Gilbert Keith Chesterton

"The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Reality and Imagination

Rating: 6.00 (Number of Voters: 2)

"Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Power and Weakness

Rating: 5.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Good and Evil

Rating: 5.50 (Number of Voters: 2)

"Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desparate."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Optimism and Hope

Rating: 4.00 (Number of Voters: 4)

"Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Manners and Ethics

Sin and Conscience

Rating: 4.50 (Number of Voters: 6)

"We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Friendship and Hostility

Various

Rating: 3.80 (Number of Voters: 5)

"It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "The Father Brown Omnibus"

Question and Problem

Rating: 9.00 (Number of Voters: 1)

"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "Orthodoxy"

Various

Rating: 8.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

"The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "Orthodoxy"

Reality and Imagination

Rating: 3.50 (Number of Voters: 2)

"Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "Man who was Thursday"

Law and Crime

Rating: 4.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "What's Wrong with the World"

God and Religion

Rating: 7.50 (Number of Voters: 2)

"My country, right or wrong - is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying "My mother, drunk or sober"."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "Defendant"

Patriotism

Rating: 4.20 (Number of Voters: 5)

"Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Authority, Government

Education

Rating: 4.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

"Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "Heretics"

Anger

Manners and Ethics

Rating: 4.00 (Number of Voters: 4)

"No animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness - or so good as drink."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "All Things Considered"

Health and Alcohol

Rating: 6.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Friendship and Hostility

God and Religion

Rating: 9.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

"One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "The Father Brown Mystery Series"

Good and Evil

Rating: 6.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

"A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Courage and Fear

Health and Alcohol

Rating: 8.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

"Art is the signature of man."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "The Everlasting Man"

Art and Culture

Human

Rating: 4.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

"The center of every man's existence is a dream."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Dreams and Desires

Rating: 5.80 (Number of Voters: 5)

"Many clever men like you have trusted to civilisation. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?"

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Various

Rating: 7.75 (Number of Voters: 4)

"The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "The Father Brown Mystery Series"

Reality and Imagination

Rating: 2.75 (Number of Voters: 4)

"Journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones Dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive. "

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "The Father Brown Mystery Series"

Various

Rating: 7.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Truth and Falsity

Rating: 9.00 (Number of Voters: 1)

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Intellect, Judgement

Rating: 5.50 (Number of Voters: 2)

"Many clever men like you have trusted to civilisation. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?"

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Trust

Various

Rating: 6.50 (Number of Voters: 2)

"The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing; the primary fact."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "Charles Dickens"

Science and Technology

Rating: 9.00 (Number of Voters: 1)

"Fairy tales are more than true - not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Reality and Imagination

Rating: 5.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

"There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "The Defendant"

Beauty and Ugliness

Rating: 4.60 (Number of Voters: 5)

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Defeates and Mistakes

Rating: 6.00 (Number of Voters: 4)

"An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "The Dagger with Wings"

Art and Culture

Rating: 6.00 (Number of Voters: 2)

"The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "The Victorian Age in Literature"

Art and Culture

Rating: 5.00 (Number of Voters: 5)

"To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "The Father Brown Mystery Series"

Richness and Money

Wisdom and Stupidity

Rating: 7.20 (Number of Voters: 5)

"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Various

Rating: 4.50 (Number of Voters: 4)

"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "The Everlasting Man"

Life and Death

Various

Rating: 6.75 (Number of Voters: 4)

"It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "Heretics"

God and Religion

Rating: 4.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

"The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism - the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

God and Religion

Rating: 7.00 (Number of Voters: 3)