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a7247cb
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Until we realize that things might not be, we cannot realize that things are. Until we see the background of darkness, we cannot admire the light as a single and created thing. As soon as we have seen that darkness, all light is lightening, sudden, blinding, and divine. Until we picture nonentity we underrate the victory of God, and can realize none of the trophies of His ancient war. It is one of the million wild jests of truth that we kno..
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existence
life
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G.K. Chesterton |
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cf6880f
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International peace means a peace between nations, not a peace after the destruction of nations, like the Buddhist peace after the destruction of personality. The golden age of the good European is like the heaven of the Christian: it is a place where people will love each other; not like the heaven of the Hindu, a place where they will be each other.
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g-k-chesterton
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G.K. Chesterton |
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860defa
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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0a4de13
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Who are you?' he asked suddenly. I'm not sure,' replied the other. 'I rather think I am your long-lost brother.'
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G.K. Chesterton |
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fef2317
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But humanity as a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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b214f64
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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bbe8167
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I earnestly hope that all children will spoil this book by painting the illustrations. I wanted to do this myself but the publishers would not let me. But let the colours you lay on be violent, gorgeous, terrific colours, because my feelings are like that.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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2ce4f57
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A modern vegetarian is also a teetotaler, yet there is no obvious connection between consuming vegetables and not consuming fermented vegetables. A drunkard, when lifted laboriously out of the gutter, might well be heard huskily to plead that he had fallen there through excessive devotion to a vegetable diet.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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515633c
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To him, even the momentary was momentous.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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3948df4
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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a5f975e
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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788fb7a
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And well may God with the serving-folk Cast in His dreadful lot; Is not He too a servant, And is not He forgot? For was not God my gardener And silent like a slave; That opened oaks on the uplands Or thicket in graveyard gave? And was not God my armourer, All patient and unpaid, That sealed my skull as a helmet, And ribs for hauberk made? Did not a great grey servant Of all my sires and me, Build this pavilion of the pines, And herd the fow..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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2e325d6
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If the great paradox of Christianity means anything it means this- that we must take the crown in our hands, and go hunting in dry places and dark corners of the earth until we find the one man who feels himself unfit to wear it. Carlyle was quite wrong; we have not got to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule. Rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he can't.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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7adbe10
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No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerness in eating and drinking.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f11f506
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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.
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the-coloured-lands
coal
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G.K. Chesterton |
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0b46296
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The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas. It may be thought 'dogmatic,' for instance, in some circles accounted progressive, to assume the perfection or improvement of man in another world. But it is not thought "dogmatic" to assume..
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progress
truth
rationalism
doctrine
dogma
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G.K. Chesterton |
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3633001
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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62b2caa
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The first principle is that nobody should be ashamed of thinking a thing funny because it is foreign; the second is that he should be ashamed of thinking it wrong because it is funny. The reaction of his senses and superficial habits of mind against something new, and to him abnormal, is a perfectly healthy reaction. But the mind which imagines that mere unfamiliarity can possibly prove anything about inferiority is a very inadequate mind.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9f7ccd1
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Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance... But the thing is true; economy, properly understood, is the more poetic. Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste. It is prosaic to throw money away, because it is prosaic to throw anything away; it is negative; it is a confession of indifference, that is, it is a confession of failure. The most prosaic thing about the ho..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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9e5bac6
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We have actually contrived to invent a new kind of hypocrite. The old hypocrite, Tartuffe or Pecksniff, was a man whose aims were really worldly and practical, while he pretended that they were religious. The new hypocrite is one whose aims are really religious, while he pretends that they are worldly and practical.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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39d03b8
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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102c6ff
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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dcf7e2e
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He liked as he liked; he seems to have liked everybody, but especially those whom everybody disliked him for liking.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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54e1b87
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Self is the gorgon.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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b8ac460
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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6842c7b
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The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day, There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away, And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide, Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride. The heavens are bowed about my head, shouting like seraph wars, With rains that might put out the sun and clean the sky of stars, Rains like the fall of ruined seas from secret worlds above, The roaring ..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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87914a8
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But the truth is that there is no more conscious inconsistency between the humility of a Christian and the rapacity of a Christian than there is between the humility of a lover and the rapacity of a lover. The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy. There never was a man in love who did not declare that, if he strained every nerve to breaking, he wa..
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lovers
christianity
love
chesterton
unworthy
catholicism
christian
humility
desire
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G.K. Chesterton |
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e74cb1e
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When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is." Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their ho..
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idealism
youth
politics
practicality
experience
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G.K. Chesterton |
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f5c16f5
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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88d5d60
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At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man say, "Life is not worth living." We regard it as we regard the statement that it is a fine day; nobody thinks that it can possibly have any serious effect on the man or on the world. And yet if that utterance were really believed, the world would stand on its head. Murderers would be given medals for saving men from life; firemen would be denounced for keeping men from death; poisons would ..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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aace754
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The weak point in the whole of Carlyle's case for aristocracy lies, indeed, in his most celebrated phrase. Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverent realism, says that they are all fools. This doctrine is sometimes called the doctrine of original sin. It may also be described as the doctrine of the equality of men. But the essential point of it is merely this, that whatever primary and far-reachin..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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a3e40a3
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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.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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e30ba34
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Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always sane; and all fashions are mild insanities. When Italy is mad on art the Church seems too Puritanical; when England is mad on Puritanism the Church seems too artistic. When you quarrel with us now you class us with kingship and despotism; but when you quarrelled with us first it was because we would not accept the divine despotism of Henry VIII. The Church always seems to be behind ..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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174d037
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As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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8354efb
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People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are. Life may sometimes legitimately appear as a book of science. Life may sometimes appear, and with a much greater legitimacy, as a book of metaphysics. But life is always a novel. Our existence may cease to be a so..
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G.K. Chesterton |
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611d86d
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My best friends are all either bottomless skeptics or quite uncontrollable believers . . . .
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G.K. Chesterton |
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5dde935
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What we all dread most is a maze with no centre.
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maze
dread
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G.K. Chesterton |
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0ce5e12
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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.
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integrity
honesty
debating
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G.K. Chesterton |
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b2d5e14
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The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror, with which it regards the past. It is propelled towards the coming time; it is, in the exact words of the popular phrase, knocked into the middle of next week. And the goad which drives it on thus eagerly is not an affectation for futurity Futurity does not exist, because it is still future. Rather it is a fear of the past; a fear not merely..
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heroism
future
fear
past
fatigue
variety
imaginary
enthusiasm
ideals
ease
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G.K. Chesterton |
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c3cafb7
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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." --
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G.K. Chesterton |
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a093944
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No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon.
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G.K. Chesterton |
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bff9b4e
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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."
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G.K. Chesterton |
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bc2132e
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Without the family, we are helpless before the State.
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family
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G.K. Chesterton |
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e4c5f5a
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There's another thing you've got to remember. You talk about these highbrows having a higher art and a more philosophical drama. But remember what a lot of the philosophy is! Remember what sort of conduct those highbrows often present to the highest! All about the Will to Power and the Right to Live and the Right to Experience -- damned nonsense and more than damned nonsense -- nonsense that can damn." Father"
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G.K. Chesterton |