Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Doubt

• Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction. Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Philosophical, Thinking, Doubt

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.129, Simon and Schuster

• I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small... We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel...

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Moving, Butterfly

  "The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

• I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Love, Princess, Dragons

• 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.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Catholic, Doubt, Gone

• Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Adventure, Men, Doubt

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

• Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Uncles, Men, Perfect

• The modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, Doubt, Modern

  "G.K. Chesterton: Philosopher Without Portfolio". Book by Quentin Lauer (p. 32), 1988.

• The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Doubt, Chickens, Chains

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

• of being strong and brave. The strong can not be brave. Only the weak can be brave; and yet again, in practice, only those who can be brave can be trusted, in time of doubt, to be strong.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Strong, Practice

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.156, Simon and Schuster

• Indeed the Book of Job avowedly only answers mystery with mystery. Job is comforted with riddles; but he is comforted. Herein is indeed a type, in the sense of a prophecy, of things speaking with authority. For when he who doubts can only say, ‘I do not understand,’ it is true that he who knows can only reply or repeat ‘You do not understand.’ And under that rebuke there is always a sudden hope in the heart; and the sense of something that would be worth understanding.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Jobs, Book, Heart

  "The Everlasting Man". Book by G. K. Chesterton, IV: God and Comparative Religion, 1925.

• In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Doubt, Enlightenment, Arrogant

• A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert - himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Doubt, Doe

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

• Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Doubt, Madmen, Causation

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

• Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Buddhism, Doubt, Literature

• Modern science is necessarily a double-edged tool, a tool that cuts both ways. ... There is no doubt that a Zeppelin is a wonderful thing; but that did not prevent it from becoming a horrible thing.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Cutting, Science, Doubt

• Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Doubt, Dogma

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

• 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.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Science, Men, Water

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

• What the world wants, what the world is waiting for, is not Modern Poetry or Classical Poetry or Neo-Classical Poetry - but Good Poetry. And the dreadful disreputable doubt, which stirs in my own skeptical mind, is doubt about whether it would really matter much what style a poet chose to write in, in any period, as long as he wrote Good poetry.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Writing, Long, Waiting

• As to the doubt of the soul I discover it to be false: a mood not a conclusion. My conclusion is the Faith. Corporate, organized, a personality, teaching. A thing, not a theory. It.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Teaching, Personality, Soul

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