G. K. Chesterton Quotes

844 Sourced Quotes

All revolutions are doctrinal — such as the French one, or the one that introduced Christianity.

G. K. Chesterton
With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.

G. K. Chesterton
What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place...The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which made him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

G. K. Chesterton
There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end

G. K. Chesterton
I should say that psycho-analysis was confession without absolution.

G. K. Chesterton
Architecture approaches nearer than any other art to being irrevocable because it is so difficult to get rid of.

G. K. Chesterton
Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?

G. K. Chesterton
But they none of them create the psychological conditions in which I first saw, or desired to see, the flower.

G. K. Chesterton
The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.

G. K. Chesterton
I am a journalist and have no earthly motives except curiosity and personal vanity.

G. K. Chesterton
The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it - because it is a fact.

G. K. Chesterton
Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government.

G. K. Chesterton
Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it.

G. K. Chesterton
Modern science cares far less for pure logic than a dancing Dervish.

G. K. Chesterton
The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.

G. K. Chesterton
It is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer.

G. K. Chesterton
War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.

G. K. Chesterton
We cannot fling ourselves into the blank future; we can only call up images from the past. This being so, the important principle follows, that how many images we have largely depends on how much past we have.

G. K. Chesterton
A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man — the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle.

G. K. Chesterton
Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself.

G. K. Chesterton
For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.

G. K. Chesterton
Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.

G. K. Chesterton
Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it.

G. K. Chesterton
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

G. K. Chesterton
My life is passed in making bad jokes and seeing them turn into true prophecies.

G. K. Chesterton