Quote

Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology for every error. The strong and virtuous admit no destiny. On earth conscience guides in heaven God watches. And destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one and dethrone the other.

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.
Every
Silence
Error
Dethrone
Dark
Admit
Phantom
Heaven
Guides
Invoke
Strong
Errors
Phantoms
Earth
Conscience
Apology
Human
Destiny
Phrase
Humans
Weak
Virtuous
Heart
Watches
Phrases

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Image
It is the decisive people who have become civilised it is the indecisive, otherwise called the higher sceptics, or the idealistic doubters, who have remained barbarians.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
I despise Birth-Control first because it is ... an entirely meaningless word and is used so as to curry favour even with those who would first recoil from its real meaning. The proceeding these quack doctors recommend does not control any birth.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Progress is the mother of problems.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
All my authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do the true civilised man is a free man, and is always talking about what he may do.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
For Tommy, on that hot and empty afternoon, was in a state of mind in which grown-up people go away and write books about their whole world, and stories about what it is like to be married, and plays about the important problems of modern times. Tommy, being only ten years old, was not able to do harm on this large and handsome scale.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.
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
Instead of the machine being a giant to which the man is the pygmy, we must at last reverse the proportions until man is a giant to whom the machine is the toy.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
In the end it will not matter to us whether we wrote well or ill whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. (on not perfectionism to put things off) .
Gilbert K. Chesterton