Gilbert K 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.

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.

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

Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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))

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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