Top 100 G K Chesterton Quotes
#1. Millions of women rose up, said G. K. Chesterton, to declare that they would no longer be dictated to, and promptly became stenographers.
Anthony Esolen
#2. No man who worships education has got the best out of education ... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.
G.K. Chesterton
#3. Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly,
G.K. Chesterton
#4. Eugenics, as discussed, evidently means the control of some men
over the marriage and unmarriage of others; and probably means the
control of the few over the marriage and unmarriage of the many
G.K. Chesterton
#5. I have a suspicion that you are all mad,' said Dr. Renard, smiling sociably; 'but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt friendship.
G.K. Chesterton
#6. Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.
G.K. Chesterton
#7. It is ludicrous to suppose that the more sceptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.
G.K. Chesterton
#8. In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities ... it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.
G.K. Chesterton
#9. A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter.
G.K. Chesterton
#10. And I offer this book with the heartiest sentiments to all the jolly people who hate what I write, and regard it (very justly, for all I know), as a piece of poor clowning or a single tiresome joke.
G.K. Chesterton
#11. That wild word, "Moor Eeffoc," is the motto of all effective realism; it is the masterpiece of the good realistic principle - the principle that the most fantastic thing of all is often the precise fact.
G.K. Chesterton
#12. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht.
G.K. Chesterton
#13. I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular.
G.K. Chesterton
#14. Our age is obviously the Nonsense Age; the wiser sort of nonsense being provided for the children and the sillier sort of nonsense for the grown-up people.
G.K. Chesterton
#15. If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever.
G.K. Chesterton
#16. What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people.
G.K. Chesterton
#17. It might be questioned whether hammering is more of a strain on the attention because it may go on for ever, or because it may stop at any minute.
G.K. Chesterton
#18. There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing.
G.K. Chesterton
#19. The primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.
G.K. Chesterton
#20. It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.
G.K. Chesterton
#21. A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both.
G.K. Chesterton
#23. When we consider the possibility that God will not be good to us, we stand on the precipice of despair and peer into the darkness below.
G.K. Chesterton
#24. All women dress to be noticed: gross and vulgar women to be grossly and vulgarly noticed, wise and modest women to be wisely and modestly noticed.
G.K. Chesterton
#25. You've only talked like that since you became a horrid what's-his-name. You know what I mean. What do you call a man who wants to embrace the chimney-sweep?" "A saint," said Father Brown. "I think," said Sir Leopold, with a supercilious smile, "that Ruby means a Socialist.
G.K. Chesterton
#26. The hardest thing to remember about our time, of course, is simply that it is a time- we all instinctively think of it as the Day of Judgment.
G.K. Chesterton
#27. Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks.
G.K. Chesterton
#28. The truth is people who worship health cannot remain healthy on the point.
G.K. Chesterton
#29. Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.
G.K. Chesterton
#30. Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.
G.K. Chesterton
#31. Perfectly," replied Syme; "always be comic in a tragedy.
G.K. Chesterton
#32. Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference which is an elegant name for ignorance.
G.K. Chesterton
#33. What is the good of a man being honest in his worship of dishonesty?
G.K. Chesterton
#34. We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth.
G.K. Chesterton
#35. Is that story really true?" he asked. "Oh, no," said Michael, airily. "It is a parable. It is a parable of you and all your rationalists. You begin by breaking up the Cross; but you end by breaking up the habitable world.
G.K. Chesterton
#36. We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.
G.K. Chesterton
#37. The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times.
G.K. Chesterton
#38. But it is clear that no political activity can be encouraged by saying that progress is natural and inevitable; that is not a reason for being active, but rather a reason for being lazy.
G.K. Chesterton
#39. Christianity came in here as before. It came in startlingly with a sword, and clove one thing from another. It divided the crime from the criminal. The criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all. It
G.K. Chesterton
#40. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.
G.K. Chesterton
#41. Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance.
G.K. Chesterton
#42. There is only one good thing science ever discovered - a good thing, good tidings of great joy - that the world is round.
G.K. Chesterton
#43. The real objection to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness. It is an attempt to crush a rational opponent not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority, by hinting that one is specially up to date or particularly in the know.
G.K. Chesterton
#44. Goo-goo goo-goo goo-goo goo
Goo-goo goo-goo goo-goo
Googly, googly, googly goo:
That's how we fill a column.
G.K. Chesterton
#45. I scarcely ever," he said, with an unconscious and colossal arrogance, "hear of anything on the face of the earth that I do not understand at once, without going to see it." And he led the way out into the purple night.
The Club of Queer Trades
G.K. Chesterton
#46. In other words, we may, by fixing our attention almost fiercely on the facts actually before us, force them to turn into adventures; force them to give up their meaning and fulfill their mysterious purpose.
G.K. Chesterton
#47. What on earth is the current morality, except in its literal sense - the morality that is always running away?
G.K. Chesterton
#48. We can't turn life into a pleasure. But we can choose such pleasures as are worthy of us and our immortal souls.
