Gilbert Chesterton Quotes

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

I am more than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do— I can die.

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.

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.

It is always the secure who are humble.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (that fabulously large Catholic writer) overheard someone making fun of Milton (it didn't matter that the insults were all true).

Gospode! kakav je to neobičan svijet u kojemu čovjek ne može ostati jedinstven, čak ni ako si da truda da poludi!

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.

You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. —GILBERT CHESTERTON

Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise.

Any one setting out to dispute anything ought always to begin by saying what he does not dispute.

Pokój bez książek to jak ciało bez duszy

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.

Here I end (thank God) the first and dullest business of this book—the rough review of recent thought.

The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.

La edad de oro retorna a los hombres cuando, aunque sólo sea momentáneamente, se olvidan del oro

We do not merely love ourselves more than we love duty; we actually love ourselves more than we love joy.

La intolerancia puede ser definida como la indignación de los hombres que no tienen opiniones.

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

We have said that the State must not absorb the individual or the family; both should be allowed free and untrammeled action

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem." ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

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? —Gilbert K. Chesterton

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.

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

It is true that there's too much official and indirect power. Often and often the thing a whole nation can't settle is just the thing a family could settle. Scores of young criminals have been fined and sent to jail when they ought to have been thrashed and sent to bed. Scores of men, I am sure, have had a lifetime at Hanwell when they only wanted a week at Brighton. There is something in Smith's notion of domestic self-government; and I propose that we put it into practice. Chesterton, Gilbert K.. Manalive

The foremost duty, therefore, of the rulers of the State should be to make sure that the laws and institutions, the general character and administration of the commonwealth, shall be such as of themselves to realize public well-being and private prosperity. This is the proper scope of wise statesmanship and is the work of the rulers. Now

Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front-

Taj smijeh, kojim ljudi ugnjetavaju jedni druge, nije tako moćan, kao što si zamišljate. Petar je razapet i to razapet glavom prema dolje. Što bi moglo biti smješnije od pomisli na uglednog, starog apostola okrenutog naopačke? Što bi moglo biti više u stilu vašeg modernog humora? Ali što je to vrijedilo? Naopačke ili s pravom stranom prema gore, Petar je čovječanstvu Petar. Naopačke se još uvijek nadvija nad Europom, a milijuni se kreću i dišu samo u duhu njegove Crkve.

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. He is not hampered by a sense of humor or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

Writing in 1932, on the hundred-year anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s birth, Gilbert K. Chesterton voiced his “dreadful fear” that Alice’s story had already fallen under the heavy hands of the scholars and was becoming “cold and monumental like a classic tomb.” “Poor, poor, little Alice!” bemoaned G.K. “She has not only been caught and made to do lessons; she has been forced to inflict lessons on others. Alice is now not only a schoolgirl but a schoolmistress. The holiday is over and Dodgson is again a don. There will be lots and lots of examination papers, with questions like: (1) What do you know of the following; mimsy, gimble, haddocks’ eyes, treacle-wells, beautiful soup? (2) Record all the moves in the chess game in Through the Looking-Glass, and give diagram. (3) Outline the practical policy of the White Knight for dealing with the social problem of green whiskers. (4) Distinguish between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Men at the close of the dark Ages may have been rude and unlettered and unlearned in everything but wars with heathen tribes, more barbarous than themselves, but they were clean. They were like children; the first beginnings of their rude arts have all the clean pleasure of children. We have to conceive them in Europe as a whole living under little local governments, feudal in so far as they were a survival of fierce wars with the barbarians, often monastic and carrying a far more friendly and fatherly character, still faintly imperial as far as Rome still ruled as a great legend. But in Italy something had survived more typical of the finer spirit of antiquity; the republic, Italy, was dotted with little states, largely democratic in their ideals, and often filled with real citizens. But the city no longer lay open as under the Roman peace, but was pent in high walls for defence against feudal war and all the citizens had to be soldiers.

