GK Chesterton (1874-1936)

Quotes

• Theology is only thought applied to religion.

• 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.

• These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.

• Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

• It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them.

• Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.

• It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

• I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.

• Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified.

• All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.

• Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.

• Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.

• When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything.

• 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.

• The real argument against aristocracy is that it always means the rule of the ignorant. For the most dangerous of all forms of ignorance is ignorance of work.

• The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.

• 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.

• There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

• Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.

• If my children wake up on Christmas morning and have someone to thank for putting candy in their stocking, have I no one to thank for putting two feet in mine?