The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men no having sufficient power of… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The problem of disbelieving in God is not that a man ends up believing nothing. Alas, it is much worse. He ends… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know they are dogmas. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A great classic means a man whom one can praise without having read. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
I would not say that old men grow wise, for men never grow wise; and many old men retain a very attractive… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
I have myself a poetical enthusiasm for pigs, and the paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings. But it… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Only men to whom the family is sacred will ever have a standard or a status by which to criticize the State.… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been reversed. Nowadays the part of… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
[There is] one distinctly human thing - the story. There can be as good science about a turnip as about a man.… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Nobody notices postmen, yet they have passions like other men. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Odd, isn't it, that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If the common man in the past had a grave respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
No man can break any of the Ten Commandments. He can only break himself against them. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The average woman is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes; the average man has to… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value of any of them is that they… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Youth is always too serious, and just now it is too serious about frivolity. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Everyone seems to assume that the unscrupulous parts of journalism will be the frivolous or jocular parts. This is against all ethical experience. Jokes… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, the sense of doom in the… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these? — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place...The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
![“[There is] one distinctly human thing - the story. There…” quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/05b/gilbert-k-chesterton-223_accounts_there-is-one-distinctly-human-thing-the_3013143.jpg)
