G. K. Chesterton Quotes (229 quotes, page 4)

“The big commercial concerns of to-day are quite exceptionally incompetent. They will be even more incompetent when they are omnipotent.”

G. K. Chesterton

Source: Utopia of Usurers (1917), p. 23

“There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Defendant

Source: The Defendant (1901), "A Defence of Baby-Worship"

Truth , Religion , Star , Understanding

“To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Innocence of Father Brown

The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Paradise of Thieves
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

Money , Stupidity

“Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.”

G. K. Chesterton

Source: Utopia of Usurers (1917), p. 31

Thinking , Sleep , Time

“A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve.”

G. K. Chesterton

Said of Benito Mussolini while comparing him to Hildebrand (i. e. Pope Gregory VII), as quoted in "The Pearl of Great Price" by Robert Royal, his Introduction to "The Resurrection of Rome" by G. K. Chesterton in The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton (1990) by Vol. XXI, p. 274

“One of his hobbies was to wait for the American Shakespeare — a hobby more patient than angling.”

G. K. Chesterton

'The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Secret Garden
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

Waiting

“He did not know the way things were going: he was too Victorian to understand the Victorian epoch. He did not know enough ignorant people to have heard the news.”

G. K. Chesterton

On William Makepeace Thackeray Ch. II: The Great Victorian Novelists (p. 65)
The Victorian Age in Literature (1913)

People , Way , Understanding

“There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.”

G. K. Chesterton

The Illustrated London News (25 April 1931)

Error

“Half the trouble about the modern man is that he is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners.”

G. K. Chesterton

Source: The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton http://books.google.com/books?id=9_m6AAAAIAAJ&q=%22Half+the+trouble+about+the+modern+man+is+that+he+is+educated+to+understand+foreign+languages+and+misunderstand+foreigners%22&pg=PA322#v=onepage (1936)

Education , Understanding

“If you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Secret of Father Brown

The Secret of Father Brown (1927) The Song of the Flying Fish
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

“When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.”

G. K. Chesterton

The Illustrated London News (7 November 1908)

Men , Learning

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”

G. K. Chesterton

Alarms and Discursions (1910), 'Cheese,' p. 70

“A stiff apology is a second insult.”

G. K. Chesterton

"The Real Dr. Johnson," http://books.google.com/books?id=2mpaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22A+stiff+apology+is+a+second+insult%22&pg=PA121#v=onpage The Common Man (1950)

“Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Innocence of Father Brown

The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Flying Stars
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

Men , Evil

“There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.”

G. K. Chesterton

G.F. Watts http://books.google.com/books?id=PLpLAAAAMAAJ&q="There+is+only+one+thing+that+it+requires+real+courage+to+say+and+that+is+a+truism"&pg=PA17#v=onepage (1904)

Courage

“Neither reason nor faith will ever die; for men would die if deprived of either. The wildest mystic uses his reason at some stage; if it be only by reasoning against reason. The most incisive sceptic has dogmas of his own; though when he is a very incisive sceptic, he has often forgotten what they are. Faith and reason are in this sense co-eternal; but as the words are popularly used, as loose labels for particular periods, the one is now almost as remote as the other. What was called the Age of Reason has vanished as completely as what are called the Ages of Faith.”

G. K. Chesterton

Anti-Religious Thought In The Eighteenth Century http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/anti_religious_thought.txt; first published in "An Outline of Christianity : The Story of our Civilization", Vol. IV, Christianity and Modern Thought (1926)

Men , Age , Faith , Sense

“The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen – that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the Government will really help it to persecute its heretics.”

