When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it; but certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded.
G. K. Chesterton (Writer, 1874 – 1936)
A thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.
G. K. Chesterton (Writer, 1874 – 1936)
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.
G. K. Chesterton (Writer, 1874 – 1936)
We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man’s terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.
G. K. Chesterton (Writer, 1874 – 1936)
It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.
G. K. Chesterton (Writer, 1874 – 1936)
But the truth is that it is only by believing in God that we can ever criticize the Government. Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God.
G. K. Chesterton (Writer, 1874 – 1936)
If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments.
G. K. Chesterton (Writer, 1874 – 1936)
When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven’s name to what?
G. K. Chesterton (Writer, 1874 – 1936)
On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn.
G. K. Chesterton (Writer, 1874 – 1936)
Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
G. K. Chesterton (Writer, 1874 – 1936)