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All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.

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.
Remember
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Forgot
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Spirit
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Art
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There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.
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Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it.
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Architecture is the alphabet of giants it is the largest set of symbols ever made to meet the eyes of men. A tower stands up like a sort of simplified stature, of much more than heroic size.
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...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.
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Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, I will not hit you if you do not hit me there is no trace of such a transaction. There IS a trace of both men having said, We must not hit each other in the holy place.
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Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.
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Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song.
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[A pacifist is] the last and least excusable on the list of the enemies of society.
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The Darwinian movement has made no difference to mankind, except that, instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy, they now talk unscientifically about science.
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The wine they drink in Paradise They make in Haute Lorraine.
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It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.
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The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully intervenes.
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A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.
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The big corporation is not in the least remarkable for efficiency it is only too big to be blamed for its inefficiency.
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All good writers express the state of their souls, even (as occurs in some cases of very good writers) if it is a state of damnation.
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One can no more have a private religion than one can have a private sun or a private moon.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller.
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The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.
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People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad.
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The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever afterwards and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other.
Gilbert K. Chesterton