G. K. Chesterton book Eugenics and other Evils

Source: Eugenics and Other Evils (1922), Ch. VII: "The Established Church of Doubt" (pp. 76-77). https://books.google.com/books?id=m2xaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA76&dq=%22the+thing+that+really+is+trying+to+tyrannise+through+government+is+science%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj9uKmM_6jMAhUHgj4KHZr3DW0Q6AEILzAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20thing%20that%20really%20is%20trying%20to%20tyrannise%20through%20government%20is%20science%22&f=false Dale Ahlquist, president and co-founder of the American Chesterton Society, commenting of this passage writes: "Eugenics is also about the tyranny of science. Forget the tired old argument about religion persecuting science. Chesterton points out the obvious fact that in the modern world, it is the quite the other way around." http://www.chesterton.org/lecture-36/ Lecture 36: Eugenics and Other Evils

School , Science , Help

“I know that journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones Dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Wisdom of Father Brown

The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914) The Purple Wig
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

People , Dead

“Yet he is right enough about there being a white magic, if he only knows where to look for it.”

G. K. Chesterton

The Dagger with Wings (1926)

“If you know what a man's doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he's doing keep behind him.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Innocence of Father Brown

The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Blue Cross
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

“There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.”

G. K. Chesterton book Heretics

Heretics (1905)

Personality

“Don't you believe people when they tell you that people sought for a sign, and believed in miracles because they were ignorant. They did it because they were wise, filthily, vilely wise—too wise to eat or sleep or put on their boots with patience.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Napoleon of Notting Hill

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

People , Sleep , Patience

“Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots.”

G. K. Chesterton

Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens Chapter VI "Old Curiosity Shop" (1911)

“The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still.”

G. K. Chesterton

Inglewood in Manalive (1912)

Light

“The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice. Moral truisms have been so much disputed that they have begun to sparkle like so many brilliant paradoxes.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Defendant

"A Defence of Humilities"
The Defendant (1901)

“Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.”

G. K. Chesterton book Tremendous Trifles

Tremendous Trifles (1909)

Night

“An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.”

G. K. Chesterton book All Things Considered

"On Running After One's Hat"
All Things Considered (1908)

“Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.”

G. K. Chesterton

Ch I: The Victorian Compromise and Its Enemies ( p. 43 http://books.google.com/books?id=mKs-AAAAYAAJ&q=%22Dogma+does+not+mean+the+absence+of+thought+but+the+end+of+thought%22&pg=PA43#v=onepage)
The Victorian Age in Literature (1913)

“There is in Islam a paradox which is perhaps a permanent menace. The great creed born in the desert creates a kind of ecstasy out of the very emptiness of its own land, and even, one may say, out of the emptiness of its own theology. […] A void is made in the heart of Islam which has to be filled up again and again by a mere repetition of the revolution that founded it. There are no sacraments; the only thing that can happen is a sort of apocalypse, as unique as the end of the world; so the apocalypse can only be repeated and the world end again and again. There are no priests; and yet this equality can only breed a multitude of lawless prophets almost as numerous as priests. The very dogma that there is only one Mahomet produces an endless procession of Mahomets.”

G. K. Chesterton

Lord Kitchener (1917), pp. 7–8 https://archive.org/stream/kitchener00chesuoft#page/7/mode/2up

World , Heart

“Bosh," he said, "On what else is the whole world run but immediate impressions? What is more practical? My friend, the philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, but its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Club of Queer Trades

The Club of Queer Trades (1905) Ch. 2 "The Painful Fall of a Great Reputation"

World , Business

“Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairy tales. And so it is with the modern tyrant, the great employer. The sight of a millionaire is seldom, in the ordinary sense, an enchanting sight: nevertheless, he is in his way an enchanter. As they say in the gushing articles about him in the magazines, he is a fascinating personality. So is a snake. At least he is fascinating to rabbits; and so is the millionaire to the rabbit-witted sort of people that ladies and gentlemen have allowed themselves to become.”

G. K. Chesterton

Source: Utopia of Usurers (1917), p. 19

People , Way , Sense , Personality

“A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man.”

G. K. Chesterton

A Utopia of Usurers (1917)

Change

“It is only great men who take up a great space by not being there.”

G. K. Chesterton

Lecture at the University of Notre Dame (13 October 1930), as quoted in notes taken by Professor Richard Baker, of the University of Dayton, and published in The Chesterton Review (Winter/Spring 1977)

Men

“The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully intervenes.”

