is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. ~ G K Chesterton,

1400:Some dogma, we are told, was credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. ~ G K Chesterton,

1401: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1402:Charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all. ~ G K Chesterton,

1403:Despite the almost aggressive touch of luxury in the fur coat, it soon became apparent that Sir Walter's large leonine head was for use as well as ornament, and he considered the matter soberly and sanely enough. ~ G K Chesterton,

1404:I found that the very people who said that mankind was one church from Plato to Emerson were the very people who said that morality had changed altogether, and that what was right in one age was wrong in another. ~ G K Chesterton,

1405:It does not, in the conventional phrase, accept the conclusions of science, for the simple reason that science has not concluded. To conclude is to shut up; and the man of science is not at all likely to shut up. ~ G K Chesterton,

1406:Mysticism conceives something transcending experience; religion seeks glimpses of a better good or a worse evil than experience can give. Reincarnation need only extend experiences in the sense of repeating them. ~ G K Chesterton,

1407:No man ought to write at all, or even to speak at all, unless he thinks that he is in truth and the other man in error. In similar style, I hold that I am dogmatic and right, while Mr. Shaw is dogmatic and wrong. ~ G K Chesterton,

1408:Up to this time I have called Pietro Bernadone father, but now I am the servant of God. Not only the money but everything that can be called his I will restore to my father, even the very clothes he has given me. ~ G K Chesterton,

1409:believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter . . . a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. ~ G K Chesterton,

1410:I will not engage in verbal controversy with the sceptic, because long experience has taught me that the sceptic’s ultimate skepticism is about the use of his own words and the reliability of his own intelligence. ~ G K Chesterton,

1411:Mr. Audley, never having been in politics, treated them a little more seriously. Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a Conservative. ~ G K Chesterton,

1412:Simple secularists still talk as if the Church had introduced a sort of schism between reason and religion. The truth is that the Church was actually the first thing that ever tried to combine reason and religion. ~ G K Chesterton,

1413:There’s a disadvantage in a stick pointing straight,” answered the other. “What is it? Why, the other end of the stick always points the opposite way. It depends whether you get hold of the stick by the right end. ~ G K Chesterton,

1414:And must not all stories of brave lives and long endeavours and weary watching for the ideal so end, until all be ended? I cannot tell you whether he found what he sought. I have told you that he sought it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1415:I have never understood them," he said. "Those two creatures I see everywhere, stumping along the ground, first one and then the other. I have never been content with the current explanation that they were my feet. ~ G K Chesterton,

1416:In truth it is inequality that is the illusion. The extreme disproportion between men, that we seem to see in life, is a thing of changing lights and lengthening shadows, a twilight full of fancies and distortions. ~ G K Chesterton,

1417:Perhaps we are both doing what we think right. But what we think right is so damned different that there can be nothing between us in the way of concession. There is nothing possible between us but honor and death. ~ G K Chesterton,

1418:The theory of a complete change of standards in human history does not merely deprive us of the pleasure of honouring our fathers; it deprives us even of the more modern and aristocratic pleasure of despising them. ~ G K Chesterton,

1419:And yet the thing hangs in the heavens unhurt. Its opponents only succeed in destroying all that they themselves justly hold dear. They do not destroy orthodoxy; they only destroy political courage and common sense. ~ G K Chesterton,

1420:Deus escreveu não tanto um poema, mas uma peça de teatro: uma peça que planejou como perfeita, mas cujo desempenho foi confiado a atores e a diretores humanos, os quais, desde então, fizeram dela uma grande bagunça. ~ G K Chesterton,

1421:Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen. ~ G K Chesterton,

1422:His order was evidently a usual one. 'I want, please,' he said with precision, 'one halfpenny bun and a small cup of black coffee.' An instant before the girl could turn away he added, 'Also, I want you to marry me. ~ G K Chesterton,

1423:mankind have hitherto held the bond between man and woman so sacred, and the effect of it on the children so incalculable, that they have always admired the maintenance of honour more than the maintenance of safety. ~ G K Chesterton,

1424:Perhaps we are both doing what we think right. But what we think right is so damned different that there can be nothing between us in the way of concession. There is nothing possible between us but honour and death, ~ G K Chesterton,

1425: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 the mistakes from being corrected. ~ G K Chesterton,

1426:The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. ~ G K Chesterton,

1427:We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth. ~ G K Chesterton,

1428:Fairy tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. ~ G K Chesterton,

1429:If you asked one of their Puritan fathers, if you asked Bunyan, for instance, whether he was sturdy, he would have answered, with tears, that he was as weak as water. And because of this he would have borne tortures. ~ G K Chesterton,

1430:St. Paul said that the Greeks had one altar to an unknown god. But in truth all their gods were unknown gods. And the real break in history did come when St. Paul declared to them whom they had ignorantly worshipped. ~ G K Chesterton,

1431:The eighteenth Century thought itself to be the age of reason; the nineteenth century thought itself to be the age of common sense while the twentieth century can only think of itself as the age of uncommon nonsense. ~ G K Chesterton,

