G. K. Chesterton Quotes
Most popular G. K. Chesterton Quotes
Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.
A yawn is a silent shout.
Art is the signature of man.
Silence is the unbearable repartee.
Progress is the mother of Problems.
Materialists and madmen never have doubts.
The true object of all human life is play.
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor poetry.
Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.
If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
Truths turn into dogmas the moment they are disputed.
It is easy to be solemn, it is so hard to be frivolous.
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.
Artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
A paradox is a truth standing on its head to gain attention.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
Research is the search of people who don't know what they want.
Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
Ingratitude is surely the chief of the intellectual sins of man.
It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.
A great classic means a man whom one can praise without having read.
The world will never starve for wonder; but only for want of wonder.
The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.
Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized.
A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
A figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.
Paradox has been defined as "Truth standing on her head to get attention."
One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.
Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised.
A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.
Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
Grey is a color that always seems on the eve of changing to some other color.
Tradition does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive.
When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
It seems a pity that psychology has destroyed all our knowledge of human nature.
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.
There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.
The mere brute pleasure of reading—the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.
What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism.
Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.
Adventure is the champagne of life, but I prefer my adventures and my champagne dry.
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
We are all in the same boat in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.
The repetition in nature may not be a mere recurrence. It may be a theatrical "encore."
Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
One may understand the cosmos, but never the self; the self is more distant than any star.
The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.
Is ditchwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun.
The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue.
Most Americans...have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne.
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year, it is that we should have a new soul.
There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive.
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.
An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes—our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape Nuts on principle.
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
The most important things are always said by signs. If people do not understand signs they will never understand words.
Betting and such sports are only the stunted and twisted shapes of the original instinct of man for adventure and romance.
The home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks.
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post.
In the end it will not matter to us whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.
I do not believe in a fate that falls on people however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.
The man who sees the consistency in things is a wit— and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist.
The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying: "Of course I do not like green cheese; I am very fond of brown sherry."
The trouble about always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.
There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.
"My country, right or wrong" is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober."
The first fact about the celebration of a birthday is that it is a way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive.
Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.
Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.
Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.
The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.
A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.
I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.
Man does not live on soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it—or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.
Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.
We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.
The power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged. God has kept that good wine until now.
The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, 'charm,' 'spell,' 'enchantment.' They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.
There are two kinds of people in the world: the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic.
The real difficulty of man is not to enjoy lamp-posts or landscapes, not to enjoy dandelions or chops, but to enjoy enjoyment. That is the practical problem which the philosopher has to solve.
He thought that the object of opening the mind is simply opening the mind. Whereas I am incurable convinced that the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
There are dark and morbid moods in which I am tempted to feel that Evil re-entered the world in the form of Essays. The Essay is like the Serpent, smooth and graceful and easy of movement, also wavering and wandering.
The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.
My friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening's sake, opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid.
Laughter has something in it in common with the ancient winds of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes men forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves; something . . . that they cannot resist.
For us who live in cities Nature is not natural. Nature is supernatural. Just as monks watched and strove to get a glimpse of heaven, so we watch and strive to get a glimpse of earth. It is as if men had cake and wine every day but were sometimes allowed common bread.
There is no perfectly epicurean corner; there is no perfectly irresponsible place. Everywhere men have made the way for us with sweat and submission. We may fling ourselves into a hammock in a fit of divine carelessness. But we are glad that the netmaker did not make the hammock in a fit of divine carelessness.
Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey.
Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalized.
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
A stiff apology is a second insult.... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.
