All Quotes

"Buy cheap, sell dearǃ (Thomas Lodge)"

"If you buy cheaply, you pay dearly."

"If you buy quality, you only cry once."

"You can't have your cake and eat it too."

"A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle."

"Don't burn the candle at both ends."

"He that is worst may still hold the candle."

"Paddle your own canoe."

"A cat may look at a king."

"All cats love fish but hate to get their paws wet."

"When the cat is away, the mice will play. (16th century) (Citatboken)"

"No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another. (Sir Thomas Browne)"

"A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Or, a chain is no stronger than its weakest link"

"Charity begins at home. (14th century)"

"Cold as charity. (14th century)"

"Cheaters never prosper."

"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched."

"The child is father to the man."

"Children are uncertain comforts but certain cares."

"Spare the rod, spoil the child."

""Never count your children twice." An old saying from the Anglo-Welsh border, where it was believed to be unlucky to do so. This saying arises from old superstition, which may have been contributed to in part by the terrain, which is rugged, hilly and sparsely populated; the region is also often subject to dense fog and disappearances under mysterious circumstance were not uncommon. Hence, the unlucky nature as on the second count, it was believed one child would most likely have disappeared; lost forever to the hills."

"Onward, Christian soldiers! (S. Baring-Gould)"

"Fear not the loss of the bell more than the loss of the steeple."

"Circumstances alter cases."

"The people are the city. (William Shakespeare)"

"Good clothes open all doors."

"Carrying coals to Newcastle."

"The coast is clear. (17th century)"

"Cobblers children are worst shod."

"Shoemaker, stick to your last."

"As the old cock crows, so crows the young."

"All colours will agree in the dark. (Francis Bacon)"

"Counsel is no command. (Strauss, 1994 p. 675)"

"Who has not served cannot command. (Strauss, 1994 p. 758)"

"Common sense is not so common."

"Chesterton and Tolkien and Lewis were, as I've said, not the only writers I read between the ages of six and thirteen, but they were the authors I read over and over again; each of them played a part in building me. Without them, I cannot imagine that I would have become a writer, and certainly not a writer of fantastic fiction. I would not have understood that the best way to show people true things is from a direction that they had not imagined the truth coming, nor that the majesty and the magic of belief and dreams could be a vital part of life and of writing. And without those three writers, I would not be here today. And nor, of course, would any of you. I thank you."

"I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement. Everybody will no doubt admit that it is a ‘clever’ book, but the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas...cannot fail to perceive that the so-called ‘wit’ of Chesterton has put their scholarship to shame. He has guessed all that which we had tried to demonstrate, and he has said all that which they were more or less clumsily attempting to express in academic formulas. Chesterton was one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed; he was deep because he was right; and he could not help being right; but he could not either help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who could understand him to know that he was right, and deep; to the others, he apologized for being right, and he made up for being deep by being witty. That is all they can see of him."

"There is great poetry being written now. G.K. Chesterton, for instance."

"Several books I purchased on my trip, among them G. K. Chesterton's The Ballad of the White Horse. Ever read it? It's great."

"To speak of ideals and their significance as goals to be reached for is to put one's finger on an ever-recurring theme in Chesterton's productive life, the indignant rejection of pessimism in any and all of its forms. This is not to say that he was unaware that there is evil — a great deal of it — in this world. His life was one continuous campaign against the evils he perceived, one of the chief of which was the denial that there is good in the world, the denial that life is basically good."

"He was a polemicist of rare quality, but he wrote and spoke always with such good humour that he seldom made enemies."

"The meeting between Chesterton and Il Duce occurred in 1929, ten years before the war, at a time when, whatever his other faults, Mussolini had reintroduced a mark spirit of optimism and freshness to an Italy that had formerly been pessimistic and stagnant. Throughout the 1920s, Chesterton thought he saw in the Italian leader qualities that might have offset certain evils in Britain. It is important to keep in mind that whatever the misreadings of fascism, Chesterton always had some quite specific British problem in view when he praises Mussolini."

"For Chesterton... British public rhetoric was more than a mere style: "The motive is the desire to disguise a thing even when expressing it." To his mind, the dictator's words, even if his actions were as bad or worse than those of the parliamentarians, were morally and stylistically superior. At least they said openly what was being done openly. The British rhetoric, for Chesterton, was one with the decayed British liberalism that allowed exploitation of workers by plutocrats who were never rebuked by government or the courts. If nothing else, Mussolini's language was a bracing alternative. Gazing back across the horrors of World War II, it is hard for us to imagine how good men like Chesterton, whatever their objections to British liberalism, could admire Mussolini, though several prominent intellectuals and politicians did. Many of us have family members or friends who fought or died to stop the fascist darkness, and we find it difficult to sympathize with Chesterton's desire to be fair to Mussolini. Mussolini's thuggish violence, of course, Chesterton and others rejected. But their admiration was an index of the scale of reform they thought needed."

"I have the greatest possible admiration for “Tremendous Trifles” and the other fairy tales – Heavens! how I can see Mr. Chesterton's beaming face crying happily, “But that’s just it! Life is a fairy tale!” Heavens! – but I believe his view of life to be based on a misconception. To put it in a theological way, he denies that God made the brain as well as the heart. He despises wisdom...Like all sentimentalists he is cruel."

""Chesterton's Post" is a call for action: Sometimes we need to intervene just to preserve what we already have. This separation is jarring."

"The fence analogy colorfully conveys why some may be reluctant to embrace radical changes in government institutions, public policies, and social norms. It embodies the insight that stable institutions are hard to create and easy to destroy."

"The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down."

"In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."

"Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations."

"‘A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.’"