G.K. Chesterton
#49. me an explanation, first, of the towering eccentricity of man among the brutes; second, of the vast human tradition of some ancient happiness; third, of the partial perpetuation of such pagan joy
G.K. Chesterton
#50. The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand but lets the gold go free
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.
G.K. Chesterton
#51. When the chord of monotony is stretched to its tightest, it breaks with the sound of a song.
G.K. Chesterton
#52. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return to at evening.
G.K. Chesterton
#53. Pagans were wiser then paganism; that is why the pagans became Christians.
G.K. Chesterton
#54. I could forgive you even your cruelty if it were not for your calm.
G.K. Chesterton
#55. Gentlemen used to lie just as schoolboys lie, because they hung together and partly to help one another out.
G.K. Chesterton
#56. G. K. Chesterton once said, 'Fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.'" She
Claire Stibbe
#57. As to the doubt of the soul I discover it to be false: a mood not a conclusion. My conclusion is the Faith. Corporate, organized, a personality, teaching. A thing, not a theory. It.
G.K. Chesterton
#59. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
G.K. Chesterton
#60. A puddle repeats infinity, and is full of light; nevertheless, if analyzed objectively, a puddle is a piece of dirty water spread very thin on mud.
G.K. Chesterton
#61. I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment.
G.K. Chesterton
#62. The real difference between Francis and Dominic, which is no discredit to either of them, is that Dominic did happen to be confronted with a huge campaign for the conversion of heretics, while Francis had only the more subtle task of the conversion of human beings.
G.K. Chesterton
#63. In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners.
G.K. Chesterton
#65. The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.
G.K. Chesterton
#66. Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.
G.K. Chesterton
#67. British writer G. K. Chesterton's reply to an invitation by the Times to write an essay on the subject "What's Wrong with the World?" Chesterton's response: Dear Sirs, I am. Sincerely, G. K. Chesterton
Dale Carnegie
#68. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down.
G.K. Chesterton
#69. People, if you have any prayers,
Say prayers for me:
And lay me under a Christian stone
In that lost land I thought my own,
To wait till the holy horn is blown,
And all poor men are free.
G.K. Chesterton
#70. We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.
G.K. Chesterton
#71. You say grace before meals. I say grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
G.K. Chesterton
#72. It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money.
G.K. Chesterton
#73. I am the fool in this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne.
G.K. Chesterton
#74. A man must love a thing very much if he practices it without any hope of fame or money, but even practice it without any hope of doing it well. Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any other man can love the rewards of it.
G.K. Chesterton
#76. Once abolish the God and the government becomes the God.
G.K. Chesterton
#77. Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals.
G.K. Chesterton
#78. If a man is genuinely superior to his fellows the first thing that he believes in is the equality of man.
G.K. Chesterton
#79. Mr. Audley, never having been in politics, treated them a little more seriously. Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a Conservative.
G.K. Chesterton
#80. Thus, all sane moralists admit that one may sometimes tell a lie; but no sane moralist would approve of telling a little boy to practise telling lies, in case he might one day have to tell a justifiable one.
G.K. Chesterton
#81. Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper than reality.
G.K. Chesterton
#82. Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms.
G.K. Chesterton
#83. Before we congratulate ourselves upon the absence of certain faults from our nation or society, we ought to ask ourselves why it is that these faults are absent. Are we without the fault because we have the opposite virtue? Or are we without the fault because we have the opposite fault?
G.K. Chesterton
#84. We can accept man as a fact, if we are content with an unexplained fact.
G.K. Chesterton
#85. Then the small man suddenly ran after them and said:
"I want to get my haircut. I say, do you know a little shop anywhere where they cut hair properly? I keep on having my hair cut, but it keeps on growing again."
One of the tall men looked at him with the air of a pained naturalist.
G.K. Chesterton
#86. You can't be angry with bad men. But a good man in the wrong - why one thirsts for his blood.
G.K. Chesterton
#87. [A] finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more essential and more strange.
G.K. Chesterton
#88. Brown paper represents the primal twilight of the first toil of creation, and with a bright-coloured chalk or two you can pick out points of fire in it, sparks of gold, and blood-red, and sea-green, like the first fierce stars that sprang out of divine darkness.
G.K. Chesterton
#89. Splendid, replied the man by the well. But the first man pronounced the word as a young man might say it about a woman, and the second as an old man might say it about the weather, not without sincerity, but certainly without fervor.
G.K. Chesterton
#91. To these things do writers sink; and then the critics tell them that they "talk for effect"; and then the writers answer: "What the devil else should we talk for? Ineffectualness?
G.K. Chesterton
#92. And must not all stories of brave lives and long endeavours and weary watching for the ideal so end, until all be ended?
I cannot tell you whether he found what he sought. I have told you that he sought it.
G.K. Chesterton
#93. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
G.K. Chesterton
#94. The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G.K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin.
P.G. Wodehouse
#95. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians.
G.K. Chesterton
#96. The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.
G.K. Chesterton
#97. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics.
G.K. Chesterton
#98. Unless a man is in part a humorist, he is only in part a man.
G.K. Chesterton
#99. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?
G.K. Chesterton
#100. I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification.
G.K. Chesterton
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