G.K. Chesterton's 138th Birthday

On this date in 1874, Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born. (He died in 1936.) In honor of this day I am posting some of his more memorable quotes.

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"The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice." - A Defense of Humilities, The Defendant, 1901

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"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." - Everlasting Man, 1925

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"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." - ILN, 4/19/30

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"Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance." - The Speaker, 12/15/00

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"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered." - On Running After Ones Hat, All Things Considered, 1908
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"What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism." - Sidelights on New London and Newer New York

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"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." - A Short History of England, Ch.10
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"The comedy of man survives the tragedy of man." - ILN 2-10-06

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"When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any." - ILN 11-7-08
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"A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish." - Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox

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"I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event." - ILN, 10/7/16

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"Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision." - Orthodoxy, 1908

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"My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday." - New York Times Magazine, 2/11/23

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"Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back." - What's Wrong With The World, 1910
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"The past is not what it was." - A Short History of England

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"[Marxism will] in a generation or so [go] into the limbo of most heresies, but meanwhile it will have poisoned the Russian Revolution." - ILN, 7/19/19

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"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God." - Christendom in Dublin, 1933

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"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged." - The Cleveland Press, 3/1/21

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"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people." - ILN, 7/16/10

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"If there were no God, there would be no atheists." - Where All Roads Lead, 1922

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"There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions." - ILN, 1/13/06

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"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." - Chapter 5, What's Wrong With The World, 1910
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"The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man." - Introduction to the Book of Job, 1907

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"The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden." - ILN 1-3-20

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"These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own." - ILN 8-11-28

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"If a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkenness and gluttony, that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says that Christmas Day is only a conspiracy kept up by Poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives, then he says something which is not so much false as startling and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewellers who wanted to sell wedding rings." - George Bernard Shaw, Ch. 6

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"The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice." - ILN, 6/11/10

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"It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong." - The Catholic Church and Conversion

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"I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it." - ILN 8/4/06
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"There are some desires that are not desirable." - Orthodoxy
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"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere." - ILN, 5/5/28