Favourite Chesterton Quotes

[PeterPaul]

I wanted to start a thread that hopefully will bring about some interest in the 20th centuries greatest layman, G.K. Chesterton. Perhaps you can contribute, perhaps you can be interested in learning more about him after reading the material submitted here.

If you don't know Chesterton, you might want to start with a basic book that covers his greatest works. That book is Dale Ahlquist's "The Apostle of Common Sense".

Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.

We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong...

 

[PeterPaul]

When he (man) drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions...holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass.

On Feminists:

Ten million young women rose to their feet with the cry, We will not be dictated to; and proceeded to become stenographers.

Chesterton on Protestants claiming the Church was afraid of the Bible:

I grew up in a world in which the Protestants, who had just proved that Rome did not believe in the Bible, were excitedly discovering that they did not believe in the Bible themselves.

On modernists:

They insist on talking about Birth Control when they mean less birth and no control

 

[PeterPaul]

A convinced Catholic is easily the most...logical person walking about the world today.

On progress:

One of the chief features of the state of Peace we now enjoy is the killing of a considerable number of harmless human beings.

Those who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion..."

 

[geocajun]

"I've searched all the parks in all the cities, and have yet to find a statue of a committee"

"no one ever grew a beard in a heat of passion"

 

[Michelina]

" The modern world will not distinguish between matters of opinion and matters of principle; and it ends by treating them all as matters of taste." (New Witness, Aug. 22, 1919)

I just got that out of my Gilbert Magazine which arrived today.

 

[PeterPaul]

There is one adequate equivalent of the word "secular"; and it is the word "dated"

On powers of the State:

The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school

 

[Scribbler]

"I've searched all the parks in all the cities, and have yet to find a statue of a committee"

I'll have to remember this one,...I've never even HEARD of Chesterton.

 

[PeterPaul]

I just got that out of my Gilbert Magazine which arrived today.

Awesome magazine!

 

[geocajun]

"Most mistaken people mean well, and all mistaken people mean something. 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. (All is Grist)

 

[ZooMom]

I found a site of Chesterton quotes. He rocks. I'm still reading, but I liked this one:

"Love means loving the unlovable - or it is no virtue at all." - Heretics, 1905

 

[Michelina]

I'll have to remember this one,...I've never even HEARD of Chesterton.

You don't know what you're missing, Scribbler.

 

[geocajun]

I'll have to remember this one,...I've never even HEARD of Chesterton.

If you like that, you'd love to read his books. One can just about take his books once sentence at a time in quotes. He was a very talented writer.
I suggest starting with this book "orthodoxy". It is one of his most read books.

 

[Michelina]

If you like that, you'd love to read his books. One can just about take his books once sentence at a time in quotes. He was a very talented writer.
I suggest starting with this book "orthodoxy". It is one of his most read books.

"Orthodoxy" is about traditional Christianity, Scribbler, and it was written when he was still a Protestant.

 

[PeterPaul]

On Marriage:

The religion that holds it most strongly will hold it when nobody else holds it

On business:

The truth is that the monopolists' shops are really very convenient - to the monopolist. They have all the advantage of concentrating business as they concentrate wealth, in fewer and fewer of the citizens.

One way of supporting small shops would be to support them.

...Large organization... is always disorganization.

On Capitalism:

The capitalist system, good or bad, right or wrong, rests upon two ideas: that the rich will always be rich enough to hire the poor; and the poor will always be poor enough to want to be hired.

When most men are wage earners, it is more and more difficult for most men to be customers. For the capitalist is always trying to cut down what his servant demands, and in doing so is cutting down what his customer can spend.

 

[PeterPaul]

bump

 

[geocajun]

"The capitalist system, good or bad, right or wrong, rests upon two ideas: that the rich will always be rich enough to hire the poor; and the poor will always be poor enough to want to be hired."

I like that one alot. I'll have to remember it

 

[TSIBHOD]

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."
-- G. K. Chesterton

I have liked that one ever since I first saw it.

 

[PeterPaul]

bump

 

[PeterPaul]

Some funny and truthful ones.

Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.

Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street

It is terrible to contemplete how few politicians are hanged

 

[PeterPaul]

Some more...

It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected

I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is

There have been household gods and household saints and household fairies. I am not sure that there have yet been any factory gods or factory saints or factory fairies. I may be wrong, as I am no commericial expert, but I have not heard of them as yet