Quote

A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things, so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State is growing insane.

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.
States
Growing
Done
Politics
Tamely
Going
Taken
Wildly
Long
Nations
Extravagant
Things
State
Mad
Spirit
Insane
Political
Whenever
Doe
Nation

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Image
A great man is not a man so strong that he feels less than other men he is a man so strong that he feels more.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
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.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Physical science is like simple addition: it is either infallible or it is false.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The world will very soon be divided, unless I am mistaken, into those who still go on explaining our success, and those somewhat more intelligent who are trying to explain our failure.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. Never forget that the devil fell by force of gravity. He who has the faith has the fun.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
...It's natural to believe in the supernatural. It never feels natural to accept only natural things.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a Conservative.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree the poetry of love in following the single woman the poetry of religion in worshipping the single star.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest? He grows a forest to hide it in.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
...it is not necessary to the child to awaken to the sense of the strange and humorous by giving a man a luminous nose...to the child it is sufficiently strange and humorous to have a nose at all.
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 more we are proud that the Bethlehem story is plain enough to be understood by the shepherds, and almost by the sheep, the more do we let ourselves go, in dark and gorgeous imaginative frescoes or pageants about the mystery and majesty of the Three Magian Kings.
Gilbert K. Chesterton