The way to love anything is to realize it may be lost.”  -Gilbert Keith Chesterton

El único magno crimen del Gobierno esta en el hecho de que gobierne. El pecado imperdonable del poder supremo está en que es supremo

What's Wrong with the World (Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)) - Your Highlight on page 93 | Location 797-799 | Added on Thursday, January 8, 2015 1:31:17 PM There is a pedantic phrase used in debating clubs which is strictly true to the masculine emotion; they call it "speaking to the question." Women speak to each other; men speak to the subject they are speaking about. Many an honest man has sat in a ring of his five best friends under heaven and forgotten who was in the room while he explained some system.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. ========== What's Wrong with the World (Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith))

When it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.” Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

Ritual is really much older than thought; it is much simpler and much wilder than thought. A feeling touching the nature of things does not only make men feel that there are certain proper things to say; it makes them feel that there are certain proper things to do.

A man who has faith 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 when he is not even ready to wear a wreath round his head for them.

A man who has faith 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 when he is not even ready to wear a wreath round his head for them.

In the round of our rational and mournful year one festival remains out of all those ancient gaieties that once covered the whole earth. Christmas remains to remind us of those ages, whether Pagan or Christian, when the many acted poetry instead of the few writing it. In all the winter in our woods there is no tree in glow but the holly.

It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does, not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw.

One of the thousand objections to the sin of pride lies precisely in this, that self-consciousness of necessity destroys self-revelation. A man who thinks a great deal about himself will try to be many-sided, attempt a theatrical excellence at all points, will try to be an encyclopaedia of culture, and his own real personality will be lost in that false universalism. Thinking about himself will lead to trying to be the universe; trying to be the universe will lead to ceasing to be anything.

To the child the tree and the lamp-post are as natural and as artificial as each other; or rather, neither of them are natural but both supernatural. For both are splendid and unexplained.

When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its comer-stone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob a coward — in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it.

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and, eclipse.

Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible... It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them.

The ultimate psychological truth, the foundation of Christianity, is that no man is a hero to himself.

Many modern Englishmen talk of themselves as the sturdy descendants of their sturdy Puritan fathers. As a fact, they would run away from a cow. 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. And this virtue of humility, while being practical enough to win battles, will always be paradoxical enough to puzzle pedants.

And every generous person will equally agree that the one kind of pride which is wholly damnable is the pride of the man who has something to be proud of. The pride which, proportionally speaking, does not hurt the character, is the pride in things which reflect no credit on the person at all. Thus it does a man no harm to be proud of his country, and comparatively little harm to be proud of his remote ancestors.

The richer a man is the easier it is for him to be a tramp. The richer a man is the easier it is for him to be popular and generally respected in the Cannibal Islands. But the poorer a man is the more likely it is that he will have to use his past life whenever he wants to get a bed for the night. Honor is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-porters.

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbor. Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature; he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain. He is Man, the most terrible of the beasts. That is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one’s duty towards humanity, but one’s duty towards one’s neighbor... we have to love our neighbor because he is there — a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation.

To be in a romance is to be in uncongenial surroundings. To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance. Of all these great limitations and frameworks which fashion and create the poetry and variety of life, the family is the most definite and important.

Entonces intentó derrotarme intelectualmente. Pero yo le opuse una táctica muy sencilla: cada vez que él decía algo que sólo él podía entender, yo contestaba algo que ni yo mismo entendía.

Una energía limitada se traduce en violencia. La energía suprema se demuestra en la levedad.

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless; or it is no virtue at all.

A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelesssness about dying. He must not merely cling to live, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death , for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. 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.

To have a party in favor of union and a party in favor of separation is as absurd as to have a party in favor of going upstairs and a party in favor of going downstairs. The question is not whether we go up or down stairs, but where we are going to, and what we are going, for?

Being a mixture of two things, it is a dilution of two things; neither is present in its full strength or contributes its full color.

