Quotes by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) — Schriftsteller · Katholisch · England

Gilbert Keith Chesterton war ein englischer Schriftsteller, Journalist und katholischer Apologet, der in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts in England wirkte. Bekannt wurde er durch die Kriminalgeschichten um Pater Brown sowie theologische Werke wie „Orthodoxy“, in denen er den christlichen Glauben mit pointierten Paradoxien und Zivilisationskritik verteidigte. Heutigen Bibellesern vermittelt sein Werk scharfsinnige apologetische Impulse, steht jedoch wegen wiederkehrender antijüdischer Passagen in seinen Texten auch in der Kritik.

Era: The 20th Century

Recurring topics: Wisdom & Understanding, Love, Courage & Strength, Joy & Gratitude, God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit, Humility & Pride, Faith & Trust, Relationships & Family

Quotes by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The really great man is the man who makes every man feel great.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Any one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

God seems to me the greatest adventure in world history. His smallest reality is greater than our boldest illusion.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven's name to what?
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The eye not infrequently sees God only through the spectacles of tears.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Jesus promised his disciples three things: that they would experience complete fearlessness, absurd happiness, and constant trouble.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The most wonderful thing about miracles is that they sometimes really happen.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Man is ready to die for any idea, provided that the idea is not quite clear to him.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

103 quotes in total — browse the collection.

Sources: thejc.com, religionunplugged.com, timesofisrael.com

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