G. K. Chesterton Quotes

844 Sourced Quotes

If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals it is the modern strengthening of minor morals.

G. K. Chesterton
To desire money is much nobler than to desire success. Desiring money may mean desiring to return to your country, or marry the woman you love, or ransom your father from brigands. But desiring success must mean that you take an abstract pleasure in the unbrotherly act of distancing and disgracing other men.

G. K. Chesterton
We are Christians and Catholics not because we worship a key, but because we have passed a door; and felt the wind that is the trumpet of liberty blow over the land of the living.

G. K. Chesterton
The Christian pities men because they are dying, and the Buddhist pities them because they are living. The Christian is sorry for what damages the life of a man; but the Buddhist is sorry for him because he is alive.

G. K. Chesterton
As an explanation of the world materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of a madman's arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.

G. K. Chesterton
Any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate. It is as true of democratic fraternity as a divine love; sham love ends in compromise and common philosophy; but real love has always ended in bloodshed.

G. K. Chesterton
The truths of religion are unprovable; the facts of science are unproved.

G. K. Chesterton
Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction. Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.

G. K. Chesterton
All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost.

G. K. Chesterton
It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans.

G. K. Chesterton
There is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs.

G. K. Chesterton
"Proof ! " he cried. Good God! the man is looking for proof! Why, of course, the chances are twenty to one that it has nothing to do with them. But what else can we do? Don't you see we must either follow one wild possibility or else go home to bed.

G. K. Chesterton
Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

G. K. Chesterton
Any one of the strange laws we suffer is a compromise between a fad and a vested interest.

G. K. Chesterton
By all men bond to Nothing, Being slaves without a lord, By one blind idiot world obeyed, Too blind to be abhorred.

G. K. Chesterton
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.

G. K. Chesterton
An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.

G. K. Chesterton
But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.

G. K. Chesterton
Physical science is like simple addition: it is either infallible or it is false.

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

G. K. Chesterton
But since he stood for England And knew what England means, Unless you give him bacon You must not give him beans.

G. K. Chesterton
No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be...

G. K. Chesterton
It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack.

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

G. K. Chesterton
But those dealing in the actual manufacture of mind are dealing in a very explosive material. The material is not merely the clay of which man is master, but the truths or semblances of truth which have a certain mastery over man. The material is explosive because it must be taken seriously. The men writing books really are throwing bombs.

G. K. Chesterton
Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion.

G. K. Chesterton
Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims.

G. K. Chesterton
It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.

G. K. Chesterton
To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

G. K. Chesterton
The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle.

G. K. Chesterton