Time Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Nine times out of ten it is the coarse word that condemns an evil, and the refined word that excuses it.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

When a person has found something which he prefers to life itself, he for the first time has begun to live.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Time and again, the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. But each time, it was the dog that died.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The worst moment for an atheist is when he feels a profound sense of gratitude and has no one to thank.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The past is democratic, because it is a people. The future is despotic, because it is a caprice. Every man is alone…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

We cannot fling ourselves into the blank future; we can only call up images from the past. This being so, the important…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

He said he didn't very well understand how George was going to sleep any more than he did now, seeing that there…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

If, therefore, nonsense is really to be the literature of the future, it must have its own version of the Cosmos to…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The last few decades have been marked by a special cultivation of the romance of the future. We seem to have made…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Tradition is only democracy extended through time; it may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

I might inform those humanitarians who have a nightmare of new and needless babies (for some humanitarians have that sort of horror…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

We all live in the past, because there is nothing else to live in. To live in the present is like proposing…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The theory of free speech, that truth is so much larger and stranger and more many-sided than we know of, that it…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The great intellectual tradition that comes down to us from the past was never interrupted or lost through such trifles as the…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Every time a man knocks on a brothel door, he is really knocking for God

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Life is serious all the time, but living cannot be. You may have all the solemnity you wish in your neckties, but…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton