Quote

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?

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.
Men
Trusted
Like
Immortal
World
Clever
Particularly
Flagrant
Civilization
Egyptians
Tell
Civilisation
Ends
Failures
Many
Rome

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Image
The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Odd, isn't it, that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad, replied Syme with perfect calm but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Humility is the mother of giants.
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
There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.
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
Are you a devil? I am a man, answered Father Brown gravely and therefore have all devils in my heart.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
It is only great men who take up a great space by not being there.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
A feminist is someone who loathes being a woman and who dislikes the chief feminine characteristics.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Some of the most frantic lies on the face of life are told with modesty and restraint for the simple reason that only modesty and restraint will save them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth this has been exactly reversed.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher it is casting out a devil.
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
We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.
Gilbert K. Chesterton