Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Morality
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It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can.
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I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
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Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks.
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If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty.
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All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.
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Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else.
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To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea.
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The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice.
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These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.
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A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.
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If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals.
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There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners.
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It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.
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All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them.
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Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, "I will not hit you if you do not hit me"; there is no trace of such a transaction. There IS a trace of both men having said, "We must not hit each other in the holy place.
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Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
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We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.
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There are some desires that are not desirable.
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To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
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Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.
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What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another.
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The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.
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It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them.
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The world will very soon be divided, unless I am mistaken, into those who still go on explaining our success, and those somewhat more intelligent who are trying to explain our failure.
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Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.
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