Quote

The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment they express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.

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.
Term
Charm
Fact
Fairy
Words
Satisfied
Facts
Express
Arbitrariness
Nature
Terms
Enchantment
Used
Mystery
Spell
Ever
Environment
Describing
Book
Books
Spells

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Image
If the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The Catholic Church is like a thick steak, a glass of red wine, and a good cigar.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
[No society can survive the socialist] fallacy that there is an absolutely unlimited number of inspired officials and an absolutely unlimited amount of money to pay them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
All men are ordinary men the extraordinary men are those who know it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
It seems a pity that psychology has destroyed all our knowledge of human nature.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
If our caricaturists do not hate their enemies, it is not because they are too big to hate them, but because their enemies are not big enough to hate.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
People that insist upon drinking and driving, are putting the quart before the hearse.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Free verse'? You may as well call sleeping in a ditch 'free architecture'.
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
You never know the best about men until you know the worst about them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are - of immeasurable stature.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Agnostic is the Greek word, for the Latin word, for ignorant
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
We are talking about an artist and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Against a dark sky, all flowers look like fireworks.
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
Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Where does a wise man kick a pebble? On the beach. Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Properly speaking, of course, there is no such thing as a return to nature, because there is no such thing as a departure from it. The phrase reminds one of the slightly intoxicated gentleman who gets up in his own dining room and declares firmly that he must be getting home.
Gilbert K. Chesterton