1432:We all disapprove of prostitution; but we do not all approve of purity. The only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal. We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity? ~ G K Chesterton,

1433:This is not a university town full of philosophies; it is a Zion of the hundred sieges raging with religions; not a place where resolutions can be voted and amended, but a place where men can be crowned and crucified. ~ G K Chesterton,

1434:We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross. ~ G K Chesterton,

1435:What are blue-stockings?' asked Tommy. Naturally you don't know,' replied the other. 'If you did, you would sympathize more with Bluebeard. They were ladies who were always reading books. They even read them aloud. ~ G K Chesterton,

1436:Egypt is a green ribbon along the river edging the dark red desolation of the desert. It is a proverb, and one of vast antiquity, that it is created by the mysterious bounty and almost sinister benevolence of the Nile. ~ G K Chesterton,

1437:I have to carve the gargoyles, because I can carve nothing else; I leave to others the angels and the arches and the spires. But I am very sure of the style of the architecture, and of the consecration of the church.27 ~ G K Chesterton,

1438:It has been often said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary. ~ G K Chesterton,

1439:Pojedinačno, ljudi mogu ostavljati više ili manje racionalan dojam, jedući, spavajući, i planirajući. Ali ljudski je rod kao cjelina varljiv, mističan, nestalan, zanosan. Ljudi su ljudi, ali čovječanstvo je žena. ~ G K Chesterton,

1440:We come back once more to the simple truth; that at some time too early for these critics to trace, a transition had occurred to which bones and stones cannot in their nature bear witness; and man became a living soul. ~ G K Chesterton,

1441:A child has an ingrained fancy for coal, not for the gross materialistic reason that it builds up fires by which we cook and are warmed, but for the infinitely nobler and more abstract reason that it blacks his fingers. ~ G K Chesterton,

1442:Does it never strike you that doubt can be a madness, as well as faith? That asking questions may be a disease, as well as proclaiming doctrines? You talk of religious mania! Is there no such thing as irreligious mania? ~ G K Chesterton,

1443:Even the common things he carried with him—the food and the brandy and the loaded pistol—took on exactly that concrete and material poetry which a child feels when he takes a gun upon a journey or a bun with him to bed. ~ G K Chesterton,

1444: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1445:Los asesinos respetan la vida humana, sino que desean alcanzar una plenitud de vida propia, a expensas de las vidas que consideran inferiores a la suya. Pero el filósofo odia la vida, ya en sí mismo o en sus semejantes. ~ G K Chesterton,

1446:The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. ~ G K Chesterton,

1447:There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life. ~ G K Chesterton,

1448:there are many kinds of sincerity and insincerity. When you say 'thank you' for the salt, do you mean what you say ? No. When you say 'the world is round,' do you mean what you say ? No. It is true, but you don't mean it ~ G K Chesterton,

1449:We will have have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross. ~ G K Chesterton,

1450:Why is it," he asked vaguely, "that I think you are quite a decent fellow? Why do I positively like you, Gregory?" He paused a moment, and then added with a sort of fresh curiosity, "Is it because you are such an ass? ~ G K Chesterton,

1451:Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticized elfland, but elfland that criticized earth. ~ G K Chesterton,

1452:Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all... As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength. ~ G K Chesterton,

1453:I never said a word against eminent men of science. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it it really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly nasty one. ~ G K Chesterton,

1454:Is that story really true?" he asked. "Oh, no," said Michael, airily. "It is a parable. It is a parable of you and all your rationalists. You begin by breaking up the Cross; but you end by breaking up the habitable world. ~ G K Chesterton,

1455:The reader cannot even begin to see the sense of a story that may well seem to him a very wild one, until he understands that to this great mystic his religion was not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love-affair. ~ G K Chesterton,

1456:Em resumo: a fé democrática pretende que as coisas mais importantes sejam deixadas a cargo dos homens comuns - a procriação, a educação dos jovens, as leis do Estado. Isso é democracia, e foi nisso que eu sempre acreditei. ~ G K Chesterton,

1457:I can hardly conceive of any educated man believing in God at all without believing that God contains in Himself every perfection including eternal joy; and does not require the solar system to entertain Him like a circus. ~ G K Chesterton,

1458:The modern mind is hard to please; and it generally calls the way of Godfrey ferocious and the way of Francis fanatical. That is, it calls any moral method unpractical, when it has just called any practical method immoral. ~ G K Chesterton,

1459:Who would condescend to strike down the mere things he does not fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common prize-fighter? Who would stoop to be fearless - like a tree? Fight the thing that you fear. ~ G K Chesterton,

1460: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1461:Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head. ~ G K Chesterton,

1462:while many moral systems have set restraints on sex almost as severe as any Eugenist could set, they have almost always had the character of securing the fidelity of the two sexes to each other, and leaving the rest to God. ~ G K Chesterton,

1463:You cannot think if you are not separate from the subject of thought. Descartes said, “I think; therefore I am.” The philosophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the epigram. He says, “I am not; therefore I cannot think. ~ G K Chesterton,

