01UndatedThe 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 / quote ↗
02UndatedThe object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
04UndatedHe had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
05UndatedModern art has to be what is called ‘intense.’ it is not easy to define being intense; but, roughly speaking, it means saying only one thing at a time, and saying it wrong.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
06UndatedWe have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
08UndatedModern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
09UndatedMen did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
10UndatedThe Frenchman works until he can play. The American works until he can’t play; and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he never worked at all.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
11UndatedWe may fight for the cause of international peace because we are very fond of fighting.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
12UndatedThe principle is this: that in everything worth having, even in every pleasure, there is a point of pain and tedium that must be survived, so that the pleasure may revive and endure. The joy of battle comes after the first fear of death; the joy of reading Virgil comes after the bore of learning him; the glow of the seabather comes after the icy shok of the sea bath.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
13UndatedTo complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
14UndatedAnd pray where in earth or heaven are there prudent marriages? Might as well talk about prudent suicides.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
15UndatedThe obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
18UndatedTo be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
19UndatedIt's just because I have picked a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don't hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you've seen it it's still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it's a platitude.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
20UndatedThe moment we care for anything deeply, the world - that is, all the other miscellaneous interests - becomes our enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one's self "unspotted from the world;" but lovers talk of it just as much when they talk of the "world well lost." Astronomically speaking, I understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I suppose that the Church was a part of the world, and even the lovers inhabitants of that orb. But they all felt a certain truth - the truth that the moment you love anything the world becomes your foe.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
21UndatedMerely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
22UndatedThe word 'heresy' not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word 'orthodoxy' not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong. All this can mean one thing, and one thing only. It means that people care less for whether they are philosophically right. For obviously a man ought to confess himself crazy before he confesses himself heretical.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
23UndatedAnd an even worse example, I think, than the cheapening of the word CHARITY is the new newspaper cheapening of the word COURAGE.Any man living in complete luxury and security who chooses to write a play or a novel which causes a flutter and exchange of compliments in Chelsea and Chiswick and a faint thrill in Streatham and Surbiton, is described as "daring," though nobody on earth knows what danger it is that he dares. I speak, of course, of terrestrial dangers; or the only sort of dangers he believes in. To be extravagantly flattered by everybody he considers enlightened, and rather feebly rebuked by everybody he considers dated and dead, does not seem so appalling a peril that a man should be stared at as a heroic warrior and militant martyr because he has had the strength to endure it.G.K. Chesterton / quote ↗
