G. K. Chesterton Quotes

844 Sourced Quotes

I am more and more convinced that I suffer, not from a shiny or showy impertinence, but from a simplicity that verges upon imbecility.

G. K. Chesterton
Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made an essential and godliness is regarded as an offence.

G. K. Chesterton
If a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.

G. K. Chesterton
The deputation of distinguished geologists and mineralogists from Paris and Berlin were there in the most magnificent and appropriate dress, for there are no men who like wearing their decorations so much as the men of science - as anybody knows who has ever been to a soiree of the Royal Society.

G. K. Chesterton
Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.

G. K. Chesterton
Lead is the humblest of the metals; it is always put where it is invisible — and where it is indispensable. It is put on the keels of boats, where nobody can see it and everybody relies on it. It is put in the shrouds of the sea-sunken dead, whom we desire to see no more.

G. K. Chesterton
When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea.

G. K. Chesterton
At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man say, "Life is not worth living." We regard it as we regard the statement that it is a fine day; nobody thinks that it can possibly have
any serious effect on the man or on the world. And yet if that utterance were really believed, the world would stand on its head.

G. K. Chesterton
We are learning to do a great many clever things. The next great task will be to learn not to do them.

G. K. Chesterton
Some of the most frantic lies on the face of life are told with modesty and restraint; for the simple reason that only modesty and restraint will save them.

G. K. Chesterton
If our caricaturists do not hate their enemies, it is not because they are too big to hate them, but because their enemies are not big enough to hate.

G. K. Chesterton
If an editor can only make people angry enough, they will write half his newspaper for him for nothing.

G. K. Chesterton
It is cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men'smarriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize andsegregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a fewgreat hygienists might enclose or limit the life of all citizens,as nurses do with a family of children. It is not anarchy, it istyranny; but tyranny is a workable thing.

G. K. Chesterton
Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist.

G. K. Chesterton
Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch.

G. K. Chesterton
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press... It is not we who silence the press. It is the press who silences us.

G. K. Chesterton
I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.

G. K. Chesterton
There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.

G. K. Chesterton
Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a Conservative.

G. K. Chesterton
Youth is always too serious, and just now it is too serious about frivolity.

G. K. Chesterton
O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.

G. K. Chesterton
A straight liner is straight And a square mile is flat: But you learn in trigonometrics a trick worth two of that.

G. K. Chesterton
A nation that has nothing but its amusements will not be amused for long.

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

G. K. Chesterton
Apparently a scientist is a man who surveys all the sciences, without any particular study of them, and then gives expression to his own moral principles or prejudices.

G. K. Chesterton
A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve.

G. K. Chesterton
You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes.

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

G. K. Chesterton
The people has no definite disbelief in the temples of theology. The people has a very fiery and practical disbelief in the temples of physical science.

G. K. Chesterton
The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman.

G. K. Chesterton