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Quotes by G. K. Chesterton

A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.
– G. K. Chesterton
A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.
– G. K. Chesterton
A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.
– G. K. Chesterton
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
– G. K. Chesterton
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.
– G. K. Chesterton
A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.
– G. K. Chesterton
A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
– G. K. Chesterton
A yawn is a silent shout.
– G. K. Chesterton
All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
– G. K. Chesterton
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
– G. K. Chesterton
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
– G. K. Chesterton
And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.
– G. K. Chesterton
And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
– G. K. Chesterton
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
– G. K. Chesterton
Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.
– G. K. Chesterton
Being contented ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.
– G. K. Chesterton
But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
– G. K. Chesterton
Coincidences are spiritual puns.
– G. K. Chesterton
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.
– G. K. Chesterton
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.
– G. K. Chesterton
Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.
– G. K. Chesterton
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
– G. K. Chesterton
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
– G. K. Chesterton
Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.
– G. K. Chesterton
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
– G. K. Chesterton
Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.
– G. K. Chesterton
Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.
– G. K. Chesterton
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.
– G. K. Chesterton
Half a truth is better than no politics.
– G. K. Chesterton
Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.
– G. K. Chesterton
How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
– G. K. Chesterton
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.
– G. K. Chesterton
I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
– G. K. Chesterton
I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.
– G. K. Chesterton
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
– G. K. Chesterton
I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
– G. K. Chesterton
If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.
– G. K. Chesterton
If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
– G. K. Chesterton
In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.
– G. K. Chesterton
It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.
– G. K. Chesterton
It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
– G. K. Chesterton
It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
– G. K. Chesterton
Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.
– G. K. Chesterton
Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
– G. K. Chesterton
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
– G. K. Chesterton
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
– G. K. Chesterton
Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.
– G. K. Chesterton
Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
– G. K. Chesterton
Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.
– G. K. Chesterton
Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.
– G. K. Chesterton
Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.
– G. K. Chesterton
New roads; new ruts.
– G. K. Chesterton
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
Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.
– G. K. Chesterton
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
– G. K. Chesterton
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
– G. K. Chesterton
One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
– G. K. Chesterton
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
– G. K. Chesterton
Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.
– G. K. Chesterton
Talk about the pews and steeples and the cash that goes therewith! But the souls of Christian people... chuck it, Smith!
– G. K. Chesterton
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.
– G. K. Chesterton
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
– G. K. Chesterton
The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.
– G. K. Chesterton
The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
– G. K. Chesterton
The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.
– G. K. Chesterton
The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with awe. It is meant for the mere slave of a routine of self-education to stuff himself with every sort of incongruous intellectual food in one indigestible meal.
– G. K. Chesterton
The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
– G. K. Chesterton
The only defensible war is a war of defense.
– G. K. Chesterton
The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.
– G. K. Chesterton
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.
– G. K. Chesterton
The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.
– G. K. Chesterton
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
– G. K. Chesterton
The present condition of fame is merely fashion.
– G. K. Chesterton
The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.
– G. K. Chesterton
The simplification of anything is always sensational.
– G. K. Chesterton
The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.
– G. K. Chesterton
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.
– G. K. Chesterton
The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
– G. K. Chesterton
The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
– G. K. Chesterton
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.
– G. K. Chesterton
The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.
– G. K. Chesterton
The word good has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.
– G. K. Chesterton
Their is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.
– G. K. Chesterton
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
– G. K. Chesterton
There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.
– G. K. Chesterton
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.
– G. K. Chesterton
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
– G. K. Chesterton
Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.
– G. K. Chesterton
To be clever enough to get all the money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
– G. K. Chesterton
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
– G. K. Chesterton
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
– G. K. Chesterton
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.
– G. K. Chesterton
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.
– G. K. Chesterton
We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.
– G. K. Chesterton
When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
– G. K. Chesterton
When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?
– G. K. Chesterton
White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
– G. K. Chesterton
With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.
– G. K. Chesterton
Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
– G. K. Chesterton
Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.
– G. K. Chesterton