G. K. Chesterton Quotes

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The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.

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
Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

G. K. Chesterton
Prince, Bayard would have smashed his sword
To see the sort of knights you dub—
Is that the last of them — O Lord
Will someone take me to a pub?

G. K. Chesterton
To an open house in the evening Home shall men come, To an older place than Eden And a taller town than Rome.

G. K. Chesterton
Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front—

G. K. Chesterton
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.

G. K. Chesterton
It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't.

G. K. Chesterton
Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.

G. K. Chesterton
Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory... we are all kings in exile.

G. K. Chesterton
An archaeologist is a man who studies old things and finds they are new.

G. K. Chesterton
In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself.

G. K. Chesterton
Islam was something like a Christian heresy. The early heresies had been full of mad reversals and evasions of the Incarnation, rescuing their Jesus from the reality of his body even at the expense of the sincerity of his soul.

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
Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, "I will not hit you if you do not hit me"; there is no trace of such a transaction. There IS a trace of both men having said, "We must not hit each other in the holy place.

G. K. Chesterton
We ought to be interested in that darkest and most real part of a man in which dwell not the vices that he does not display, but the virtues that he cannot.

G. K. Chesterton
The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

G. K. Chesterton
A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.

G. K. Chesterton
It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.

G. K. Chesterton
Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

G. K. Chesterton
The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person.

G. K. Chesterton
Religious unity can look like a carnival and religious liberty can look like a funeral.

G. K. Chesterton
Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

G. K. Chesterton
The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

G. K. Chesterton
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.

G. K. Chesterton