G. K. Chesterton Quotes

844 Sourced Quotes

Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They
cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can
only represent what is unusual.

G. K. Chesterton
Science, that nameless being, declared that the weakest must go to the wall; especially in Wall Street.

G. K. Chesterton
He walked by instinct along one white road, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found himself outside a fenced garden. There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great unconscious gravity of a girl.

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
Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil.

G. K. Chesterton
The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of love in following the single woman; the poetry of religion in worshipping the single star.

G. K. Chesterton
The great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts.

G. K. Chesterton
Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek.

G. K. Chesterton
Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller.

G. K. Chesterton
Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves.

G. K. Chesterton
A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything.

G. K. Chesterton
I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.

G. K. Chesterton
It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.

G. K. Chesterton
Leaving the complications of the human breakfast-table out of account, in an elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken. But the chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable in himself.

G. K. Chesterton
Stick to the man who looks out of the window and tries to understand the world. Keep clear of the man who looks in at the window and tries to understand you.

G. K. Chesterton
It is unpardonable conceit not to laugh at your own jokes. Joking is undignified; that is why it is so good for one's soul. Do not fancy you can be a detached wit and avoid being a buffoon; you cannot. If you are the Court Jester you must be the Court Fool.

G. K. Chesterton
Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black.

G. K. Chesterton
A man cannot have the energy to produce good art without having the energy to wish to pass beyond it.

G. K. Chesterton
Pride juggles with her toppling towers, They strike the sun and cease, But the firm feet of humility They grip the ground like trees.

G. K. Chesterton
The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.

G. K. Chesterton
Science finds facts in Nature, but Science is not Nature; because Science has co-ordinated ideas, interpretations and analyses; and can say of Nature what Nature cannot say for itself.

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

G. K. Chesterton
Honour is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-porters.

G. K. Chesterton
The trouble about 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
If Christianity should happen to be true - that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe - then defending it may mean talking about anything and everything.

G. K. Chesterton
It's natural to believe in the supernatural. It never feels natural to accept only natural things.

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

G. K. Chesterton
For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, the sense of doom in the Calvinist.

G. K. Chesterton
A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it.

G. K. Chesterton
The human race is always trying this dodge of making everything entirely easy; but the difficulty which it shifts off one thing it shifts to another.

G. K. Chesterton