Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Giving

• The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Running, Order

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.71, Simon and Schuster

• Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Baby, Children, Dragons

  "Tremendous Trifles". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1909.

• Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dirty, Self, Circles

• There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Hope, Ideas, Giving

• Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Running, Men, Thinking

• The best kind of giving is thanksgiving.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Thank You, Gratitude, Giving

• Tradition is only democracy extended through time; it may be defined as an extension of the franchise. 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 are merely walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Father, Mean, Men

  'Orthodoxy' (1908) ch. 4

• The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together. Their top-heavy dignity is more touching than any humility; their solemnity gives us more hope for all things than a thousand carnivals of optimism; their large and lustrous eyes seem to hold all the stars in their astonishment; their fascinating absence of nose seems to give to us the most perfect hint of the humour that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Stars, Children, Humorous

  "The Defendant". Book by G. K. Chesterton, A Defence of Baby-Worship, 1901.

• People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing away the veils from private life; but it seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men and men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after one has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete shock and reversal to meet him in real life.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Men, Yellow

• ...it is not necessary to the child to awaken to the sense of the strange and humorous by giving a man a luminous nose...to the child it is sufficiently strange and humorous to have a nose at all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Humorous, Men

• Children feel the whiteness of the lily with a graphic and passionate clearness which we cannot give them at all. The only thing we can give them is information-the information that if you break the lily in two it won't grow again.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Two, Giving

• Students of popular science... are always insisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism. This is generally believed, and I believed it myself until I read a book giving the reasons for it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Buddhism, Giving

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.97, Simon and Schuster

• Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Giving Up, Don't Give Up, Instant

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.186, Simon and Schuster

• What is education? Properly speaking, there is no such thing as education. Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. Whatever the soul is like, it will have to be passed on somehow, consciously or unconsciously, and that transition may be called education. ... What we need is to have a culture before we hand it down. In other words, it is a truth, however sad and strange, that we cannot give what we have not got, and cannot teach to other people what we do not know ourselves.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wisdom, Hands, People

• If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dirty, Luxury, People

• A good Moslem king was one who was strict in religion, valiant in battle, just in giving judgment among his people, but not one who had the slightest objection in international matters to removing his neighbour's landmark.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Kings, People, Giving

• A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So long as he does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a shape.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Giving Up, Wine, Intelligent

  "The Victorian Age in Literature" by Gilbert K. Chesterton, University of Notre Dame Press, (p. 20), 1963.

• Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Kings, Men, Ideas

• The sceptics, like bees, give their one sting and die.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Giving, Bees, Skeptic

• When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Giving, Advice

• Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Time, Sleep, Thinking

  "Utopia of Usurers". Book by G. K. Chesterton, p. 31, 1917.

• 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 that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Class, Giving

  Orthodoxy ch. 4 (1908)

• But since he stood for England And knew what England means, Unless you give him bacon You must not give him beans.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Food, Mean, Giving

  Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “The Englishman”

• Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Smart, Men, Generous Man

  A Miscellany of Men "The Miser and His Friends" (1912)

• I would give a woman not more rights, but more privileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in which she can be free.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Rights, Giving, House

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