Top 100 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. 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
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. When a newspaper posed the question, "What's Wrong with the World?" the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response: "Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton." That is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of Jesus.
Timothy Keller
#6. My country right or wrong is like saying my mother drunk or sober. G.K.Chesterton This is one of my favorite quotes and would bring about world peace if more knew and lived it.
Wayne Costigan
#7. A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing goes against it," said G. K. Chesterton. That
Rod Dreher
#8. And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow. G. K. Chesterton
Leslie Parrott
#9. G. K. Chesterton compared fantastic fiction to going on holiday - that the importance of your holiday is the moment you return, and you see the place you live through fresh eyes.
Neil Gaiman
#10. When we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing. We worship anything. G. K. Chesterton
Matt Papa
#11. G. K. Chesterton: When Man ceases to worship God he does not worship nothing but worships everything.
Pope Francis
#12. (Fairy tales, as G. K. Chesterton* once pointed out, are not true. They are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated.) V
Neil Gaiman
#13. When one of England's finest writers, G. K. Chesterton, spoke of "the furious love of God," he was referencing the enormous vitality and strength of the God of Jesus seeking union with us.
Brennan Manning
#14. G. K. Chesterton famously quipped that "those who marry the spirit of the age will find themselves widows in the next.
Miroslav Volf
#15. The greatest influence in writing was G. K. Chesterton who never used a useless word, who saw the value of a paradox, and avoided what was trite.
Fulton J. Sheen
#16. Reason cannot account for those moments in life that "bewilder the intellect yet utterly quiet the heart," as G.K. Chesterton observed.
Eric Weiner
#17. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried. - G. K. CHESTERTON
Clare De Graaf
#18. G.K. Chesterton said: People are equal in the same way pennies are equal. Some are bright, others are dull; some are worn smooth, others are sharp and fresh. But all are equal in value for each penny bears the image of the sovereign, each person bears the image of the King of Kings.
Tim Chester
#19. As G. K. Chesterton is credited with saying, The opposite of a belief in God is not a belief in nothing; it is a belief in anything.
David Jeremiah
#20. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless or it is no virtue at all. It is only when things are hopeless that hope begins to be a strength (G. K. Chesterton). Hope is an undefeated forward look.
Warren W. Wiersbe
#21. G.K. Chesterton was the best writer of the 20th century. He said something about everything and he said it better than anybody else.
Dale Ahlquist
#22. You start reading C.S. Lewis, then you're reading G.K. Chesterton, then you're a Catholic.
Ross Douthat
#23. In reality, to quote G. K. Chesterton, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."2 Or perhaps it might be more accurately said of our time that Christianity has not been presented and therefore has been left untried.
Skye Jethani
#24. I started reading G. K. Chesterton's 'The Man Who Was Thursday' on a subway ride, almost missed my stop, and walked home thumbing pages.
Kate Christensen
#25. G.K. Chesterton once said: If something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. I live by this philosophy when I teach writing. It seems to me vastly more important that a student try a new technique in her writing, and use it imperfectly, than never try the technique at all.
Ralph Fletcher
#26. Old G.K. knew when to fast and when to down a good ale. It's the timing. It's all in the timing. [On G.K. Chesterton]
Michael D. O'Brien
#27. G. K. Chesterton says chess players go crazy, not poets. I think he is right.
Donald Miller
#28. G.K. Chesterton said (in a somewhat different context), "If you believe in nothing, you'll believe in anything." That
Michael Crichton
#29. G. K. Chesterton once said that to be thankful is the highest form of thought and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. Thanklessness, then,must be the lowest form of thought, and ingratitude is discontentment, bankrupted of wonder.
Ravi Zacharias
#30. A cynic once told G. K. Chesterton, the British novelist and essayist, "Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed." Chesterton's rejoinder? "Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything.
Benjamin Graham
#31. As G. K. Chesterton wrote, "How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it."22
Ann Voskamp
#33. 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
#34. Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly,
G.K. Chesterton
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities ... it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.
G.K. Chesterton
#40. The worst moment for an atheist is when he feels a profound sense of gratitude and has no one to thank.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#41. A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter.
G.K. Chesterton
#42. But since he stood for England And knew what England means, Unless you give him bacon You must not give him beans.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#43. Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular.
G.K. Chesterton
#48. The danger of loss of faith in God is not that one will believe in nothing, but rather that one will believe in anything.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#49. 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
#50. 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
#52. 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
#53. 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.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#54. 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
#55. There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing.
G.K. Chesterton
#56. The primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.
G.K. Chesterton
#57. It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.
G.K. Chesterton
#58. Architecture approaches nearer than any other art to being irrevocable because it is so difficult to get rid of.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#59. I should favour anything that would increase the present enormous authority of women and their creative action in their own homes. The average woman ... is a despot; the average man is a serf.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#60. A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both.
G.K. Chesterton
#62. The big corporation is not in the least remarkable for efficiency; it is only too big to be blamed for its inefficiency.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not); it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#68. 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
#70. 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
#71. Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks.
G.K. Chesterton
#72. The truth is people who worship health cannot remain healthy on the point.
G.K. Chesterton
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. Perfectly," replied Syme; "always be comic in a tragedy.
G.K. Chesterton
#76. True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#77. Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference which is an elegant name for ignorance.
G.K. Chesterton
#78. What is the good of a man being honest in his worship of dishonesty?
G.K. Chesterton
#80. 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
#82. It's not the world that's got so much worse but the news coverage that's got so much better.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#83. 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
#84. We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.
G.K. Chesterton
#85. Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#86. The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times.
G.K. Chesterton
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance.
G.K. Chesterton
#91. You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#92. 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
#94. 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
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#99. There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#100. Saint George he was for England, And before he killed the dragon he drank a pint of English ale out of an English flagon.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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