G. K. Chesterton - Man Quotes

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Oh, most unhappy man,' he cried, 'try to be happy! You have red hair like your sister.' My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world,' said Gregory.

G. K. Chesterton
The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of nations.

G. K. Chesterton
A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

G. K. Chesterton
There is no better test of a man's ultimate chivalry and integrity than how he behaves when he is wrong.... A stiff apology is a second insult.

G. K. Chesterton
Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.

G. K. Chesterton
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.

G. K. Chesterton
Odd, isn't it, that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?

G. K. Chesterton
We ought to be interested in that darkest and most real part of a man in which dwell not the vices that he does not display, but the virtues that he cannot.

G. K. Chesterton
I am more than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do— I can die.

G. K. Chesterton
A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher.

G. K. Chesterton
Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small.

G. K. Chesterton
It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.

G. K. Chesterton
Literary men are being employed to praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They not only find political reasons for the commercial schemes—that they have done for some time past—they also find moral defences for the commercial schemers. … I do resent the whole age of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath.

G. K. Chesterton
And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely.

G. K. Chesterton
There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived.

G. K. Chesterton
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.

G. K. Chesterton
Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.

G. K. Chesterton
Even the moon is only poetical because there is a man in the moon.

G. K. Chesterton
A man running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a woman.

G. K. Chesterton
A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying: Of course I do not like green cheese; I am very fond of brown sherry.

G. K. Chesterton
'I'm afraid I'm a practical man,' said the doctor with gruff humour, 'and I don't bother much about religion and philosophy.'
'You'll never be a practical man till you do,' said Father Brown. 'Look here, doctor; you know me pretty well; I think you know I'm not a bigot. You know I know there are all sorts in all religions; good men in bad ones and bad men in good ones.

G. K. Chesterton
There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

G. K. Chesterton
Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.

G. K. Chesterton
Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, "I will not hit you if you do not hit me"; there is no trace of such a transaction. There IS a trace of both men having said, "We must not hit each other in the holy place.

G. K. Chesterton
There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth

G. K. Chesterton
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

G. K. Chesterton
Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them.

G. K. Chesterton
We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.

G. K. Chesterton
Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.

G. K. Chesterton
A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So long as he does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a shape.

G. K. Chesterton