Quote

There is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.

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.
Book
Safe
Thousandth
Looks
Seeing
Frightful
First
Books
Darkest
Thing
Written
Ninety
Time
Law
Perfectly
Life
Times
Nine
Look
Hundred
Firsts
Danger

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Image
The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Science in the modern world has many uses its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Human anger is a higher thing than what is called divine discontent. For you must be angry with something but you can be discontented with everything.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Progress is the mother of problems.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
...but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The man of the true religious tradition understands two things: liberty and obedience. The first means knowing what you really want. The second means knowing what you really trust.
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
Science boasts of the distance of its stars of the terrific remoteness of the things of which it has to speak. But poetry and religion always insist upon the proximity, the almost menacing closeness of the things with which they are concerned. Always the Kingdom of Heaven is At Hand.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
One pleasure attached to growing older is that many things seem to be growing younger growing fresher and more lively than we once supposed them to be.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Nothing is certain by uncertainty.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so and it never seemed to mind.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
There is also an insulting speech about 'one grey day just like another'. You might as well talk about one green tree like another.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
She had never really listened to anyone in her life which, some said, was why she had survived.
Gilbert K. Chesterton