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Gilbert K. Chesterton

Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

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Famous Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

“Leaving the complications of the human breakfast-table out of account, in an elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken. But the chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable in himself.”

HumansMayDoeIdeasOrderAnimalProduceCreaturesConsciousAccountsPraiseTablesLeavingValuableEggsChickensBreakfastComplicationElementalsPraise God
Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.”

HumansImportantFeelingsNightCertainValuesKnowledgeHeardIgnoranceFlowerUnderstoodGardenDirectStrikesMoodDramaticPoeticLeafsMeadowsProdigiesImbecilityDazed
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“All the controversialists who have become conscious of the real issue are already saying of our ideal exactly what used to be said of the Socialists' ideal. They are saying that private property is too ideal not to be impossible. They are saying that private enterprise is too good to be true. They are saying that the idea of ordinary men owning ordinary possessions is against the laws of political economy and requires an alteration in human nature.”

MenHumansSaidIdeasRealLawPoliticalUsedPoliticsEconomyIssuesImpossibleHuman NatureOrdinaryConsciousIdealsPropertyPossessionUsed To BeBeing TrueLiberalismEnterprisePrivate PropertyOrdinary ManAlterationsPolitical EconomyPrivate EnterpriseToo Good To Be True
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists.”

HumansMayReasonPastFightingMereMysticismCatholicismRitualAgain And AgainExaggerationSuperstitiousRepressedAsceticismHuman ReasonPragmatists
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“The great intellectual tradition that comes down to us from the past was never interrupted or lost through such trifles as the sack of Rome, the triumph of Attila, or all the barbarian invasions of the Dark Ages. It was lost after the introduction of printing, the discovery of America, the founding of the Royal Society, and all the enlightenment of the Renaissance and the modern world. It was there, if anywhere, that there was lost or impatiently snapped the long thin delicate thread that had descended from distant antiquity; the thread of that unusual human hobby: the habit of thinking.”

IfsThinkingWorldHumansLongAgeAmericaPastLostDarkModernHabitIntellectualEnlightenmentDiscoveryTraditionTriumphUnusualRomeDelicateThreadHobbiesRoyalFoundingModern WorldIntroductionInvasionDark AgesRenaissanceTriflesPrintingAntiquityBarbariansInterruptedDiscovery Of America
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.”

WorldHumansMadePlayActorsLeftPerfectChristianityWrittenStagePhilosopherMessManagersStage Managers
Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.”

WritingHumansLongBookWould BeAgePastFoundTypeToolsInstancePocketsCarrieKnivesEpicInfantPrimeval
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“They hate kings, they hate priests, they hate soldiers, they hate sailors. They distrust men of science, they denounce the middle classes, they despair of working men, but they adore humanity. Only they always speak of humanity as if it were a curious foreign nation. They are dividing themselves more and more from men to exalt the strange race of mankind. They are ceasing to be human in the effort to be humane.”

IfsMenHumansHateHumanitySpeakNationsEffortRaceClassMiddleMankindStrangeKingsDespairSoldierCuriousMiddle ClassPriestsAdoreDistrustHumaneSailorDividingWorking Man
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“The sceptic ultimately undermines democracy (1) because he can see no significance in death and such things of a literal equality; (2) because he introduces different first principles, making debate impossible: and debate is the life of democracy; (3) because the fading of the images of sacred persons leaves a man too prone to be a respecter of earthly persons; (4) because there will be more, not less, respect for human rights if they can be treated as divine rights.”

IfsMenFirstsHumansPersonsDifferentPrinciplesDemocracyRightsImpossibleDivineSacredHuman RightsDebateTreatedSignificanceIntroducingLiteralSkepticFadingScepticDivine Right
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“[There is] one distinctly human thing - the story. There can be as good science about a turnip as about a man. ... [Or philosophy, or theology] ...There can be, without any question at all, as good higher mathematics about a turnip as about a man. But I do not think, though I speak in a manner somewhat tentative, that there could be as good a novel written about a turnip as a man.”

ThinkingMenHumansPhilosophyStoriesScienceSpeakNovelWrittenHigherAccountsMathematicsTheologyTurnipsGood Science
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“The idea of private property universal but private, the idea of families free but still families, of domesticity democratic but still domestic, of one man one house - this remains the real vision and magnet of mankind. The world may accept something more official and general, less human and intimate. But the world will be like a broken-hearted woman who makes a humdrum marriage because she may not make a happy one; Socialism may be the world's deliverance, but it is not the world's desire.”

MenWorldHumansMayStillsIdeasRealInspirationDesireFaithHouseAcceptingVisionMankindBrokenUniversalRemainsPropertyDemocraticChristian InspirationalSocialismIntimateOfficialsOne ManHeartedPrivate PropertyDeliveranceMagnetBroken HeartedDomesticityHumdrum
Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke - that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls.”

HumansMayRealSoulEndsPlayInspirationMightEarthLastsLife IsFaithUniverseHeavenStarsObjectsJokesGardenTasksTreatsFinalsSecureInnocenceHuman LifeHolidayHuman SoulPlaygrounds
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small... We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel...”

IfsThinkingFeelsHumansLooksKindChildrenLittlesHandsMightMovingEnergyImaginationDoubtTreeHuman NatureCreaturesEssentialsCatholicWingsTinyObligationAwfulLook UpFrightenedButterflyTendernessLeafs
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“Even in a minute instance, it is best to look first to the main tendencies of Nature. A particular flower may not be dead in early winter, but the flowers are dying; a particular pebble may never be wetted with the tide, but the tide is coming in. To the scientific eye all human history is a series of collective movements, destructions or migrations, like the massacre of flies in winter or the return of birds in spring.”

FirstsHumansLooksMayEyeMinutesDyingMovementParticularFlowerReturnSpringBirdDestructionSeriesWinterTendenciesInstanceCollectivesTidesHuman HistoryMigrationPebblesMassacres
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“The modern world has far too little understanding of the art of keeping young. Its notion of progress has been to pile one thing on top of another, without caring if each thing was crushed in turn. People forgot that the human soul can enjoy a thing most when there is time to think about it and be thankful for it. And by crowding things together they lost the sense of surprise; and surprise is the secret of joy.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWorldHumansLittlesHas BeensArtSoulTogetherYoungJoyTurnsLostEnjoyUnderstandingSecretProgressOne ThingModernSurpriseNotionCaringModern WorldBeing ThankfulHuman SoulCrushedTime To Think
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within.”

MenHumansChildrenPhilosophyChristianityCasesModernDespairOppositesWineDancingDrinkingRingsArtisticHuman LifePriestsEthicalPaganInhumanDrinking WineAbnegationModern Philosophy
Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton
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