The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton Quotes

“No man knows he is young while he is young.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Autobiography

“But there is a way of despising the dandelion which is not that of the dreary pessimist, but of the more offensive optimist. It can be done in various ways; one of which is saying, "You can get much better dandelions at Selfridge's," or "You can get much cheaper dandelions at Woolworth's." Another way is to observe with a casual drawl, "Of course nobody but Gamboli in Vienna really understands dandelions," or saying that nobody would put up with the old-fashioned dandelion since the super-dandelion has been grown in the Frankfurt Palm Garden; or merely sneering at the stinginess of providing dandelions, when all the best hostesses give you an orchid for your buttonhole and a bouquet of rare exotics to take away with you. These are all methods of undervaluing the thing by comparison; for it is not familiarity but comparison that breeds contempt. And all such captious comparisons are ultimately based on the strange and staggering heresy that a human being has a right to dandelions; that in some extraordinary fashion we can demand the very pick of all the dandelions in the garden of Paradise; that we owe no thanks for them at all and need feel no wonder at them at all; and above all no wonder at being thought worthy to receive them. Instead of saying, like the old religious poet, "What is man that Thou carest for him, or the son of man that Thou regardest him?" we are to say like the discontented cabman, "What's this?" or like the bad-tempered Major in the club, "Is this a chop fit for a gentleman?" Now I not only dislike this attitude quite as much as the Swinburnian pessimistic attitude, but I think it comes to very much the same thing; to the actual loss of appetite for the chop or the dish of dandelion-tea. And the name of it is Presumption and the name of its twin brother is Despair.

This is the principle I was maintaining when I seemed an optimist to Mr. Max Beerbohm; and this is the principle I am still maintaining when I should undoubtedly seem a pessimist to Mr. Gordon Selfridge. The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“What I meant, whether or no I managed to say it, was this; that no man knows how much he is an optimist, even when he calls himself a pessimist, because he has not really measured the depths of his debt to whatever created him and enabled him to call himself anything. At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder; so that a man sitting in a chair might suddenly understand that he was actually alive, and be happy.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“It is now certain that the public does know. It is not so certain that the public does care.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Autobiography

“Su versatilidad como experimentador y hombre habilidoso en diferentes terrenos era sorprendente. En su madriguera o estudio, había pilas enormes compuestas por capas estratificadas con muestras de diez o doce entretenimientos creativos: acuarelas, esculturas, fotografías, vidrieras, grecas, linternas gráficas e iluminaciones medievales. He heredado, o acaso he imitado, su hábito de dibujar, pero en todos los otros aspectos soy decididamente un patoso. Se decía que en su juventud había estudiado arte para ser un profesional, pero obviamente el negocio familiar era más seguro, y su vida siguió un camino de cierta prudencia satisfecha y desprendida, extraordinariamente típica de él, de su familia y de su generación. Jamás se le ocurrió sacar provecho económico de su talento para las artes plásticas ni utilizarlo para nada que no fuese su propio placer y el nuestro. A nosotros, él nos parecía, por supuesto, el Hombre de la llave dorada, un mago que abría las verjas de los castillos de los duendes y los sepulcros de los héroes muertos, con lo que no era incongruente llamar linterna mágica a su linterna. Sin embargo, durante todos aquellos años, el mundo, e incluso los vecinos de al lado, le tenían por un hombre de negocios digno de confianza y capaz, pero desprovisto de ambición. Fue una magnífica primera lección en lo que también es la última lección de la vida: en todo lo importante, el interior es mucho mayor que el exterior. En resumen, me alegro de que nunca fuese un artista. Ello podría haberle impedido ser un amateur. Podría haber estropeado su carrera, su carrera personal. Nunca habría conseguido un vulgar éxito en las miles de cosas que con tanto éxito hacía.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“it is not familiarity but comparison that breeds contempt.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“Deste pequeno memorial acerca da memória eu retiro uma certa conclusão. Aquilo que havia de espantoso na infância era que nada havia nela de espantar. Não era um mundo de milagres, era um mundo por milagre. E o que me dá esta impressão não é nada que eu possa recordar, não são as coisas que eu acho que valeria a pena recordar. É nisto que ela difere das outras emoções do passado, de tudo quanto esteja ligado com o primeiro amor e a paixão romântica. Porque esta, conquanto seja igualmente dolorosa, vem sempre dar a um ponto, e é como uma ponta afiada que atravessa o coração, ao passo que a outra era mais semelhante a centenas de janelas abertas por toda a cabeça. [p. 39]”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“this overwhelming conviction that there is one key which can unlock all doors brings back to me the first glimpse of the glorious gift of the senses; and the sensational experience of sensation.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“It was my instinct to defend liberty in small nations and poor families; that is to defend the rights of man as including the rights of property; especially the property of the poor.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“my morbidities were mental as well as moral; and sounded the most appalling depths of fundamental scepticism and solipsism. And there again I found that the Church had gone before me and established her adamantine foundations; that she had affirmed the actuality of external things; so that even madmen might hear her voice; and by a revelation in their very brain begin to believe their eyes.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“The gift is given at a price, and is conditioned by a confession. In other words, the name of the price is Truth, which may also be called Reality; but it is facing the reality about oneself.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“He believes that in that dim corner, and in that brief ritual, God has really remade him in His own image. He is now a new experiment of the Creator. He is as much a new experiment as he was when he was really only five years old. He stands, as I said, in the white light at the worthy beginning of the life of a man. The accumulations of time can no longer terrify. He may be grey and gouty; but he is only five minutes old. I”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“That the Catholic Church knew more about good than I did was easy to believe. That she knew more about evil than I did seemed incredible.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“Puritanism is only a paralysis; which stiffens into Stoicism when it loses religion.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“The traveller sees what he sees; the tripper sees what he has come to see.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“A debate about the history of religion with a very famous sceptic; who, when I tried to talk about Greek cults or Asiatic asceticism, appeared to be unable to think of anything except Jonah and the Whale.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“I have heard many arguments against the idea of a Class War; but the argument which discredits it for me is the fact that the Socialists, like the Imperialists, always assumed that they would win the war.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“But Hardy and Housman, like Henley and Swinburne, and most of the other great men among my elders for that matter, produced on my mind a curious cloudy impression of being all one background of pagan pessimism;”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“He was not like most old novelists; he was interested in what was novel. He did not live in the books he had written; he lived in the books he had not written.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“He was the victim of that decay of our agricultural culture, which gave men bad religion and no philosophy.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“there seems to be a much more vivid interest in the lives of such literary men than in their literary works.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“One to whom I owe more than to most other people was Philip Wicksteed, the Dante lecturer; but there again, the modern mind had been broadened by a study of narrow mediaeval dogmas.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“They seemed so very negative and their criticism was a sort of nagging”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“And I had early begun to doubt, and later to deny, the Socialist or any other assumption that involved a complete confidence in the State.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“he was always criticised as a cloudy and confusing speaker, when he was in fact a remarkably clear speaker; and anybody could follow him who could follow an argument. Only to the Modern Mind it would seem that lucidity is more bewildering than mystification.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“Truth can understand error; but error cannot understand Truth.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“For it is another example of the human irony that it seems easier to die in battle than to tell the truth in politics.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“the Yellow Press spread panic and political mutiny and called them patriotism and journalistic enterprise.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“He was not a Communist; but he was a Utopian; and his Utopia was far, far madder than any Communism.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“I remember when he was asked whether the Church was not corrupt and crying out for the Reformation, he answered with disconcerting warmth, “Who can doubt it? How horrible must have been the corruption which could have tolerated for so long three Catholic priests like John Knox and John Calvin and Martin Luther.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton