Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Literature
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Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.
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Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
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The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
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The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.
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Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.
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If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.
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Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.
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And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
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All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
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Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
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Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.
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Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.
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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 grave religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
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People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.
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A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.
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The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded.
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I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.
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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.
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The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.
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The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
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Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.
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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.
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Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.
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Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.
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The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.
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The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.
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Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.
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Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.
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Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.
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We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.
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