You can always spot a well-informed man — his views are the same as yours.
Ilka Chase (1905-1978) American actress, writer
(Attributed)
One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) French writer, politican, diplomat
(Attributed)
Man is what he believes.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) Russian playwright and writer
(Attributed)
You will not become a saint through other people’s sins.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) Russian playwright and writer
(Attributed)
We fret ourselves to reform life, in order that posterity may be happy, and posterity will say as usual: “In the past it used to be better, the present is worse than the past.”
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) Russian playwright and writer
Notebooks
Nothing better forges a bond of love, friendship or respect than common hatred toward something.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) Russian playwright and writer
Notebooks, Notebook I, vol. 17, p. 52,
http://www.bartleby.com/66/57/11757.html
He was a rationalist, but he had to confess that he liked the ringing of church bells.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) Russian playwright and writer
Notebooks
Any idiot can face a crisis, it is the day-to-day living that wears you out.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) Russian playwright and writer
(Attributed)
I bid you strike at the passions; and if you do, you too will prevail. If you can once engage people’s pride, love, pity, ambition (or whichever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son, #105 (8 Feb 1746)
(Source)
Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough. They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than experience, which they call coldness. They are but half mistaken; for though spirit without experience is dangerous, experience without spirit is languid and defective.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son, #298 (15 Jan 1758)
(Source)
Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one. If you are asked what o’clock it is, tell it; but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son, #142 (22 Feb 1748)
(Source)
Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable; however, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son, #226 (24 May 1750)
(Source)
Either a good or a bad reputation outruns and gets before people wherever they go.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to Solomon Dayrolles (23 Dec 1848)
(Source)
I recommend to you to take care of the minutes; for hours will take care of themselves.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son, #131 (6 Nov 1747)
(Source)
Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of commercial, life; returns are equally expected for both.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son, #304 (25 Dec 1758)
(Source)
It is the test of a good religion whether you can make a joke about it.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)
The dispute that goes on between Macbeth and his wife about the murder of Duncan is almost word for word a dispute which goes on at any suburban breakfast table about something else. It is merely a matter of changing ‘Infirm of purpose, give me the daggers’ into ‘Infirm of purpose, give me the postage stamps.’
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Chesterton on Shakespeare
ed. Dorothy Collins (1972)
A man has been lucky in marrying the women he loves. But he is luckier in loving the woman he marries.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Brave New Family
ed. Alvaro de Silva (1990)
Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.
If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1906)
We’re all really dependent in nearly everything, and we all make a fuss about being independent in something.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922)
Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of the opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington ….
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Autobiography (1936)
JACKSON: Truth is one’s own conception of things.
CHESTERTON: The Big Blunder. All thought is an attempt to discover if one’s own conception is true or not.Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Platitudes Undone
commentary on Holbrook Jackson's Platitudes in the Making (1997)
“My Country, right or wrong” is a thing no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
The Defendant, ch. 16 “A Defence of Patriotism”
(Source)
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
A Short History of England (1917)
For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value in any of them is that they bear the image of the king.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)
Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)
The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
G.F. Watts (1906)
The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
The Superstition of Divorce (1920)
We are learning to do a great many clever things. … The next great task will be to learn not to do them.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Varied Types (1908)
The one really rousing thing about human history is that, whether or no the proceedings go right, at any rate, the prophecies always go wrong. The promises are never fulfilled and the threats are never fulfilled. Even when good things do happen, they are never the good things that were guaranteed. And even when bad things happen, they are never the bad things that were inevitable. You may be quite certain that, if an old pessimist says the country is going to the dogs, it will go to any other animals except the dogs; if it be to the dromedaries or even the dragons. … It was as if one weather prophet confidently predicted blazing sunshine and the other was equally certain of blinding fog; and they were both buried in a beautiful snow-storm and lay, fortunately dead, under a clear and starry sky.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
The Illustrated London News, column (17 April 1926)
Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Autobiography (1936)
Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
What’s Wrong with the World (1910)
If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)
America has never been quite normal.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Sidelights on New London and Newer York (1932)
This man’s spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Manalive (1912)
The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)
It’s not the world that’s gotten so much worse, but the news coverage that’s gotten so much better.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)
Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Charles Dickens, Ch. 11 (1906)
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found it without it.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
A Miscelleny of Men, “The Angry Author: His Farewell (1912)
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
“The New Generations and Morality,” The Illustrated London News (9 Mar 1929)
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Orthodoxy, Ch. 4, “The Ethics of England” (1908)
Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
“Our Note Book,” Illustrated London News (5 May 1928)
Often misattributed to Oscar Wilde (and as "Morality, like art ..."). For more info, see here.
The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and the princess lived happily, and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other. Most marriages, I think, are happy marriages; but there is no such thing as a contented marriage. The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Chesterton on Dickens (1911)
CONJURER: Doctor, there are about a thousand reasons why I should not tell you how I really did that trick. But one will suffice, because it is the most practical of all.
DOCTOR: Well? And why shouldn’t you tell me?
CONJURER:”Because you wouldn’t believe me if I did.Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Magic (1913)
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
The Man Who Was Thursday (1907)
I don’t believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. When one’s hostess starts in with self-deprecations such as “Oh, I don’t know how to cook …,” or “Poor little me …,” or “This may taste awful …,” it is so dreadful to have to reassure her that everything is delicious and fine, whether it is or not. Besides, such admissions only draw attention to one’s shortcomings (or self-perceived shortcomings) and make the other person think, “Yes, you’re right, this really is an awful meal!” Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed — eh bien, tant pis!
Julia Child (1912-2004) American chef and writer
My Life In France, “Le Cordon Bleu,” sec. 2 (2006)
(Source)
"Oh well, too bad."
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
Noam Chomsky (b. 1928) American linguist and activist
The Common Good (1998)
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
Noam Chomsky (b. 1928) American linguist and activist
The Late Show, TV interview with John Pilger, BBC2 (25 Nov 1992)
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
(Attributed)
Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Ch. 11 (Poirot) (1911)
Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason not to give it.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
(Attributed)
You meet a thousand times in life with those who, in dealing with any religious question, make at once their appeal to reason, and insist on forthwith rejecting aught that lies beyond its sphere — without, however, being able to render any clear account of the nature and proper limits of the knowledge thus derived, or of the relation in which such knowledge stands to the religious needs of men. I would invite you, therefore, to inquire seriously whether such persons are not really bowing down before an idol of the mind, which, while itself of very questionable worth, demands as much implicit faith from its worshipers as divine revelation itself.
Theodor Christlieb (1833-1889) German theologian
(Attributed)
Granting that you and I argue. If you get the better of me, and not I of you, are you necessarily right and I wrong? Or if I get the better of you and not you of me, am I necessarily right and you wrong? Or are we both partly right and partly wrong? Or are we both wholly right and wholly wrong? You and I cannot know this, and consequently we all live in darkness.
Chuang Tzu (369-286 BC) Chinese philosopher, co-founder of Taoism
On Leveling All Things
