Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton -
Man
Quotes
165 Sourced Quotes
View all G. K. Chesterton Quotes
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin-a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or not man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
Oh with what prayers and fasting Shall mortal man deserve To see that glimpse of Heaven.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
A man running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a woman.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man — the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
The Christian pities men because they are dying, and the Buddhist pities them because they are living. The Christian is sorry for what damages the life of a man; but the Buddhist is sorry for him because he is alive.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
Any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate. It is as true of democratic fraternity as a divine love; sham love ends in compromise and common philosophy; but real love has always ended in bloodshed.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
Instead of the machine being a giant to which the man is the pygmy, we must at last reverse the proportions until man is a giant to whom the machine is the toy.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
But those dealing in the actual manufacture of mind are dealing in a very explosive material. The material is not merely the clay of which man is master, but the truths or semblances of truth which have a certain mastery over man. The material is explosive because it must be taken seriously. The men writing books really are throwing bombs.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
The lunatic is the man who lives in a small world but thinks it is a large one; he is the man who lives in a tenth of the truth, and thinks it is the whole. The madman cannot conceive any cosmos outside a certain tale or conspiracy or vision.
G. K. Chesterton
Source
Report...
A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.
G. K. Chesterton
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Quote of the day
No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.
Edvard Munch
G. K. Chesterton
Creative Commons
Born:
May 29, 1874
Died:
June 14, 1936
(aged 62)
More about G. K. Chesterton...
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes