G. K. Chesterton - Orthodoxy (1908)

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[Modern science moves] toward the supernatural with the rapidity of a railway train.

G. K. Chesterton
An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.

G. K. Chesterton
Modern science cares far less for pure logic than a dancing Dervish.

G. K. Chesterton
The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle.

G. K. Chesterton
The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within.

G. K. Chesterton
A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.

G. K. Chesterton
Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul.

G. K. Chesterton
Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain

G. K. Chesterton
A figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.

G. K. Chesterton
There is, therefore, about all complete conviction a kind of huge helplessness.

G. K. Chesterton
A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle.

G. K. Chesterton
The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits.

G. K. Chesterton
How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos.

G. K. Chesterton
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
For the universe is a single jewel, and while it is a natural cant to talk of a jewel as peerless and priceless, of this jewel it is literally true. This cosmos is indeed without peer and without price: for there cannot be another one.

G. K. Chesterton
Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.

G. K. Chesterton
Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected.

G. K. Chesterton
Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else.

G. K. Chesterton
Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable.

G. K. Chesterton
And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.

G. K. Chesterton
Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil.

G. K. Chesterton
If a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.

G. K. Chesterton
Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist.

G. K. Chesterton
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press... It is not we who silence the press. It is the press who silences us.

G. K. Chesterton
You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes.

G. K. Chesterton
The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman.

G. K. Chesterton
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

G. K. Chesterton
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
But out of the desert, from the dry places and the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for God to be alone.

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

G. K. Chesterton