Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: May 29
Died: 1936
Died: June 14
Autobiographer
Biographer
Crime Writer
Essayist
Historian
Illustrator
Journalist
Literary Historian
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton
G. K. C.
Gods
Unless
Literature
Much
Annoys
Really
Invoke
Never
Annoyed
Annoying
Appear
More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
(Tradition) is the democracy of the dead.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The books that influence the world are those that it has not read.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
There are many books which we think we have read when we have not. There are, at least, many that we think we remember when we do not. An original picture was, perhaps, imprinted upon the brain, but it has changed with our own changing minds. We only remember our remembrance.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A modern vegetarian is also a teetotaler, yet there is no obvious connection between consuming vegetables and not consuming fermented vegetables. A drunkard, when lifted laboriously out of the gutter, might well be heard huskily to plead that he had fallen there through excessive devotion to a vegetable diet.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The old assumption of the approximate impossibility of war really rested on a similar assumption about the impossibility of evil-and especially of evil in high places.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The word 'good' has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Comradeship is quite a different thing from friendship. . .
Gilbert K. Chesterton
St Thomas (Aqinas) loved books and lived on books... When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, ‘I have understood every page I ever read’.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Government has become ungovernable that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel story is like the power of mill-stones, and those who can read them simply enough will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do the true civilised man is a free man, and is always talking about what he may do.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy to suppose that our objection to scepticism is that it removes the discipline from life. Our objection to scepticism is that it removes the motive power. Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere restraint. Materialism itself is the great restraint.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A crown of roses is also a crown of thorns.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
And all over the world, the old literature, the popular literature, is the same. It consists of very dignified sorrow and very undignified fun. Its sad tales are of broken hearts its happy tales are of broken heads.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
Gilbert K. Chesterton