Wednesday, September 15, 2010

G.K. Chesterton quotes

"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." - Everlasting Man, 1925

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." - ILN, 4/19/30

"What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism." - Sidelights on New London and Newer New York

"The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are." - Introduction to The Defendant

"Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street." - ILN, 11/16/07

"Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision." - Orthodoxy, 1908

"Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back." - What's Wrong With The World, 1910

"None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them." Ð Daily News 7-21-06

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." - ILN, 1/14/11

"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God." - Christendom in Dublin, 1933

"The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man." - Chapter 19, What I Saw In America, 1922

"Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline." - Manalive

"There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions." - ILN, 1/13/06

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." - Chapter 5, What's Wrong With The World, 1910

"The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man." - Introduction to the Book of Job, 1907

"It has been often said, very truely, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary." - Charles Dickens

"These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own." - ILN 8-11-28