Quotes by Chesterton, Gilbert K.

"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on reason
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"A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on religion   

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"The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on retirement   

"You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on evolution
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"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on riches   

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"Among the very rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on riches
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"Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on ritual   

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"Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on science   

"The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on science   

"Silence is the unbearable repartee."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on silence   

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"All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on slang   

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"Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on speakers and speaking   

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"A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on speakers and speaking   

"Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on status
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"To be clever enough to get all the money, one must be stupid enough to want it."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on stupidity
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"I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on action
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"We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on bigotry
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"A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on birds
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"The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on books - reading   

"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on books - reading   

"A yawn is a silent shout."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on bores and boredom
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"Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on boys   

"Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on buddhism   

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"Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on chastity   

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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."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on taste
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"A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on teacher   

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"Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on temperament   

"The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on terrorism   

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"Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on things and little things   

"How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on thoughts and thinking
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"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes -- our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on tradition   

"The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on trains
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"The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist see what he has come to see."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on travel
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"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on travel   

"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on truth
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"Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on truth   

"If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on understanding
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"People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on understanding   

"Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on virtue   

"The chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a color. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on virtue