That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already, but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point -- and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologize in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in the terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.


G.K. Chesterton

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And it did certainly appear that the prophets had put the people (engaged in the old game of Cheat t...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Then the small man suddenly ran after them and said:
"I want to get my haircut. I say, do you k...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Adam Wayne, the conqueror, with his face flung back and his mane like a lion's, stood with his great...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Cooking is an art; it has in it personality, and even perversity, for the definition of an art is th...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I can only put it sufficiently curtly in a careless simile. A Socialist means a man who thinks a wal...
G.K. CHESTERTON
In the lower classes the school master does not work for the parent, but against the parent. Modern ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.
G.K. CHESTERTON
We have actually contrived to invent a new kind of hypocrite. The old hypocrite, Tartuffe or Pecksni...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Now I have no notion at all of propounding a new ideal. There is no new ideal imaginable by the madn...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy. It is quite enou...
G.K. CHESTERTON
But of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have before...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance... But the thing is ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
A head can be beaten small enough until it fits the hat.
G.K. CHESTERTON
No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerne...
G.K. CHESTERTON
No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerne...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Men have not got tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of. M...
G.K. CHESTERTON
It is very currently suggested that the modern man is the heir of all the ages, that he has got the ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Thrift is poetic because it is creative.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself,...
G.K. CHESTERTON
No man demands what he desires; each man demands what he fancies he can get. Soon people forget what...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in off...
G.K. CHESTERTON
When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar.
G.K. CHESTERTON
In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.
G.K. CHESTERTON
All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ...E...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, wo...
G.K. CHESTERTON
An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite much of a miracle as an institution...
G.K. CHESTERTON
As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War—they might as well say that the...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings
G.K. CHESTERTON
..."vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a d...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the State to interfere to cure a great evil. I say ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.
G.K. CHESTERTON
If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
It is quite certain that the skirt means female dignity, not female submission; it can be proved by ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accide...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its mea...
G.K. CHESTERTON
[Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If Innocent is happy, it is because he is innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just becau...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There is something sinister about putting a leprechaun in a workhouse. The only solid comfort is tha...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will not worship it; but there are some ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If we are calm," replied the policeman, "it is the calm of organized resistance."
"Eh?" said Sy...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which your are accustomed...
G.K. CHESTERTON
As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry,' answered Father Brown. 'The things that ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens...
G.K. CHESTERTON
No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for edu...
G.K. CHESTERTON
A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A mode...
G.K. CHESTERTON
These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, b...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There is a limit to human charity," said Lady Outram, trembling all over.

"There is," sai...
G.K. CHESTERTON
He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of c...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But wha...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly,
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.
G.K. CHESTERTON
We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practica...
G.K. CHESTERTON
He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's wha...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautifu...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
G.K. CHESTERTON
My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperat...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Can you not see, […] that fairy tales in their essence are quite solid and straightforward; but th...
G.K. CHESTERTON
the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it ...
G.K. CHESTERTON