Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Language

• Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless that the colors of an autumn forest....Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them , in all their tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Memories, Believe, Autumn

• Mr. Blatchford says that there was not a Fall but a gradual rise. But the very word "rise" implies that you know toward what you are rising. Unless there is a standard you cannot tell whether you are rising or falling. But the main point is that the Fall like every other large path of Christianity is embodied in the common language talked on the top of an omnibus. Anybody might say, "Very few men are really Manly." Nobody would say, "Very few whales are really whaley."

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Fall, Men, Whales

• Modern man is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Language, Modern

You May Also Like:

C. S. Lewis

Hilaire Belloc

Arthur Conan Doyle

Charles Dickens

Agatha Christie

Dale Ahlquist

George MacDonald