People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTONAt 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.
More Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
-
-
Dear Sir: Regarding your article ‘What’s Wrong with the World?’ I am. Yours truly.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
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.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
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.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
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.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
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.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
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.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
One must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
One elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
The Church is a house with a hundred gates: and no two men enter at exactly the same angle
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
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.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
Against a dark sky, all flowers look like fireworks.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
Thanks are the highest form of thought.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
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.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
We’re all in the same boat, and we’re all seasick.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
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.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
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.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON