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Orthodoxy quotes

G. K. Chesterton

English (18) Français (17)

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“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast'; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith...” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are...” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“the trouble with our sages is not that they cannot see the answer; it is that they cannot even see the riddle.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“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.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“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.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

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respect faith love reality reason logic tradition angels fantasy happiness politics God strength work imagination insanity beauty nature poetry democracy

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G. K. Chesterton quotes