~ Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes ~

[MysteRy]

The only right way of telling a story is to begin at the beginning--at the beginning of the world. Therefore all books have to be begun in the wrong way for the sake of brevity.

[MysteRy]

The word 'good' has many meanings. For example if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards I should call him a good shot but not necessarily a good man.

[MysteRy]

By a curious confusion many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

[MysteRy]

All but the hard hearted man must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it.

[MysteRy]

Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed.

[MysteRy]

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 that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

[MysteRy]

It has been often said very truly that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.

[MysteRy]

At least five times...with the Arian and the Albigensian with the Humanist sceptic after Voltaire and after Darwin the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died.

[MysteRy]

The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That is it was founded on a faith that was not merely summed up after it had exited but was defined before it existed.

[MysteRy]

In science 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

[MysteRy]

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not he is not a free man any more than a dog.

[MysteRy]

He who lives in the future lives in a featureless blank; he lives in impersonality; he lives in Nirvana. The past is democratic because it is a people. The future is despotic because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction just as each man is alone in a dream.

[MysteRy]

The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.

[MysteRy]

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera and grace before the play and pantomime and grace before I open a book and grace before sketching painting swimming fencing boxing walking playing dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

[MysteRy]

The truth is of course that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion but on the contrary of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things are forbidden.