Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG, better known as G. K. Chesterton, was an English writer, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, lay theologian, biographer, and literary and art critic. Chesterton is often referred to as the "prince of paradox." Time magazine has observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out."...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth29 May 1874
art sunset bad-ass
All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
art philosophy reality
Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.
artist creative criticism
The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.
art mean common-sense
We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
artist touching shadow
Every true artist feels that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil.
believe artist clouds
Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there, something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; that imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up.
art rebel visionaries
It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms.
art intelligent unique
It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.
art believe men
The Byzantines hammered away at their hard and orthodox symbols, because they could not be in a mood to believe that men could take a hint. The moderns drag out into lengths and reels of extravagance their new orthodoxy of being unorthodox, because they also cannot give a hint -- or take a hint. Yet all perfect and well-poised art is really a hint.
art humility size
Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are-of immeasurable stature.
art men expression
The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men no having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being.
art men thinking
For the mass of men the idea of artistic creation can only be expressed by an idea unpopular in present discussions - the idea of property... Property is merely the art of the democracy... One would think, to hear people talk, that the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers were on the side of property. But obviously they are the enemies of property; because they are enemies of their own limitations.
art soul faces
For the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.
art men wish
A man cannot have the energy to produce good art without having the energy to wish to pass beyond it.