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Man is always something worse or something better than an animal and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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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.
Perfection
Better
Worse
Chivalrous
Something
Mere
Obscene
Good
Sex
Touches
Always
Drink
Timeless
Never
Either
Invented
Men
Thus
Animal
Argument
Anything

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.
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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.
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There are some desires that are not desirable.
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The atheist is not interested in anything except attacks on atheism.
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History is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced
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Plato was right, but not quite right.
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Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.
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...a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.
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Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised.
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We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
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When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.
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Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.
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The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.
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The eagle has no liberty he only has loneliness.
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He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican.
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The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not) it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them.
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Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.
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English experience indicates that when the two great political parties agree about something it is generally wrong.
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There is a case for telling the truth there is a case for avoiding the scandal but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth
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Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?
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