Quotations - Morality and Truth
"The vast mass of humanity, with their vast mass of idle books and idle words, have never doubted and never will doubt that courage is splendid, that fidelity is noble, that distressed ladies should be rescued, and vanquished enemies spared. There are a large number of cultivated persons who doubt these maxims of daily life, just there are a large number of persons who believe they are the Prince of Wales; and I am told that both classes of people are entertaining conversationalists." - G. K. Chesterton, A Defense of Penny Dreadfuls
"Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 10/23/09
"It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 3/14/08
"The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 6/11/10
"Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 2/24/06
"Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks." - G.K. Chesterton, Daily News, 2/21/02
"It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong." - G.K. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion
"There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners." - G.K. Chesterton, The Father Brown Omnibus
"All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 3/14/08
"Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 9/11/09
"I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 8/4/06
"To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea." - G.K. Chesterton, Heretics, CW I, p128
"Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 9-30-33
"The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea." - G.K. Chesterton, T.P.'s Weekly, Christmas Number, 1910
"All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive." - G.K. Chesterton, The Thing. CW. III 191
"Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities." - G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With the World
"If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty." - G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
"What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another." -G.K. Chesterton, Daily News 12-21-05
"There are some desires that are not desirable." - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy "In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn." - G.K. Chesterton, The Speaker 2-2-01
"Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else." - G.K. Chesterton, "The Church of the Servile State" Utopia of Usurers
"The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice." - G.K. Chesterton, A Defense of Humilities, The Defendant, 1901
"Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance." - G.K. Chesterton, The Speaker, 12/15/00
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 4/19/30
"I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 6-3-22
"When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 11-7-08
"The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 10-28-22
"Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink." - G.K. Chesterton, "Wine when it is red" All Things Considered
"A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish." - G.K. Chesterton, Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox
"There are two kinds of paradoxes. They are not so much the good and the bad, nor even the true and the false. Rather they are the fruitful and the barren; the paradoxes which produce life and the paradoxes that merely announce death. Nearly all modern paradoxes merely announce death." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 3-11-11
"There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first is the quack who cures you; the second is the highly qualified person who doesn't." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 2-15-08
"Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 4/7/23
"Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition." - G.K. Chesterton, Lunacy and Letters
"Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 10/23/09
"It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 3/14/08
"The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 6/11/10
"Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 2/24/06
"Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks." - G.K. Chesterton, Daily News, 2/21/02
"It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong." - G.K. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion
"There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners." - G.K. Chesterton, The Father Brown Omnibus
"All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 3/14/08
"Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 9/11/09
"I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 8/4/06
"To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea." - G.K. Chesterton, Heretics, CW I, p128
"Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 9-30-33
"The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea." - G.K. Chesterton, T.P.'s Weekly, Christmas Number, 1910
"All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive." - G.K. Chesterton, The Thing. CW. III 191
"Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities." - G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With the World
"If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty." - G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
"What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another." -G.K. Chesterton, Daily News 12-21-05
"There are some desires that are not desirable." - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy "In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn." - G.K. Chesterton, The Speaker 2-2-01
"Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else." - G.K. Chesterton, "The Church of the Servile State" Utopia of Usurers
"The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice." - G.K. Chesterton, A Defense of Humilities, The Defendant, 1901
"Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance." - G.K. Chesterton, The Speaker, 12/15/00
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 4/19/30
"I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 6-3-22
"When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 11-7-08
"The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 10-28-22
"Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink." - G.K. Chesterton, "Wine when it is red" All Things Considered
"A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish." - G.K. Chesterton, Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox
"There are two kinds of paradoxes. They are not so much the good and the bad, nor even the true and the false. Rather they are the fruitful and the barren; the paradoxes which produce life and the paradoxes that merely announce death. Nearly all modern paradoxes merely announce death." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 3-11-11
"There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first is the quack who cures you; the second is the highly qualified person who doesn't." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 2-15-08
"Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 4/7/23
"Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition." - G.K. Chesterton, Lunacy and Letters
Labels: 2006, Quotations
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