Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Character
-
When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.
→ -
Very few people in the world would care to listen to the real defense of their own characters. The real defense, the defense which belongs to the Day of Judgment, would make such damaging admissions, would clear away so many artificial virtues, would tell such tragedies of weakness and failure, that a man would sooner be misunderstood and censured by the world than exposed to that awful and merciless eulogy.
→ -
The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.
→ -
I do not know much about Mohammed or Mohammedanism. I do not take the Koran to bed with me every night. But, if I did on some one particular night, there is one sense at least in which I know what I should not find there. I apprehend that I should not find the work abounding in strong encouragements to the worship of idols; that the praises of polytheism would not be loudly sung; that the character of Mohammed would not be subjected to anything resembling hatred and derision; and that the great modern doctrine of the unimportance of religion would not be needlessly emphasised.
→ -
The sincere love of books has nothing to do with cleverness or stupidity any more than any other sincere love. It is a quality of character, a freshness, a power of pleasure, a power of faith. A silly person may delight in reading masterpieces just as a silly person may delight in picking flowers. A fool may be in love with a poet as he may be in love with a woman.
→ -
I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.
→
Related Authors
-
George Bernard Shaw Playwright -
Wilkie Collins Novelist -
Hilaire Belloc Writer -
Arthur Conan Doyle Physician -
J. R. R. Tolkien Writer -
Edgar Allan Poe Author -
Robert Louis Stevenson Novelist -
Charles Dickens Writer -
Dale Ahlquist Author -
Dorothy L. Sayers Writer -
H. G. Wells Writer -
George MacDonald Author -
Thomas Aquinas Priest -
Jorge Luis Borges Writer -
C. S. Lewis Novelist -
Oscar Wilde Writer -
Agatha Christie Novelist -
Henry David Thoreau Author -
Rudyard Kipling Writer -
Leo Tolstoy Writer