We have here an unusual opportunity to appraise the human mind, or to examine, in Earth terms, the roles of good and evil in a man. His negative side, which you call hostility, lust, violence. And his positive side, which Earth people express as compassion, love, tenderness. —Star Trek, “The Enemy Within” (Spock) Suppose some mathematical creature from the moon were to reckon up the human body; he would at once see that the essential thing about it was that it was duplicate. A man is two men, he on the right exactly resembling him on the left. Having noted that there was an arm on the right and one on the left, a leg on the right and one on the left, he might go further and still find on each side the same number of fingers, the same number of toes, twin eyes, twin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain. At last he would take it as a law; and then, where he found a heart on one side, would deduce that there was another heart on the other. And just then, where he most felt he was right, he would be wrong. —Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home; because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be a usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property; because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution.

A stern Scotch minister remarked concerning the game of golf, with a terrible solemnity of manner, "the man who plays golf—he neglects his business, he forsakes his wife, he forgets his God." He did not seem to realise that it is the chief aim of many a modern capitalist's life to forget all three.

During the second half of the nineteenth century’, wrote Gilbert’s younger brother Cecil, ‘the middle class was absolutely bubbling over with ideas…. It was rioting in its new-found intellectual liberty as heartily as the men of the Restoration rioted in their new-found moral liberty. Everywhere you found households where new theories of politics, philosophy, religion, or science were eagerly welcomed, debated, and

Ljudska rasa, kojoj veliki broj mojih čitatelja pripada, igra se dječjih igara od samoga početka, a vjerojatno će to činiti i do samoga kraja, što je gnjavaža za ono nekoliko ljudi koji su odrasli. A jedna od igara kojoj je najviše privržena zove se "Zadrži sutrašnjicu u tami," a još su joj nadjenuli i ime (seljaci iz Shropshirea, bez ikakve sumnje) "Prevari proroka." Igrači saslušaju vrlo pažljivo i s poštovanjem sve što mudar čovjek ima za reći o onome što bi se trebalo dogoditi u sljedećoj generaciji. Igrači tada sačekaju dok svi mudri ljudi ne umru, pa ih lijepo pokopaju. Zatim odu i učine nešto potpuno drugačije. I to je sve. Za rasu jednostavnih sklonosti to je, međutim, jako zabavno.

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.

A liberal is a noble and indispensable lunatic who tries to make a cosmos of his own head.

In the highest sense, indeed, all thought is reflection. "This is the real truth, in the saying that second thoughts are best. Animals have no second thoughts; man alone is able to see his own thought double, as a drunkard sees a lamp-post; man alone is able to see his own thought upside down as one sees a house in a puddle. This duplication of mentality, as in a mirror, is (we repeat) the inmost thing of human philosophy. There is a mystical, even a monstrous truth, in the statement that two heads are better than one. But they ought both to grow on the same body." Chesterton, Gilbert K.. Manalive

Inglewood looked up, to find, to his astonishment (as many another denizen of the eastern hemisphere has found), that the American was not only perfectly serious, but was really eloquent and affecting—when the difference of the hemispheres was adjusted. "Manalive

El hombre sabe que hay en el alma tintes más desconcertantes, más innumerables y más anónimos que los colores de una selva otoñal... cree, sin embargo, que esos tintes, en todas sus fusiones y conversiones, son representables con precisión por un mecanismo arbitrario de gruñidos y chillidos. Cree que del interior de un bolsita salen realmente ruidos que significan todos los misterios de la memoria y todas la agonías del anhelo.

I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe. I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.

La grande marcia della distruzione intellettuale proseguirà. Tutto sarà negato. Tutto diventerà un credo. È una posizione ragionevole negare le pietre della strada; diventerà un dogma religioso riaffermarle. È una tesi razionale quella che ci vuole tutti immersi in un sogno; sarà una forma assennata di misticismo asserire che siamo tutti svegli. Fuochi verranno attizzati per testimoniare che due più due fa quattro. Spade saranno sguainate per dimostrare che le foglie sono verdi in estate. Noi ci ritroveremo a difendere non solo le incredibili virtù e l'incredibile sensatezza della vita umana, ma qualcosa di ancora più incredibile, questo immenso, impossibile universo che ci fissa in volto. Combatteremo per i prodigi visibili come se fossero invisibili. Guarderemo l'erba e i cieli impossibili con uno strano coraggio. Noi saremo tra quanti hanno visto eppure hanno creduto.

