G. K. Chesterton - Orthodoxy (1908)

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Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain

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

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

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
Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If in your bold creative way you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.

G. K. Chesterton
Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.

G. K. Chesterton
If a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small.

G. K. Chesterton
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

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
As an explanation of the world materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of a madman's arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.

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
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
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
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
It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything - even pride.

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

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
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
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes — our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.

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
Democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.

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

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