G. K. Chesterton

" The Skeptic as a Critic http://books.google.com/books?id=DlMeAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+full+potentialities+of+human+fury+cannot+be+reached+until+a+friend+of+both+parties+tactfully+intervenes%22&pg=PA218#v=onepage," The Forum ( February 1929 http://books.google.com/books?id=JqfPAAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+full+potentialities+of+human+fury+cannot+be+reached+until+a+friend+of+both+parties+tactfully+intervenes%22&pg=PA65#v=onepage)

“For my part, I should be inclined to suggest that the chief object of education should be to restore simplicity. If you like to put it so, the chief object of education is not to learn things; nay, the chief object of education is to unlearn things.”

G. K. Chesterton book All Things Considered

"An Essay on Two Cities"
All Things Considered (1908)

Education , Learning , Parting

“I swear to you, then," said MacIan, after a pause. "I swear to you that nothing shall come between us. I swear to you that nothing shall be in my heart or in my head till our swords clash together. I swear it by the God you have denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it by the seven swords in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where my fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and by the chalice of the Blood of God.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Ball and the Cross

The atheist drew up his head. "And I," he said, "give my word."
The Ball and the Cross (1909), part II: "The Religion of the Stipendiary Magistrate", last paragraphs

God , People , Secret , Heart

“Plato was right, but not quite right.”

G. K. Chesterton

The Dumb Ox (1934)

“My country, right or wrong' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Defendant

"A Defence of Patriotism"
The Defendant (1901)

Thinking , Country

“The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.”

G. K. Chesterton

"The Book of Job: An introduction" (1907)

God

“I don't believe in anything; I'm a journalist," answered the melancholy being—“Boon, of the Daily Wire. …”

G. K. Chesterton book The Incredulity of Father Brown

The Incredulity of Father Brown (1923) The Curse of the Golden Cross
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

“Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Defendant

"Introduction"
The Defendant (1901)

Men

“Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?”

G. K. Chesterton book The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Book I, Chapter II: "The Man in Green"
The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

World , Failure , Men

“Fine weather encourages individualism. When the whole glittering landscape is cut out as clear as a map—indented by the blue sky as by a blue sea, then each one of us wishes to take his own way, to walk by himself along the roads of the world and conquer for himself the cities of the morning. In the sunlight a man asks for liberty, which is only the divine name for loneliness. But it is in black and bleak conditions that we learn that it is not well for man to be alone; and festivity was discovered in the darkness. Winter encourages that thing called comradeship which modern humanitarians so often seem unable to understand, but which Walt Whitman so wisely perceived to be the permanent foundation of democracy.”

G. K. Chesterton

Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton : The Illustrated London News, 1905-1907 (1986), p. 190

Democracy , Understanding , Loneliness , Learning

“I'm afraid I'm a practical man,' said the doctor with gruff humour, 'and I don't bother much about religion and philosophy.”

G. K. Chesterton

'You'll never be a practical man till you do,' said Father Brown. 'Look here, doctor; you know me pretty well; I think you know I'm not a bigot. You know I know there are all sorts in all religions; good men in bad ones and bad men in good ones.
The Dagger with Wings (1926)

Religion

“You have no business to be an unbeliever. You ought to stand for all the things these stupid people call superstitions. Come now, don't you think there's a lot in those old wives' tales about luck and charms and so on, silver bullets included? What do you say about them as a Catholic?'
'I say I'm an agnostic,' replied Father Brown, smiling.
'Nonsense,' said Aylmer impatiently. 'It's your business to believe things.”

G. K. Chesterton

'Well, I do believe some things, of course,' conceded Father Brown; 'and therefore, of course, I don't believe other things.' .
The Dagger with Wings (1926)

Business , Smile , Bad luck , People

“Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with "they say" or "don't you know that?"”

G. K. Chesterton

or try (and fail) to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say.
The Superstition of Divorce (1920)

“…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?”

G. K. Chesterton book The Innocence of Father Brown

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

Thinking , People

“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.””

G. K. Chesterton

Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics.
"The Ethics of Elfland" https://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/orthodoxy.vii.html in Delphi Works of G. K. Chesterton

Business , Boy , Age , World

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”

G. K. Chesterton

Folly and Female Education
What's Wrong With The World (1910)