Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence

It is part of the pholosophic dullness of our time that there are millions of rational monsters walking about on their hind legs, observing the world through pairs of flexible little lenses, periodically supplying themselves with energy by pushing organic substances through holes in their faces, who see nothing fabulous whatever about themselves.

Once it has learned to dream the double, the self arrives at this weird crossroad and a moment comes when one realizes that it is the double who dreams the self.

Anything an artist does is to show ourselves as we really are, which is a complex thing. I don't think that one work of Philosophy or Art, or Letters, or Acting, or Middle Playing, or Tightrope Walking, or Flea Circuses has made mankind better, if by better you mean kinder, wiser, more tolerant of each other. One thing self knowledge. Knoticayton: know thyself.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is. If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death - or shall I say, death implies life - you can conceive yourself.

It has always been difficult for Man to realize that his life is all an art. It has been more difficult to conceive it so than to act it so. For that is always how he has more or less acted it.

I think and that is all that I am.

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.

Contemplation and wisdom are highest achievements and man is not totally at home with them.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Transcendence constitutes selfhood.

I can explain my body and my brain, but there's something more. I can't explain my own existence - what makes me a unique human being.

The human being is a most curious creature. He thinks he has got one soul, and he has got dozens.

I drink therefore I am.

The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.

Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.

I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead - and that one was myself.

I think you are born, and I think you die. I have a pragmatic nature, but I yearn to believe.

At times I think and at times I am.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

If you don't ponder the end of the world on a regular basis, I don't think you're really human.

How do we describe the fact of human existence? At a certain point, perhaps, style fails us. Language, even and in particular at its most evocative, becomes less of an aid and more of a difficulty.