G. K. Chesterton: Trending quotes

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G. K. Chesterton: 458 quotes19 likes

“It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Scandal of Father Brown

The Scandal of Father Brown (1935) The Point of a Pin
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”

G. K. Chesterton

Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton : The Illustrated London News, 1905-1907 (1986), p. 71

“I am not fighting a hopeless fight. People who have fought in real fights don't, as a rule.”

G. K. Chesterton

Patrick Dalroy in The Flying Inn (1914), p 295

“You do believe it,' he said. 'You do believe everything. We all believe everything, even when we deny everything. The denyers believe. The unbelievers believe. Don't you feel in your heart that these contradictions do not really contradict: that there is a cosmos that contains them all? The soul goes round upon a wheel of stars and all things return; perhaps Strake and I have striven in many shapes, beast against beast and bird against bird, and perhaps we shall strive for ever. But since we seek and need each other, even that eternal hatred is an eternal love. Good and evil go round in a wheel that is one thing and not many. Do you not realize in your heart, do you not believe behind all your beliefs, that there is but one reality and we are its shadows; and that all things are but aspects of one thing: a centre where men melt into Man and Man into God?”

G. K. Chesterton

'No,' said Father Brown.
The Dagger with Wings (1926)

“Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up.”

G. K. Chesterton

According to The American Chesterton Society http://www.chesterton.org/qmeister2/19.htm, this quotation is actually a paraphrase by John F. Kennedy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy of a passage from The Thing (1929) in which Chesterton made reference to a fence or gate erected across a road: &quot;The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, &quot;I don&#x27;t see the use of this; let us clear it away.&quot; To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: &quot;If you don&#x27;t see the use of it, I certainly won&#x27;t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.&quot; <br class="br">Misattributed

“The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Defendant

"A Defence of Slang"
The Defendant (1901)

“The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.”

G. K. Chesterton

Ch I: The Victorian Compromise and Its Enemies (p. 24)
The Victorian Age in Literature (1913)

“She hasn’t got any intellect to speak of; but you don’t need any intellect to be an intellectual.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Scandal of Father Brown

The Scandal of Father Brown (1935) The Scandal of Father Brown
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

“It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms.”

G. K. Chesterton

Ch I: The Victorian Compromise and Its Enemies (p. 8)
The Victorian Age in Literature (1913)

“As for science and religion, the known and admitted facts are few and plain enough. All that the parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors say is disproved. That's the only difference between science and religion there's ever been, or will be.”

G. K. Chesterton

Michael Moon in Manalive (1912)

“It is always the secure who are humble.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Defendant

"A Defence of Humilities"
The Defendant (1901)

“It is amusing to think how much conservative ingenuity has been wasted in the defence of the House of Lords by men who were desperately endeavouring to prove that the House of Lords consisted of clever men. There is one really good defence of the House of Lords […] and that is, that the House of Lords, in its full and proper strength, consists of stupid men. It really would be a plausible defence of that otherwise indefensible body to point out that the clever men in the Commons, who owed their power to cleverness, ought in the last resort to be checked by the average man in the Lords, who owed their power to accident.”

G. K. Chesterton book Heretics

Heretics (1905)

“Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen.”

G. K. Chesterton

Daily News (18 February 1905)

“He had the notion that because I am a clergyman I should believe anything. Many people have little notions of that kind.”

G. K. Chesterton

The Dagger with Wings (1926)

“"… If ever I murdered somebody," he added quite simply, "I dare say it might be an Optimist."
"Why?" cried Merton amused. "Do you think people dislike cheerfulness?"
"People like frequent laughter," answered Father Brown, "but I don't think they like a permanent smile. Cheerfulness without humour is a very trying thing."”

G. K. Chesterton book The Innocence of Father Brown

The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Three Tools of Death
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.”

G. K. Chesterton

Illustrated London News (23 October 1909)

“The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.”

G. K. Chesterton

"Holding on to Romanticism" in The Illustrated London News (2 May 1931)

“Whatever the word "great" means, Dickens was what it means.”

G. K. Chesterton Charles Dickens

Source: Charles Dickens (1906), Ch 1 : "The Dickens Period"

“When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.”

G. K. Chesterton Charles Dickens

Source: Charles Dickens (1906), Ch. 10 "The Great Dickens Characters"

“The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Flying Inn

The Flying Inn (1914)