1464:The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. ~ G K Chesterton,

1465:There is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century. ~ G K Chesterton,

1466: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 the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. ~ G K Chesterton,

1467:A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art. The First Effect I should say the first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. ~ G K Chesterton,

1468:A novel in which a number of separate characters all turned out to be the same character would certainly be a sensational novel. It is so with the idea that sun and tree and river are the disguises of one god and not of many. ~ G K Chesterton,

1469:Aristotle anticipated more fully the sacramental sanity that was to combine the body and the soul of things; for he considered the nature of men as well as the nature of morals, and looked to the eyes as well as to the light. ~ G K Chesterton,

1470:I have known some people of very modern views driven by their distress to the use of theological terms to which they attached no doctrinal significance, merely because a drawer was jammed tight and they could not pull it out. ~ G K Chesterton,

1471:Millones de hombres trajeados se definen a sí mismos como cuerdos y sensatos simplemente porque siempre van a la par con la locura del momento, porque van a toda prisa de locura en locura, llevados por la corriente del mundo. ~ G K Chesterton,

1472:Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers. ~ G K Chesterton,

1473:Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, "I will not hit you if you do not hit me"; there is no trace of such a transaction. There IS a trace of both men having said, "We must not hit each other in the holy place. ~ G K Chesterton,

1474:Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realise that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions. ~ G K Chesterton,

1475:Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realize that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions. ~ G K Chesterton,

1476:No gleam of reason, no momentary return to first principles, no abstract asking of any obvious question, can interrupt this mad and monotonous gallop of mere progress by precedent. It is a good way to prevent real revolution. ~ G K Chesterton,

1477:Pan again!" said Dr. Bull irritably. "You seem to think Pan is everything." "So he is," said the Professor, "in Greek. He means everything." "Don't forget," said the Secretary, looking down, "that he also means Panic. ~ G K Chesterton,

1478:Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of making truth the test. The sceptic feels himself too large to measure life by the largest things; and ends by measuring it by the smallest thing of all. ~ G K Chesterton,

1479:The hospital, by necessity, may send a man home with one leg less: but it will not (in a creative rapture) send him home with one leg extra. Medical science is content with the normal human body, and only seeks to restore it. ~ G K Chesterton,

1480:The modern instinct is that if the heart of man is evil, there is nothing that remains good. But the older feeling was that if the heart of man was ever so evil, there was something that remained good--goodness remained good. ~ G K Chesterton,

1481:The ultimate question is why they go at all; and anybody who really understands that question will know that it always has been and always will be a religious question; or at any rate a philosophical or metaphysical question. ~ G K Chesterton,

1482:Um homem não consegue sair do mal mental só por meio de seu pensamento; pois é exatamente o órgão do pensamento que se tornou doentio, ingovernável e, por assim dizer, independente. Ele só pode ser salvo pela vontade ou a fé. ~ G K Chesterton,

1483:What makes it difficult for the average man to be a universalist is that the average man has to be a specialist; he has not only to learn one trade, but to learn it so well as to uphold him in a more or less ruthless society. ~ G K Chesterton,

1484:It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity. ~ G K Chesterton,

1485:Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better. If our civilization goes on like this, only one man will laugh, because he can laugh better than the rest. ~ G K Chesterton,

1486:The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits. ~ G K Chesterton,

1487:Where does a wise man hide a pebble?" And the tall man answered in a low voice: "On the beach." The small man nodded, and after a short silence said: "Where does a wise man hide a leaf?" And the other answered: "In the forest. ~ G K Chesterton,

1488:Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. 'Odd, isn't it,' he said, 'that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man? ~ G K Chesterton,

1489: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1490:It is the friction of two spiritual things, of tradition and invention, or of substance and symbol, from which the mind takes fire. The creeds condemned as complex have something like the secret of sex; they can breed thoughts. ~ G K Chesterton,

1491:Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. ~ G K Chesterton,

1492:Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. ~ G K Chesterton,

1493:A man who thinks much about success must be the drowsiest sentimentalist; for he must be always looking back. If he only likes victory he must always come late for the battle. For the man of action there is nothing but idealism. ~ G K Chesterton,

1494:It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't. ~ G K Chesterton,

1495:It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn’t. ~ G K Chesterton,

1496:The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. ~ G K Chesterton,

1497:What was the matter with the heretic Pharaoh, as with a good many other heretics, was that he probably never paused to ask himself whether there was anything in the popular beliefs and tales of people less educated than himself. ~ G K Chesterton,

1498:I beseech you, little brothers, that you be as wise as brother Daisy and brother dandelion; for never do they lie awake thinking of tomorrow, yet they have gold crowns like kings and emperors or like Charlemagne in all his glory. ~ G K Chesterton,

1499: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. ~ G K Chesterton,

1500:Não, a visão é sempre sólida e confiável. A realidade é que muitas vezes é uma fraude. Como sempre fiz, mais do que nunca o fiz, eu acredito no liberalismo. Mas houve um róseo tempo de inocência em que eu acreditava nos liberais. ~ G K Chesterton,