Kada kažu da je Katolička Crkva staromodna, to je zapravo kompliment. Jer samo nešto što je istinski vrijedno može tako dugo živjeti.

The gallows in my garden, people say, Is new and neat and adequately tall; I tie the noose on in a knowing way As one that knots his necktie for a ball; But just as all the neighbours--on the wall-- Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!" The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all I think I will not hang myself to-day. To-morrow is the time I get my pay-- My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall-- I see a little cloud all pink and grey-- Perhaps the rector's mother will not call-- I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall That mushrooms could be cooked another way-- I never read the works of Juvenal-- I think I will not hang myself to-day. The world will have another washing-day; The decadents decay; the pedants pall; And H.G. Wells has found that children play, And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall, Rationalists are growing rational-- And through thick woods one finds a stream astray So secret that the very sky seems small-- I think I will not hang myself to-day. Envoi Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal, The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way; Even to-day your royal head may fall, I think I will not hang myself to-day.

Kakva je lakrdija ovo moderno slobodoumlje! U našoj modernoj civilizaciji, sloboda govora zapravo znači da moramo govoriti isključivo o nevažnim stvarima. Ne smijemo govoriti o religiji, jer je to netrpeljivo; ne smijemo govoriti o kruhu i siru, jer je to razgovor o trgovini; ne smijemo govoriti o smrti, jer je to depresivno; ne smijemo govoriti o rođenju, jer je to neobzirno. To ne može potrajati. Nešto mora slomiti tu čudnu ravnodušnost, taj neobični pospani egoizam, tu čudnu usamljenost milijuna ljudi u gomili. Nešto ju mora slomiti. Zašto to ne bismo bili Vi i ja?

Nijedan čovjek koji je zaljubljen, ne misli da je itko prije njega bio zaljubljen.

Zar mislite kako se ja nemam pravo boriti za Notting Hill, Vi, čija se engleska vlada tako često borila za budalaštine? Ako, kao što Vaši bogati prijatelji tvrde, nema bogova, a nebo iznad nas je mračno, za što bi se drugo čovjek trebao boriti, nego za mjesto koje je bilo rajski vrt njegovog djetinjstva i kratki raj njegove prve ljubavi? Ako ni hramovi, niti sveta pisma nisu sveta, što je sveto ako čovjekova vlastita mladost nije sveta?

To je ono čemu zamjeram u vašem kozmopolitizmu. Kada kažete kako želite da se svi ljudi ujedine, zapravo mislite kako želite da se svi narodi ujedine kako bi naučili vještine vaših ljudi. Ako Arap beduin ne zna čitati, engleski misionar ili učitelj mora biti poslan da ga nauči čitati, ali nitko nikada ne kaže, 'Taj učitelj ne zna jahati na devi; hajmo platiti beduinu da ga nauči.' Kažete da će vaša civilizacija uključiti sve talente. Hoće li? Želite li stvarno reći, kako ćete do onoga trenutka kada Eskim nauči glasati za okružno vijeće, vi naučiti probosti morža kopljem? Vraćam se primjeru koji sam već spomenuo. U Nikaragvi smo imali način za lovljenje divljih konja – vezanjem prednjih nogu lasom – koji je navodno bio najbolji način u Južnoj Americi. Ako ćete uključiti sve talente, odite i učinite to. Ako nećete, dozvolite mi da kažem što sam oduvijek govorio, kako je iz svijeta nešto nestalo kada je Nikaragva civilizirana.

Gilbert Chesterton said, “There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.” So get interested!

extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children. —GILBERT K. CHESTERTON

discontented with the general proposal to go to bed

all ‘boring’ information can be made more interesting with the right mindset. Gilbert Chesterton said, “There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.” So get interested!

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war. ― Gilbert K. Chesterton Love is the journey of passion; marriage is the compromise, agreement, and interpretation of this journey. ― Ehsan Sehgal

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.” - Gilbert K. Chesterton