G.K. Chesterton quotations

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Chesterton fans: I’m not going to ask you to post your favorite quotes by G.K., because there are far too many to choose from. But what are some that come to mind?

Here’s one I just read in The Catholic Church and Conversion:
One mark distinguishes all the wild innovations and insurrections of modern intellecualism; one note is apparent in all the new and revolutionary religions that have recently swept the world; and that note is dullness. They are too simple to be true.
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The trouble is knowing where to stop quoting him. The entire paragraph from which I took this quotation is golden!
 
I’m terribly sorry, but I mistakenly cited the quotation above as being from The Catholic Church and Conversion, when really it is from Where All Roads Lead.

And if no one else is going to pitch in, here’s on that really is from The Catholic Church…:
It is impossible to be just to the Catholic Church. The moment men cease to pull against it they feel a tug towards it. The moment they cease to shout it down they begin to listen to it with pleasure. The moment they try to be fair to it they begin to be fond of it.
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That’s certainly a good one.

Here’s a couple that I like. I won’t say they’re my favourites coz - well how could you have a favourite GKC quote…
Men are men but man is a woman
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Something of an enigmatic one that - but for me this is saying that next to God the Father all of creatoin is a woman. There is a feminin quality to all of creation - namely that is is a recepticle for God’s grace. It is no accident that grace (and the theological virtues come to think of it) is a girls name.

Not word perfect this next one but something like:
The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid but ends up making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious and everything else becomes clear.
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A comment contra reductionism
 
If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe. If you look at it a thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.”

I also like Gabriel Syme, the poet of reason and order.
 
Goodness, where to start?

“A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter.”

“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evil, but they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.”

“A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.”

“It is not always wrong to go to the brink of the lowest promontory and look down on hell. It is when you look up at hell that a serious miscalculation has probably been made.”

“Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.”

There are so many more, but I’ll leave them to others to quote.
BTW, I never miss the weekly show on Chesterton on EWTN.
 
“When a man stops believing in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing; he believes anything.”
 
I have pages and pages of G.K. Chesterton quotes saved on my computer, so I obviously can’t post them all here.

A man’s friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else… Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.—G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

We are always near the breaking-point when we care only for what is legal and nothing for what is lawful. Unless we have a moral principle about such delicate matters as marriage and murder, the whole world will become a welter of exceptions with no rules. There will be so many hard cases that everything will go soft. —G.K. Chesterton, “On What We Would Do with Two Million (If We Had It)”

I do not know anything about psycho-analysis, except that it demands a great deal more than the Confessional was always abused for demanding.—G.K. Chesterton, “On Psycho-analysis”
 
severinus said:
“When a man stops believing in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing; he believes anything.”
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Do you have a source for that? I always thought it was:
The danger when men cease to believe in God is not that they will believe in nothing but that they will believe anything.
 
Antiaphordite:

Obviously that was not a quote by Chesterton. I did not put it in quotation marks.

Kay Cee
 
I’m always finding new “favorites” - what a brilliant man.

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

“What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism.”

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

Here are a lot more Chesterton quotes: 🙂
ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ27.HTM
chesterton.org/acs/quotes.htm
quotationspage.com/quotes/G._K._Chesterton/
home.att.net/~quotesabout/gkchesterton.html
workinghumor.com/quotes/gk_chesterton.shtml
 
From his August 29,1914 obituary for Pope Pius X, The Peasant Who became Pope, in the Illustrated London News:
As has been pointed out, with subtle power and all proper delicacy, in numberless liberal and large-minded journals, the great and good priest now dead had all the prejudices of a peasant. He had a prejudice to the effect that the mystical word “Yes” should be distinguished from the equally unfathomable expression “No”.
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I should have liked to hear Chesterton explain the meaning of “is” to a certain ex-president. 😉
 
Calling GKC, come in! He is the best poster anywhere on CAF to chime in on this thread! Somebody call GKC!
 
Joe_Kelley said:
F
I should have liked to hear Chesterton explain the meaning of “is” to a certain ex-president. 😉
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Did anyone else want the prosecutor to shoot right back, “Intransitive predicating copula, 3rd person singular present indicative. Any other questions?”
 
I’m trying to find a quote by Chesteron that very very loosely says something like “I believe in the Catholic Church because it is the only church that claims to be the one true church, and also the only one that acts like it”

That is more the gist of what I remember, but I’m sure the wording is totally different. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Doug
 
To those who use Facebook, Mr Chesterton’s fan page is updated daily with quotes and pictures. Just thought I’d share: facebook.com/G.K.Chesterton

And here’s a contribution of my own, but it’s a little lengthy:
"The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.

The men of the East may search the scrolls
For sure fates and fame,
But the men that drink the blood of God
Go singing to their shame.’ -GKC, ‘The Ballad of the White Horse’
 
Gurney, Whatchoodoin in 6 year old threads??

I stink at remembering quotes, but my favorite is approximately:

Reformers are usually right about what is wrong, but are almost always wrong about what is right.
 
This can’t be a quote, but I love the message he is conveying. An extension to the above! 😃

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution.

If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

G. K. Chesterton - The Thing: Why I Am A Catholic (1929)
 
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