Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Pessimism

• Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Lying, Tired, Blessing

  "The Everlasting Man". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, VIII: The End of the World, 1925.

• Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when Joy is the fundamental thing in him, and Grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive state of mind; Praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; Joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live? Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Grief, Holiday

  "Orthodoxy". Book by G. K. Chesterton, Chapter VIII. "The Romances of Orthodoxy", 1908.

• I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Thinking, Sin, Pessimism

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.63, Simon and Schuster

• In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation - it is a
  convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the primer of minor poetry.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Exercise, Pessimism, Conventions

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

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