I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTONThe 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.
More Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
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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 -
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.
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 -
The present condition of fame is merely fashion.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
The Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God.
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 -
A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
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.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
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
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
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.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
I don’t deny,” he said, “that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. 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.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
Original sin is the only doctrine that’s been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
Comradeship is quite a different thing from friendship. . .
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 -
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.
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Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
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Thanks are the highest form of thought.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON -
Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance.
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 -
When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
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