Quote

He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it.

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.
Death
Coward
Spirit
Indifference
Must
Escape
Life
Suicide
Merely
Wait
Seek
Furious
Waiting
Cling

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Image
Art is the signature of man.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return to at evening.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning. An art school is a place where about three people work with feverish energy and everybody else idles to a degree that I should have conceived unattainable by human nature.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
You never know the best about men until you know the worst about them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that it's never been tried . . . not that it can't remake the world, but that it's difficult.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Sticking to one woman is a small price to pay for so much as having seen one woman.
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
Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two?
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Were Patrick Henry to return to earth and look around on the vast economic order of the day, he might revise his observation and merely say ‘Give me death’-the alternative being manifestly impossible under modern conditions.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Original sin is the only doctrine that's been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
I don't need a church to tell me I'm wrong where I already know I'm wrong I need a Church to tell me I'm wrong where I think I'm right
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Puritanism was an honourable mood it was a noble fad. In other words, it was a highly creditable mistake.
Gilbert K. Chesterton