G. K. Chesterton Quotes

844 Sourced Quotes

It is something to have wept as we have wept,
It is something to have done as we have done,
It is something to have watched when all men slept,
And seen the stars which never see the sun.
It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,
Although it break and leave the thorny rods,
It is something to have hungered once as those
Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.

G. K. Chesterton
'I'm afraid I'm a practical man,' said the doctor with gruff humour, 'and I don't bother much about religion and philosophy.'
'You'll never be a practical man till you do,' said Father Brown. 'Look here, doctor; you know me pretty well; I think you know I'm not a bigot. You know I know there are all sorts in all religions; good men in bad ones and bad men in good ones.

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
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

G. K. Chesterton
They say travel broadens the mind; but you must have the mind.

G. K. Chesterton
It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything - even pride.

G. K. Chesterton
Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.

G. K. Chesterton
The men of the East may spell the stars, And times and triumphs mark, But the men signed of the cross of Christ Go gaily in the dark.

G. K. Chesterton
When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.

G. K. Chesterton
They died to save their country and they only saved the world.

G. K. Chesterton
The simplification of anything is always sensational.

G. K. Chesterton
But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind.

G. K. Chesterton
Literary men are being employed to praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They not only find political reasons for the commercial schemes—that they have done for some time past—they also find moral defences for the commercial schemers. … I do resent the whole age of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath.

G. K. Chesterton
In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.

G. K. Chesterton
It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms.

G. K. Chesterton
He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical.

G. K. Chesterton
No man must be superior to the things that are common to men.... Not only are we all in the same boat, but we are all seasick.

G. K. Chesterton
The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.

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
The strangest whim has seized me…. After all
I think I will not hang myself today.

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
I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.

G. K. Chesterton
In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire
In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.
Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.

G. K. Chesterton
Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If in your bold creative way you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.

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
The mind moves by instincts, associations and premonitions and not by fixed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will occur simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: notions will be first defined long after they are dead.

G. K. Chesterton
They haven't got no noses
The fallen sons of Eve;
Even the smell of roses
Is not what they supposes;
But more than mind discloses
And more than men believe.

G. K. Chesterton
Our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it;
Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace;
Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,
And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.

G. K. Chesterton
Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of making truth the test. The sceptic feels himself too large to measure life by the largest things; and ends by measuring it by the smallest thing of all.

G. K. Chesterton
For 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