G. K. Chesterton Quotes

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All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them.

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
Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.

G. K. Chesterton
Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction … for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.

G. K. Chesterton
Burn from my brain and from my breast Sloth, and the cowardice that clings, And stiffness and the soul's arrest: And feed my brain with better things.

G. K. Chesterton
Individually, men may present a more or less rational appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming. But humanity a a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman.

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

G. K. Chesterton
Facts by themselves can often feed the flame of madness, because sanity is a spirit.

G. K. Chesterton
Children are simply human beings who are allowed to do what everyone else really desires to do, as for instance, to fly kites, or when seriously wronged to emit prolonged screams for several minutes.

G. K. Chesterton
Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.

G. K. Chesterton
We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera.

G. K. Chesterton
He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican.

G. K. Chesterton
A machine is a machine because it cannot think.

G. K. Chesterton
A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.

G. K. Chesterton
The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.

G. K. Chesterton
When any part of the general public is drawn into a debate on physical science, we may be certain that it has already become a debate on moral science.

G. K. Chesterton
The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.

G. K. Chesterton
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

G. K. Chesterton
Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.

G. K. Chesterton
Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales-because they find them romantic.

G. K. Chesterton
If there were no coincidence, it would be the greatest coincidence of all.

G. K. Chesterton
We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

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
It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money.

G. K. Chesterton
I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

G. K. Chesterton