“The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Men are moved most by their religion; especially when it is irreligion.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“When duty and religion are really destroyed, it will be by the rich.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“But always, it has been truly said, the savage is talkative about his mythology and taciturn about his religion.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of hte god within.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“A religion is not the church a man goes to but the cosmos he lives in; and if any sceptic forgets it,… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“First, it must be realized that liveliness in the preacher does not mean liveliness in the congregation. On the contrary, the extreme… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“it will be generally found that the popular joke is not true to the letter, but is true to the spirit. The… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Mysticism conceives something transcending experience; religion seeks glimpses of a better good or a worse evil than experience can give. Reincarnation need… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Many great religions, Pagan and Christian, have insisted on wine. Only one, I think, has insisted on Soap. You will find it… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The materialist philosophy (whether true or not) is certainly much more limiting than any religion. In one sense, of course, all intelligent… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“I'm afraid I'm a practical man,' said the doctor with gruff humour, 'and I don't bother much about religion and philosophy.' 'You'll… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“You will not be able rationally to read the Gospel and regard the Crucifixion as an afterthought or an anti-climax or an… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, "I will not hit you if you do not hit me"; there… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“I do not say that there are no stronger men than these; but will any one say that there are any men… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The moment men begin to care more for education than for religion, they begin to care more for ambition than for education.… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise,… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Much of our modern difficulty, in religion and other things, arises merely from this: that we confuse the word "indefinable" with the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“People are very curious nowadays in their way of talking about "the spirit" of a thing. There is, for example, a particular… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Saint-worship is not the same as hero-worship; it is a much less dangerous thing than hero-worship. For hero-worship generally means the absorption… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its cornerstone neither the brilliant Paul nor the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The substance of all such paganism may be summarised thus. It is an attempt to reach the divine reality through the imagination… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Briefly, then, we dismiss the two opposite dangers of bigotry and fanaticism, bigotry which is a too great vagueness and fanaticism which… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“In most cases the name is unpoetical, although the fact is poetical. In the case of Smith, the name is so poetical… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The truth is, I think, that they are caught in a sort of argument in a circle. Their vague philosophy says to… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The vulgar modern argument used against religion, and lately against common decency, would be absolutely fatal to any idea of liberty. It… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“This is not a university town full of philosophies; it is a Zion of the hundred sieges raging with religions; not a… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“I should say that there ought to be no war except religious war. If war is irreligious, it is immoral. No man… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“I never use paradox. The statements I make are wearisome and obvious common sense. I have even been driven to the tedium of reading… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Nothing, again, could be more prosaic and impenetrable than the domestic energies of Miss Diana Duke. But Innocent had somehow blundered on the discovery… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“ask yourself how many people you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who attacked it as curable? How… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy….The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market-gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve,… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
