A Year with G. K. Chesterton Quotes

“God is not a symbol of goodness. Goodness is a symbol of God.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“Defy the conventions . . . keep the commandments.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“In short, I had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“RAVI ZACHARIAS ON GKC G. K. Chesterton once quipped that before you remove any fence, always ask first why it was put there in the first place. You see, every boundary set by God points to something worth protecting, and if you are to protect the wonder of existence, God’s instruction book is the place to turn. A”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“weak thought is always thought about its most recent developments.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“It was Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back to orthodox theology. They sowed in my mind my first wild doubts of doubt. Our grandmothers were quite right when they said that Tom Paine and the freethinkers unsettled the mind. They do. They unsettled mine horribly. The rationalist made me question whether reason was of any use whatever; and when I had finished Herbert Spencer I had got as far as doubting (for the first time) whether evolution had occurred at all. As I laid down the last of Colonel Ingersoll’s atheistic lectures the dreadful thought broke across my mind, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” I was in a desperate way.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“Grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“Life is always a novel. Our existence may cease to be a song; it may cease even to be a beautiful lament. Our existence may not be an intelligible justice, or even a recognizable wrong. But our existence is still a story. In the fiery alphabet of every sunset is written, “to be continued in our next.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“I do seriously think that the most profound criticism of the culture of our time can be found in a sentence which, I believe, was written by Artemus Ward, which runs, I think: “It isn’t so much people’s ignorance that does the harm as it is their knowing so many things that ain’t so.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“Right is right, even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong about it.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth . . . in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is . . . also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. . . . It clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“strong thought about a thing is always thought about its original nature;”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“If only Mr. Blatchford would ask the real question. It is not, “Why is Christianity so bad when it claims to be so good?” The real question is, “Why are all human beings so bad when they claim to be so good?” Why is not the most noble scheme a guarantee against corruption? If [Mr. Blatchford] will boldly pursue this question, will really leave delusions behind and walk across the godless waste, alone, he will come at last to a strange place. His sceptical pilgrimage will end at a place where Christianity begins.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“A man’s soul is as full of voices as a forest; there are ten thousand tongues there like all the tongues of the trees: fancies, follies, memories, madnesses, mysterious fears, and more mysterious hopes. All the settlement and sane government of life consists in coming to the conclusion that some of those voices have authority and others not.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“Every one on this earth should believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that his life and temperament have some object on the earth. Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given. Every one should, for the good of men and the saving of his own soul, believe that it is possible, even if we are the enemies of the human race, to be the friends of God.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“And the strongest emotion was that life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstasy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

“It is one of the million wild jests of truth that we know nothing until we know nothing.”
― Kevin Belmonte, A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder