 A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The rare strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross obvious thing is to miss it. Chaos is dull; because in chaos a train might go anywhere -- to Baker Street or Bagdad. But man is a magician and his whole magic is in this that he does say 'Victoria,' and lo! it is Victoria.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Man who was Thursday
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.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
All Things Considered
THIEVES respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fullness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people's.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Man who was Thursday
EVERYTHING is military in the sense that everything depends upon obedience. There is no perfectly epicurean corner; there is no perfectly irresponsible place. Everywhere men have made the way for us with sweat and submission. We may fling ourselves into a hammock in a fit of divine carelessness. But we are glad that the net-maker did not make the net in a fit of divine carelessness. We may jump upon a child's rocking-horse for a joke. But we are glad that the carpenter did not leave the legs of it unglued for a joke.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Heretics
Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Speaker, 12/15/1900
It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Cleveland Press, 3/1/21
When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
London Daily News
Most people either say that they agree with Bernard Shaw or that they do not understand him. I am the only person who understands him, and I do not agree with him.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
George Bernard Shaw
We deny the snobbish assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the great poisoning princes of the Renaissance. We say that the most dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral people, and my heart goes out to them.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Man who was Thursday
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
wikipedia
We fight for the trust and for the tryst; for fixed memories and the possible meeting of men; for all that makes life anything but an uncontrollable nightmare. We fight for the long arm of honour and remembrance; for all that can lift a man above the quicksands of his moods, and give him the mastery of time.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Appetite of Tyranny
|
