Alarms and Discursions Quotes

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sight seers.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing towards a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it nasty.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“Modern art has to be what is called ‘intense.’ it is not easy to define being intense; but, roughly speaking, it means saying only one thing at a time, and saying it wrong.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“There is a certain solid use in fools. It is not so much that they rush in where angels fear to tread, but rather that they let out what devils intend to do.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of people in the world…the division follows lines of real psychological cleavage. I do not offer it lightly. It has been the fruit of more than eighteen minutes of earnest reflection and research.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories…cheerfulness would creep in. Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“Therefore I see no wrong in riding with the Nightmare to-night; she whinnies to me from the rocking tree-tops and the roaring wind; I will catch her and ride her through the awful air. Woods and weeds are alike tugging at the roots in the rising tempest, as if all wished to fly with us over the moon, like that wild, amorous cow whose child was the Moon-Calf. We will rise to that mad infinite where there is neither up nor down, the high topsy-turveydom of the heavens. I will ride on the Nightmare; but she shall not ride on me.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“All the exaggerations are right, if they exaggerate the right thing.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“The sceptics, like bees, give their one sting and die.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“Try to grow straight, and life will bend you.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“No one worth calling a man allows his moods to change his convictions; but it is by moods that we understand other men's convictions. The bigot is not he who knows he is right; every sane man knows he is right. The bigot is he whose emotions and imagination are too cold and weak to feel how it is that other men go wrong.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions