Quote

The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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.
Something
Mysticism
Men
Secret
Help
Understand
Helping
Cannot
Everything
Whole

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Image
Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
No man can be merry unless he is serious.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
You have not wasted your time you have helped to save the world. We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a Conservative.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
I would never commit the positively anti-social action of robbing a bank, or worse still, working in one.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
It is because artists do not practise, patrons do not patronize, crowds do not assemble to reverently worship the great work of Doing Nothing, that the world has lost its philosophy and even failed to invent a new religion.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The aim of life is appreciation there is no sense in not appreciating things and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which your are accustomed to seeing or hearing without being shocked. ... It may be that your grandmother was an extremely lively and vital animal and that you are a paralytic.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The Frenchman works until he can play. The American works until he can’t play and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he never worked at all.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Jesus promised his disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art. ... The first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front--
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Gratitude, being nearly the greatest of human duties, is also nearly the most difficult.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
All things are from God and above all, reason and imagination and the great gifts of the mind. They are good in themselves and we must not altogether forget their origin even in their perversion.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
I may not practice what I preach but God forbid I should preach what I practice
Gilbert K. Chesterton