Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes. Below is a collection of famous Gilbert K. Chesterton quotes. Here you can find the most popular and greatest quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton. Share these quotations with your friends and family.
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton
One may understand the Cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
By Gilbert K. Chesterton